Our Family Has Fallen

"I’ve heard people mention it before, but only that this pattern is called [World]. I don’t really know anything else."

For example, [Revelation] is that half arc divided by five lines, the pattern rendered in bright white, its meaning generally leaning toward positive virtues.

𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

[Iron Crown] is a similar pattern, except it shows up in blood-red within the design, its meaning leaning toward negative torment.

As for the mark used by the Ascension Sect, you can understand it as [Anti-Revelation], it’s just the pattern flipped upside down.

You can basically see that all these messy patterns are parts, or variants, of the complete [World] pattern.

It’s somewhat like the Church’s cross, which, after many years of development, has all kinds of bizarre cross forms, each containing different meanings.

As for why Lance knows about [World], that has to be traced back to an old acquaintance...

But now is not the time to be thinking about that. Lance hurriedly pressed the scholar about his discovery.

Alhazred carefully observed it, and only after a moment did he offer a simple judgment.

"This is a beacon. It should be connected to that thing, but I’ll need more time to determine the specifics."

What the scholar meant, naturally, was that uncanny construct leading into the void.

Lance had no objections to this. He knew how troublesome a Transcendent Ritual was, how it was destined to take time, and besides, he had always respected intellectuals.

But the mission wasn’t over yet.

"Beggby and the Legion stay here to protect the scholar while he does his research. I’ll take the trusted aides and continue the clearing. If there’s a problem, you can retreat on your own—keeping yourselves alive is the most critical thing."

The reason he got the idea to split the troops was because the scholar’s group could easily handle most situations, and with himself on the other side, Lance was confident he could deal with any unexpected events.

After leaving them a batch of supplies, Lance took his trusted aides and began sweeping the other areas.

With the Legion’s bulldozer-like offensive gone, the task of killing enemies fell to the trusted aides.

Lance directly organized ten-man squads to take on combat, support, control, defense, offense—basically this kind of configuration—and split them into five teams.

One team fights while the others keep on reaping, maintaining combat effectiveness through rotation.

The five squads took turns cleaning out the enemies. Fighting was the best way to grow stronger. They had no trouble dealing with antibodies and polyp-meat; raising their guns to blow one apart with a single shot was easy, and as long as they didn’t close in for melee, they didn’t have to worry about the disgusting secretions splashing out.

As for fast and agile monsters like Flesh Hounds, the melee trusted aides would intercept them, or else use bombs and similar tools.

They didn’t need to kill them outright—just use area attacks to interrupt the Flesh Hounds’ movements, or shockwaves to stun and briefly control them. That was enough to finish them off.

If they ran into a Holy Hall or a Macrophage, they’d go straight in with bombs, Incendiary Bottles, raised guns, and artillery.

With my equipment advantage, why would I bother with melee against you? Cripple you first, then rush in to reap, hacking you to death in a flurry of blades.

Frankly, the techniques of these trusted aides were getting more and more refined; calling them butchers dissecting an ox wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

And Lance?

He was still drawing maps, or else pushing carts to collect flesh, only giving them Bless and treatment after each fight ended.

It’s hard to imagine that the Dark Dungeon which even Church saints failed against had become Lance’s training ground.

A Holy Hall sniper fired a Bone Spur from its tail that actually pierced straight through the Shield and drove into the shoulder of the armored trusted aide.

But at the same instant, gunshots rang out. The raised gun round slammed into the Holy Hall’s head, shredding the black iron helmet in a flash and blowing half its face off.

Unfortunately, the shot was a little off; otherwise the entire head would have exploded.

This was the flaw—the accuracy wasn’t high enough, let alone when you’re aiming at a small target like the head.

But it wasn’t just one shot, and its reflexive move to raise its pincers to defend itself happened to bump into another round.

A crisp cracking sound rang out as the pincers that could clash with swords were directly smashed, splitting into several fissures.

The successive gunshots punched several large holes in the Holy Hall sniper’s body, sending its frame collapsing as if out of control.

