“Chesk, cover for me please!”

“Inisco, cover the monster in the back!”

The north passage of the Gorge of Blast dungeon.

At the road that would lead them to the altar, three men were sweating like hell while fighting.

And countless Abyss spirits were attacking them in all directions.

“Ugh, hold on just a little longer!”

“Ralph hyung, isn’t it better to just step in and get it? If we push in any further, we might end up with dangerous aggression!”

“Don’t hang on the orders, Inisco. It is done once we arrive at the altar, anyway. That’s it!”

“Okay… uh, hyung. But we still have three minutes ahead of us!”

“That is all we need!”

In fact, the Gorge of Blast dungeon wasn’t a large map, and the distance from the third cave to the altar wasn’t that far either.

However, that road was the last part of the dungeon to be cleared, so the number of monsters that appeared and the level of difficulty was a bit harder.

Because of that, the strategy was this, killing one monster and then taking a step in.

If they just ran toward the monsters, they would get surrounded by the spirits.

The situation of Ralph’s party was similar to that.

Kwang- Kwang-!

Numerous purple bullets flowing in the sound of an intense explosion came in from all directions.

Subsequently, a system message appeared in front of Inisco.

Tring-!

[The summon ‘Linkis’ has been damaged fatally!]

[The Vitality of summon ‘Linkis’ has been reduced by 1,029!]

[The summon ‘Linkis’ has been damaged fatally!]

Linkis was a legendary summon in the shape of a giant bean beetle.

It was the most powerful tanking familiar of the highest tier compared to all tanking summons in the higher tier, and it could provoke the aggros and draws in the aggros to prevent an enemy attack.

But even that kind of guy wasn’t able to endure the intense bombardment of the powerful abyss spirits.

The vitality of Linkis eventually got exhausted.

Tring-!

[The summon ‘Linkis’ vitality has been drained.]

[The summon Linkis has been summoned back.]

“Dammit!”

Inisco cursed under his breath.

If he went in slowly without overdoing these stuff, then he wouldn’t have had to lose Linkis.

Of course, it wasn’t like the orders of Ralph were incomprehensible.

The ‘monster’ guy was up there before they went to the altar. Because of that, they tried to take down the party of Ian and run out of the altar.

All the plans they had put together would be in vain if it didn’t work out.

But apart from that, Ralph’s orders were too self-centered and that was inevitable.

“Ralph hyung! This is just too much!”

“It is done! Just 20 seconds!”

Kwaah-!

Ralph’s sword was stained in red, giving out tremendous heat waves in all directions.

And in the place where the heatwave exploded, a wide path had opened up.

Not all monsters were gone, but the explosion was big enough to push the monsters back a few feet.

Ralph recovered his sword and jumped in without delay.

With the altar within their reach, they were hoping to clear the quest.

Tatt-!

“Ahhhh-!”

Ralph leaped forward with all his strength and might.

At the same time, an unexpected system message had come up before his party.

[The conditions have been met.]

[The terrain will be changed. Some party members will be disconnected.]

[The divided party will now be reorganized.]

[Current party members: Ralph, Chesk, Inisco.]

Chesk and Inisco who noticed the system messages asked out loud about what they just saw,

“Uh?”

“What is this? Why would the party split?”

But Ralph, who put his head into work, smiled out of realization.

“Idiots, can’t get the situation still?”

“Huh?”

“What is that supposed to mean, hyung?”

Arriving at the altar, Ralph smiled and pulled out the orb from his inventory.

He then opened his mouth and looked at Chesk and Inisco.

“Why did the party split?”

“…!”

“Those dumbasses smashed the iron gates; they are trapped inside the cave.”

“Ah, because of that…?”

Only then did the other two people managed to understand the situation.

And their expressions brightened.

If Ian and his party were trapped in the cave with that ‘monster’, then they had a longer time in their hands.

Smiling, Ralph put the orb on the altar.

Blue light began to dance around the altar.

Woong-!

Ralph, Chesk, and Inisco were very elated, seeing that scene unfold in front of their eyes.

They didn’t have to fight anymore.

The moment the altar began to work, all the monsters which were surrounding them would get wiped out.

Kung- Kung-!

At the same time, a loud vibrating sound rang out from the altar, and the blue light started to spread on all directions.

Subsequently, they were all shooting toward the monsters around them.

Pung- Pong-!

And with a sound of crackers bursting, all the spirts and monsters were taken down in a second.

As the altar started to work, the Abyss Valley began to get cleared.

“Done! Told you we could do it!”

Ralph clenched his fist and looked over at the cave where the monster was trapped.

In fact, putting the orb on the altar had been successful when they tried that previously.

Nevertheless, the reason why they failed to clear the quest was because the altar began to work, which made the monsters come out and destroy the orbs.

If the orbs got destroyed before the valley got purified, then the last gate won’t activate.

In other words, the road to the ‘spirit sanctuary’ wouldn’t open.

So Ralph still couldn’t feel assured even though the altar worked.

If that monster broke out of the cave and came running in their direction, it would turn into another fail.

It was not over until the messages said that the gate was active.

‘Please, don’t come on this side!’

As if planned, all of their eyes were stuck onto the entrance of the cave with the desire to not cross path with the monster again.

Their hopes seemed like it would come true.

10 seconds, 20 seconds, no 1 minute.

