The Black Necromancer

"Hmm, I need to wait for the perfect moment so I can strike and capture him in one fell swoop." Garrix muttered to himself as he kept on following Leon and Nedra from a respectable distance. He was eager to confront Leon, but also smart enough to know to wait for the perfect moment before striking.

He followed them for several miles before they came to a stop at the peak of a rather large hill. Garrix could not clearly see what they were doing, and was shocked when the duo suddenly vanished.

"What?" Garrix was tempted to rush to the spot were Leon and Nedra had just been, but he held himself back. "It might be an attempt to lure me out... Did they notice me?" He asked himself, but soon disregarded that thought, as he possessed a treasure that could hide him from the senses of even a Peak A rank for a limited amount of time.

Garrix remained hidden for an entire hour before Leon and Nedra appeared again. This time, he could clearly see that they had emerged from a hole at the top of the hill.

"A hidden underground entrance?" He wondered but kept on watching. He saw Leon hold up a red crystal that was as large as his torso up before the crystal vanished. "What was that?"

Before Garrix could think of an explanation to what had happened, Leon and Nedra took off in another direction again. He quickly chased after them while deliberating over the strange actions of the duo.

.

.

Some time earlier...

Leon and Nedra stopped at the peak of a high hill and looked around.

"There, an opening!" Nedra pointed at a rather inconspicuous looking hole at the base of a dark rock. Upon spotting the hole, Leon immediately dove into it, eager to find out the source of this new specie of millipedes.

Darkness enveloped the two of them as they dropped into the hole, but it did not impede their sight.

Thud!

Leon's landed firmly in an open underground space that eerily reminded him of the millipede nest of the past. The air was damp and humid, and the walls were wet.

Screee?!

The moment Leon landed, he instantly spotted dozens of red figures. The underground space was infested by the Phantom Millipedes! At once, they turned around and pounced on the intruder, but were all killed in an instant because of the disparity in power.

Leon waved his hand as he walked forward, easily killing dozens of Phantom Millipedes with each wave of his hand.

As he walked forward, the large cavern began to open up into a series of winding tunnels. Leon sighed as he was reminded of the millipede nest even more. However, he did not need to spread his summons around.

In an instant, Leon's mind enveloped the entire underground tunnel network, and he found the center of the space. He also sensed a strange source of mana within that space.

"Strange, what is that?" Leon wondered and shared what he had found with Nedra.

"It is probably what is behind spawning these creatures." Nedra hummed as they continued forward.

Before long, the duo found themselves in front of a large, red crystal that hovered above the ground, gently releasing pulses of mana like a heart beating.

"This must be it. I can sense the same type of mana that I sense from the Phantom Millipedes." Leon said and walked forward, circling the crystal while examining it. "What do you think?" He asked Nedra.

"I agree with you. But this does not explain much. Where did it come from?" She asked.

"We need to find more of them. Maybe we can piece together an answer then." Leon sighed and turned around to leave the underground space. He did not bother with turning any of the dead Phantom Millipedes into his summons, but just absorbed them to directly strengthen his body. Because of how low rank they were, he barely felt any difference, but he did not complain.

Soon, they were at the top of the mountain, and Leon put away the glowing red crystal. He pulled out the compass once again and waited for only a few moments for it to point in another direction.

"This compass is really good. Yet Kai spoke as if it was a terribly flawed product." Leon shook his head and put the compass away after making sure that he had memorized the correct direction.

Boom!

The hill shook as Leon took off, leaving a small shockwave of dust in his wake. The wind around him parted as he manipulated both the wind, to lessen the friction, and gravity, to make himself move faster. In a split second, he had already left the area he was in behind, turning it into nothing more than a speck in the distance.

'Something isn't right.' He thought to himself but did not slow down.

It only took a couple of minutes for Leon to arrive in the next location. He cleared out all the Phantom Millipedes and took the spawning crystal from its spot before preparing to leave again. However, just before he left, he paused and took a look around, the uneasy feeling in his chest growing once again.

"What's wrong?" Nedra asked, her legs tapping against Leon's armor as she crawled around his neck.

"I am not sure. I just feel uneasy." Leon replied, placing a hand on her head. He turned around, his senses flaring as he scanned his surroundings. He just could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Meanwhile, as he paused, Garrix also froze. He knew how uncanny the intuition of an A rank was, so he was not surprised that Sylvester had felt that something was wrong. He prepared himself to use the stealth treasure at its maximum power as Leon began to scan the place. As Leon's senses were about to sweep over his location, he activated the small bead in his grasp and focused on making his presence as small as possible.

Just when he thought that everything was fine, he heard Leon exclaim.