Chapter 269: Our Objective

I crept up behind the figure and easily grabbed them from behind. I wrapped one arm around their neck and held their arm behind their back. Immediately they began to squirm and thrash around, but they weren’t strong enough to push me off of them.

“Hey! Let go of me or I’ll…”

From the sound of their voice, I could tell they were a girl. Just then their hair brushed across my nose and I got a whiff of their scent.

Selthia?!

What is she doing here?

Right now she didn’t realize it was me, but the moment she does I don’t think she’ll be happy that I was the one who attacked her from behind.

I slowly released her, then slid my hands down, grabbing her by the waist and kissed on the back of the neck. A loud shriek escaped her mouth.

“You bastard!” She shouted and swung her arm around, aiming to slap me in the face, but I easily grabbed her hand at the last second.

She was pissed. I could tell. I could feel a strange murderous energy coming off of her. An energy so strong that my instincts were telling me to take a step back.

“How dare you touch me inappropriately. I’ll make sure you suffer for this.”

Her voice was low and murderous. It seemed she was also preparing some kind of attack.

Before the situation could escalate, I quickly revealed myself.

“Wait, Selthia, it’s me,” I quickly said, and the moment I did, I saw her freeze.

I also heard the sound of water falling to the ground.

So she was preparing an attack.

“Darling,” her once low murderous voice turned into a high-pitched shriek as she realized who had grabbed her. “What are you doing?”

“I saw your stunning figure from behind and couldn’t resist the urge to grab you.” I said.

Shriek!

Another high pitch shriek escaped her and she began stammering over her words.

I couldn’t see her face but I knew that she was blushing. This was a far better outcome than her getting angry at me for attacking her from behind. I was saving face by kissing her on the back on the neck.

Without wasting another second, she took a step forward and wrapped her arms around me.

“Darling, I’m so glad you’re here. I thought the worst after you rushed off,” she cried as she buried her face in my chest. “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

The moment that question was raised, Selthia suddenly went quiet. I couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but I knew she was looking down.

“We only wanted to help you by buying you some time. The plan was for us to trap Damian here while you level up on the outside. You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

Now it all makes sense.

“You said we, do you mean you and Mariah?”

“…”

Once again she went quiet, which struck me as strange. It was a simple question. I more or less knew that Mariah had to be here, so I was just confirming what I already knew.

So why? Why was she hesitating?

“Selthia…”

“It’s not just Mariah and me… everyone is here,” she finally responded, but her voice was so low, it was barely above a whisper.

“By everyone do you mean…”

“Sylvie is here. Along with Isabella and Kumo.”

Hearing her words, I couldn’t help but pinch the bridge of my nose in frustration.

“You can’t be serious. I told Sylvie and Isabella to stay back home. What happened to Kaguya?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. They showed up here with Mariah. We all separated so we’d be harder to catch. Damian is after Mariah since she’s the only one who can get him out of here. We’re all working together to protect him.”

I bet this was all Mariah’s scheming. They must’ve overpowered Kaguya. There was no way Kaguya would let them come here against my orders.

“We only wanted to help. With Damian out there causing havoc, it would be nearly impossible for you to evolve. In the time that he spent out there, he has wiped out nearly half of the ghouls,” Selthia said.

I didn’t know the exact amount of ghouls, but I estimated it to be around 15,000. That meant he had killed nearly 7,000 ghouls within the span of 5 hours. At that rate he could’ve wiped out the ghouls in no time and moved on to my other pack members.

I understood that most likely saved me from failing miserably, but still, there was another issue at hand. I didn’t want Selthia and Isabella in any danger. Which was why I ordered Kaguya to keep watch over her.

“I didn’t want to involve the others. Preferably I wanted only Mariah and me to get involved, but…”

I reached out and rested my hand on Selthia’s head. She seemed to be spiraling.

“It’s ok, Selthia. I’m not angry at you.”

I was happy that they were able to work together to come up with a solution to help me. I just wished it was done in a way that wouldn’t put them at risk.

Taking a deep sigh, I then took Selthia by the hands.

“Darling?” She seemed a bit surprised by my actions.

“Seeing as it’s pitch black, it’s best to hold hands so we don’t lose sight of each other.”

Besides, I was the only one able to traverse in the dark effectively because of my thermal vision skill. Selthia and I moved around slowly with Skoll and Hati by our side. Every once in a while I would stop and observe the heat signature of creatures I had come across.

Most of them were ghouls, but still I had to make sure. I also encountered a few heat signatures that I wasn’t quite sure about. Most of them were either too big or oddly shaped to be any of the girls, so I avoided them completely.

But soon I encountered something that caused me to stop in my tracks.

“What is it?” Selthia whispered, her voice showing concern.

I couldn’t help but sigh before answering.

“We’re surrounded.”

All around us were creatures I couldn’t quite recognize. They were the size of a human, but from the outline of their heat signature I saw that they were crouched down on the ground and some were also crawling on walls.

They also had a tail that waved softly behind them.

“Oh yes, you’re right, I can sense them,” Selthia whispered back.

Sense them?

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Just then I remembered the reason why I started following Selthia in the first place. It was because she was killing ghouls. If she couldn’t see them, then how was she killing them from a distance?

“I send out small water vapors in the air with my magic. Whenever I feel a small vibration on them it means I hit something, so I fire a water blade at whatever it is. When you approached me from behind, I also felt a vibration but I was too busy dealing with another ghoul to react in time.” She explained.

So that was how she was able to kill the ghouls. Putting that aside, I then turned my attention to the creatures surrounding us.

“We’re going to have to fight.”

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