The story of the black silk female knight

Unlike other adventurers, the three looked like the patriarchs of the Teido family's investigation team, and even carried more powerful-looking alchemical detection tools.

We don’t really know what happened, but they seemed to have found out something and instructed us to sail the boat to a certain place. After that, they each tore open a water-repelling scroll and went into the water.

As a result, they completely lost contact after going into the water, and we waited for them for a whole day... According to regulations, we should have sold their belongings left on the boat before hiring someone to rescue them, but we were blinded by greed and only sold the belongings without hiring anyone to rescue them... We thought that since they were probably already in grave danger, we might as well save the rescue money and divide it among ourselves.”

This is certainly not very ethical, but it's not exactly a heinous crime.

After a moment's thought, Valensa first gave the fishermen a stern scolding and made them swear to the Sun Goddess that they would go back and redeem the three adventurers' belongings from the pawnshop and find a way to return them to the adventurers' friends and families.

After Valencia played the bad cop and delivered her verdict on the fishermen, Tia quickly switched to the good cop, pulling out a handful of gold coins to tell them that as long as they worked hard, they would still receive a reward.

The fishermen, of course, dared not disobey and led Valensa and the others to the place where the three adventurers had never returned after going into the water.

Because of the deteriorating water quality, this sea area has seen a significant decrease in both dangerous marine creatures and ordinary aquatic products... Therefore, the three adventurers were likely not attacked by underwater monsters, but rather discovered something and were tragically silenced.

Valensa was quite cautious about this. She told Tia to be prepared to teleport away at any time before jumping into the water alone to investigate the seabed.

The straight-line distance from here to the coast of Chizhi Island is less than 7 kilometers. The water is not deep, about 70 or 80 meters deep, and it is a shallow sea.

Valensa quickly reached the bottom of the water, staring intently and searching for anything suspicious.

At first, Valensa used the Divine Insight and mental powers to enhance her vision, allowing her to see the entire seabed clearly, but she did not find anything unusual.

Just as she was about to float to the surface with a confused expression, a thought struck her.

Instead of looking with her eyes, she closed them and used all the mental power that enhanced her vision to enhance her sense of touch. She also retrieved the divine particle armor and the black stockings from the [Heart of Stockings] earring, and used her skin to directly contact the seawater, feeling it with her heart.

This time, she finally made a discovery... Valensa sensed a vertical undercurrent, constantly surging from somewhere on the seabed and flowing into the ocean, but she could see nothing unusual about it.

It must be some kind of extremely sophisticated illusion disguise, capable of perfectly deceiving even Radiant-rank experts and divine perception techniques visually, but unfortunately it is slightly weaker in terms of tactile perception.

Those three adventurers, who are probably already dead, are really capable; the place they went into the water actually had a problem!

Valensa focused intently, keeping her eyes closed to avoid visual distractions, while carefully exploring the seabed with her hands.

Before long, the texture of the rocks and sand in her hands suddenly changed, turning into metal... metal with obvious artificial traces, much like the square iron gate at the bottom of a swimming pool.

You can feel a very obvious hot current gushing out here, but when you open your eyes, you can only see the seabed sand and rocks that are completely normal, and even the touch of the current has been greatly weakened.

This is it, there's definitely something wrong with this!

Valensa grabbed one of the iron bars, just about to pull it hard to see what was going on, when a seemingly ordinary seabed rock next to her suddenly transformed into a large anaconda-like snake with a completely metal body. It opened its mouth to bite Valensa's head, while simultaneously coiling around her body.

The underwater tunnel that was originally spewing out hot air suddenly reversed its direction, turning into a powerful suction force that pulled Valensa's arm in and held her firmly in place.

quack!

In the critical moment, the Noble Phantasm, Six Flowers, split and flew out. Two of the floating blades directly blocked the mouth of the metal serpent that was biting down, while the other four blades violently struck the serpent's body, successfully breaking the serpent's constriction.

At the same time, Valensa unleashed all her strength without hesitation, forcibly pulling her arm out of the eerie hole in the seabed, only to find it covered with countless tiny black worms trying to burrow into her flesh.

It's an extremely vicious and dangerous trap... Without a doubt, the three adventurers who discovered the anomaly here were most likely killed by the giant metal serpent.

Fortunately, Valensa was strong enough to successfully deal with the first wave of surprise attacks and quickly took control of the situation.

The metal serpent was not weak, but it was only at the level of a Radiant-rank summon, similar to the Evil Blood derivative that Ziye had summoned before. It was no match for Valensa in a one-on-one fight and was easily defeated.

On the contrary, the black insects on her arm were unexpected by Valensa. She didn't know what kind of insects they were, but they were not afraid of the Holy Flame and could even absorb the Holy Flame to strengthen themselves.

Valensa initially tried to use the Holy Flame to get rid of the insects, but unexpectedly, it made the insects even more excited. They bit her arm, leaving many bloody holes, and devoured her flesh and drank her blood.

However, just as Valensa was about to use her Moon Kiss to scrape off and physically kill these black insects, the black insects that were drinking Valensa's blood were instead devoured by her blood... Just like sugar dissolving in boiling water, all the black insects became Valensa's nourishment.

