Chapter 409: Tomb
I slowly turned toward her.
"But then why didn’t you tell me? We spent hours traveling."
Ariel tilted her head. Then, without the slightest hint of shame, she replied,
"Taking the long route is sometimes fun."
I stared at her.
What kind of bullshit reason was that?
Her shoulders trembled ever so slightly, and I could tell she was doing everything she could to keep a straight face. The corners of her mouth twitched, her tails swayed lazily behind her, and the smug satisfaction in her eyes only made it worse.
She knew exactly how ridiculous that answer was. Yet she said it anyway.
I could only stand there in disbelief. Then, after a few seconds, I rubbed my forehead and let out a weary sigh.
Somehow, I couldn’t even stay angry.
This was exactly the kind of thing I usually did to her.
I’d intentionally say something outrageous, poke at her until she got flustered, then sit back and enjoy watching her reaction.
It was practically one of my favorite pastimes.
This time, however...
The roles had been completely reversed.
I was the one getting baited.
And judging by the grin she was desperately trying to hide, Ariel was enjoying every second of it.
Ariel finally gave up trying to suppress her amusement and let out a quiet chuckle before turning away. One of her tails flicked lazily behind her.
"Instead of wasting time talking about this, shouldn’t we focus on the actual objective?"
Right...the objective.
I shifted my attention toward the tomb Ariel had brought me to.
It was built into the base of a rocky hill, its square-shaped entrance framed by weathered stone bricks that looked far too orderly to have been formed naturally.
Someone had built this.
That realization lingered in my mind for only a moment before my attention was drawn elsewhere.
To the two figures standing motionless before the entrance.
They were skeletal humanoids, each gripping what appeared to be old, rusted blades.
At first glance, the weapons looked worn by countless years. But something about them immediately felt... wrong.
I knew they weren’t ordinary rusted swords.
The same unsettling aura radiating from the skeletal figures seeped from the blades as well, making the weapons feel far more dangerous than their appearance suggested.
Even from this distance, I felt a faint chill crawl down my spine.
The skeletons hadn’t moved.
They simply stood there like statues, silently guarding the entrance. Yet their presence alone was enough to make every instinct in my body scream at me not to take another step.
I could already tell they were powerful.
Still, I activated [Analyze] anyway.
[Undead Knight - Level 75]
Level seventy-five?
I frowned. That was more than ten levels above my own.
My gaze lingered on the name: Undead Knight.
The title itself told me a lot.
Knights served someone.
Whether it was a king, a lord, or some other master, they rarely existed on their own. If these creatures truly were guardians, then there was almost certainly someone—or something—inside the tomb commanding them.
And if these level seventy-five undead were merely the guards...
I didn’t even want to imagine the strength of whatever lay deeper within.
A creature capable of commanding them would almost certainly be far stronger.
Level one hundred, perhaps. Or even higher.
The thought made me swallow unconsciously.
But despite feeling anxious, I couldn’t stop the smile that crept onto my face.
Every major leap in my strength had come from defeating enemies that once seemed impossible to overcome, so standing before an opponent stronger than myself stirred something inside me.
But excitement wasn’t an excuse to get reckless.
The King’s Games were only five days away. Dying here would be disastrous, not just for me, but for the entire clan that had spent the past week preparing for what was coming.
I intended to leave this tomb alive, which meant I couldn’t afford to underestimate the knights, the traps, or whatever waited beyond that entrance. Every step from here on had to be taken with caution.
Ariel walked over and stopped beside me, her eyes fixed on the two undead knights guarding the entrance.
"So..." she said. "What do you think? Attractive, aren’t they?"
Something about the way she said it bothered me.
There was a strange excitement behind her words, almost as though she was trying to lure me toward something she knew was dangerous.
Unfortunately...it was working.
The danger only made the tomb more enticing.
"I don’t think they’re a big deal," I said casually, keeping my eyes on the skeletal knights. "I should be able to handle them."
Ariel slowly turned to look at me.
For a brief moment, she wore a genuinely strange expression, as though she couldn’t decide whether I was being serious or simply overconfident. Then her usual composure returned.
"Right," she said with a small nod. "I forgot."
She looked back toward the entrance.
"You’re a monster yourself. Of course, you’d look at those demons and think they’re nothing special."
A grin spread across my face.
"You think I’m a monster?"
I placed a hand against my chest dramatically.
"Thank you."
Ariel visibly flinched.
"...That wasn’t a compliment."
"It sounded like one."
"It wasn’t."
"I’ll choose to believe it was."
She let out an exasperated sigh before looking at me again.
"But you’re also an idiot if you think you’re going to take them down easily."
I grinned and turned toward the tomb.
"Says the coward who didn’t even try attacking them."
"Who says I didn’t try?!"
I barely registered the rest of what Ariel shouted.
With a burst of speed, I leaped out from our cover and landed several meters in front of the tomb’s entrance.
The impact sent a small cloud of dust rolling across the ground.
Whether Ariel had actually fought them before or not didn’t matter. What mattered was that I’d finally found an opponent worthy of testing my abilities against.
The moment my feet touched the ground, the two skeletal knights reacted.
Their hollow eye sockets snapped toward me simultaneously.
An instant later, one of them vanished.
The undead knight crossed the distance between us so quickly that my eyes barely kept up. Its rusted blade was already inches from my face by the time my instincts caught up with what was happening.
I threw myself sideways.
The sword whistled past my cheek, missing by the narrowest of margins.
The force behind the thrust didn’t stop there.
The blade drove into the earth where I’d been standing, carving deep into the packed ground before the knight immediately wrenched it free in one smooth motion.
I slid several steps across the dirt before regaining my balance and drawing Grave Fang.
The familiar weight settled comfortably in my hand.
The knight slowly straightened and turned its skull toward me, the empty sockets fixed in my direction. Then, without making a sound, it gave a slight tilt of its head toward the second knight, as if to say:
We go together.