Chapter 173: The Demonic Prodigy

After cutting down the eight Headless Cavalrymen, Marcus slowed his breathing and glanced back toward the scattered Headless Grunts and drifting Mist Vultures. They hovered and shuffled about without the slightest acknowledgment of him, as though he were nothing more than empty air. It made no sense. They had clearly respawned, yet they treated him with complete indifference, neither hostile nor wary.

More unsettling still, eight new Headless Cavalrymen had materialized precisely where the previous ones had fallen. Marcus stood well within what should have been their aggro range, close enough to test the theory without stepping forward, yet they remained motionless, silent figures atop phantom steeds, as passive as the grunts wandering nearby.

He frowned, unease pricking at him. Whatever mechanism governed this place clearly did not follow ordinary dungeon logic.

Still, after a moment, he exhaled and let the tension settle. ’As long as I’m strong enough,’ he thought, ’it doesn’t matter what tricks this place tries to pull.’

He turned instead to the spoils at his feet. The Headless Cavalry had proven unexpectedly generous. Each rider had dropped two pieces of equipment, and when Marcus finished collecting everything, he found sixteen items in total. Ten shimmered with the faint glow of Blue-tier gear, while six radiated the richer sheen of Level 40 Gold-tier equipment. It did not feel random. If anything, it felt deliberate, as though the riders existed solely to reward those capable of breaking through their formation.

That realization stirred both satisfaction and irritation. His Identification skill was still pitifully low, allowing only five uses per day. After a brief hesitation, he chose five of the Gold-tier items and activated the skill. The revealed attributes were excellent, undeniably high quality, but none aligned with his own build. Useful, yes. Profitable, certainly. For him personally, however, they were little more than glittering trophies.

Suppressing a sigh, Marcus stored the remaining Gold-tier items in his inventory. His gaze drifted back to the eight newly spawned cavalrymen. If he could uncover the reason for their sudden passivity, he would not hesitate to harvest them all over again.

Finding no obvious explanation in the immediate surroundings, he began edging toward the outer perimeter of the Mist Veil Palace courtyard. His movements were cautious and deliberate. Somewhere in this space, there had to be a trigger or boundary governing the respawns.

He had taken only a handful of steps when a faint sound reached him.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

It was subtle but unmistakable, the rhythm of combat echoing from deeper within the palace grounds.

Marcus froze, his heart giving a sharp kick against his ribs. Someone else was here.

The realization rearranged everything in an instant. The grunts and vultures had not respawned because of him. They had respawned because another challenger had entered the trial.

Relief washed through him so suddenly it almost made him laugh. ’Good thing I didn’t attack them.’

If he had killed even one of the new spawns, the newcomer might have fallen short of the fifty-kill requirement. And if that happened, both of them would be forced to face the Three-Headed Black Dragon Knight prematurely.

Marcus had no illusions about that Boss as he knew It would not stand idle like these grunts.

’Who could it be?’ he wondered.

To survive the Mistbone Specters and push this far into the palace, the newcomer’s defense and awareness had to be exceptional. A possibility surfaced in his mind, one that made his eyes narrow.

Could this be the Level 30 “Demonic Prodigy” the Pegasus Knight Mare had mentioned? The expert dispatched by the Demon Clan to search for the Dragon-Horse Lyre?

Marcus slipped behind a collapsed stone pillar, suppressing his presence and waiting. He would observe first and act later.

Before he caught sight of the player, the air ahead shimmered with a piercing blue light. The temperature dropped sharply. Two massive figures materialized from the mist, each towering more than twice the height of a man.

They looked as though they had been carved from living ice. Their bodies were translucent blue, beautifully sculpted and faintly radiant. From the waist up they were imposing giants; from the waist down they dissolved into swirling blue clouds, allowing them to hover soundlessly above the ground.

The moment the Frost Golems appeared, everything within five meters changed.

The Headless Grunts stiffened. The Mist Vultures shrieked.

Then chaos erupted.

