The deep tunnels of the copper mines opened up into massive, vaulted cavern chambers. Everywhere the light of my thigh-strapped lantern flickered, it illuminated thick, rich veins of raw copper webbing through the stone.
For a fleeting second, looking at the sheer volume of valuable metal, a practical thought crossed my mind.
"I could easily mold my blood magic into a solid, heavy pickaxe and harvest this myself" I thought greedily
With fifty silver coins left in my purse, a heavy haul of raw copper could easily be traded to shady merchants for a fortune. But the cold voice of reality quickly snapped me out of it. Mining inside the Caria mountain range without an official, bureau-stamped imperial permit was highly illegal. If I tried to sell raw ore to the minting companies or the local syndicates, their appraisers would immediately flag me. I'd be thrown into a high-security capital jail, or worse… the intense investigation into my background would completely expose my identity as the blood-winged Crimson Phantom.
I gave the glittering copper veins one last, lingering stare, processing the frustration, before turning my focus back to the path. I couldn't afford a distraction.
SCREECH…!
A piercing, unnatural shriek suddenly ripped through the cavern, echoing violently off the stone walls. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The slime hive-mind knew I was here.
I instantly brought the Death Chant Shotgun up, bracing it with my right hand and leveling the crimson-glowing barrel straight into the pitch-black maw of the forward tunnel. The silver etchings pulsed hungrily as they drank from my mana ring.
Instead of humanoid miners or gelatinous blobs, a pack of low-slung, quadrupeds scrambled out of the dark. They were cave wolves… feral predators that nested in the upper ridges… but they were completely unrecognizable. Their fur was matted with thick, bubbling blue-green sludge, their jaws were locked open in permanent, agonizing snarls, and translucent slime tendrils pulsed violently through their hollow, glowing eye sockets. The slimes had hijacked an entire hunting pack.
The lead wolf lunged through the mist with terrifying speed, its slime-coated teeth snapping inches from my throat.
I cleanly stepped backward, keeping my balance on the rusted iron tracks, and let loose a rapid, devastating fire.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Three thunderous blasts shattered the cave's quiet in less than two seconds. The high-pressure pellets of pressurized blood slammed into the charging pack at point-blank range. The explosive force completely vaporized the lead wolves, blowing their corrupted bodies into a harmless spray of red mist and inert sludge. The shotgun's lifesteal effect hummed, feeding a warm rush of vitality back into my veins to instantly replenish the lifeforce I had spent on the shots.
I kept the weapon leveled, the barrel smoking as the remaining glowing eyes in the darkness began to encircle me.
"Five rounds left in the chamber." I adjusted my stance, ready to paint the copper mines in blood.
The echo of the final wolf bursting into sludge had barely bounced off the copper-laced walls before a sharp twhip cut through the damp air.
Out of the pitch-black shadows of the upper cavern ledges, a volley of jagged iron arrows rained down on me. I didn't have a second arm to raise a shield. Three arrows missed entirely, clattering against the rusted iron tracks, but two found their mark… driving deep into my chest with a dull, wet thud. The impact jolted me backward, the tips tearing through my traveler's cloak and embedding into my flesh.
Residual slime acid on the iron tips hissed, sending a burning, agonizing wave of heat straight toward my lungs.
I didn't even flinch. I closed my lone jade-green eye for a fraction of a second and instantly triggered Pain Manipulation. My nervous system went completely numb, locking the agonizing burning sensation behind an iron wall of mental focus. With a brutal, single-handed yank, I gripped the wooden shafts sticking out of my chest and ripped them out one by one, tossing the blood-stained arrows onto the stone.
Before the wounds could even begin to knit, a high-pitched, gurgling screech erupted directly in front of me.
A subterranean goblin… its green skin bloated, translucent, and pulsing with blue-green bio slime suddenly, lunged out from a collapsed mining alcove. Its eyes glowed with that eerie, brainwashed bioluminescence, and it swung a heavy, rusted blunt sword straight at my neck.
"Eirene, watch out." Plasma warned
My right hand snapped upward. I jammed the smoking muzzle of the Death Chant Shotgun right into its face and pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The goblin's head was completely erased from existence, a shower of dark blood and acidic slime painting the ceiling.
Four rounds left.
I didn't wait for the archers on the ledges to reload. Fueled by the cold fury of my mother's memory, I locked my single eye onto the glowing blue-green pinpricks of light hiding up on the scaffolding. I charged forward, my heavy boots crushing the stone, and unleashed a rapid-fire barrage as I closed the distance.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Four deafening blasts illuminated the vaulted copper chambers in strobes of violent crimson light. The explosive blood pellets slammed into the goblin archers on impact, obliterating their wooden perches and tearing their hijacked bodies to shreds.
Click. Click.
The shotgun's internal mechanism gave a dry, metallic rattle. Zero rounds left. The chamber was completely empty, and my mana reservoir ring pulsed as it worked to convert more energy into blood shells.
