188 Chapter 188: Underground

Even as we walked along the underground tunnel, Anastasia placed her hand against the rocky wall.

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"I knew it," she murmured. "There are traces of magic left on the walls. Someone has definitely been down here."

"Obviously." I rolled my eyes at her statement of the obvious. "This tunnel is artificial. Someone had to come down here and build it. The question is who was down here and for what purposes?"

"Ah…" Anastasia looked embarrassed. "My bad. I should have been more specific. This feels like dark magic…the type of magic that the Dark Church uses, to confound senses and disrupt communication." She smiled when she saw me recall her earlier conversation with the fallen priest. "Yes, exactly the kind of things I was looking for."

"Then the people who cast the spell are most likely the Dark Church…" I conceded and glanced around nervously. "And the Goblins they were gathering must be around here somewhere."

Anastasia nodded gloomily. I closed my eyes, remembering the other information I had read in the holographic screen. We had copied the data and downloaded it into a thumb drive as well as uploaded it to the cloud just in case, so that the authorities could conduct further investigations. The Azpire City Council had requested that we help track down the Goblins' nest while the police began evacuations.

But all of us were aware that if what the information we had obtained was true, we wouldn't be able to evacuate all of the civilians in time.

"They triggered an Emergence event to summon all the Goblins underground," I muttered. Then I brightened up. "At least they didn't summon a Crastrate this time…or the city will already be doomed."

I didn't want to think about the consequences if Azpire City had an entire hive of Crastrates infesting their underground area. There would be a queen of sorts, and they would be able to wipe out an entire colony…uh, city.

"Goblins are bad enough," Anastasia snapped, her eyes piercing. "The amount of damage they can do when unleashed on the city will still be catastrophic."

"I'm not denying that," I assured her. "Just thanking the Heavens for small miracles, that's all. But no matter what, we've to stop the Goblins from reaching the surface…as best as we can."

"Agreed."

Then I suddenly stopped when I caught a whiff of something terrible. Wrinkling my nose, I fought my reflexive desire to gag.

"Good lord, what the hell is that…?"

Unlike me, Anastasia wasn't affected. She was merely staring ahead at a bunch of…what looked like carrion.

"Seems like they were feeding the Goblins something," she said frostily. I grimaced as I caught sight of putrid bones sticking out of rotting flesh, doing my best to suppress the nausea that had risen in my gut.

"Maybe the Goblins will die from food poisoning and we won't have to deal with them," I suggested hopefully. Anastasia tried to smack my head, but I effortlessly dodge her.

"Don't be naïve. Goblins won't die from eating such things. They have much tougher digestive systems than humans."

All monsters did, but that wasn't the point. Trying to avoid staring at the carcasses, I glanced elsewhere and remembered something.

"Wait…where are the Goblins that fed on those poor beasts?"

"Not here?" Anastasia answered with a shrug. "I guess they moved on somewhere."

"…to where?"

"That's what we're here for…to find out their exact location. Best to keep moving."

Without any hesitation, Anastasia continued walking forward. I rubbed my cheek and followed her, gingerly making my way through the underground graveyard of rotting carrion. Doing my best not to accidentally step on them, I proceeded toward the end of the corridor. My shoe squelched against something, making me flinch, but I didn't complain.

Anastasia must have nerves of steel, to walk through this damned, foul place without any emotion. Once again I was reminded that she was an Assassin. She must be very used to death. Such a gruesome scene didn't affect her anymore.

In some ways I found that pitiful. Looking at Anastasia, she appeared to be an ordinary girl. Extremely beautiful, yes, but other than that she didn't seem very different from most girls her age. Alicia came to mind, for some reason. If Anastasia wasn't an Assassin, she would be attending school like us, hanging out with female friends, gossiping about romance and maybe admiring guys from afar. She wouldn't be involved in this dark business of death and violence.

I was aware that I was being super-naïve and unnecessarily idealistic. What happened had already happened. There was no changing Anastasia's past, no matter how much I wished for it. Nor could she could simply forget the assassination skills she had mastered and suddenly switch to a new vocation.

For now, we should focus on the present. Once we saved Azpire from a Goblin Apocalypse, then only could we worry about Anastasia's future.

Fortunately, we didn't have to spend too much time traversing the field of carrion. It terminated abruptly, and after putting a good distance between ourselves and the revolting place, I found myself able to breathe properly again.

"The trail of magic leads that way," Anastasia pointed out when we reached a fork. She had been unaffected the entire time and was coolly leading the way. However, I raised an eyebrow skeptically when I realized the implications of what she was saying.

"Do you think the human mages…the Dark Church dudes are herding the Goblins, using magic?" That was a disturbing thought. If so, that it meant that the Dark Church had perfected their technology to the point where they could control low-ranked monsters at least.

Anastasia considered the possibility for a moment, and then shook her head.