A small amount of highly refined energy was completely absorbed by Valensa, which also activated a part of her inherited bloodline memories, allowing her to recognize the insect.

This insect shares the same origin as the Dragon-Slaying Grass; both are life forms from the negative space. They don't exist in the natural world of Eve; they can only be summoned through evil rituals and sacrifices.

Insects have very weak physical resistance; an adult can crush them with a single step. Yet they are a nightmare for almost all spellcasters—they can devour magic power to continuously strengthen themselves. A single insect can burrow into a spellcaster below the Radiant rank and be fatal. In swarms, even Radiant rank spellcasters have a chance of dying.

The insects that Valensa encountered may have undergone artificial breeding and evolutionary modification, as they can even devour holy flames, posing a great threat to clergy!

In short, it was extremely dangerous.

Fortunately, the only things guarding the secret here were the giant metal serpent and the small black insect. After Valensa killed them all, the seabed returned to calm, as if nothing had happened.

The underwater cave entrance that had just spewed out scorching dark currents is still nowhere to be seen with the naked eye, and now even the spewing of dark currents has stopped... The opponent has chosen to perfectly hide it using super-powerful illusion magic, so that Valensa, who just fought a battle, knows there is something wrong here, but just can't find the exact location!

However, Valensa showed no sign of discouragement at the last moment. She had no lingering in the seabed and went straight to the surface to reunite with Tia.

"Walk."

Without offering any explanation, Valencia returned to the boat and immediately ordered the fishermen to sail back to the shore of Chit Island.

The fishermen naturally dared not disobey orders and sailed back at full speed without any further incidents.

Only after she had given the fishermen a reward and made them swear a solemn oath to the sun goddess never to tell anyone about what had happened that day did Valensa look at Tia:

"How about it?"

"Of course, no problem."

Tia tilted her head back, stretched out her hand with her palm facing upward, and magic gathered in her palm. Within seconds, a simple hologram of the Island of Rulers appeared out of thin air.

At the foot of the snow-capped mountain in the center of the holographic island, a point of light appears and disappears.

With the help of the giant metal serpent and the small black insect, the mysterious cave in the seabed did indeed hide itself again, but it was no longer of any use.

As Valensa's arm was sucked hard into the hole, she took the opportunity to throw a Tia magic card into the hole as well, letting the magic card drift into the depths of the cave with the water.

Now Tia reconnected to the magic card, and sure enough, the underwater cave was connected to a certain part of Ruler Island, and the culprit causing the anomalies in the southern waters of Ruler Island was on Ruler Island.

After Valensa and Tia carefully compared the map of Ruler Island, they were surprised to find that the magic card was located directly below Cloud Hidden Ridge!

It's clear that there's something wrong with Ziye sending the Human Acorn and the Crystal Bead of the second-in-command of the Sailian Clan to Yunyin Ridge, and it's very likely related to the anomaly in the waters south of Chizhi Island.

That mysterious nun is most likely an accomplice of Ziye, hiding on Chizhi Island and plotting something!

The problem is... Cloud Hidden Ridge has been plundered countless times by countless adventurers, and Valensa has personally inspected it carefully, but she did not find any hidden underground space. How could Tia's magic card have traveled there through the seabed?

...No, there's one place that's been overlooked!

Valensa and Tia simultaneously recalled a blind spot from before, exchanged a glance, and said in unison:

"It's that well!"

Because there were water-drawing tools in use at the wellhead and many signs of camping around the well, Valensa initially assumed it was an ordinary well in use.

To avoid contaminating the drinking water source, Valensa and Tia did not investigate the well much at the time.

But now that I think about it, given the sophisticated illusion and camouflage techniques used at the entrance to the underwater cave, there's probably more to it than meets the eye below the well!

After all, adventurers have explored almost the entire underground area of ​​Cloud Hidden Ridge, and the only place that hasn't been disturbed much is the bottom of the well! It's a very useful and clean public water source, and messing with it would likely make you the target of hostility from all the adventurers in the vicinity!

That's brilliant.

With a sigh in their hearts, Valensa and Tia both entered a state of complete focus, treating this target as a formidable foe.

They immediately headed towards the foot of Snow Peak Mountain in the center of Chizhi Island, and soon arrived at Cloud Hidden Ridge, a place full of ruins, and found the well.

A four-person adventurer team was camping and resting about 4 meters away from the well. They didn't pay any attention to Valensa and Tia, who were walking straight toward the well, assuming that they were there to fetch water.

It wasn't until they saw Valensa about to jump into the well that the adventurer party suddenly flew into a rage, grabbing their weapons and charging forward.

"Woman, what are you doing? Trying to make us all drink your foot bath water, huh?"

Tia frowned; she sensed that something was wrong with these adventurers.

Many adventurers are indeed quite rude, but even the rudest adventurer would generally not dare to lose their temper with a paladin, let alone a high-ranking paladin.

Tia then carefully observed the adventurers and indeed found that their eyes were gradually turning blood red and their aura of violence was growing stronger.

