Overlord Tamer: All My Pet Monsters Have God Potential

Chapter 213: Harrowing Quest (3/3)

With Terravax anchoring one flank and Azelis’s disrupted shadow clearing a path through the other, they carved a route deeper without losing anyone to the river’s reach.Deposits of crystallized Eldritch Energy clung to the ceiling here, undisturbed because nothing else could safely reach them. Selenroot’s root tendrils extended carefully, prying the crystals loose without disturbing the surrounding shadow, while Azelis kept her disruption active to hold the river back.

By the time they made camp that night, exhaustion had settled into all of them again, but so had a quiet satisfaction at how much they’d already gathered, and how much more they’d survived.

"After today," Yuna said, sprawled against a smooth stone wall as Emberlune curled against her side, "the shadow river feels almost relaxing."

"Don’t get comfortable," John said, though he was smiling as he sorted through their materials. "This place still has teeth."

The corridors past the shadow river grew quieter, and that quiet unsettled all of them more than the river had, walls carved with intricate murals depicting tall, elongated figures with too many joints, locked in scenes of battle against something formless and vast.

They found the Chorus of the Drowned two days later, a chamber filled with fractured mirrors, each one reflecting a slightly different version of the same room, pale half-formed figures stepping out one by one in an illusion-woven ambush.

"Ruinblaze ignores illusions that don’t have actual mass behind them," Yuna called, already moving. "Emberlune, mirror them back!"

The fox split into its own overlapping images, matching chaos with chaos, and for every false strike the Chorus sent, an equally false flame answered it, until neither side could tell friend from illusion anymore.

Jibril took a more direct approach, Gravitalon pulling every mirror shard in the chamber toward a single collapsing point, crushing three of the figures before they could finish forming.

It took longer than the previous boss, more chaotic than dangerous, but eventually the last echo shattered, and the mirrors themselves cracked and dissolved into fine glass dust, leaving behind a cluster of thin, glass-like shards humming with layered, overlapping tones.

"Chorusglass Shard," John said, gathering them carefully. "Illusion and sound-type material."

"Mine," Yuna said immediately, grinning, still favoring her bruised ribs slightly.

The day after brought a different kind of danger entirely, a boss that moved in fractured half-steps, its form flickering between several points in time simultaneously.

"Chronavael, get over here," John called, and his time-attuned stag bounded forward, antlers flickering in sync with the boss’s own distortions. "Match its rhythm."

The two time-attuned creatures circled each other for a long, tense moment before Chronavael found the gap, predicting the boss’s next flicker a half-second before it happened.

Azelis’s Shadow Ink disrupted its outline the moment it solidified, Jibril’s Razewater blade caught it mid-flicker, and John finished it with a strike timed perfectly to the boss’s own broken rhythm, driving straight through before it could shift away again.

It shattered into fragments of light that folded in on themselves before settling into a single, glasslike orb, its surface swirling with slow, looping patterns like sand falling upward and downward at once.

"Fractured Hourglass Core," John said, turning it over in his hand. "Time-attribute material. Rare, dense, and extremely temperamental. This one’s mine."

By the final day, exhaustion had settled deep into all of them, but so had a quiet momentum none of them wanted to break.

The last chamber of their run opened into a vast, cathedral-like space, and waiting at its center was something considerably larger and more coordinated than anything they’d faced since the vault, a towering sentinel wrapped in layered black plating, its many limbs each wielding a different weapon forged from the same dark material.

"Sableborn Sentinel," John said, feeling the weight of its presence settle over the chamber. "This is the one guarding whatever’s actually valuable back here."

"After Vaelkyrn," Azelis said, falling into position, "this feels almost fair."

The fight was long, but nowhere near as harrowing as the vault had been, every Tamer and every Monster working in constant, coordinated motion, Terravax anchoring the front line, Volkia weaving through gaps in its defense, Levi binding limbs one at a time while Rexion and Pymon harried it from above.

Yuna and Jibril fought in tandem, Wraithbound Convergence and Gravitalon layering together to crush an opening wide enough for John to finish the job, driving both Feralsteel claws and a surge of raw Eldritch energy straight through the Sentinel’s chestplate.

It fell in a shower of black plating that dissolved into dust before it hit the ground, leaving behind a single, dense heartstone at the center of the wreckage, pulsing with layered violet and black light.

"Sableborn Heartstone," John said quietly, lifting it with both hands. "Core-type material. Versatile enough to anchor any gear, no matter the attribute."

They made camp one final time before heading back, the group’s collective haul spread out between them, Titancore Duskstone, Chorusglass Shards, the Fractured Hourglass Core, the Sableborn Heartstone, and the memory of a fight none of them would forget anytime soon.

Five full days, by the Labyrinth’s internal clock. Barely five minutes would have passed outside.

"We’ve got more than enough to start on the Eldritch Gears now," John said, cataloguing everything with quiet satisfaction. "This trip more than paid for itself."

"And a new ally," Azelis added, flexing her regrown arm with a faint, tired smile. "Even if it nearly cost one of mine permanently."

"A new ally," John agreed, grinning as he rose to his feet despite the exhaustion still clinging to him. "Alright. Let’s head home."

With that, their first expedition into the Abyss Labyrinth was finally over.

[Total Eldritch Energy gathered: 874,930]

’Interesting. So how much is this actually?’

[Chuthulos: Depends on the type and quality of gears you craft in the Eldritch Gear Forge. I suppose you can craft two to four.]

’Two to four...alright. Let’s hope they are game changer enough to go against the Dranvok Empire.’

[Chuthulos: You bet. Hunt some Calamity-9 Monsters and use their cores alongside the materials and Eldritch Energy. Then you’ll get Gears that can help you against Demi-God.]

’Dayum.’