The monsters rushed the golems in a frenzy, swarming them from all directions. The indifference that had defined them moments before vanished completely, replaced by an almost desperate fixation.

’Taunt’, Marcus realized immediately. But this was no ordinary Taunt.

The golems had not attacked. They had not even moved. Yet every monster in the area had locked onto them with absolute focus.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

As the grunts and vultures crowded tightly around the Frost Golems, compressing into a dense mass, the true attacker revealed themselves.

From behind the icy giants, waves of searing fire surged forward in controlled bursts. The flames rolled across the tightly packed monsters like a blazing tide. Health bars plummeted at a shocking rate. The damage was brutal, efficient and overwhelming.

And still, not a single monster turned away.

Anchored by the Taunt, they burned where they stood until their health dropped to zero and their bodies collapsed into ash.

’Impressive,’ Marcus admitted inwardly.

To maintain that level of fixation, the Taunt had to be at least Advanced tier, possibly higher. Yet Taunt was typically single-target. How were these golems pulling an entire mob at once? An aura? A passive field? If so, it was absurdly powerful.

The newcomer advanced methodically. The Frost Golems drifted ahead, absorbing attention and controlling positioning, while their master followed at a safe distance, unleashing precise waves of destruction. The coordination was seamless. Their clearing speed was easily comparable to Marcus’s own.

As they drew closer to his hiding place, Marcus finally saw the so-called prodigy clearly.

He blinked.

Dominion truly contained wonders beyond imagination.

The figure wore a flowing red silk robe embroidered with large, vivid blossoms that swayed gently with each movement, creating a silhouette that seemed almost delicate, almost feminine. But the illusion dissolved the moment his gaze dropped lower.

The “legs” beneath the robe were not legs at all. They were thick, gnarled tree branches rooted together and wrapped in dense green leaves. Instead of feet, clusters of foliage brushed the ground.

Marcus slowly lifted his eyes.

Where a face should have been, three fully bloomed red flowers opened toward the world, identical to the embroidery stitched across the robe. Large green leaves framed them like protective hands.

This was no disguise.

It was a Flower Demon in the midst of an evolutionary transformation.

So this was the Demonic Prodigy Mare had spoken of. Marcus had expected a player aligned with the Demon Clan. He had not expected the representative to be a literal monster.

Then, abruptly, danger brushed the edge of his awareness.

Pebble and Goldie moved.

His Temple Guardian and his pet stepped forward despite his stillness, their bodies angling toward the Frost Golems as if pulled by invisible strings. Their hostility meters spiked.

They were preparing to attack.

Marcus’s heart tightened. The golems had not seen him. They had not targeted his companions specifically. This could only mean one thing.

The Taunt was a high-level passive aura.

Fortunately, Taunt did not affect players directly. Its influence was limited to monsters and NPC units. If it had worked on him, he would already be charging blindly into the open.

Reacting instantly, Marcus unsummoned Pebble and Goldie. Both vanished in flashes of light before they could take another step. He pressed himself tighter against the cold surface of the stone pillar, steadying his breathing and waiting.

With the Frost Golems anchoring every engagement, the Flower Demon carved through the required numbers with relentless precision. Fifty grunts fell, thirty vultures followed.

Just as in Marcus’s own trial, the remaining twenty vultures retreated upward, climbing into the high mist where melee attacks could not reach them.

Marcus watched intently. A small, selfish part of him hoped the demon lacked flight capabilities. If the prodigy could not finish the vultures, the trial would fail, and the Three-Headed Black Dragon Knight would awaken.

He would very much like to see how that played out.

But his hope was short-lived.

The Flower Demon was clearly no ordinary individual. With a smooth, almost graceful motion that resembled a willow branch swaying in the wind, one slender limb lifted and gestured skyward.

At the command, the two Frost Golems began to rise.

Their cloud-like lower bodies swirled more rapidly as they ascended, drifting upward with effortless control, climbing toward the fleeing vultures as though the sky itself offered no resistance.

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