"They're beyond saving!"

Valenza was even more direct and decisive, without any preamble, unleashing a chilling and merciless Moonbeam Sword strike that killed all four adventurers.

Sure enough, something was wrong with the four adventurers. After they fell, not a drop of blood flowed from their bodies. Instead, more than a dozen black seeds the size of strawberries burst out of their bodies, flew to the air about 2 meters high, and flickered with an extremely ominous evil light. They violently gathered the surrounding elements, as if they could explode at any moment, leaving nothing but barren land within a radius of dozens of meters.

But Valensa had clearly anticipated this. As soon as the black seeds flew out, she sucked them all in without causing any ripples.

"They have long been implanted with the seeds of evil magic."

Valensa, aware of Tia's confusion, sighed and explained:

"When I was studying the theory of the Inner Templars, Fran told me about it. It's a signature evil spell of a cult that caused huge casualties in America."

Those implanted with the seed of evil magic are not cultists; they are, in fact, victims... But once the seed of evil magic is activated, it cannot be removed. It will completely turn the implanted person into a puppet, and after the implanted person dies, it can absorb the remaining bio-energy and turn it into an evil magic bomb... It is an extremely vicious evil magic.

Fortunately, implanting this seed of evil magic is not easy; the victim must willingly accept the caster's complete spell… Therefore, the cultists who used this evil magic at the time disguised themselves as healers, secretly implanting the seed of evil magic while treating patients.

"Implanted during treatment?"

Tia frowned even more, clearly realizing the seriousness of the problem:

"It seems most likely that it was the work of that mysterious nun... but she has treated quite a few people in the nearby villages and towns over the past two years. Once all those evil seeds are activated..."

“The entire island of Chizhi could become a hell, littered with corpses.”

Valensa nodded, took a deep breath, and walked towards the well again:

"Therefore, we must find that mysterious nun... The seed of evil magic is completely harmless as long as it is not activated by the caster. The best way to minimize casualties is to kill the culprit directly."

"and many more!"

Seeing that Valensa was about to jump into the well, Tia stopped her:

"Since the evil seeds within these adventurers have been activated, it means that the nun has already discovered our actions. Going down directly will most likely lead us right into a trap."

“I know… honey, you have a better idea?” Valensa said helplessly.

"Of course."

Tia snorted and, to Valensa's astonishment, produced a number of bombs.

There were technologically advanced bombs obtained from Valencia, magical bombs made using alchemy, and hybrid bombs that combined high-performance explosives with fire-attribute magic crystals.

“Whenever I encounter this situation while playing those game consoles you brought over, I like it.”

As Tia spoke, she pulled Valensa out of the well and threw all the bombs in:

"Throwing bombs to ask for directions."

Chapter 72 Only time can fight against time!

Amidst the deafening explosions, water sprayed and rocks flew everywhere, instantly transforming the wellhead into a volcano. Flames shot upwards for hundreds of meters, and the shockwaves tore the ground apart, blasting everything around the well.

Valensa was just about to complain about when Tia had developed a fear of insufficient firepower when she noticed that the water mist that had been blown into the sky along with the fire and debris had not dissipated, but instead turned gray and darkened, condensing into a wolf-like beast that was more than 3 meters tall within seconds.

"The Fog Demon?"

Tia gasped in surprise, but her spellcasting was swift. A magic card instantly became transparent and was placed in front of her eyes, as if she were wearing glasses to look at the giant water mist wolf.

This is a spell that Tia created based on the guidance of Thousand Leaf Grass. It is useless against other enemies, but it can easily see through the body structure of the Mist Demon and lock onto its core.

However, after glancing at the water mist giant wolf through the magic card that had transformed into a lens, Tia was even more surprised:

"It doesn't have a core? How is that possible? Even humanoid mist demons with strength comparable to a Radiant-rank cultivator have cores, right?"

"...because it is not the Fog Demon, or rather, not entirely."

Valensa, who also imbued her eyes with divine power, spoke solemnly:

"It is maintained by a chaotic divine power... This thing is also a product of evil magic, and should be a simulated mist demon created by evil magic."

"Then how do we fight?"

Tia, who had already conjured two spells in her hand, was somewhat puzzled:

"Its body is essentially still water mist, no different from a real mist demon. It will recover no matter how you attack it, as long as you don't destroy its core."

"So we don't need to attack it itself, we just need to destroy the very thing that exists... like you just did, baby, only with a larger dose!"

Whoosh!

During the conversation, the giant water mist wolf pounced on Tia, biting her with incredible speed that no ordinary lighthouse-level spellcaster could react to.

Snapped!

At the crucial moment, Valensa struck Tia in the chest with a palm, sending Tia flying. However, she used a very subtle way of exerting force, so that Tia only flew a few hundred meters without getting injured.

Valensa then completely ignored the giant wolf's attack on her and rushed to the original well, which had now turned into a deep pit, and looked down.

Sure enough, the chaotic divine power inside was even more concentrated, and it had some kind of connection with the giant water mist wolf that was clawing and tearing at it from the side, like an electrical socket and an electric toy connected by invisible wires.