Odyssey of the Blind God
Chapter 45 Blood

Somehow, Nial couldn't help but feel astonished about everything.

After his first encounter with a petrification rats group, he had yet to be encircled or attacked a second time.

Not even a single stray beast approached him which was uncommon in a dungeon that was reported to harbor several hundred petrification rats at the bare minimum!

This was weird but Nial was unable to focus on this because his entire body felt much lighter after he had strained it a little bit in order to defeat the large group of petrification rats.

He had given his best to eradicate the threat as quickly as possible, which had worked quite well but owing to the movement sequence, his mind was currently tormented.

Right now, his entire mind wanted to continue unraveling the secrets of Master Junades movement sequences and adapting those into his fighting style.

But, the knowledge seemed to evade him and Nial had to try hard not to think about it.

Unfortunately, this worked exactly in the opposite way, because the more he tried to prevent thinking about it, the more his thoughts went in that direction.

Thus, he was quite happy, when he reached an intersection that led him to three large tunnels.

According to his mana perception, there were dozens if not hundreds of small tunnels within the large ones, but that was useless for him because he was unable to squeeze himself through the thigh tunnels.

Only the petrification rats and similar beasts of that size could move in and out of those tunnels swiftly, but that was currently not important to Nial, who tried to make up his mind on what tunnel he should enter.

Despite using his senses and mana perception to figure out the differences in the tunnels, they felt the same to him.

When he touched them, all of the entrances felt cold with some spots being wet and other spots infested with weed and moss.

This astonished Nial a little bit because if moss grew in the depths of the tunnel, the entire cave had to be relatively bright and receive sunlight to allow its growth.

Yet, even though it was unexpected, he quickly averted his attention to focus on his other senses before he tried to evaluate the dangers of the caves.

'The one on the left smells like urine, extremely distinct, and it's worse than in the other tunnel in the middle that has the smell of blood in the air…as for the right tunnel…I cannot smell anything from there…that's odd!'

In the end, the tunnel on the right felt the most dangerous, and Nial didn't believe that anyone would survive in that tunnel.

It was simply too ominous, and when he recalled the thunderous roar when he had been with the cadets at the cavern entrance, Nial couldn't help but give an involuntary shudder.

When he recalled the cadets, he noticed that those faint remnants of their mana fluctuations lingered in the air, pointing towards the direction of the right tunnel.

When he sensed this, Nial couldn't help but wonder if they were extremely intelligent, or plain stupid.

They had gone searching for the boss monster because they were confident of defeating it, and also tried to be the saviors of the students who were stuck inside while simultaneously aiming for bonus merits for solving their mission with an excellent score.

Either way, Nial was definitely not one of the Originals who were confident in defeating the boss monster of the anomalistic two-element dungeon.

As such, he ignored the tunnel on the right and went into the tunnel that reeked of blood.

While the overpowering stench of urine might not indicate anything, it was likely the tunnel that would lead him to their nest.

That was not somewhere he wanted to be even remotely close to. Thus, he chose the tunnel that reeked of blood as it could mean that many petrification rat corpses might be found there.

At the same time, it was also possible for the missing students' corpses to be lying there, but that was not something he hoped to replace.

Either way, he entered the blood reeking tunnel with vigilant steps, knowing that beasts could attack him from all directions.

However, he felt oddly reassured, knowing that it was impossible to avoid being surrounded without an escape route because there were dozens of small tunnels that seemed to connect to each other like an anthill!

This was interesting because Nial was able to roughly come up with a blueprint of the cave in his mind..or so he first thought.

Yet, after recalling that some students were still labeled 'missing', Nial couldn't help but believe that the two-element dungeon might be larger than it appeared.

Considering that the Melind dungeon had several floors, it was possible for the two-element dungeon to have multiple layers underground!

If the entire space of the dungeon's underground was riddled with tunnels, Nial could only make a rough estimate of just how ginormous the dungeon might be.

He had been walking on the surface and knew how vast the space was, after all.

'That's… crazy.' Nial could only think, hoping that he was interpreting too much into the fact that the government labeled the students as 'missing'.

Averting his attention from the horrifying thoughts, Nial began to visualize the movement sequences he recalled from the time Master Junades had beat him up.

His body might not be able to cope with the burden yet, but it should be possible to trim down the lengthy sequences into shorter ones which he could quickly utilize one after another.

A small break in between each sequence should be more than enough to give him just a moment to catch his breath so as to not let his muscles cramp.

He wanted to test out if that would work, but before that he would have to replace new opponents. Furthermore, he had yet to properly imagine the movement sequences, let alone repeat them until he perfected them.

Not only were his muscles too weak, but his entire constitution should be completely different to Master Junades, who was anything but frail, rigid, and lacking the necessary strength like him.

With that in mind, Nial moved the Fang spear in its glaive form, trying to replicate the movement sequence in its most basic and crude form.

It didn't allow him to do anything special or move extremely fast, but slowly repeating the lengthy movement sequence was possible.

This was a great achievement because he now knew that it was possible for him to move according to his imagination, even if it was just Master Junades' most basic movement sequence that was correctly initiated.

