The Paladin in the Abyss

Lancelot fixed his gaze and discovered that there was a cliff ahead of them, their speed too fast to turn in time now.

In their haste to escape, they had long since veered off the path. What lay below the cliff was now unseen; they could only take a gamble.

"Hold on to me!"

He shouted loudly, then once again spurred the snowboard beneath his feet to increase his speed. There was likely nothing but unaccumulated dust and scattered rocks below the cliff, so he had to fly as far as possible to hopefully find a suitable area to land.

"No, no, no, no, no! Don't jump, don't jump! Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!"

Amidst Bruto's screams of terror, two figures flew out from the cliff.

Lancelot continued to stimulate the snowboard with True Qi. Although he couldn't manage it like flying a Flying Sword, he was still able to adjust the direction and speed of his glide through the air.

Lancelot looked around for a suitable place to land but what he saw once again brought his heart to a stop.

In front of them was a gigantic sand worm, at least ten feet in radius and nearly a thousand feet long, rearing up like a cobra with its gaping maw wide open, waiting for them.

In that disgusting giant mouth were rows upon rows of sharp teeth, and Lancelot had no doubt that anything caught between them would be reduced to a paste.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck! Not like this! We're going to die!!!" Bruto had lost all coherence, the shock of the past five minutes had exceeded what a Dwarf could bear.

"Hold tight!"

Lancelot too was scared by the massive mouth resembling a tunnel entrance, but he knew he still had a chance to fight. He drew his Greatsword from his back, silently estimating the distance as he poured all his might and Innate Power into the Gathering Qi Slash.

A golden-red Sword Aura extended along the sword, making the Greatsword appear to have doubled in length.

Just as he was about to fall into the maw of the Lord Level monster, Lancelot twisted his body into an inverted position and funneled all the remaining True Qi sourced from the nature's spiritual energy into the snowboard on his feet.

An explosion sounded in the air as the snowboard beneath Lancelot's feet shattered, his body changing its original trajectory by utilising the explosive force, plummeting like a meteor.

It seemed he would narrowly miss the gaping mouth, but with his current velocity, hitting the ground would likely still spell certain death.

"Haah!!"

The unbelievable happened. As Lancelot brushed past the sand worm Lord, he fiercely slashed with the Greatsword exhaling golden Sword Aura in his hand.

The sand worm, thought to be soundless, let out a ground-shaking wail. Lancelot's weapon cut through the lower jaw of the giant worm as easily as a hot knife through a cake, slicing downward.

He gripped the sword hilt tightly to slow his descent. The Greatsword, like unzipping the belly of the sand worm Lord, laid it open and spilled its guts for all to see.

The insides of the sand worm Lord were mostly comprised of the sand and mud it had consumed. If not for the creature's massive girth, Lancelot's strike could have split it completely, as easily as chopping wood.

Bruto held tightly to Lancelot's thighs, his eyes shut tight, missing this spectacular moment.

For a Dwarf, the experience of feet not touching the ground for so long was still too terrifying.

Finally, he felt his legs touch the ground, and Lancelot patted his shoulder:

"There, there, we've landed, you can let go now."

Bruto carefully opened his eyes and looked around.

The first thing that came into view was the corpse of the sandworm overlord, its colossal body split open in the middle, looking like an opened book, still standing upright in mid-air.

"By Moradin's long beard!" Bruto exclaimed, using the name of the dwarf creator. "Lancelot, from today on you are my big brother, how did you do it?"

"Eh, give me the shield first," Lancelot, looking up, said with a serious face.

Without any hesitation, Bruto took off the shield from his back and handed it to Lancelot.

"Big brother, here you go. Are you going to give me an autograph?"

Lancelot wordlessly raised the shield over his head and thumped it on Bruto's head:

"Hurry up and come back to your senses, this is to use as an umbrella for a moment."

Before his words ended, a torrential blood rain hammered on their heads, the fresh blood spurting from the inside of the sandworm; and because Lancelot had fallen too swiftly, it reached the ground ahead of the blood. The small shield hardly covered their entire bodies, and the areas exposed were splotched with blood red, as if splashed with paint, in an instant.

Bruto let out an odd cry, once again clinging tightly to Lancelot's thigh. Lancelot thought Bruto's voice had taken on a sharper tone, considering how often he had made such cries today.

Following that was a large amount of sand, which was the food the sandworm consumed into its belly. A sandstorm descended upon the two of them, as Lancelot held the shield steadfastly; a clinking sound filled the air, obviously mixed with rocks and other hard substances within the sand.

Bruto, still clutching Lancelot's thigh, twitched his ears, as if discerning something carefully; then he tilted his head up, staring dumbly at the shield raised above his head.

Perhaps it was some faint, crisp collision sound that stirred him; Bruto suddenly released his grip on Lancelot and leaped outside.

"What are you doing?"

Lancelot cried out in surprise, perplexed by Bruto's strange behavior.

"I heard it! I heard lots! There are so many!"

Bruto's voice was instantly drowned out by the sand; in fact, his entire body had been buried completely by the continuously falling sand. Fearing that Bruto would be suffocated, Lancelot quickly reached out and dragged him back.

"Have you gone mad? This is..."

Lancelot's words were cut mid-sentence when he saw that Bruto was holding a fist-sized yellow crystal stone, grinning foolishly.

"Bruto, what is this?"

"Pure mountain crystal! Even bigger than the one on the Dwarf King's crown! And there are lots more inside! I definitely didn't hear wrong!"

Lancelot paused for a moment, then suddenly realized. The sandworm had been burrowing through the ground, consuming sand and soil, surely swallowing many precious ores and gemstones over time. This huge sandworm overlord might be like an old clam, with its belly full of treasures.

What caught his attention more was the feeling that this mountain crystal contained a large amount of spiritual energy, very much like the spirit stones described in the bamboo slips.

Spirit stones are a very common resource in the world of spiritual cultivation, classified into lower, middle, upper, and even top grades based on the quality of spiritual energy they contain. They could be directly absorbed by cultivators to replenish energy during battle or cultivation, and were used in artifact refining, alchemy, to power formations, and many other aspects, acting like currency among the lower and middle rank spiritual cultivators.

Lancelot's eyes suddenly gleamed with excitement, as the bamboo slips recorded several rare encounters, including killing fierce beasts and seizing the treasures they guarded, which appeared to apply just as well in the Abyssal Plane!

We've struck it rich!