Yet, the monster didn’t come out.

But the three still wouldn’t celebrate.

“…?”

“What is this?”

“Nothing? Is something up?”

The monster didn’t appear, and the gate to the spirit sanctuary didn’t activate either.

Right before their eyes came messages which they hadn’t seen before.

Messages they wanted to deny so badly.

[‘Abyss Orb’ is now active.]

[The conditions have been met.]

[The Abyss valley has begun to get purified.]

[Purification rate 10… 25… 70, 80, 85, 90 percent.]

[Some areas of the valley have been cut off by an unknown force.]

[Purification of Abyss Valley was failed.]

Woong-!

With low resonance, violent vibrations around the altar began to subside.

The blue energy surrounding the altar began to disappear like it never existed.

“No, no way…”

Chesk started to get nervous.

In front of the three people, an additional line of system message came up.

[Purification was failed, the contaminated spirit has been recreated.]

Abyss spirits began to form again in front of the three who looked like dead people.

* * *

Grrrrk-!

An audible sound was heard; a monster stood in front of the party of Ian.

Kung-!

To be more specific, rather than a monster, the more appropriate term was a giant monster.

‘What kind of monsters are here? They’re bigger than Thor.’

With the name guardian machine, he had a very complex appearance made up of numerous hardware components.

Ian really couldn’t help but admire the appearance of that monster.

‘Keu, cool! I want to have a summon that looks like a mechanical monster!’

However, Ian’s thoughts didn’t last long.

Muel who was next to him was feeling rather down.

“We are so done now…”

“Huh?”

“Since you smashed the gate, we will all get wiped out.”

“Hmm…?”

Muel was shaking her head with a desperate expression.

Ian couldn’t understand her because the accident hadn’t occurred from her side.

“What is that supposed to mean? Why will we get wiped out?”

“…?”

“I don’t think I saw a phrase in the quest window which said that we would get wiped out.”

“Eh?”

Ian pointed to the mechanical being which was in front of him and asked, “That guy over there. Can’t we get out of here if we catch him?”

“That… that is true, right?”

“Then let’s get that lump of iron now!”

Ian smiled at Muel and took the Judgment of the Spirit King in his hand.

Muel stared at Ian and shook her head.

‘Well, it sure is nice to be confident…’

As mentioned earlier, Muel did acknowledge Ian’s skills.

But even then, she didn’t think that Ian would be able to kill that monster.

‘That monster isn’t a thing that could just be defeated easily…’

The ‘Guardian Machine’ in front of their eyes wasn’t just a powerful monster.

Starting from his vitality to all his combat abilities, everything was enormous, and he was a monster that had a nasty ‘attribute’.

‘How is a Zion boss monster of 100,000 transcendence vitality be taken down…?’

The term Zion had appeared for the first time in the spirit dimension.

The monsters with that attribute were characterized to have tremendous vitality recovery rate.

Zion normal spirits were hard enough to kill, and how were they going to kill a boss monster which had dozens of vitality compared to normal ones.

A mechanical guardian whose vitality never went below half even after the pole deal done by Ralph’s party.

No matter how good Ian was, she thought that it would be impossible to take that guy down.

‘Well, maybe it would work if Ralph’s party manage to arrive here as well, right?’

If they knew that the strength of Ian’s party had a great deal, then maybe Ralph would have attacked the boss along with them.

However, it all made no sense.

Muel, shook the thoughts out of her head as she was starting to think of silly stuff.

She went behind Ian’s party to prepare for the battle.

Even though she thought it was a worthless fight, she couldn’t help but join in because of her pride.

[Kuek. Who… dares… to wake… keuk… humans…]

Thud-!

The guardian machine began to approach Ian’s party with thudding footsteps.

Kiyaaa-!

After a while, a white light started to emanate from the body of the guardian.

It was a very familiar effect that the party of Ian had witnessed from the Zion earlier in the dungeon.

“Zion…!”

A word left from the mouth of Vanessa.

Zion, which was the most difficult attribute of the dungeons’ contaminated spirits.

Because of that white and cloudy energy which was shining around it, it could be considered that the mechanical guardian had a Zion attribute.

On the other hand, there were characters who were responding quite differently.

“Zion attribute… looks fun, right?”

And Muel who heard that couldn’t help but feel shocked.

Ian wasn’t feeling down, not one bit, even after realizing that the huge machine was of a Zion attribute.

On the contrary, he was feeling rather elated.

‘What kind of confidence does he have?’

Her shock didn’t end there though.

Ian and the twins were having an incomprehensible conversation.

“This… We can’t help it anymore.”

At those words from Ian, Vanessa added,

“Yeah, Ian. We cant get wiped out after coming all this way, right?”

Sarah who was right next to her joined the conversation.

“It is a miracle that you were able to hide it so far.”

“Right. That ridiculous Knight cosplay…”

“You know what is really creepy, Vanessa? This was harder for those who knew the truth.”

“Right, Unnie. In addition, this current situation wasn’t a normal one.”

Unable to understand their conversation, Muel just kept staring at them.

After a while…

Woong-!

Along with a resonating sound, a flash of light began to surround Ian one after the other.

A summoner skill that only a summoner could perform.

Subsequently, a number of summons began to appear around Ian.

“What is this!?”

Muel wasn’t able to close her mouth for a long time.