CHAPTER 257: JEALOUSY

"The Vaelira show is resuming at long last now that the wonder boy and his ladies have licked their wounds enough," Vaelira’s voice rang out as the mana camera began whirring behind her.

"..." Kaiden didn’t respond to her words. He knew she was trying to ride their fame to boost her own numbers, and what better way to do that than to stir drama with stars?

Well, of course, the option of becoming their trusted ally could be much more beneficial in the long term than trying to fish a few reactions from them by spouting nonsense all the time, but such a thing never even occurred in the woman’s head.

Vaelira was a rather short-sighted woman, or if one wanted to be generous, she could be described as someone who tried to achieve her goals by deliberately playing on nightmare mode instead of normal.

But the woman herself didn’t seem to be aware that she was doing that, evidenced by her growing hostile feelings toward the group. She felt jealous, incredibly so.

At the beginning of the desert dungeon, she was only stirring drama for the sake of it, using the fact that Kaiden confessed to her in high school to make her stream more engaging for the drama-starved viewers.

But now, she was feeling so damned inadequate. She was here, as an A-tier awakened while he was a supposed F-rank. But that was only the start. While she was still just a rookie guild member of Nova Circuit, Kaiden somehow gamed the system by being willing to work as a mercenary in extremely dangerous situations and charging an arm and a leg for his services.

If that wasn’t enough, he was pulling in many, many times her numbers because he dicked down a freaking monster girl and gave her such an awesome time—or whatever—that she willingly submitted to him.

Now, he has four women on his side who are not only loyal to a fault but also are such lookers that they constantly make her feel things she isn’t ready to confront.

And Kaiden gained all this in less than two months. Vaelira simply couldn’t wrap her mind around all the discrepancies between his rate of progress and hers, hence her growing negative feelings.

When she used her mind to check on Valhalla’s Sinners’ awakened media page and saw that they were already having over 20k viewers even though the stream only went live 5 seconds ago... That didn’t help one bit.

Diaz’s hand lifted with a silent gesture.

The group froze behind him as the rogue crouched. He pressed two fingers to the ground, checking for vibrations. Then his other hand made a quick motion toward the right corridor.

Two hallways branched from the corrupted ballroom:

One leading back toward the wing that Kaiden’s group had barely survived during their first descent, where Starved Thralls had lunged from every crevice like rabid insects.

The second was the route Vaelira’s team had taken during that same expedition. It was a longer, winding path. It had seemed more stable back then. Less chaotic.

And now... it was their preferred option.

As they pressed forward, the architecture grew stranger.

Where the ballroom was warped nobility, the halls now were too clean, too symmetrical. It was drastically different from how the west wing looked.

Diaz’s arm rose again.

"Contact ahead. Group of six."

Kaiden stepped beside him, and it didn’t take long for him to glimpse one in the distance.

A new enemy.

No longer the ragged, crawling Starved Thralls. No, these were something else.

[Crimson Handmaiden - Level 23]

[Crimson Handmaiden - Level 22]

[Crimson Handmaiden - Level 24]

"They’re considered elite monsters for a D-rank dungeon," Diaz grumbled with dissatisfaction. "Three ahead, three posted behind. They’re in a boxed formation."

"Mobility units, huh..." Kaiden murmured.

Diaz nodded. "Extremely. They teleport between mirrors. There’s one mounted to each wall where they camp. These monsters don’t tend to roam the dungeons but stay where their mirrors are. You’ll want to disable them if you don’t want to be pincered endlessly."

Vaelira’s group slowly moved into battle positions, and Jack grunted.

"Let me guess, they shriek when they die?"

Diaz’s face twitched. "They shriek when they live."

As if hearing the cue, one of the Handmaidens suddenly pulled its head back.

Its porcelain mask cracked.

Then it opened, like a mouth splitting vertically down the middle, revealing not teeth, but a ring of crimson eyes, each blinking out of sync.

*SHHHRRRKKKKKKKKK!!*

The scream wasn’t a sound. It was pressure. The walls trembled, mana warped, and even the lights dimmed.

Nyx winced. "Okay. I miss the Thralls."

"Did you already forget that the presence of thralls implies the presence of at least one vampire noble?" Luna sighed.

Kaiden raised a hand. "Let’s tackle this encounter properly."

But someone else was already moving.

Bastet.

She stepped up beside him without uttering a single word. Her hips swayed with the elegance of a born predator, the muscles beneath her deep tan skin coiling with each step. Her tail flicked idly, its golden bands chiming with a faint jingle, as her long ears twitched to track every noise in the corridor.

Her eyes narrowed, turning into vertical slits.

"Are these creatures serious right now~?" she purred, more to herself than anyone else. Her gaze lingered on the handmaidens, still floating eerily in formation near their cursed mirrors.

"Staying back there? Really?" Her good mood turned foul as she felt a great sense of disrespect being thrown her way. "You dare stand idly by out in the open in my presence?! You think you’re safe?"

Diaz, still scanning the formation, gave a curt nod. "That is their strategy. Let the environment do the heavy lifting. They draw you in, then teleport and bleed you dry."

Bastet’s smile deepened.

A slow, dangerous upward curl of her lips happened, forming what could be best described as the grin of a lioness who spotted cornered prey.

"I see~ So that’s how it is~"

She raised one arm into the air lazily. A single index finger extended skyward, tracing a glowing line in the air. It shimmered gold, then pulsed with deep orange. Within a mere moment, solar energy began spiraling around her finger, dancing like playful fireflies drawn to the sun queen’s presence.

Sasha slapped her forehead with a loud groan. "Did you people not give the monster girl a basic rundown on enemy tendencies? She seriously thinks no one tried ranged attacks on this monster type before?"

Leon sighed beside her, watching Bastet’s back and magic gathering at her fingertips. "It’s not a matter of trying. When no one engages them in melee, they gain insane resistances. Mages burn through their whole mana pool with zero results, and archers can unload a full quiver without scratching them. On top of that, they regenerate as long as their mirrors are intact."

He shifted his attention from Bastet to the monsters before saying, "It’s a losing battle of attrition. You’d have to be far superior to break through their defenses."

"[Judgment of the Noonday Sun]."

Bastet whispered the words with a low tone as if it were a prayer instead of a mere spell chant. The spell she cast was specifically meant to hurt the undead... Though its flashiness belied that fact.