Paragon of Skills

Chapter 286

Astabazos slowly walks toward the portal, waiting for Jacob Cloud to slip and get killed.

Even with the Grimoire, if this truly is a Dungeon set up by the Cult of Apocalypse, then Jacob Cloud is toast.

Astabazos hates to admit it, but he fears the Dungeon more than the Leader of Champions.

Dungeons arranged by the Cult of the Apocalypse, as it was taught to all Dark Champions, were they ever to face one of these, are the nastiest in existence. The Cult of the Apocalypse specializes in arrays and formations. They are all incredible masters and scholars of Primordial Magic and can do things that nobody else can when it comes to Formations.

Even if Jacob Cloud will be able to see what kind of dangers a Formation inside poses, Astabazos knows that the Leader of Champions will have to suffer through twisted, complex magic that even he, an Infernal, would avoid at all costs.

You might possess a Rainbow Skill that soon will be mine, Jacob Cloud. But the depth of Primordial Magic is something you’ll never truly understand and—

When Astabazos’s view finally clears after entering the portal, he expects to see Jacob jumping over jets of flames, streams of Mana blades, and curses raining hell on him and—

There’s none of that.

Astabazos looks at a pretty large hall made of stone that has simply been…

Ravaged.

There are chips and even boulders of stone detached from the walls, from the ceiling, and even from the floor. He can see materials, from metal plates and twisted ropes of magical twines that were supposed to power some kind of formation. But they’re all broken beyond recognition.

And there’s not one ounce of blood in sight.

What in the name of Asmodeus happened here?

Astabazos walks forward.

Maybe the first room was easy. Of course, it would be. It’s just the first room. The Cult of the Apocalypse is known to be extremely, extremely twisted when it comes to order. They must have made an easier one so that Jacob Cloud would lower his guard. He’s probably in the next room, about to die, he thinks.

Astabazos, still fully cloaked in a perfect, impenetrable stealth, steps forward, toward the corridor of stone that leads to the next room, clutching the long, curved dagger in his hands.

I would like to torture the bastard, but as soon as I see him struggle, I’ll just cut his head off.

Not even the arrogant Infernal wants to give Jacob Cloud one more moment to live. He knows that the bastard is, regrettably, extraordinary in too many regards to take lightly.

But when he steps into the second room, yet another stony hall, the picture there is pretty much the same as the previous one.

What happened? But before Astabazos can wonder whether he’s losing his mind, he just steps forward, ignoring the broken up room and the destroyed traps.

But the third room is the exact same as the second. And when he steps into the fourth and the fifth, it’s the same again.

That’s when he starts breaking into a run.

How is this possible?!

He pushes his mind to activate the telepathic link.

Delefagus, are you seeing this?!

Delefagus, far, but still connected to him through the power of Asmodeus that the Prophet gifted them, replies, yes. I have no idea how he could have done any of this.

They know that Jacob Cloud has Baalrek the Mad’s inheritance. And Baalrek the Mad, the late father of their own Prophet, was an unparalleled expert in Primordial Magic.

But, how was this possible?!

Jacob Cloud is only at Platinum Rank, despite the fact that his own power can reach True Diamond. Yet, he shouldn’t be able to absolutely breeze through this place!

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Something’s off, Delefagus, Astabazos says.

We saw him use that Primordial Spell to eradicate Nimirea’s Dark Seed and her Soul Contract. Maybe, it wasn’t a one-off spell that he learned from his master.

Astabazos thinks about what Delefagus is saying.

No. He’s too weak. He’s too young to have mastered the wide array of Primordial Spells one would need here.

And so, Astabazos, ignoring Delefagus once again, reaches the end of the Dungeon, where he finds Jacob Cloud sat on a chest, eating a sandwich.

The Infernal is pretty sure he entered the place only half a minute later than his archnemesis. But then, how can the guy have completed the Dungeon, reaped the reward, and taken the time to snack?!

