"Boom!"

The sound of buildings collapsing came from the dark underground passage.

"boom!"

Immediately afterwards, the tall and burly body of the gray-faced dragonborn paladin crawled out of the collapsed ruins.

"Why is it okay for Brother Kutaig to walk through the stairs? I just took two steps and then collapsed." Paladin Peo got up and patted the dust on the silver-white armor, and sorted out the face covered with fine scales. Said in a depressed tone.

But fortunately, although his entire body was buried in the collapsed ruins because the spiral staircase could not bear the weight of his body, the dragon scales covering his whole body and the protection of a heavy metal armor made him not suffer any harm. .

"I didn't remind you just now that your armor might not be able to withstand the weight of the stairs, so you should remove it and put it in the dimensional bag in advance." Thorne noticed the embarrassed paladin Peo and complained.

Then he ignored the other party. He had already seen it. The reason why the other party didn't choose to take off his armor was mainly because he was wearing a full-body armor, and there was no other covering clothes inside.

After all, dragonborn are protected by scales, and it's fine for them to wear no clothes.

At this time, the group of them came to a spacious corridor through the spiral staircase of the tower, and a smell full of corruption came from the ventilation opening at the other end of the corridor.

Although the dust here covers the entire corridor like snow, it leaves dense walking traces, and according to Thorne's judgment, it can be found that these footprints are left for about half a month at the longest.

That is to say, before half a month, there were very few traces of biological activity here, but the time point before half a month was exactly when Carlos discovered this place.

And all that was left on the ground were the footprints of terrifying rats, vicious rats, and humanoid-like creatures. As for the depths of the passage, because of his limited vision, what appeared in his eyes was darkness.

Thorne, holding a long sword, looked down at these disorganized footprints, then looked at the rooms that were almost all half-covered on both sides, and fell into contemplation.

The group of people who followed Thorne saw him stop, as if thinking about a problem, and they all stood there and remained silent.

After all, as a ranger, path-finding and reconnaissance is what he is best at. All they need to do is to follow behind them honestly.

"Is there any problem here?" Seeing that Thorne remained silent all the time, Andrina couldn't help but leaned forward and asked.

"It's too quiet." Thorne glanced at her and expressed his doubts.

From the messy footprints on the ground, he could see that this was the place where mice have been moving frequently in recent days, but just now there was the sound of the collapse of the ruins, causing such a big noise, and it was still so quiet that he felt strange.

Then Thorne looked up at the ceiling again, and sure enough, he found the traces left by the climbing.

"Do you mean that there is a possibility of something ambush ahead?" Andrina thought for a while, and said her inner guess.

"That's right." Thorne nodded, looking at the long corridor and the dense footprints again.

If there is an ambush in the corridor, the hidden enemy will definitely wait for them to walk into the middle of the corridor to launch a surprise attack.

Moreover, this is also the territory of the rat people, and they are naturally greeted by the vast number of terrifying rats and fierce rats.

The Dread Rat and the Dire Rat were not very harmful to their group, but they didn't know the strength of the Rat Man entrenched here.

If you encounter a group of low-level spellcasters, with the ability of a few of them, if they accidentally encounter an ambush, it is very likely to threaten the safety of life.

So in uncertain and dangerous situations, as the person leading the way, he must minimize the threats he encounters every time he moves forward.

"Squeak..."

Suddenly, in the room closest to Thorne, two terrifying mice with a length of nearly one meter emerged. These two terrifying mice had a more ferocious appearance than ordinary mice and a pair of red pupils.

They first glanced in Thorne's direction, then turned and fled, submerged into the darkness, and soon disappeared without a trace.

"Everyone is vigilant, we are likely to be surrounded by enemies." Watching the disappearing figures of the two terror rats, Thorne reminded a few people behind him solemnly.

Then, he pulled Anderina beside him and stepped back.

Hearing Thorne's solemn tone, the Orc Juggernaut immediately moved his footsteps with his sword and approached the goblin wizard Malvasa, while the paladin Peo held a long sword and a shield in front of Master Qingchen.

"What's the matter?" Malvasia's pale red eyes fell on Thorne, her tone full of doubts.

"I'm not quite sure how the hidden enemy discovered us in advance. In short, there must be a dense number of enemies ambushing in the rooms on both sides of the front corridor, waiting for us to take the bait." Thorne clenched the sharp blade in his hand and said solemnly. :

"We can only leave this decaying castle through the corridor in front of us unless we blast a gap in the rear wall to escape.

But from the ruins that just collapsed, it can be seen that the castle will be destroyed directly as long as the movement is a little louder over time. Therefore, just in case, this method cannot be activated for the time being. After all, we have not even met the enemy hidden in the dark. "

"That is to say, we can only stand in place and wait for the enemy to come and attack." Malvasia glanced at the corridor calmly.

"That's the only way." Thorne nodded: "Now it's up to the enemy and us, who is more patient."

——“Shadow Hand School (Stance Skill): Blade Shell!”

Immediately afterwards, Thorne glanced at the silent and eerie corridor, and with a thought, a mass of shadow energy wrapped around his body, and kept surging and spinning.

This is the first-level move of the Shadow Hand School. This is a move that he has fully mastered every day through nearly a month of his own time without using cultivation points.

In the process of learning the moves, he has repeatedly transformed the energy of qi into the shadow energy shrouded in the surging shadow energy. He made mistakes due to rustling, causing himself to be hurt by the shadow energy. This is the result of learning one step at a time. disadvantages.

The function of this move is to prevent an unknown enemy from launching a surprise attack on him. Without his awareness, the surging shadow energy around his body will instantly help him attack or defend the sneak attacking enemy, so that he can react immediately. , and be prepared to deal with the enemy.

Although learning a first-level move is as difficult as a wizard learning spells, the advantage is that when he learns and masters this move on his own, his proficiency in this move is unmatched by other skills, and it does not consume practice. Well, it's just time wasted.

After all, although "Sword Intent" can bring him a good practice point, allowing him to quickly learn the nine sword moves that he needs to master, but as the level increases, the large consumption of practice points is still a bit stretched for him.

Moreover, he also intends to use practice points to improve the level of expertise he has mastered.

This has led to his kendoist level, although he has reached level 7, and has the ability to cast fourth-level moves. However, due to the lack of training points, he only learned two fourth-level moves of the Mofeng Sect for the time being.

Therefore, in order to make up for the lack of cultivation points, his current coping method can only be learned and mastered one by one by consuming a lot of time, just like a wizard learns spells.

What surprised him was that after learning the first-level move of Shadow Hand School, he actually mastered a skill that was more beneficial to his learning.

[Knowledge (Martial Arts): By learning the basics of the Nine Swords School, you have mastered a lot of knowledge and skills about qi control and martial arts learning. With the improvement of the level of martial arts knowledge, the speed of your learning style moves will gradually increase . 】

The effect of this skill does nothing to help him in combat, the only effect is to speed up his progress when learning genre moves.

Therefore, if he wants to learn the Nine Swords moves through practice in the future, then the level of this martial arts knowledge must be improved.

But in addition to the skill points that can be improved by leveling up this skill, another way is to read the books that explain the knowledge of martial arts circulating in Karatu.

Most of these books on martial arts are concentrated in the monasteries that cultivate the profession of warrior monks, and for him, they are not available for the time being.