Half Elf Ranger

Chapter 266 The Enemy in the Darkness

"Boom!"

The sound of the building collapsing came from the dark underground passage.

"boom!"

Immediately afterwards, the tall and burly body of the disgraced dragon-born paladin crawled out of the collapsed ruins.

"Why is it okay for Brother Kutaige to walk over the stairs, I just took two steps and collapsed immediately." Paladin Peo got up and patted the dust on the silver-white armor, and tidied up his face covered with fine scales. Said with a depressed tone.

But fortunately, although his whole body was buried in the collapsed ruins because the spiral staircase couldn't bear the weight of his body, he was not harmed by the dragon scales covering his whole body and the protection of his heavy metal armor. .

"Didn't I remind you just now that your armor may not be able to withstand the weight of the stairs, so you should take it off and put it in the dimensional bag in advance." Thorn noticed the embarrassed paladin Peo and complained.

Afterwards, he ignored the other party. He had already seen that the main reason why the other party did not choose to take off his armor was because he had no other covering clothes other than a full body armor.

After all, dragonborn have the protection of scales, even if they don't wear clothes, it's no problem for them.

At this time, the group of them came to a spacious corridor through the spiral staircase of the tower, and a smell full of corruption came from the vent at the other end of the corridor.

Although the dust here covered the entire corridor like snow, it left dense walking marks, and according to Thorne's judgment, it can be found that the longest time these footprints were left was about half a month.

In other words, half a month ago, there were very few traces of biological activity here, but the time half a month ago happened to be when Carlos discovered this place.

Moreover, all the footprints left on the ground were the footprints of dire rats, dire rats, and similar humanoid creatures, some of which had just walked there not long ago, and some had walked there for a long time.As for the depths of the tunnel, because of his limited vision, what he saw was darkness.

Thorne held the long sword, looked down at the messy footprints, and looked at the half-covered rooms on both sides, lost in thought.

A group of people following Thorne saw him standing still, as if he was thinking about a problem, and they all stood in place and remained silent.

After all, as a ranger, road scouting is what he is best at. All they need to do is follow behind them obediently.

"Is there any problem here?" Seeing Thorne standing still and keeping silent, Andelina couldn't help but leaned forward and asked.

"It's too quiet." Thorne glanced at her and expressed his inner doubts.

From the messy footprints on the ground, he could find that this place was a place where rats often moved in the past few days, but the sound of ruins collapsing just now caused such a big commotion, and it was still so quiet that he felt weird.

Then Thorne looked up at the ceiling again, and sure enough, he found the traces left by the climbing.

"You mean that there is a high possibility of something ambushing ahead?" Anderina thought for a while, and expressed her inner guess.

"That's right." Thorne nodded, looking at the long corridor and the dense footprints again.

If there is really an ambush in the corridor, then the hidden enemies will definitely wait for them to walk in the middle of the corridor to launch a surprise attack.

Moreover, this is still the territory of the Ratmen, so what greeted them was naturally a vast number of Dreadrats and Dire Rats.

The Dread Rat and Dire Rat are not very harmful to their group, but they don't know the strength of the Rat Man entrenched here.

If you encounter a group of low-level spellcasters, with the abilities of a few of them, if you encounter an ambush accidentally, it is very likely to threaten your life.

Therefore, in the uncertain danger situation, as the leader who leads the way, he must minimize the threats he encounters every time he moves forward.

"Squeak..."

Suddenly, two dread mice with a length of nearly one meter emerged from the room closest to Thorne. These two dread mice had a more ferocious appearance than ordinary mice and a pair of shining red pupils.

They first glanced in Thorn's direction, then turned and fled, plunged into the darkness, and quickly disappeared without a trace.

"Everyone stay vigilant, we are very likely to be surrounded by the enemy." Seeing the disappearance of the two Dreadrats, Thorne reminded the people behind him solemnly.

Then, he pulled Anderina who was beside him to back away.

Hearing Thorne's solemn tone, the orc sword master immediately moved to the goblin wizard Malvisa with his sword, while the paladin Peo stood in front of Master Qingchen with a long sword and shield.

"What's going on?" Malvisa cast her pale red eyes on Thorne, with doubts in her tone.

"I'm also not quite sure how the enemies hidden in the dark discovered us in advance. In short, there must be densely packed enemies ambushing in the rooms on both sides of the corridor ahead, waiting for us to take the bait." Thorn clenched the sharp blade in his hand and said in a deep voice :
"Unless we break open a gap in the rear wall to escape, otherwise we can only leave this decaying castle through the corridor in front of us.

But from the collapsed ruins just now, it can be seen that the castle will be destroyed as time goes by, as long as there is a slight movement.So just in case, this method cannot be activated for the time being, after all, we haven't even met the enemies hidden in the dark. "

"In other words, we can only stand still and wait for the enemy to attack." Malvisa glanced at the corridor calmly.

"That's the only way to go." Thorne nodded: "Now let's see who is more patient."

——"Shadow Hand School (Stance Skill): Blade Shell!"

Immediately afterwards, Thorne glanced at the quiet and eerie corridor, and with a thought, a cloud of shadow energy wrapped around his body, constantly surging and spinning.

This is the first-level move of the Shadow Hand School, and it is also the first move that he has not used his practice points, but has spent nearly a month learning and completely mastering it every day.

In the process of learning the moves, when he transformed the energy of Qi into the surging shadow energy covering his body many times, he made a mistake due to unfamiliarity, which caused him to be hurt by the shadow energy. This is what he learned step by step. disadvantages.

The function of this move is to prevent unknown enemies from launching a sudden attack on him. Without his being aware of it, the swirling shadow energy around his body will instantly help him attack or defend the sneak attacking enemy, so that he can react immediately , and be prepared to deal with the enemy.

Although learning a first-level move is as difficult as a wizard learning spells, the benefit is that after he learns and masters this move by himself, his proficiency in this move is incomparable to other skills, and it does not consume practice. It's just a waste of time.

After all, although "Sword Intent" can bring him good practice points, allowing him to quickly learn the Nine Swords moves that he needs to master, but as the level increases, the large consumption of practice points is still a bit stretched for him.

Moreover, he also intends to use his practice points to increase the level of expertise he has mastered.

This led to the fact that although his kendoist level has reached level 7, he has the ability to cast level [-] moves.But because of the lack of practice points, he only learned two fourth-level moves of the Desert Wind School for the time being.

So in order to make up for the lack of practice points, his current solution can only be like a wizard learning spells, by consuming a lot of time to learn and master one move at a time.

To his surprise, after learning the first-level move of Shadow Hand School, he also mastered a skill that is more beneficial for him to learn.

[Knowledge (Martial Arts): By learning the basics of the Nine Swords genre, you have mastered a lot of knowledge and skills about qi control and martial arts learning. As the level of martial arts knowledge increases, your speed of learning the genre's moves will gradually increase . 】

The role of this skill is not so obvious to help him fight. The biggest role is to speed up his progress in learning genre moves.

Therefore, if he wants to learn the moves of Nine Swords through practice in the future, then the level of this martial arts knowledge must be improved.

But this skill can be improved through the skill points obtained through leveling up. Another way is to read books that explain martial arts knowledge circulated in the Karatu continent.

Most of these books explaining martial arts are concentrated in monasteries that train monks, and for him, they are not available yet.

(End of this chapter)