From the outside, it might look weird and rough, but that did not matter to Nial because it was fine as long as it felt good to himself.

Unfortunately even that was not exactly the case because there were some inconveniences that were quickly solved by tweaking the movement sequence a bit, and prolonging certain movements while changing something else.

If someone else were to know what Nial was currently trying to achieve, they would either call him crazy and idiotic or a prodigious talent.

The former would be the case if he knew nothing about the anatomy of the human body, while the latter was the case if he knew what kinds of movements and alterations were dangerous for his body to make after previous movements.

Having no idea about the human body's anatomy, Nial turned into the former, an idiot with crazy ideas, and he was fully aware of this.

But though his ideas were a bit reckless, he could not just sit and waste precious time as he had yet to learn a combat technique.

As such, Master Junades' movement sequences were the only reference points he could take in order to create some simple means to attack.

Other than that, he could only attack with simple thrusts and slashes while trying to move somewhat correctly, preventing to interrupt his already crude movements.

Having memorized Master Junades' movements had saved him from being gravely injured as replicating those had enabled him to fight the large group of petrification rats even if it had strained him.

Thus, given the fact that he was fighting with his life on the line, he would rather be an idiot with crazy ideas than dead.

It was as simple as that!

After entering the depths of the blood reeking tunnel, it didn't take long before he found dozens of rat corpses that littered the ground.

The corpses seemed to be decaying, indicating that the rats were killed days ago, and the stench intensified when he passed by them.

Trying to not gag, he focussed on stepping on the clear ground so as to not slip and fall in the reeking mass of corpses.

Using his mana perception with more accuracy, Nial tried to figure out if it was possible to get to exactly know how old the corpses were.

Unfortunately, that was not possible, but what he noticed was something else that gave him a ray of hope- there were fresh remnants of mana!

This was great, and something Nial had hoped to encounter.

The remnants were strong enough to be from beings stronger than petrification rats, and based on his assessment, he could tell that they belonged to two different kinds of beings.

Nial had yet to learn how to clearly separate mana fluctuations, but there were still certain things he could roughly gauge.

While a fraction of the mana remnants felt like it was wild and unstable, indicating that it belonged to a stronger kind of beast, the majority of mana remnants belonged to the Originals, which would be great.

Despite being able to tell that the mana remnants were fresh, Nial couldn't deduce the exact time that had passed since the strong mana currents had been released!

As such, he had found a clue but was unable to tell how useful it was.

Nonetheless, it was better than nothing, and with vigilance, Nial continued to descend the tunnel, and finally, after spending ten minutes in tension, a group of petrification rats attacked him!

Nial was unable to express how happy he was about finally encountering a group of beasts that attacked him because he felt uncomfortable with the blood reeking stench permeating the air inside the entire tunnel, only to encounter not even a single beast.

Thus, after sensing the petrification rats and hearing their screeches, he smiled vibrantly. Without hesitation, he pulled the Fang glaive backward, holding it in one hand as he rushed ahead, avoiding stepping on the wet spots on the cold stone ground.

Emerging in front of the closest petrification rats, who had gathered its mana in the area around its eyes, to activate the petrification effect, it tried to intimidate Nial who was unaffected, and slashed out with the glaive, cutting the rat in half.

No hesitation could be detected in his movements that were a lot smoother than they had been during the first time he fought the petrification rats.

Learning and adapting to the movements quickly, Nial was adjusting to the given circumstances at a pace that shocked him, as he threw his body around, avoiding several petrification rats that jumped toward him.

After that, he supported his back by pushing the lower end of the glaive towards his back, preventing him from falling on the wet ground.

He had to avoid falling at all costs as once he fell, it would have been over because his movements would be restricted, and the time which he would require to get back on his feet would be longer.

As such, instead of pushing himself up from the ground, or the glaive, he inserted faint traces of his mana into the Fang spear that quickly released a blade from the spear's rear end, pushing him upwards.

The sound of metal clashing with stone caused his ears to prick, but Nial ignored it as he evaded the follow-up attacks of the other petrification rats.

Under normal circumstances, or even in the last battle, he would have retreated by now.

Yet, contrary to his own beliefs, Nial advanced ahead, forcing his combat instincts and everything he had comprehended about combat during the last few weeks to resurface.

His movements had already improved from the previous battle and Nial knew that this originated from the fact that he tried to imitate the way Master Junades moved, just in his own customized version!

Because of his ambition to grow stronger, he was able to defeat his opponents, and it took only a few minutes until the smaller group of 20 petrification rats was eradicated, and left behind a single origin crystal.

Picking it up, Nail ignored the corpses, and he continued to pave his way through the cave while analyzing the fight he had just won.

Yet, just as he was about to start focusing on the fight he visualized in his mind, Nial halted in his tracks when his mana perception sensed something that caused him to feel extremely uncomfortable.

The hazy outlines of a dead Original were beginning to unfold merely 10 meters away from him. And, despite his mind entering a chaotic state, only one thought flashed through his mind, repeating itself over and over.

'Please, don't let it be Shana!'