Raven didn't even bother drawing his sword. He tilted his body until he was nearly parallel to the ground, then pushed off with one hand to vault behind the creature.
The monster's bite snapped at empty air. Before it could even land, Raven grabbed its black-clothed head from behind and gave it a vicious twist.
Snap.
Tossing the limp corpse aside, Raven remarked with a frown, "This doesn't seem human. It's far too small."
"How did it find us?" Lansi asked, sounding a bit miffed. "My darkness incantation shouldn't have any openings."
"Either by scent or some special sense beyond the usual five, similar to my Blind Spot technique," Raven said. He used the tip of his sword to flick away the black cloth covering the creature's head. "Let's see what this thing really is."
Lansi leaned in to look, then immediately recoiled several steps.
Beneath the cloth, the head was a gruesome mess of raw flesh. It looked as if the skin and scalp had been completely peeled away, exposing layers of blood-streaked muscle.
"It's an Albinauric," Lansi noted. "I smell the scent of Albinauric blood."
The shape of the skull confirmed her assessment.
"It's not Rudy, is it?"
"No, the scent of the blood is different," Lansi shook her head. "Is he a criminal sent here by the Golden Dynasty?"
Raven stood in silence for a long moment.
"The Albinaurics cluster in Liurnia of the Lakes. Unless something catastrophic has happened to the Carian Royalty recently, they wouldn't easily leave their homeland, let alone be caught committing crimes within the Dynasty's borders. People like Rudy are the rare exception."
He paced around the corpse twice.
"When I was in Caria, the Albinauric chieftains reported to me that their people had been disappearing in large numbers for years. At the time, we assumed the Giant Crayfish and Crabs were picking them off." Raven's expression turned grim. "Perhaps they weren't all being eaten by wild beasts."
"Volcano Manor sent people to kidnap them?" Lansi asked. "How long is 'for years'?"
"The chieftains weren't precise, but at least a decade or more." Raven knelt to inspect the Albinauric's thin, spindly limbs. "Severe malnutrition, and his legs are broken. He's endured a vast amount of torture—not just for days or weeks, but for a long time."
"Rudy... he won't be subjected to this, will he?" Lansi whispered.
"We need to hurry." Raven gripped his communication glintstone, orienting himself. "Let's go."
The two began to jog. The Assassin's Approach incantation rendered their footsteps silent, allowing them to bypass any living thing that resembled a guard. They quickly descended several more floors.
Whatever the serpent cultists had been thinking when they built this place, the corridor ceilings were unnaturally high while the width was extremely narrow—Raven could almost touch both walls simply by extending his arms. Large patches of dried blood—red and white—stained the walls and floor, and the metallic stench of gore mixed with the rot of decay hit them in waves.
To their left and right were rows of tightly packed cells. The iron doors were shut tight, save for small grated windows.
Some cells were deathly silent, while others emitted weak, rhythmic wails and moans. From the iron grates of several cells, gaunt, skeletal arms reached out, waving frantically as if begging for salvation—or perhaps simply trying to drag someone else into the hell they endured.
Lansi let out a sudden yelp as one of the hands snaking through a grate caught her by the hair. An excited growl came from inside the cell as the prisoner tried to yank Lansi toward the door.
Raven spun around like a flash of lightning, his sword severing the arm in a single stroke.
"YYYYYEEEEEEE!"
The cell went silent for a heartbeat, followed by a piercing, ear-splitting scream.
In an instant, it felt as if the entire prison had been jolted awake.
Inhuman howls erupted from every cell, their shrill echoes vibrating through the narrow corridor. Hundreds of arms thrust through the iron grates, clawing madly at anything they could reach. Sometimes they caught each other, their sharp nails tearing and gouging until flesh and blood sprayed into the air.
Lansi was frozen in terror. Raven scooped her up into his arms, huddling low as he sprinted down the hallway.
Above them was a ceiling of tangled, thrashing limbs. Foul blood and bits of shredded meat rained down on them. Raven manifested a glintstone shield to cover them as he ran, feeling as if he were traveling through an intestinal tract, being digested and pushed along by writhing, organic walls.
Finally, they burst out of the long corridor into a space where the cells ended. Raven set the trembling Lansi down.
"We're through." Raven's face was pale, half his body drenched in gore. To ensure Lansi remained protected, he had tilted his shield toward her, leaving himself partially exposed to the filth.
"How could humans do something so horrific?" Lansi was still visibly shaken. "I never imagined..."
"Enemy!" Raven's expression shifted suddenly.
At the end of the corridor, an Abductor Virgin hummed to life, awakening from its dormancy. The circular saws on its mechanical arms began to spin with a low, menacing whine. Raven's extrasensory perception was less effective on inanimate objects, and amidst the previous chaos, he had overlooked the dormant puppet.
The saws accelerated into a high-speed blur, letting out a terrifying shriek. The puppet pressed the blades against the stone floor, sending a spray of sparks and stone chips flying. Using the friction for momentum, the five-meter-tall behemoth charged toward them like a runaway gale.
"Get back!" Raven grabbed Lansi and shoved her behind him.
The narrow corridor offered no room to dodge. With Lansi behind him, he suppressed the instinct to use Bloodhound's Step.
He had to stop it head-on!
Taking a deep breath, Raven threw his arms wide and met the charging puppet and its whirring saws.
"Commander!" Lansi stumbled as she landed, thinking Raven was going to sacrifice his body to shield her. She screamed in desperation, a burst of red lightning erupting from her hand.
Raven's eyes were locked on the massive saws. He didn't even flinch as stone chips peppered his face. As the saws reached him, he lunged forward into a deep crouch, his hands glowing with the light of Crystalline Sorcery as he slammed them against the inner rims of the wheels.
There was no spray of blood. Instead, there was the screeching sound of grinding metal.
The moment the crystals touched the saws, they were crunched into powder, and the centrifugal force nearly dragged Raven's palms into the mechanism. But more crystals surged from his hands, manifesting faster than the saws could grind them down. They seeped into the inner gears of the saws, eventually spreading across the entire surface of the blades.
Red light flared from the Abductor Virgin's eye sockets. The internal gears groaned as it increased its power output, pushing Raven backward with ferocious intensity.
Raven's boots shattered the floor, carving two deep trenches into the stone, yet his hands remained clamped firmly onto the interior of the saws.
Clang! Screech! Crash! Bang!
After a chaotic symphony of mechanical failure, the rotation of the saws finally began to slow, the transmission structure ruined by the invasive crystals. With a sharp shout, Raven forced the crystals to grow even further, encasing both circular saws in solid mineral.
Deprived of its primary drive, the Abductor Virgin's speed plummeted, and Raven actually managed to grind it to a halt. Its eyes flickered red as it tried to raise its mechanical arms, but the massive saws were sealed within giant blocks of crystal and anchored to the floor. No matter how much power the puppet exerted, it couldn't budge.
The corridor was filled with dust and debris, the stone flooring reduced to rubble.
Raven let out a hot breath and was just about to stand up when the Abductor Virgin's torso suddenly swung open. A cloud of foul, bloody miasma sprayed directly into his face. Raven instinctively closed his eyes and tried to retreat, but two grayish-blue monstrous hands lunged from the mist and clamped around his throat.
The internal serrated rollers inside the puppet's belly began to scream as they spun up. The two hands lifted Raven off the ground, dragging him toward the meat grinder within.
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Elden Ring: The Unborn One's Journey Through Elden Ring(135 Chapter - Ongoing)
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