Paragon of Skills

The Mithril Nightmare Juggernaut of Apocalypse is frozen while he sees another massive lance coming for one of his brothers, another Juggernaut, with less Mithril than him, but still empowered beyond what any of these pathetic parasites should have been able to touch.

And yet, it destroys its chest, passing right through the several-feet-thick torso.

Several other Mithril Nightmares are downed in the successive moments.

It’s a brief volley, but it’s deadly. Every single one of those lances is launched at impressive speed, but what’s even scarier is the fact that they are so easily able to penetrate their bodies.

Mother… The Mithril Nightmare Juggernaut of Apocalypse sends a plea to Mother. He has no idea what’s happening, and how, most importantly, it could even be happening.

When did the parasites get so strong?

He raises his head as he keeps charging, and that’s when his very soul twists inside his body, shaken by a primordial fear.

There’s a pale, laughing man in front of the formation of parasites, with a thin, silvery sword in his hand.

His aura is nothing in front of someone like him or his siblings.

In fact, across the entire formation of humans, this creature, this lowly parasite, is the weakest. His aura is pathetic. It wouldn’t even register if judged on power alone.

But there’s something in it, something that reacts with the knowledge that Mother gifted him.

Something that upsets him.

Something that… scares him.

The Mithril Nightmare Juggernaut does not have a nose or eyes—he sees through Mana. Yet, despite normal human senses missing from his constitution, he has an ancestral memory of them coming straight from his once-human soul. And that’s when a thick, earthy scent of minerals reaches his nostrils. It’s minerals, it’s burnt. It’s oily, it’s metal.

It’s…

Rafnov, Mother speaks the rumbling words to him with gravity. For a moment, the Juggernaut feels the impending need to stop his entire body and run in fear of whatever this creature is, whatever husk has been possessed by the scourge that managed to curse Mother and her creator.

There are so many things going through the Juggernaut, so many emotions that are wrecking his body from the inside out. Yet, Mother gives an absolute order not to stop, to continue charging, to meet whatever end is going to be there.

The Juggernaut wonders what insane capabilities the parasite, Rafnov’s creation, is hiding.

And he’s about to find out—he knows it.

Rafnov, the most powerful Miner, the legendary slaughterer of Primordials.

Rafnov, the curse, the blight, the relentless.

What height could his heir have reached?

“YO! TIME!” The heir shouts at the top of his lungs.

“Scaredy cat,” a feminine voice says as a woman suddenly speeds towards the Juggernaut while the heir… runs?

Mother? The Juggernaut asks while raising his massive sword, ready to cut apart this weak female. His tone is quizzical.

The meaning is roughly ‘why is the heir, the supposedly terrifying aura-bearer that smells of literal extinction of the Nightmare’s kind… running?’

But before the Juggernaut can compute that, the heir shouts.

“Right shoulder, left leg!”

The female bends around his sword and, jumping off his left leg, slams a little sword on him.

He shrugs it off while about to chase the heir, but suddenly feels a massive dent in his Mana reserves as a result.

Mother communicates to him what has just happened.

Terrifying…

A human word comes to his mind.

What kind of monsters are they facing?

What kind of fearless creatures are these?

A Minute Before

“They’re about to charge!” Jacob shouts, feeling himself swallowing heavily.

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“Sir, I feel like this is a terrible idea!” Sir Francis says.

“Yeah, Jacob, why would we pick them apart frontally?! Have you lost your mind?!” Vyrrak shouts himself, nervously holding onto one of the spears that Jacob had some mysterious expert craft for them.

“Shut up! Get ready!” Jacob says. “It’s easy! Come on!”

“IT’S NOT EASY!” Delefagus shouts, trembling himself.

All the people here are Champions, Dark Champions, and the very cream of the crop among the Knights that are present in Ashenmere. Despite this, Jacob informed them that more than fifty of those terrifying Mithril Nightmares are about to attack, and their whole plan is…

“The equipment is going to save your asses! Shut up! Lances, READY!”

Sir Francis sees a Juggernaut, one thrice the size of every other Juggernaut they have seen, starting to charge against them, many times taller than every single warrior here, and he almost wets his pants.

“THROW!” Jacob shouts.

Nobody wonders if they’re too far and it’s too early. They just throw the volley and a few even break out crying.

But then…

The first Imperium-Mithril spear pierces clean through one of the Mithril Nightmares.

It goes so fast through it that the Knight who threw it, someone with spear-related Skills, looks down at his hand and then back at the killed Mithril Nightmare.

“What?” the Knight asks.

“THROW THE OTHER SPEARS, IDIOTS!” Jacob shouts and they start throwing the rest of the spears that had been made for the occasion.

They all find their marks, almost supernaturally guided, and kill almost the entire group at once.

Yet, by the time they have readied another volley, the Mithril Nightmares are upon them.

Nimirea skips over Jacob, pushing him back, and attacks the Juggernaut, immediately dousing it with Devouring Ocean Eating the Heavens and smiling.

