BXBX NOVEL Chapter 209 209 - Bone Mountains
After another two hours of traveling through the deserts and dunes of oceans of sand, they finally arrived at their destination, which were the Bone Mountains; fortunately, they arrived fast enough because several tens kilometers behind them, they nearly met and were caught in the sandstorm which was forming there, which would be... most problematic outcome.
"So... what now?"
Yvraine asked unsurely, looking at the huge and tall white mountains that looked like enormous bones sprouting from the ground, giving off a ghastly feeling and entirely the bad atmosphere around the entire place.
"We should capture someone for talk."
Samiel stated as Yvraine almost shuddered at the thought of what Samiel considered talking, probably torturing them physically and mentally. Naturally, the Bone Mountains were attracting many of the unsavory elements due to its half-cursed nature; essentially, nobody who had everything right in their heads would ever come to the Bone Mountains.
She then nodded and followed behind Samiel as they were mainly keeping their search to the outskirts of the Bone Mountains, not going any further than that for now because their primary objective was just information gathering and nothing more.
Fortunately for them, it took them only half an hour before they finally found someone, as they saw some cultists being on patrol or whatever. Why were they so sure that the person was a cultist? Simple because nobody sane enough would be wearing black robes on the 10th Floor and have a symbol of Daemon engraved onto his forehead.
"It seems that we are in luck..."
Samiel muttered as he observed the Steel-Tier human cultists of Daemon Andromalius based on the emblem engraved on his forehead. Andromalius was one of the 72 Daemon Pillars with the rank of Count and was Greater Daemon, which was comparable to the Intermediate God with his rank being the 72nd of the 72 Daemon Pillars of Ars Goetia of the Abyss.
Even though this should be some grunt of the Daemon Cult of Andromalius, it should be enough for them to gather basic intelligence, at least on the known factions in the Bone Mountains, if nothing else.
'Though I should rather devour his soul right away... with my proficiency, I could get the basic information out of his soul straight, considering his abysmal power.'
Samiel thought as he walked up to the Daemon Cultist of Andromalius and used the Level 3 Ultimate Ability Winter Ruler and froze the human entirely in a split of a second, effectively killing him instantly as he captured his fleeing soul and stuffed it into his mouth.
'Bleh... it tastes bad...'
He thought as he ate the soul of Daemon Cultist because as he was more Eldritch Creature than human, he could easily taste the souls and how they tasted. Naturally, the souls which tasted the best were ones from the pure soul; people who were innocent and before their death were tortured to insanity; those were the best or the ones from the powerful Professionals.
This soul of the Daemon Cultist tasted like a pile of rotten food because it was tainted by the presence of Daemon, but nevertheless, Samiel got all the necessary information he needed for their journey as he revealed a rare smile.
[Proficiency with the Level 3 Ultimate Ability Soul Devour has been increased by 1%.]
Samiel got a notification from the Akashic Records as a tremendous amount of information entered his head, starting from the unimportant ones, which were the personal memories of the cultists he killed, but those were immediately deleted because they were virtually useless.
Then came the information related to various cults, politics, Daemons and other things, which could be useful. However, there were not many new things at all because Samiel knew even more sensitive information due to his status as the Holy Son of the Hall of Kadath; as he searched through the memories related to the 10th Floor of the Tower as he grinned at this.
"Here it is... now, this is even better than initially anticipated..."
He muttered as Yvraine came up to him from the hiding place where she was previously.
"So, what have you found?"
She probed, seeing that Samiel was in a really, like perfect mood after eating the soul of the Daemon Cultist, aside from the short episode of disgust upon tasting the soul, but that was to be expected, considering that he told her that the souls of Daemon, Devil and Evil God worshippers typically tasted like shit.
"That this place is literarily swarming with the Daemon Cultists and some other minor Gods. Around twenty kilometers, there is the Divine Altar of the God of Kobolds Kurtulmak and then there is also a Divine Altar of Kuraulyek... which is most surprising to see a Divine Altar of the Demigod in the Tower. Also, aside from them, in the area where we are currently located, there are another ten cults, mainly of the Daemons, who are not part of the 72 Pillars of Ars Goetia. And... apparently, in the depths of the Bone Mountains are the Divine Altars of the Dark Seldarine Pantheon... a whole bunch of them; apparently, this grunt didn't know more of it, but they are the big boss here."
Samiel explained from the memories he managed to obtain from the soul of the Daemon Cultist and it appeared that the Bone Mountains were indeed a catch.
"That is good... though having the Divine Altar of Demigod here is indeed weird."
Yvraine muttered because this was an extraordinary situation. Demigods are Holy Legendaries who are already in the state of transition to Godhood and becoming Transcendents, so they are very powerful.
