Chapter 582: Cold Truth
Along with Shin's successful progression into another soul rank, the rest of them also rounded up and concluded their essence absorption.
Dante took a short glance at Shane's wound but did not say anything. Instead, he turned away with a small distress hinting behind his eyes.
Shane lowered her head and bit down on her lips. She didn't need to be told outright. She felt like she was being a burden to the Lieutenant-no, she was sure of it.
Northern studied all of them, his eyes carrying a faint light of deep scrutiny before he spoke.
"Since we all seem to be in a good place, I think we should proceed further into the rift. The longer we stay in here, the more dangerous I presume it will be."
All of them had differently portrayed expressions of tiredness on their facial features but did a commendable job at hiding it.
After all, no kids existed here. If anyone was to be thrown under such classification, it would be Northern, and funnily, he was the unspoken, unassigned, and silently consented leader of the group.
Studying their faces once more, he said.
"I don't think there will be enormous numbers like this one. Going forward, the monsters we will be fighting might just be stronger. We've still not come across any Behemoths. And the Destroyers that we have been seeing are Hazardous and Disastrous Level."
He glanced in Shane, Hansel, and Rafel's direction.
"We only came across one devil, which was a hellion. My senses are picking up several insanely strong monsters. I suspect we may encounter more of those Devilish Rabid Rots, and even worse, Devilish Maelstroms and Calamitous or Catastrophic Destroyers."
As Northern spoke, the crude manner at which fear seemed to gnaw at their hearts grew insidiously devastating.
They were all maintaining straight faces and were focused on Northern as he spoke.
No one at this point doubted his words anymore-only a fool would. Which was why the truth of their situation settled in with a sickening intensity.
If anyone of them were weak-willed, they'd probably have raised their hands to opt out at this moment.
Aside from the fact that looking for a way out of the rift was another task-wandering around the rift could stumble one upon a very strong monster, one he or she cannot defeat, hence bringing down upon themselves their own gruesome death-no one, especially none of the Lieutenant's subordinates who looked to be the weakest of the group, could dare say they wanted to opt out.
Their hearts beat with a toxic fear that sent fissures of pain around their nervous system. But they boldly stood, their faces rigidly contorted as Northern conveyed the news.
Northern paid extra attention to them, surprised at how they wouldn't budge. However, he was also disgusted by it.
Being able to look so deep into a human soul thanks to Chaos Eyes, he had been granted the ability not just to see the emotions of people, but to manipulate them to an extent.
Of course, Northern, since the first time he received an ability like that, did not pay it any heed. He wasn't interested in manipulating someone to feel fear for him.
If one would feel extreme fear for him, or despair at his presence, it would be because the aura of his presence and reputation came together in that moment to create such a result.
But he still could see the emotions that they tried so much to hide underneath their bowels and fortified faces. It disgusted him.
It disgusted him because they were breaking on the inside, and the only thing they cared about was pleasing this dude whom they looked up to and respected.
Why?
Was it fame? A salary raise? They wanted higher positions in the military? They wanted to win his favor?
Northern didn't care what it was; he didn't think anything of frivolity was worth throwing one's life away for.
But then again, he couldn't really blame these people.
'They've not lived a life where every day is worse than the battle we just fought, where there's
no guarantee that anyone will see tomorrow, and yet we just fight.'
Northern shook his head, sending away the thought.
'It's none of my business anyway.'
"So you are saying that the battles going forward will only be tougher but with no immense numbers?" Alystren asked, sweat breaking out on his face.
Northern let out an ugly smile. Then he erased it and answered.
"At least you won't have to fight while being insecure about your back."
Alystren raised his head and slapped his face. "Dammit, I knew coming into this rift was a bad idea. We should have just waited for more Drifters."
"We have Northern, and we have a Paragon. We will tackle the worst and come out of this alive," Ryan inputted.
His input, however, grabbed everyone's attention.
"Since when did you speak such amazing words, Ryan?" Northern grinned. "As flattered as I am about your words, I'd rather us expect the worst than say we will come out of this alive."
He glared at all of them, adding,
"I'm saying, if you feel like you are not ready to die, my opinion is that you should take a gamble and find your way out of the rift."
He pointed towards the north. "I know that way leads deeper into where the stronger monsters are because I can feel the intensity of the presences emanating from there. You can go back and carefully trace where we've been coming from-there are no monsters there at
all."
Dropping his hand, he fell silent for a moment, focused on Dante's subordinates for a moment, and averted his gaze.
"But if you are sure that you want to keep going, from experience I'd advise you to steel yourself so much that if you die and go to hell, you won't whine about it." His voice was resolute and cold.
"I don't know what to be scared of-that a sixteen-year-old is uttering such cold and harrowing words, or that those words hold all the truth that we need at this moment in
them."
Alystren muttered, sending a glance over to Shin who was beside him, hearing him clearly.
Shin just silently stared at his son, his expression blank, and his eyes perfectly hiding his pain.