A couple of hours later, all of the Crimson Abyss guild members had returned back from the beginner dungeons. Those who had stayed behind were also somewhat rested, and everyone was ready to face whatever was coming next.
So the entire guild was waiting near the hive hill with anticipation for their guild leader to make an appearance.
“Even in the apocalypse, this guy is never punctual,” Alex grumbled.
“Aren’t you tired, sis? Why are you being a bitch? Can’t you just use this time to rest while you can?” Rey rolled his eyes. He then immediately tensed up, realizing that he had spoken something that should not have been said in his tiredness.
“Ha Ha Ha. Just kidding.” He tried to salvage the mess, but he was too late. A painful hit landed on his back, sending him staggering to the front.
Rey knew that more was coming, so he quickly ran away to the hive hill, where a few people were helping Liam’s soul minion army to harvest the Orichalcum from the pyramid while they were waiting.
Overall everyone was in high spirits after the invigorating fight with the isons, and the dungeon runs right afterward. There wasn’t a single casualty, and every single person had also leveled up significantly. The day was a huge success.
So no one complained even though they had to wait idly for a while. They either ate and drank to rest their bodies, or they made themselves useful by harvesting Orichalcum.
In this manner, another hour passed by when suddenly something loud sounded in the distance. The guild immediately became alert and turned to look in the direction where the disturbance was coming from.
Shit! Everyone’s face paled.
There in front of them were two golden giants that looked similar to the hive hill nearby. Each step these giants took reverberated loudly with strength and power.
Unlike the isons that came at them in a huge swarm, there were just two of these giants, and yet no one who looked at them could muster the slightest confidence that they could face these monsters.
Shit! Shit! Shit! Alex clutched the shield in her hand nervously. To fight or flee? That was the thought running through her brain. Liam was not there with them right now. So the burden of making this decision fell upon her.
However, all of a sudden, Rey’s loud voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Oh my god! Look! Bro is back!”
“What?” Alex had no idea what the hell he was talking about. But when she looked at the two golden giants again, she saw the familiar white fox and the person sitting atop the fox. She finally understood what Rey was talking about.
But there was still the question remaining. Why hadn’t Liam attacked the two giants yet? No, why were the two giants not attacking Liam or the fox?
For a moment, Alex was confused, but seeing the big smile on Liam’s face, she thought of a frightening possibility. “No… that’s not possible…” She gulped.
She and the rest of the guild watched in a daze as Liam and Luna landed near them, with the two golden giants still walking right behind them, coming straight for the group.
“So, how was the dungeon run?” Liam grinned. Seeing everybody’s stunned faces, he then added, “We have two newcomers to the guild.” And he looked right at the golems when he said the words.
Everyone dazedly nodded, not understanding what was going on.
Alex smiled bitterly. Hadn’t they just gone for three or four hours? Just what the hell happened while they were running the dungeons? How did these roughly slashed-down metal chunks lying next to them become these two giants?
Everyone watched in awe as the two giant golems arrived near them and then further proceeded to walk toward the hive hill.
Without any hesitation, the two immediately started tearing down the rest of the hive hill into smaller metal chunks, making a short work of the pyramid structure. Clearly, the efficiency of these two monsters was much higher than the smaller soul minions.
Liam chuckled and dismissed all the soul minions. He quickly collected all the materials and then addressed the flabbergasted guild. “Let’s return to the base first.”
Everyone wordlessly sat back on the wyverns as the group majestically marched back to their home base.
Looking at the giant golden lumps, one would think that their agility was lacking, but the two monsters proved them wrong. The return trip was only slightly slower than the previous trip.
Though the golems couldn’t compare with the agility of the wyverns, they performed decently. Besides, Liam used this chance to investigate the surroundings some more. It was hard to believe, but he found some shocking truths because of this.
The first being every single mutated beast in the vicinity was missing. The area was completely wiped clean of all beasts, whether it was evolved or elite or boss type. Even their corpses were not left behind.
The second thing that he found out was that these insects hadn’t yet touched the human settlements. One or two hideouts where people had taken refuge had been massacred, but there were a few untouched.
This led him to think that maybe the isons were targeting the beast nests on earth first. Currently, these were the stronger and more powerful populations when compared to human beings.
So maybe they were taking them out first? For now, this was just a conjecture, but Liam had a feeling that he was correct. Otherwise, it was impossible for these civilians to survive the ison swarm.
Liam also separately sent Alex, Shen Yue, and Lan Deming to talk to these smaller groups using this time they were traveling. Originally, he had no plans of doing this sort of thing at the moment or any time in the future, but the situation had become way too dire.
This was just the second wave, and things had already become so dangerous. Then what was going to happen during the third wave and the fourth wave? Wouldn’t the entire population would be utterly annihilated?
Liam particularly did not care too much about this, except that with the plans he had in mind for the future, a little bit of manpower was required. There was simply no way around it.
Otherwise, with their limited population, there would be no hope of ever bringing back some resemblance of normalcy to the current world. The standard of living would always remain this bad.
So if these people were willing to follow the guild rules and stay in line, he did not have any issues in providing them with shelter and a chance to survive, as long as the guild wasn’t expanding too much too fast.
