Our Family Has Fallen

Chapter 1254: Chapter 686: 2_2

When brute force DPS crushed one of them, against these Laughing Cultists who never fight back, killing one basically meant killing them all.

Audrey, who had backed off earlier, also seemed to realize these creepy-looking bastards wouldn’t retaliate. The moment she imagined Amanda mocking her later, she hurried back up, swinging her pickaxe to rejoin the fight.

The battle died down quickly, but there wasn’t much joy on anyone’s face. Instead, there was confusion—and exhaustion.

Because this had been a bizarre fight: a victory that was both easy and damn hard.

Easy, because these Frenzied Cultists only guarded their teammates and healed, never fighting back at all, like a bunch of target dummies.

Hard, because their protective power and insane recovery meant you had to burst them down with enough damage in a short window just to kill one.

This kind of high-intensity fight was enough to leave Boudica gasping for breath, and even Amanda didn’t bother to trash-talk Audrey—she was simply too tired to waste the energy.

Lance quickly sacrificed those corpses, then turned and cast Bless on his teammates to refresh their status, murmuring words of comfort and motivation.

"Even if it’s a tiny, insignificant victory, it’s still a victory. No enemy can stand in the way of our advance."

The team’s condition quickly recovered, and Audrey could actually feel the power in those words—her fatigue swept clean away, her strength and sharp, full-focus mindset returning.

The repeated whiplash between extremes left her with a strange sense of satisfaction, a kind of intense fulfillment.

Lance didn’t dwell on Audrey’s feelings; he was thinking over how those Frenzied Cultists had just reacted.

If the evil cultists outside the dungeon still retained some thought, if they understood they were pursuing Ascension and had some personal goals—

The will driving them was to guard this place, to protect their god.

Although Lance still didn’t get why a "god" would need its believers to protect it.

What kind of weak-ass god is that supposed to be?

"Let’s move. I’m getting impatient."

Trying to understand that kind of abstract crap was downright irrational, even a form of contamination—once you start sinking into it, things go very wrong.

So Lance neatly cut off his train of thought, rallied the team after a short breather, and led them onward along the now-unblocked path.

All the way forward, not a single evil cultist came out to stop them. It was clear their numbers were way smaller than the cockroach-like hordes outside.

This place was all the ancestor’s elite—but that’s fine, he was here specifically to beat up elites.

At the end of the passage, they could see a stone arch. Seven Longswords shaped like blades without hilts were stabbed into it—the tips narrow and razor-sharp, the ends hollow diamond-shaped—inserted into the arc in a unique pattern that formed a familiar sigil.

There was only one path forward, and obviously this was the gate to go deeper. It was just that those pins stabbed into it were locking it down.

Lance also noticed those metal pins were dark-gold. That stuff was practically the trademark of that ancient civilization, so this place clearly had ties to those people.

Naturally, they weren’t going to let some weird gate block them. While Amanda was still cautiously studying it, Lance just reached out without a care.

He hadn’t even touched the pins in the arch when the thing seemed to sense something, the pins popped free on their own, opening the way.

The sudden movement startled the others, but Lance had seen sensor doors before; this didn’t count as anything particularly fancy.

He took point, stepping through that strange gate onto a platform where the floor was broken into jagged chunks of rock, with blood flowing through the cracks.

There were no protruding spike-fences on the sides. Beyond the platform they could see two towering humanoid statues. The weird thing was that both figures were naked, contorted into poses normal people could never make sense of, as if they were trapped in extreme agony and struggling.

Their lower bodies were covered by something you could barely recognize—like giant hands, yet also like twisted flesh...

Link that with the statues standing in a place where blood was streaming everywhere, and it looked like something was trying to drag them down into a sea of blood.

Higher up, who knew what was there; blood was pouring down like a small waterfall. Spray spattered onto the statues, lending them an even more vivid, gruesome realism.

But Lance’s group didn’t get the chance to closely examine the platform—their arrival had already alerted the evil cultists stationed here.

Two Priests from the Sect of Ascension looked very familiar: bare upper bodies showing off hardened muscles, round disk armor strapped around their waists, and skirt-like lower armor that was much more refined than the ones worn by the cultists above.

Same standardized Skull helmets, same claws—but the difference was, these weren’t black iron; they were dark-gold.

Dark-gold gear, that distinctive metal—looked like the ancestor really had gotten his hands on part of that ancient civilization’s legacy.

And behind them was a Frenzied Cultist like the ones they’d just fought. That ecstatic face and constant swaying motion were way too familiar.

Two Priests, one Frenzied Cultist.

The fight broke out before Lance even had to say a word—the evil cultists rushed forward, arms swinging.

New God Sacrificial Stab!

Lance swung his blade, aiming to cut him down, but suddenly saw the Priest’s flesh reveal a twisted spectacle beneath the skin at the moment he moved.

Blood-flesh mutation had already covered most of his body. A tumor on his shoulder was latched onto him, a tangled mass from which tendrils extended along his arm.

When the claw struck, a tentacle lined with spikes lashed out with it. Their movements were almost synchronized, like it was the tumor running the show rather than the body itself.

It made you wonder whether the tumor was the actual brain, or if there was still a head under that helmet.

He remembered how the Heretic Priest earlier hadn’t really had a clear head. Once the transformation was complete, this was probably where Heretic Priests came from.

But Lance didn’t have time to think it through. Wolf Fang was already clashing with the claw—but then there was that tentacle.

It whipped toward Lance from the man’s arm, rows of spikes like a razor blade hungry for flesh.

"Bang!"

Lance’s left hand pulled out his gun in a flash, pressed the muzzle to the tumor on the Priest’s shoulder, and fired. The shot tore a gash open; the black eyeball on it burst apart, and the tentacles extending from it spasmed violently, lost all strength, and drooped.

After that Heretic Priest pulled that stunt, Lance had been wary of these things’ "accessories." No way he’d get caught by the same trick.

"Watch the tentacles!"

Lance called out, just about to finish off the Priest when the Frenzied Cultist behind him moved, opening his mouth to savagely tear into his own flesh.

Blood and Flesh as One!

That bizarre power rebounded, and the tumor Lance had shot open a second ago grew right back the next.

Fuck! So that thing was the tank and the healer.

Lance realized what role the Frenzied Cultist played here, and raised a hand to mark him.

"Kill that one!"

Amanda flicked out a Flying Dagger, trying to disrupt the ritual power connecting to the cultist, and Audrey knew exactly who was easier to bully, so she followed up with poison darts that struck the cultist’s tumors. The toxins erupted, gnawing into the flesh and further tanking his condition.

Then Audrey hefted her pickaxe and moved in. Like swinging at a golf ball, she twisted her body and put all her strength into the swing, driving the pick up from below—the spike punched right through the tumor on his waist and even burst out his back.

Amanda moved in as well, pulling out a vial and uncorking it. Under her control, that strange energy invaded the cultist’s body.

Even flesh blessed by the New God couldn’t withstand it; poison and bleeding flared up together, his entire body rotting into pus and bone, his life force wiped out completely.

Erased!

Amanda and Audrey were forced to cooperate, but the move was undeniably badass.

Both sides paused, glancing at each other—but the moment their eyes met, they each looked away, annoyed.

"Hmph~"

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