"~I don’t see any structures nearby apart from those caves over there. The captives might be held there, but there’s also a chance that this is a trap," Cipher transmitted to the chairman. Just as he transmitted, he remembered that the chairman couldn’t use voice transmission to reply.
Just as he was about to go down, a small portal appeared beside him.
"I guess this works too," he thought.
The chairman’s voice came from the portal. "It’s most likely a trap. But don’t worry about it. Just go in. He probably has his eyes all over the battlefield and might raise his guard if he notices us moving there. But if just your team moves, he might let his guard down. I’ll teleport to your location the moment you reach the entrance and see if we can catch him off guard."
Cipher nodded.
"Alright," he responded, and the portal closed. He then transmitted this info to his party members before going back to taking out monsters with his rifle.
[How cowardly] the heavenly demon suddenly spoke.
"What cowardice? This is called strategy," he replied as he shot down another undead.
[You have slain D-rank Undead (Level 42)]
[+32,500 EXP]
[+40 Cheat Points]
[You have leveled up!]
Still, this method wasn’t as effective as he’d hoped.
Although the combination of the rifle, fly mode, and aimbot was great, it wasn’t as efficient as he’d hoped. First, some undead required more than a single shot to take down, and that’s just D-rank.
If he had to take two shots to kill a single D-rank while others were swarming his teammates...
He began losing altitude, putting his gun in the inventory and retrieving his sword. He dropped down in the middle of his team that was being surrounded and made a slash, instantly slicing through three D-rank undead.
[Now this is more like it] the heavenly demon said.
Cipher looked at his sword. In the end, using his own abilities was more effective. At the moment, he just used aura and his mana without using demonic qi. But even with that, he was still extremely strong.
With 400 raw damage, times three for the Heavenly Demonic Sword Art, he had a 1200 base damage. Then multiply that by four... he was dealing around 4800 damage per hit. He rushed forward, slashing at the monsters.
He needed to get as much out of his aura as he could before it deactivated.
"I’ll pave the path forward. Everyone, follow me. Selene, watch the rear," he gave orders as he moved. The team instantly responded to the orders with actions, falling into formation behind him.
Half a minute later, Cipher’s aura had run out, but he didn’t activate it again. Rather, he proceeded with just mana manipulation. Before, their mission was going to be easy - just dealing with a few cultists here and there as they rescued the captives.
But now, they had become the vanguard. If they arrived at that cave and something went wrong, he needed to have his mana ready. Even without aura, he was still dealing over 2000 damage per hit. That, combined with his agility that allowed him to deliver multiple hits a second, he still wasn’t losing his edge.
...
After some time, Cipher and the team finally managed to break away from the fight and could catch a breath. The main team was fighting against the monsters, and they could now focus on getting to the caves.
The four approached the caves cautiously.
When they were just a few meters away from the entrance, Cipher signaled for them to stop.
Through appraisal, he could see that there were more undead in the cave, and this time, they were higher ranked, with most being C-rank. C-ranks were quite rare. After all, the top powerhouses in the world were A-ranks.
C-rank, being just a two realms away from that, was nothing to scoff at.
But if that was the case, then how come this guy had so many of them as undead? Where had he gotten them from? And how could he capture so many C-ranks? This could be attributed to them willingly becoming undead, which might not be necessarily far-fetched considering this was a cult, but still... there were way too many of them.
The only other possibility he could think of was that these guys weren’t C-rank and that he had used some sort of technique to make them that level. If that was the case, then the person they were dealing with was extremely dangerous.
Well, he didn’t need this to come to that conclusion. He already knew the person - well... more like monster - they were looking for. In the future, the head of the Church of Eternal Brilliance had become an extremely strong and feared monster known as the Immortal King.
He was called this as he was immortal. Unlike other undead that could be destroyed, he would always revive no matter how many times he was killed.
"It seems he isn’t here," he thought.
Through ESP, he didn’t detect anyone stronger than C-rank in either of the three caves.
Of course, he could just be hiding deeper in the cave. In fact, Cipher suspected this to be the most likely scenario. Still, he felt that something was wrong. What if his assumption was wrong and the Immortal King was actually somewhere else?
Since he didn’t have a way to communicate with the chairman from this far away, the chairman was probably going to teleport to him if he reached the entrance of either of the caves as they had agreed, and he was probably also going to bring some heavy hitters with him.
If that happened, they might leave the rest of the squad exposed.
As they looked for the Immortal King in the cave, he might be outside slaughtering the rest of them. Playing such cheap tricks wasn’t something he put past the Immortal King.
"Which one should we go in?" Selene asked, seeing as he’d been quiet for a while.
"Neither," Cipher said.
They probably led to the same place anyway. He thought
"Neither? Then what do we do?" she asked.
"I don’t know. We need to discuss with the chairman," he said.
"Are you saying we should go back?" she asked.
"Kekeke, since you already came all this way, why don’t you stay..." a voice came from the cave.