"Yah!"

The trusted aide who’d been skewered by the Bone Spur didn’t even let out a cry of pain, instead shoving the Shield aside, yanking the spur out of his body along with it.

This ruthless man completely ignored his injuries, threw away the Shield, and charged in, one-handedly chopping off the Holy Hall’s head. The others swarmed up as well, hacking it to death in a frenzy.

With the monster’s death, the battle came to an end.

Only then did Lance start treating them, and then he Blessed them with the Spiritual Essence offered by the sacrifice.

This was why they feared no pain and dared to charge forward.

The Lord watches me!

But their Lord was not very satisfied.

"How many times have I said this—do your best to avoid getting hurt. If you’re wounded, your first move should be to leave the battlefield and get your injury under control. You have to trust your teammates; only after treatment will you be able to play a greater role.

And I already told you that monster can still fire all of its Bone Spurs. Since you were responsible for guarding, how could you abandon your teammates and charge in?"

"My Lord, but the monster had completely lost its reactions."

"Pride and complacency are a slow but insidious killer. You must stay alert at all times. Any little bit of ’it’ll probably be fine’ on the battlefield is a sign of death."

"Yes!"

Even though Lance instilled in them the idea of exercising initiative, that didn’t mean they could question the Lord’s decisions. To them, the most important thing was loyalty!

"Although I require you to master some level of melee ability, we absolutely must play to our own advantages. If you can fight at range, don’t move in close. Do you think the gear I gave you are just fire sticks?

When you’ve stabilized the situation, don’t take risks. The best way to confirm whether the enemy can still resist is not to walk up and check, but a single bullet..."

Under other nobles, the soldiers would need to be whipped to make them go in. In Hamlet, Lance had to keep persuading his men not to charge so recklessly.

Right now, having his own healing made it manageable. Without it, losing even one of them would be heartbreaking—these were elites who had climbed out of piles of corpses over and over again, and more importantly, consuming huge amounts of Spiritual Essence to reach their current strength.

Before they came in, most of those trusted aides were at Elite rank, and under normal circumstances, raising a major rank required both talent and effort in full measure.

Many people needed a lifetime of accumulation just to step into Master. The unlucky ones—even those with outstanding talent like Amanda—could be stuck at this threshold for a long time due to the path they’d chosen. You can imagine how difficult it is.

But after one circuit down here, most of these trusted aides were already at Master rank. That was just outrageous. These weren’t cabbages, after all—probably even the Emperor of the Empire couldn’t muster fifty loyal Masters under his command.

The trusted aides themselves didn’t react much to this. They could feel the increasingly powerful strength, but it wasn’t like it was growing out of thin air for no reason.

All of them had come up from the bottom, reaching this point through battle after bloody battle. What was truly strong was that will of steel, tempered a thousand times.

They used willpower to control their strength. The rationality Lance instilled in them would suppress the agitation in their hearts.

Even in a high-pressure environment like the dungeon, their rising power remained very stable.

Because they had ideals and faith. They were the Lord’s most loyal troops!

For Lance, the key point was that he’d emptied out his Spiritual Essence before coming in—meaning these Masters were basically all raised on the ancestral funeral savings he’d eaten through on the spot.

And even that was only one part of this dungeon, which was carpeted in flesh.

Master wasn’t the limit yet. Let me see what your true limit is!

After splitting up at the Stomach of the Behemoth’s portal, Lance took the Honor Guard and made a full circuit through the rest of the Dark Dungeon’s third layer, basically clearing every passage and room.

The flesh of a million people was mostly concentrated on the third layer. Calling it a Meat Mountain and sea of blood wouldn’t be an exaggeration. No matter how strong they were, to the "Behemoth" they were only superficial wounds.

In a sense, it was just like the ruins on the surface—development was impossible to finish in a day or two.

Lance understood this, so their primary task was clearing and fighting; harvesting was actually secondary.