“Letia!!!”
With a single miserable scream, Red was dragged away by a certain evil spirit.
At that moment, Letia finally started to regain her senses.
In truth, her panties were still on, but her mind couldn’t keep up with her mouth, so she just blurted out those words.
Maybe deep down, she thought it’d be fun to do so?
Otherwise, she herself had no idea why she said it.
But seeing Red’s reaction was indeed quite amusing.
Because there was quite a commotion outside, Letia had no choice but to crawl out of her sleeping bag.
After putting her clothes back on, she left the tent and stepped outside.
By this time, the fight between Tos and Red had already come to an end.
Seeing Letia emerge from the tent, Red immediately said,
“You’ve ruined my reputation! Thanks to what you said, people are starting to think I’m a lolicon now!”
At this, Mason covered his forehead speechlessly.
“Isn’t that what you are?”
Tos finally let Red go, turning his gaze to Letia.
After pondering for a moment, he said to Red,
“In a sense, you two are quite a match.”
“Get lost!”
Red silently gave Tos the middle finger.
He could pair up with anyone, except Letia.
After all, for others, “pair” meant marriage, but for Letia, “pair” meant mating, crazy lottery draws or something—get lost!
“You guys are lively so early in the morning,” Brian walked over, looking at everyone and said, “Let’s proceed with the plan from yesterday. The sooner we get back to the surface, the sooner those wounded can get proper treatment…”
At this, Brian glanced in the direction of the Field Hospital.
“Speaking of which, Letia’s medical skills are quite impressive. Yesterday you could hear all sorts of moans and cries from the wounded, but today it’s all quiet. Even when applying medicine, they just bite their lips and don’t make a sound…”
His voice was tinged with emotion, while Red’s expression grew a bit guilty.
As for Letia, she regretfully put down the Cross in her hand.
“In any case, Tos, you take a small group to lure the demons, Mason and I will take the others and wait to reap the rewards. As for Red and Letia, I’ll leave you two to watch over things here.”
“No problem.”
“Is there a reward?”
Red nodded as if he was living up to everyone’s expectations, but nearly spat out blood when he heard Letia’s question.
Brian, however, didn’t mind at all and burst out laughing.
“Payment is no issue, but you’ll have to wait till we get back to the surface. I don’t have any money on me right now.”
Red’s face froze for a moment before he let out a helpless sigh.
Brian and the others quickly led their squad away from the Camp.
Red watched their figures grow distant and said quietly,
“I hope everything goes smoothly.”
“When you say something like that, I just feel like you’ve jinxed it already…”
Letia muttered softly, then headed toward the Field Hospital to continue being a doctor who saves the suffering.
Time ticked by, and even while staying in the Camp, Red could still hear heart-rending roars from afar and feel the earth tremble as if in an earthquake.
You had to know, there was quite a distance between here and the Lord’s Nest.
It spoke to just how fierce the battle was.
But hearing such commotion, Red couldn’t shake a vague sense of unease in his heart.
It reminded him of his time on the Twenty-Third Floor.
Back then, Jessica had unleashed a Curse Technique.
Though it wiped out the monsters ahead, the deafening noise drew the Monster Tide upon them.
Now, the anxiety brewing in the dead silence beyond the camp was eerily overlapping with that nightmarish memory.
Even if noise alone was unlikely to attract a massive beast tide deep in the dungeon, Red’s sense of foreboding only grew stronger.
He immediately left the Camp, running outside.
Seeing him so anxious, Letia asked, “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to check outside.”
Red didn’t bother to explain and vanished from Letia’s sight.
Letia frowned, confused but quietly followed after him.
Red ran a great distance, only stopping once he was sure he’d left behind any sounds from the camp that might interfere.
He pressed his ear to the ground, carefully listening for vibrations.
At the same time, dozens of Blood-Hunting Spiders lurking in the darkness were instantly activated.
Like the most loyal scouts, they maximized their networks of vision, hearing, and vibration senses.
One second…
Two seconds…
The mental link returned nothing but dead silence.
The ground was steady, the air frozen, only the monotonous drip of water echoing through the gloom.
Maybe that fear from before really was just an illusion?
Or was it?
Just as Red began to doubt himself, the ground… started to tremble.
Through the Blood-Hunting Spiders’ shared senses, he saw it: from every passage to the east, countless scarlet eyes were rushing this way at terrifying speed!
Seeing a wave of beastly red eyes flooding toward him like a crimson tsunami, Red instantly made a calm assessment.
This Monster Tide was so vast that even the Scarlet Legion in its prime couldn’t hope to hold it back, let alone the Camp now, where most were severely wounded—missing arms and legs, barely able to hold weapons, completely defenseless.
Worse, these beasts moved with horrifying speed.
Like a black flood swallowing everything, with such overwhelming force, there was no time to evacuate the wounded, not even enough for the able-bodied to run before being overrun.
What now?
Red’s mind raced, forced to its limits by the life-and-death pressure, thoughts flashing back to the Twenty-Third Floor.
A beast tide.
A desperate situation…
“There’s only one option… Use the same trick again.”
He took a deep breath and gathered mana in his hands.
Dozens of rectangular, clockwork mechanical devices hit the ground, crawling swiftly along the stone walls to form a ring.
Once firmly attached, they glowed red, brighter and brighter—
“Boom!!”
In a flash, the main passage leading to the Scarlet Legion’s Camp was blocked off, packed tight with tons of rubble and broken stone.
But that… was nowhere near enough!
Red knew this perfectly well.
The force of a Monster Tide was terrifying—if their attention wasn’t diverted, this makeshift wall wouldn’t hold them for long!
They’d batter it down like a battering ram, tearing open a bloody path with their own flesh, and the defenseless camp would be swallowed all the same.
So he had to lure them away.
Red used his magic to conjure a massive Magic Amplifier, took a deep breath, and called out in a provoking tone, “Come over here if you dare!”
The monsters were not mindless.
When they saw a human blatantly standing before them and heard that taunting shout, they instantly flew into a rage.
“Roar!!!”
“Good, their aggro is locked.”
Red’s eyes turned sharp.
Without the slightest hesitation, he turned and sprinted at top speed into a tunnel leading even deeper into the unknown darkness, in the opposite direction of the camp.
Not mindless, but certainly stupid.