This bastard… he made another battle easy.

Next, Vyrrak appears out of nowhere, with a thick dagger made of the same Imperium-Mithril mix and delivers a blow to the Juggernaut that is trying to chase Jacob.

The Dragonkin’s attack creates an explosion so powerful all the Mithril Nightmares close to the Juggernaut are blown away.

A large piece of the Juggernaut’s chest is blown out, with many pieces of Mithril scattered all around them.

Nimirea turns her attention to the battle, where most of the Knights would have expected to start dying within seconds.

The Mithril Nightmares have been more resilient than them, harder to beat, stronger, faster, and better.

But now, she sees a Shield not even fully tank a blow of a Mithril Nightmare Lancer of Apocalypse, just skirt it part shield part chestpiece… and the Imperium-Mithril alloy absorbs the thing as if it were nothing.

The Lancer itself is thrown off balance and pierced through the head by the attack of a Dagger.

Next, it’s a Breaker, slicing through a minor Juggernaut with his sword as if it was nothing.

And it continues.

What they thought would have been the worst battle of their lives becomes almost an act of bullying.

The Mithril Nightmares had been feared because of their raw power… but now that the new equipment has filled the gap, they’re nothing in front of more experienced, Skill-armed Knights, Champions, and Dark Champions.

The battle is over in a matter of minutes.

Nimirea approaches Jacob, who ran way too far, shouting orders upon orders and telling people how to move thanks to his Grimoire.

During the battle, several people miraculously avoid deadly blows because Jacob kept an eye on them and used the Grimoire to tell them about all the weaknesses of the Nightmare in front of them.

And that’s only possible after Jacob ordered Nimirea to teach everybody about the telepathy that the Dark Champions use.

So, every fighter in the Primordial Dungeon now is using telepathy.

In a way, they’ve become scarier and more coordinated than the monsters themselves.

But the scariest part?

Nimirea sees a sickly Jacob take deep breaths.

“You’re still not going to tell me why you’re doing this?”

Thanks to the Eye of the Prophet, she can see what Jacob is doing. But she doesn’t get… why.

“Nope,” Jacob says, gasping for air. “Just… trust the process.”

She doesn’t know the extent of Jacob’s plan, but what he’s been doing so far has been nothing short of insane.

Mining Imperium and Mithril, that he somehow became able to spot in the past week, they have created enough pieces of armor that are an alloy of Imperium and Mithril to outfit the fighters. Only the main group is outfitted, which rotates and exchanges equipment with the rest.

But still, Mithril, despite not being the highest Rank in existence, as an ore is close to being the rarest ore of all. That’s because of its perfect compatibility with any kind of Mana.

And so, what Jacob has done is not something new.

He didn’t reinvent the wheel.

No, but he did, in fact, break the bank.

He mixed Imperium and Mithril in order for people below Imperium Rank, such as the fighters in this Dungeon, to use Rafnov’s Quality Imperium ore that they found in Rafnov’s Bounty.

Anybody could have done that… well, if they have enough money to buy a kingdom, of course.

Sir Maximilian warned people multiple times that if they’re found trying to hide, smuggle away, or even look for too long at any of those pieces of Imperium-Mithril equipment, they’ll be executed on the spot.

Jacob, instead, goes up to the giant Juggernaut and says, “We’ll make at least a dozen pieces of armor out of this bastard alone.”

In the next weeks, Jacob splits the Knights.

A group is constantly mining new spots that he personally locates. With people being promised the Mithril equipment if they make it out alive, they’re digging in the earth with more ferocity than the Nightmares are fighting back the other group of Knights.

Jacob oversees and micromanages both the fights and the mining, stretching himself thin, and disappearing during the breaks, alone, for hours on end, with only Augusta knowing where he’s going.

Yet, despite the pressures from the Champions and the Dark Champions, the young woman has her lips sealed.

She’s wearing a lot of Mithril nowadays…

Jacob managed to buy her loyalty just like that.

And so, they hunt down all the Mithril Nightmares while everybody keeps growing stronger. Facing such dangerous enemies, even with so many Rainbow Skills at their fingertips and helping them, is making everybody’s levels and strength skyrocket.

Virtually every single Knight has reached the very Peak of Diamond Rank and their power has entered Early Imperium Rank at the very least.

…

Jacob is leading them down a corridor when he suddenly raises a hand.

The wall suddenly opens to their right and they fan out, waiting for Nightmares to pop out.

It’s a new development, but everybody is ready.

But that’s not what happens.

Jacob goes to look at the wall in Rafnov’s Bounty and sighs, dropping to his knees.

“Finally,” he says, coughing. “We made it. I have been looking forward to it. We killed enough Mithril Nightmares to trigger the opening of the Advanced Grounds.”

The soldiers go up to the wound in the wall, finding only a very tight, rocky, and pitch black passage in it.

“We’re close to the end,” Jacob says. “Augusta, mark this place. Let’s go rest. We enter the Advanced Grounds at dawn.”

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