"This sort of magic is usually used to disrupt and confound the senses, to conceal the user from others," she explained. I nodded. The only reason why Anastasia could detect the spells was because she was trained to do so…probably to locate her assassination targets despite their best attempts to hide from her. "I think it's more likely that the Dark Church mages concealed their presence from the Goblins and observed them from a distance. If necessary, they'll take steps to influence the Goblins or nudge them in the direction they want the creatures to go, using the technology that you were talking about earlier. But I doubt they were actively commanding the monsters."

That was a relief. It meant that the enemy wasn't omnipotent.

"The trail seems to be ending soon. I think we're close."

Not paying any attention to me exhaling, Anastasia continued to focus on the search. I glanced up, and using the high-end sensors and functions on my glasses, which displayed a tiny holographic map on the lenses, I located a door.

"You're probably right. I see an entrance to something over there."

The infrared vision revealed what seemed like hundreds of throbbing life signs behind the door. Gulping, I briefly informed Anastasia.

She nodded, unsurprised. "That should be what we're looking for." Then she frowned. "Does the Azpire City Council really expect the two of us to kill all hundreds of Goblins by ourselves?"

"I think they've heard about me and my Strategic-scale spell and got carried away…forgetting that I can't nuke them if they're underground."

"Oh, right." Anastasia giggled. "The slayer of three thousand monsters. Of course they would think hundreds of Goblins are nothing to you. You are the man who achieved such an incredible feat, after all."

"That doesn't change the fact that I can't nuke them when they're underground," I repeated dryly, to emphasize the point. Anastasia sighed and nodded again.

"Yes, indeed. But we'll still have to go and do something."

"Agreed."

It didn't take us too long before we found ourselves standing in front of the nine-meter door my glasses had spotted earlier. Anastasia held out a hand to stop me.

"Don't do anything reckless like summoning a Soul Beast and smashing the door down, please. I know we're in a hurry, but they might have a different kind of booby trap. One that might be dangerous even to your Soul Beasts."

"Then how do you suggest we go in?" I asked, trying not to sound sarcastic but failing. "Should we go knock on the door politely?"

Anastasia gave me a withering stare. "You've never been on a stealth mission before, have you?"

"Of course not."

She sighed and shook her head. "Just leave it to me, all right?"

I bowed exaggeratedly and gestured for her to take the lead. "All yours, Ana."

Rolling her eyes, Anastasia stepped forward cautiously. She was obviously looking out for traps, or for anything out of place.

Unfortunately, she seemed to be looking at the wrong places.

The moment she stepped on a particular block that made up the concrete floor, a gigantic magic circle materialized below her and suffused the entire chamber in an eerie green and crimson glow. Ana narrowed her eyes and immediately jumped back, but she was too late.

"I knew it," she hissed under her breath. "This whole place is booby-trapped!"

Unfortunately, it was too late. She had triggered the trap, and now something was emerging from the magic circle. I immediately recognized it as a summoning spell. I mean, I had to. I was a summoner, after all.

"Watch out!" I shouted, but Anastasia was already moving. A gigantic silhouette pulled itself out of the magic circle and swung a massive arm at the former Assassin, but she effortlessly dodged it, jumping high in the air and gracefully flipping herself over.

"A Golem, huh?" she remarked, as if it was nothing more than a nuisance. She was correct. The brown, rocky humanoid creature that was dragging itself out of the magic circle was a Golem. About five meters tall and half as wide, the bulky behemoth was a mass of solid rock. Despite its slow speed and clumsiness, its swinging arms struck with the force of a freight train, gouging chunks of concrete out from the underground walls.

If we didn't take it down soon, it would end up causing a cave-in and wipe us out along with itself.

Anastasia didn't seem too worried. Even as the Golem swatted at her again, she elegantly evaded it. While soaring in midair, she drew two poisoned daggers. Twisting herself around, she planted her feet on the stone ceiling before launching herself at the clumsily lumbering Golem and slashed with both of her deadly weapons.

Clang!

It was testament to her skill that she managed to chip off huge amounts of rock from her target. The Golem grunted and tried to turn to follow her, but she was already rolling away. Glancing up, she clicked her tongue in irritation.

"I should have known that poison would have no effect on a Golem."

The Golem finally turned to face her and it swung its huge fist to pulverize her. Anastasia simply leaped up and landed on its rocky arm before running along the length of the limb. The Golem shuddered and tried to swipe her away with its other arm, but the moment she reached its shoulder, she did a cartwheel and launched herself away, narrowly avoiding getting struck by several tons of solid rock.

"Ana! Are you all right?" I asked as I hurried toward her. She rolled her eyes.

"Of course I'm all right. I'm a former Assassin, remember?" she then placed her hands on her hips. "What, did you expect me to fall over in fear and become too afraid to move like some damsel in distress just so you can play the hero and rescue me?"

"No." I was gaping at her. "Where did you get the idea from?"

"From some badly written web novel that somehow got popular enough to get officially published as a light novel and have an anime adaptation."

I didn't know Ana watched anime and read web novels too. She was definitely a keeper.

"Anyway, my poison doesn't work on the Golem," she informed me as she retreated from the slowly turning summoned beast. "Do you mind if I leave this blockhead to you?"

"Already on it," I assured her, and at that instant I completed my summoning spell.