But the horde wasn't entirely finished. Two more slime-bitten goblins dragged themselves out from the wreckage, their calcified claws scraping the stone as they hissed at me.
"Dead weight" I muttered behind my canvas mask.
I didn't waste time reloading. I smoothly slung the empty shotgun onto my back, extended my right hand, and channeled my volatile blood magic. A heavy, razor-sharp blood sword erupted from my palm, glowing with an intense, crystallized crimson light.
I lunged. With two fluid, blindingly fast slashes, I cut through their humanoid frames like paper. The crimson blade sheared through their chests, destroying the central slime cores nesting inside their ribcages. They collapsed into motionless, inert heaps of melting flesh.
As the blade dissolved back into red mist and returned to my veins, the shotgun's lifesteal effect finally caught up with the chaos. A warm, stolen rush of vitality flooded my torso, rapidly patching up the arrow holes in my chest until the skin was smooth and unblemished once more.
I stepped back into the center of the bloody cavern, the golden light of the thigh-strapped lantern throwing long, flickering shadows across the mangled remains of the wolves and goblins. I stood perfectly still, letting my breath even out beneath my canvas mask.
With a smooth, practiced motion, I brought the Death Chant Shotgun back into my right hand. The chamber was completely dry, and I needed to prime it for the deeper descents. I closed my lone jade-green eye and focused my mind on the weapon's ancient, silver-etched runes.
I channeled my innate Blood Manipulation, forcing my living essence to flow directly from my palm into the cold metal stock. The shotgun greedily drank it down.
This was the fundamental curse of all Death Chant artifacts… they didn't rely on standard gunpowder or physical ammunition, they functioned by absorbing the raw, spiritual life force of the wielder and condensing it into devastating, pressurized projectiles. The silver etchings flared into a brilliant, pulsing crimson as eight heavy shotgun shells, made entirely of my own crystallized blood, formed perfectly inside the internal mag-tube.
"Clack-clack." I racked the slide with a brutal, single-handed motion, chambering the first blood shell.
But as the crimson light of the gun faded, my sensory perception flared. A sudden, heavy chill gripped the stagnant air of the copper mines. Out from the thick sulfur mist of the lower smelting floors, six tall, heavily armored silhouettes emerged.
My heart did a violent, agonizing skip inside my chest.
They wore the shattered, acid-etched remains of high-tier Bureau armor. Their steel breastplates were partially melted, warped by severe corrosion, and their faces were completely gone… hollowed out into grotesque masks of exposed skull by the slimes. These were the six Capital Knights Nautilus had deployed just four days ago. The very men he said had been flayed and lost.
The hive-mind had fully hijacked them. Translucent, blue-green slime pulsed through the joints of their armor, and their hands had been horribly mutated, the fingers fused together to form jagged, calcified, razor-sharp slime claws that scraped against the stone tracks.
The six infested knights didn't hesitate. Recognizing me as an uncorrupted target, they coordinated a flawless, high-speed military ambush. They lunged from the shadows simultaneously, their heavy, slime-boosted bodies cutting through the air as they raised their lethal claws to shred me to pieces.
A flash of grim solemnity washed over me, immediately followed by an unyielding executioner's focus.
"There is no saving them, this is mercy." I thought
I leveled the glowing crimson barrel directly at the charging formation, braced my boots against the iron rails, and pulled the trigger in a merciless, rapid-fire sequence.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The deafening roars of the Death Chant Shotgun turned the narrow tunnel into a literal meat grinder. The high-pressure pellets of my own blood slammed into the frontline knights with catastrophic kinetic force. The explosive shells didn't just pierce their armor; they completely obliterated the centralized slime cores nesting in their chests, vaporizing the blue-green parasites on a molecular level.
I stepped pivoting on my heel as the remaining infested knights leaped from the flanks, and emptied the rest of the tube.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The final four blasts lit up the copper vaults in blinding strobes of crimson fury. The remaining soldiers were torn apart mid-air, their hijacked limbs, melted breastplates, and shattered skulls blowing backward into the dark abyss. They didn't have a single fraction of a second to regenerate or duplicate. The parasite was entirely neutralized.
The internal chamber gave a dry, empty click. As the echoes of the gunfire died away, the shotgun's vampiric lifesteal effect triggered in full force. A massive, roaring torrent of stolen vitality rushed backward from the obliterated targets, flooding into my veins. My internal mana reservoir ring buzzed furiously, absorbing the energy and instantly converting it to completely replenish the heavy amount of life force I had just spent on the reload.
I stood in the center of the quiet, smoking cavern, looking down at the scattered, unmoving pieces of the Bureau's finest. Nautilus's scouting squad was officially at peace. I slung the empty shotgun over my shoulder, my lone green eye burning through the darkness as I looked down the steep incline. The copper mines were clear. The third mineshaft… the Silver Mines… was waiting right below.
"Second mineshaft done… let's go to the silver mines." Plasma said