The biggest difference between them and the Holies was that, contrary to the Holies who only obtained the Holiness and weren't hard set in their path to Transcendence, Semi-Daemon, False Immortals or Demigods were already on it, they did the first step and became something more than ordinary Holy Legendary.
This made them extraordinarily powerful, but some monstrous Holy Legendaries like Menuhyutt Faulhaber, Angol of the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe or others, killed plenty of people who reached the transition phase.
"Kuraulyek is the servant of the Kurtulmak and they are essential members of the Chromatic Dragon Pantheon and are probably striving for better chances of ascension for the Kuraulyek; there should be the possibility of some dragonoid magical beasts being in the Divine Altar of those two... seeing that their Divine Altars were not destroyed by those who worship Metallic Dragon Pantheon."
Samiel said, considering the enmity between the two Dragon Pantheons, but at the same time, he was pretty curious, so they still chose the Kobolds to be their first choice if they proved to be too powerful and had something to guard their Divine Altars, which were gathering Faith for them in the Tower, they would retreat and go for more suitable targets.
And if not...
Then it would be a festival of slaughter and carnage.
"Come on... we can at least give it a try... perhaps they only stood that long because they have the numerical advantage, something which I am master in dealing with."
Samiel grinned as Yvraine sighed and followed after him to the depths of the Bone Mountains as they went through various paths and corridors until they reached a particular mountain in the mountain range, in which the Divine Altar of the God of Kobolds Kurtulmak was built.
The good sign was that they didn't feel any powerful aura but felt many more aura, which meant it was the numerical advantage that Samiel was talking about. So they could safely attack and destroy the Divine Altar without problems.
"There are at least five thousand Kobolds of various Tiers, though mainly Iron-Tier and Steel-Tier, with only their strongest warriors and shamans being at the Bronze-Tier."
Samiel concluded after scouting the mountain for several minutes with his superior sensitive senses towards the Mana itself. With them, he was able to effortlessly identify the strongest people in the colony of Kobolds whose sole purpose of being here was to reproduce and pray to the God of Kobolds, thus generating an endless and continuous stream of Faith.
"We should wait with the attack until they are in the prayer."
Yvraine proposed as Samiel agreed with her and thus they just remained there, observing the kobold colony from the hiding spot that Samiel found for them and waiting until the shamans of the colony started calling everyone for prayer to the God of Kobolds.
Not to mention, attacking during the prayer was a great sacrilege, so it will lead all of those dragonoid dog creatures into a frenzy berserker state, where they wouldn't be using even that shed of logic they have.
Half an hour alter, after the prayer started, Samiel released over ten thousand of his Undead all around the mountain space and let them slaughter the kobolds. For him, these creatures were so weak that is was far beneath him to intervene directly and left everything to Negash and Ashimer, who were both very powerful Silver-Tier Higher Undead.
Both he and Yvraine just observed from their hiding spot how the Undead started swarming the praying kobolds and slaughtering them in the ferocious ambush in tens every second as the unfortunate creatures didn't have a way out as they were totally surprised by this.
It took them several minutes to cope up with the situation as they started a counterattack, but unfortunately for them, it was too late because within three minutes they were organizing themselves, hundreds of kobold warriors were killed by Samiel's Undead and that was in a situation where neither Ashimer nor Negash made a move, aside from killing all Bronze-Tier shamans and some of the Bronze-Tier kobold warriors.
Meanwhile, Samiel was just enjoying the show, collecting souls and thrilled in the environment of slaughter, while some part of him was getting horny from the combination of slaughtering thousands and Yvraine's soft body rubbing on him.
It took several more minutes until everything was done and the last kobold was killed. Afterward, to be sure, Samiel sent his Undead to search through the mountain, locate valuables as he finished collecting exactly 5,978 souls of the kobolds, which was nice.
Then he stood in front of the Divine Altar to the God of Kobolds Kurtulmak as he used the most powerful 3rd Level Spell Void Strike as he could and blasted the Divine Altar apart.
[The Unique Quest: Destruction of the Divine Altars has been updated.
Current progression: 1 Divine Altar Destroyed (Ordinary-Tier Transcendent)]
After the destruction of the Divine Altar of the God of Kobolds Kurtulmak, all the Faith stored in the Divine Altar burst out and he heard the notification from the Akashic Records as he noticed that somewhere in the corner a small portal to the Void opened as the Faith was being absorbed into it.
Even though the Outer Gods didn't need the Faith, for them it was still tasty snacks as they were immune to the corrosion of it, so probably some Outer God who was a member of the Azathoth's Court decided to take this Faith for him/her/it?