Standing in the middle of a scorched area, a young looking man and an old man were silent, the young man, wearing white robes with gorgeos golden decorations grasped seemingly nothing in his hands, looking at this nothing closely, the old man waited for the young man to speak up but after a bit too long of silence, he spoke up.
"Is it unholy mana?" he asked, the old man was the same person that had been at the meeting of the clan leaders, despite asking about such a grave subject considering his affiliation, a subtle smile could be seen on his wrinkled face, the prospect of having an arch enemy such as an user of unholiness made his blood boil as if he was still young.
"No" responded the young man, unlike the decrepit looking man behind him, the young man almost seemed to shine due to the amount of holy energy he radiated, befitting of a saint.
"I don't know what this is but it's clearly opposite to the holy, all of the holy mana that should be present after the extended stay of such a large group of our members is nowhere to be seen, I'm positive this got rid of it all" he added on, clutching what he had grasped, destroying it with holy mana.
"Do you think we should call out the dungeon expedition?" asked the old man.
"There is no need to, we shall make another camp, the space mage has already been informed, the locals are said it after all, what caused the camp to be razed were monsters afflicted with that flame, the flame that first appeared in the dungeon, they may be able to find its source or more information on it" spoke the saint.
"Gnart, you can rejoice, the existence of this enemy of the holy calls for a crusade, we need to extinguish that flame, hunt down all of those afflicted by it, we shall enlist the help of all the knight establishments, clans and whatever else there may be" the saint never turned around while speaking, still gazing intensely at his palm.
"Very well, there is no choice after all, it is our mission" uttered Gnart.
And thus, the great holy hunt had started, with the objective of destroying the mysterious orange flame that opposed the holy, to put an end to the heresy that was its existence.
In a matter of days, the various knights establisments were informed of the situation and the knights all started to work toward the same objective, they had to put their disagreements aside as it was the Holy order that had commanded their help, an entity too large to be challenged by even the most influent of knight establisments.
Meanwhile, the source of all of this and actual main target of all of this was cheering on a particularily large hoarder spider as it was fighting against the expedition, unware that a target had been placed on the fire and even if he had been aware, the same situation would have still happened, Vlasfimia was not one to shake in his boots when targeted.
And he stayed unaware for a while as he remained in the dungeon for a long time, observing the expedition, putting traps for them, setting up monsters ambushes, the last one remained his favorite though, even if it had mostly been a disappointement as the monsters weren't great strategists, despite their nice attempts, the combined might and team work of the expedition on top of their high number made for a powerful group that even nameless figures couldn't easily get a crack on.
The cave-like dungeon filled with nameless figures, hoarder spiders and shadow-covered skeletons came to an end on the fortieth floor, still it hadn't been completely uneventful, after all, Vlasfimia always went a bit ahead of them to test the grounds and check the bosses, even with his new abilities some bosses were tricky to fight.
The expedition's advance had been fairly smooth when considering the fact that Vlas was making it harder than it should really be but even them had to stop upon entering this floor as all they were faced with was an ocean, an ocean filled with dirty water and most certainly horrible monsters with a great advantage over them.
At the very least, no fog covered their vision and the exit to the floor could be made out on the other side, far away.
Even Vlas had to admit that this floor seemed to be quite the scary place, without a great deal of preparation one wouldn't be able to make any boat as the floor didn't have any trees or the likes and so did the previous floors apart from occasional small trees.
However, for him, it wasn't as scary as it would usually be, he could feel that the terrifying creatures lurking below were afflicted with the flame, it apparently worked underwater to his delight.
Even though, the floor wasn't that lengthy as the exit could be made out although not by everyone, it certainly was quite wide, the beach portions of it stretched out to impossible lenghts, so much so that Vlas could probably be standing straight up at the farthest point and still be unseen by the whole expedition but it wasn't necessary as large rocks covered the beach, providing the necessary cover.
And as he was peeking from behind one of this rocks, he heard the sound of something moving in the water, he turned his head to the side and was met with a very fish like face peeking out of the water, it had a bit too many eyes that didn't seem to know where to go on its face as they sometimes overlapped but one of them burned with an orange flame, unbothered by the humidity of its host.
The monster stepped out, just like the nameless figures it wasn't screaming in pain, so it was either incapable to, couldn't feel pain at all or was able to assimilate its power without much issue.
The monster wasn't any monster, it was an abyssal, not from the actual abyss but from the depths named like that, a specie said to be worshippers of an outsider god, it was faily humanoid in shape, its eyes were large and googly, it had palms and all of the necessary equipment for living underwater but it wasn't having any issue with staying outside of it, its mouth was large almost on par with Tarrare and its body was dark in color.
It simply stood there like an idiot, no any other seemed to be coming out, it seemed almost entranced as it stared at Vlas, Vlas pointed to the expedition and it followed his movement, its eyes landing on them, finally, it went out of its stupor and walked back into the ocean, seeing that it had not attacked immediately, Vlas could be certain that it wasn't a completely mindless monster.
It was most likely going to go get some assistance from other abyssals, even in an ocean floor, the coast was not safe.