I’ll follow him much more closely next, Astabazos thinks, narrowing his eyes at the Leader of Champions. His bloodthirst is screaming to be quenched in the crimson blood of his enemy. Yet, he knows that despite looking so peaceful, Jacob Cloud’s still very perceptive. Sure, he could hurt him if he attacked now, but given all the Afflictions that the young man has at his disposal, it would be hard to get out of this unscathed in a fair one-on-one match.

As Jacob is about to enter the second Dungeon, he looks at the response from the Grimoire again.

[The Dungeon of Pain and Torture]

[Entry requirements: two people and special conditions to fulfill.]

Not even Vyrrak could sneak up on me like this, Jacob thinks, paying a lot of attention not to look away.

If he was another person, he might not have questioned much how he was able to enter the first Dungeon. Yet, despite not knowing what exactly fulfilled the special requirements of the Dungeon, he knows that the two-people entry requirement, which is most likely impossible to know beforehand by the other party, cannot be bypassed.

Or, if it was bypassed, he would know thanks to the Grimoire.

Therefore, there’s only one thing that could explain how he got into the first Dungeon.

Once again, I was right.

While back at the tournament, once Jacob’s Grimoire fused with King Baalrek’s black grimoire of Primordial Spells, the evolved Rainbow Skill acquired even more functions. It was all thanks to the Primordial Grimoire.

One of them was that it didn’t just show the flaws of something, but it showed him everything.

They don’t know this, though. They’re operating, them and the Prophet, thinking that I can only see flaws. Which means they don’t know how much I know about them.

And he knows of exactly one person who would be able, interested, and capable of something so idiotic as to follow him inside a Dungeon. Also, it’s the only person whose Skill would go undetected by his Grimoire.

Astabazos Kerczakh.

But he’s not the one trying to start a mass Corruption event here.

He still remembered the man’s analysis vividly.

[Astabazos Kerczakh, Grimoire Analysis]

[History: Son of a Baron who was executed for stealing from Infernal Royalty in the year of…]

[Skills: …]

[The Mantle of the Abyss (Rainbow)]

[The Mantle of the Abyss allows the user to become invulnerable as long as it’s being used and the user stays one foot away from the physical body of whoever tries to touch him. The Mantle of the Abyss can only be used while nobody’s looking.]

Despite the fact that it can only be used when someone is not looking at you, it is an incredible Rainbow Skill.

I got confirmation from Sir Lucas. I asked him when he was last in touch with some of the local cults that have recently been exterminated and it turns out they were obsessed with the mines. If it had been anywhere else, I wouldn’t have suspected so much.

What Jacob has found out is that his original intuition, that the Dark Champion Delefagus wants to kill Sir Lucas, is actually wrong.

Delefagus clearly also wants Sir Lucas dead, otherwise he wouldn’t have attracted him there with this puny level of Corruption.

The Corruption is dangerous, but there’s really no way of triggering it to make monsters. The Dark Seeds that they distributed at the tournament were thick, dense manifestations of Corruption that one had to ingest willingly. You can’t just monsterify everybody passively.

If the Dark Champions could have just turned about anybody into a monster, they would have done so without trying to disseminate fear and terror during the tournament.

That has led Jacob to believe that they simply cannot turn someone into a monster just because.

And if I didn’t realize that and I wasn’t so paranoid, it wouldn’t have made any sense then why they would be spreading so much wanton Corruption here, Jacob thinks.

Still, the only other option is pretty… crazy.

If the Corruption is not for the people, this was just a whole ruse, one massive plan to attract me. Or at least one of the Champions.

And one might ask, how is that possible? How would he know so much?

Because Orrivane was supposedly contacted by a cultist that should have been dead, Jacob sighs.

If it hadn’t been for Sir Lucas giving him information, he might have fallen for this. Which, logically, makes him believe that there’s not just one Dark Champion after Sir Lucas.

It’s probably all of them after me. If Astabazos is here, however, alone, and where the advantage would be mine if we faced each other given all the traps that I could side-step with the Grimoire…

Jacob smiles slightly.

They want me in the mines. There must be a massive trap array, something that even I can’t take.

Which also means that Astabazos must have acted alone.

Therefore, Jacob thinks, I can play with him a little.