Chapter 212 - 211 Scouting The Demon’s Stronghold

Taking a single day to rest and plan, the beasts along with Marcus and Mrazivý's party Royal Frost, did their best to get ready for the assault planned on the demon.

"You be carful out there Irene, I will not be able to sleep well for quite some time if one of my only friends gets killed." Mrazivý said with a playful smirk on her face but worry in her eyes.

"Yes, do be careful, your help has already been invaluable and if you were to die for our cause it would leave a bitter taste in all of our mouths." The leader of the beasts the winged unicorn Veunlux said while bowing its head towards Marcus.

'You are not allowed to die out there. If you, do I will lose out on some of my best skills and my supply of that delicious puff cow meat.' Roxene telepathically said to Marcus in a joking manner

And last but not least, pulling him into a big embrace was his little sister Lilia who said, "You already promised me you would come back safely so I will be waiting."

With the last of his friends and family wishing him luck, Marcus began walking down the tunnel that the demon and his forces normally came from and said, "I will send word once my recon is done and right before engaging the demon. Make sure everyone is ready because this ends today."

At that Marcus disappeared down the tunnel out of view of all that had come to see him off.

After passing through the part of the tunnel that teleported him to another area of the dungeon, Marcus returned to his ghost form just in case the demon had any scouts waiting around.

He then began going down the tunnels that would normally be labyrinthine to navigate, but due to the frequent invading done by the demon and its forces, a number of easily distinguishable tracks led the way.

Floating along for around two hours Marcus finally made it to the end of the tunnel as he saw the illusory wall that hid it from the rest of the dungeon.

'Looks like the demon could not disable the illusion, not that it really matters since once you know where it is the illusion is worthless.'

Floating out of the illusory wall Marcus immediately noticed that four of the large bat like monsters that he had seen while fighting the demon before were positioned right outside the tunnel.

They were obviously there to serve as the first line detection especially since every minute or so one of them would open their mouth an emit a screech using echolocation.

Unfortunately for the bats, as good as their normal senses were, without something to perceive souls they were not going to notice Marcus.

'Now there is a problem.' Marcus thought as he looked at the four bats.

He was not sure how far their echolocation went, but with it the beast's charge would probably be noticed sooner.

The only problem was that dealing with them would likely alert the demon and possibly ruin the entire plan.

'I suppose there is another way to deal with them.'

After floating past the bats, Marcus began taking in the area better, and noticed that there were a number of the dark aura beasts and monsters around moving from place to place.

Following where the majority of them were going Marcus found what looked to be a small fortress made out of some type of ominous dark red nearly black stone.

As he got closer Marcus saw that a number of the dark aura beasts and monster were caring regular beast and monsters that had either been restrained or knocked unconscious.

'Those must be the new recruits.'

Taking the time now before he went any further, Marcus using his connection to Roxene gave her an update on how things were progressing and then Roxene relayed the information to Veunlux.

With his first update done Marcus decided he needed to deal with the bats, but he had to do it in a roundabout way so that the demon would not suspect his infiltration just yet.

Following one of the groups of the demon's forces, Marcus waited until they encountered a group of monsters and then went off further into the area.

It took Marcus a bit of time to find what he was looking for but when he did, he also discovered what area the demon had set up shop in.

'So, we were in the elemental crystal area.'

Having searched around for a suitable beast or monster to possess, in order to attack those four bats without actually involving himself. Marcus had found a fairly out of the way location after a bit of searching that would have been near impossible to access without flying.

In front of him now Marcus was staring at a huge level forty-three gargoyle that was currently at rest next to a fairly sizeable earth elemental crystal gem.

Unfortunately, as large as the crystal was it was not actually a very high purity, so Marcus disregarded it and moved right over to the gargoyle that was still none the wiser.

Luckily it also did not have anyway to notice Marcus, at least not until it was too late.

Floating into it and activating his possession skill Marcus and the gargoyle began to battle for control of its body.

It took Marcus quite a bit of struggle as the gargoyle put up and intense fight, but eventually he came out the winner and had control of its body.

Now in control of the gargoyle's body Marcus spread its wings and got used to moving around and flying.

He was still pretty clunky but after minute Marcus figured that he was good enough and needed to hurry.

Crawling out of the gargoyle's hidden cave, Marcus came back out into he open and began flying in the direction of the demon's forces.

He planned to have the gargoyle fight and kill the bats that were acting as sentries or at the very least heavily injure them.

Flying along as fast as he could it took Marcus around six minutes to come back to the cavern where the demon's forces were congregated, and he made a beeline for the bats.

He attracted a few of the other beasts and monsters attention and he made sure to attack them a bit while flying around to make it seem like the gargoyle was just going on a rampage before really going after his main target the bats.

The bats let out an aggressive screech before dislodging from the ceiling and flying right for the gargoyle coming at them.

Crashing into them Marcus felt as the bats that were all around level forty began biting into the gargoyle's body he was possessing, but its tough skin prevented the wounds from being too deep.

Aiming for their wings Marcus used the gargoyle's claws to slash at the bats using its greater physical strength to tear them apart.

Going at it for about two minutes, Marcus had already managed to kill one of the bats and grounded two of the other, but the remaining one was getting away.

That was until Marcus unleashed his phantom pressure on it, causing it to slow down and giving him enough time to catch up and bite into its neck with the strong jaws of the gargoyle.

However, right as he finished off the last bat, he heard a loud roar and saw a massive wyvern wreathed in black flames coming for him.

'Well, my work here is done.'

Hopping out of the gargoyle's body, the poor unsuspecting monster began looking around and quickly noticed the powerful wyvern coming right for it.

Even as strong as the gargoyle was it could sense that it stood not chance against this wyvern and tried to flee.

Unfortunately for the gargoyle, the inferno wyvern caught up to it with blinding speed and in only an instant snapped it into its jaws and smashed the poor gargoyle into the ground.

However, the wyvern did not kill the gargoyle and after incapacitating it began dragging it back towards the demon's base.

'That must be the inferno wyvern that Jarek told me about. Seems that even as strong as it is the demon got control over it. Though unlike the other beasts and monsters it has some type of collar on it as well. It was probably too difficult to control with just the demon's normal method.'

Following the wyvern from behind, Marcus watched as it dragged the gargoyle into the demon's strong hold and passed by a bunch of other beasts and monsters that were transporting their prey.

The wyvern continued down this long line until it came to a large room where Marcus saw something that caused him to stop abruptly.

Coming out of what appeared to be a portal was a colossal demonic blue arm that made the inferno wyvern look like a common lizard.

Th arm was radiating an immense pressure and Marcus felt a type of suffocating aura all though the room.

However, he quickly recomposed himself and looked around and noticed that the portal was being generated by some type of device that currently had extremely pure elemental crystals along with high-grade cores as its power source.

Continuing to scan along the arm Marcus noticed that it had a number of syringe like devices pulling blood out of it which were then administered to the beasts and monsters coming in.

Marcus then watched as these normal beasts and monsters suddenly began glowing with a dark aura after being injected with the blood.