Epoch: A Berserker's Rise

Chapter 124: Phantom Mansion (1)

When the group arrived in front of the mansion, Menius said "We entered together, but a large group of wraith ambushed us and forced us to leave the mansion. When we met, we were thinking of how we could enter the mansion without alerting the wraiths."

Adam said "There's no need now. What can you tell me about the wraiths inside?" Cilliore looked relieved when she heard what he said, and she quickly replied to his question "The wraiths we saw were all Level 70, and they aren't very strong. However, you must watch out for your Aura consumption once inside, as the Wraiths are impervious to physical attacks and can only by hurt using Aura or Mana."

Adam nodded, this was a big advantage for the wraiths. At least, against normal people. Adam's passive Aura Recovery was at 20 Aura per second. Even if he takes hits, to recover one percent of his health he needs to spend 6 Aura, meaning that if he recovers 3% of his health every second he would still recover 2 Aura every second.

And that was if he was injured. If none of the wraiths could deal damage to him, then he wouldn't need to waste Aura to heal himself.

As Adam was about to lead the group in the mansion, they all heard a roar echo somewhere in the city, and it was quickly followed by several others. They all turned to look in the direction of the commotion, and after several seconds they started feeling tremors in the ground.

Adam looked up at Neith and asked "Take care of them, while I go with them inside. It would have been uncomfortable for you inside anyway."

Neith purred, which was quite unusual of her 'Sure, I'm going to have some fun' Adam realized that the purr he heard wasn't a good sign, and he hurriedly entered the mansion with the two centaurs.

Well, it was called a Mansion, but it was enormous, it looked more like a palace than anything from outside. But this was the case for most of the clans' homes in this world.

On Earth, even the kings and emperors of ancient times only had a few hundreds people living with them at most, with all their servants. But the clans in Epoch, even the smaller ones, had thousands of members each, which was most of the clan's mansions were bigger than palaces.

And for appearance sake, the bigger clans all have even bigger mansions, whether they have more or less members. The most exaggerated were the Imperial Palaces, or their equivalent in the different Racial Powers. They were literally kilometers tall, and in width they were as big as a town, reaching hundreds of square kilometers.

So even though this place was called the Phantom Mansion, it wasn't a small area by any means, and it would take time to search through it.

When he entered the mansion with the two centaurs, he half expected this to be a dungeon, but was proved wrong as a group of specters appeared some distance away from them.

[Lower Wraith] (Elite, Level 70)

HP: 30000/30000

[Hungry Wraith] (Chieftain, Level 70)

HP: 150000/150000

Both Cilliore and Menius took out their bow, but before they could shoot any of the wraiths, Adam had already acted.

He unsheathed his sword so fast that it became a blur, and a compressed blade of vapor exited the sword, clashing with the ethereal enemies.

-164000 HP!

The flying slash went through the entire group of wraiths, killing all of them in a single blow. Adam couldn't help but smile, it had gone as he expected. Normally, his damage should have been around 135k, but he remembered something about the wraiths.

They were beings of extreme cold, as they were undead beings, and so fire, lightning and holy damages would deal extra damage, whereas they had a resistance to ice and dark damage.

The Water element could be split in Water, Ice and Steam/Vapor, and they all had different proprieties. For steam, it was extremely hot attacks, which was why he had dealt additional damage. If he was right in his calculations, then he should be dealing 20% damage to them by using steam attacks.

As for Cilliore and Menius, they were dumbfounded by what they saw. The wraiths that had successfully split their group, were actually killed with a single blow by Adam? They knew he was strong, from the rumors, but this exceeded their expectations.

However, the two didn't take several factors into account. First, while their intangibility allowed them to ignore normal physical attacks, it had a secondary effect, and that was that attacks could just pass through them.

The Wraiths had close to no defense, so even after killing the first wraith Adam's flying slash did not lower in power, and all the wraiths suffered the full powered blow from Adam.

If it had been actual living being of flesh and blood in front of Adam, with the same amount of HP as those Wraiths, the slash would have killed the first people it touched, but the others directly behind would barely be injured, and those in the back wouldn't even have been hit.

The group of three were able to quickly peruse through the mansion, Cilliore being the one who led the way. She said she had an intuition, which told her the approximate location of her lover, and thus the rest of the team.

However, on the way they had crossed the dead bodies of two centaurs, which were part of Cilliore's and Menius' team. From their faces, their death hadn't been a nice one. The wraiths did not leave any remains behind, as they were mere spirits. Even for Adam, they didn't drop any items, but they rewarded more XP than monsters of the same level.

The group of three walked through the house for an entire hour, clashing with wraiths between Elite and Lord Rank. All of them were dealt with by Adam, but Agera, Cilliore's lover, and her team obviously didn't have an easier time.

During this hour they had seen two more corpses other than the first two, and according to Cilliore and Menius, the only survivors of their squad was Agera, and the two of them.

Soon after, a desperate looking Cilliore and a lost Menius arrived at a big room, alongside Adam. Inside the room were hundreds of wraiths, surrounding a single centaur. The centaur carried a spear and a shield, and looked like she was on her last leg.

When Cilliore saw Agera, her eyes widened and hope reignited in her eyes as she rushed straight into the Wraith army. Adam looked at Menius, and seeing his face he couldn't help but sigh.

Cilliore still had her lover to save, but Menius didn't have anyone who stood out among the group, they were all family for him. And discovering their dead bodies one by one had been a terrible blow to his mind.

Even Cilliore had been hit hard, but she still had Agera so her mental state was a little better.

After a moment, Menius's eyes turned red all of a sudden, surprising Adam. Menius didn't even bother taking out his bow, he straightforwardly rushed into the Wraith army. However, unlike Cilliore, he did not rush to Agera while ignoring the wraith.

Instead, Adam saw his hoofs shine slightly, and he began stomping every wraith he could see. Adam didn't rush into the army though, and instead looked at the other side of the room.

Hiding behind the army of wraiths was another wraith. However, this one was different from the others. The other wraiths looked blurry, and had no feature of their own, they looked like copies of each other. This wraith though had a clear face, and he was also holding a spirit sword.

Next to him was another Centaur, who looked younger than the ones Adam had already seen. If he wasn't wrong, this was Ajetus, Cilliore's little brother, whom they had come for. Unfortunately, he was nothing but a cold corpse. Cilliore hadn't seen him yet as it seemed.

But more importantly, on a wall at the other end of the boss room, a one handed hammer hung on a wall, beneath of which was a skeleton. The Forger's Dream.