Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

Eren let his blood drop right in the middle of the depression over the stone platform. Immediately afterwards, a strange mana pulse was released in the surroundings with the altar as the epicentre of it.

The skull with the two horns levitated in the air while the altar split vertically right in the middle. A thin, semi-transparent mana layer was created in the space that was open by the split altar. That mana layer looked like the surface of a lake, with ripples forming in between.

Next, the horned skull turned around on its own and radiated a blinding red light that fell on the water-surface-like mana layer. As a result of which, the ripples stopped forming on the surface and became stable.

This was a subspace that led to the Oni dungeon. A subspace was different from a separate dimension. It was still part of the same dimension. It was just that it was isolated from the rest of the world in various ways.

Eren closed his eyes after he saw that the ripples had become stable. He concentrated on the Blood Seed located near his heart and tapped into his shapeshifting ability.

Eren's muscles started growing while his mana signature started feeling less and less like that of a human. His body first transformed into that of an orc. His face followed right afterwards.

Soon, an orc-looking Eren was seen standing over the altar near the mana screen. He looked down and confirmed everything was okay. He thought of something and removed his army outfit completely. He changed into clothes made of beast skin and monster armour that the orcs used to wear. He had collected them before his assigned task of destroying orc bodies.

'Here goes nothing.'

Eren said to himself as he approached the mana screen. Soon he passed through the screen and entered a space he had been meaning to enter for quite some time.

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Tumko Darata!

This was the name of an ill-famous thief in Eren's previous timeline. He had been famous for a lot of his heists and deeds. Some said that he worked for the cultists. Others said that he was working for the kingdom of Edinburgh because of his military background.

The guy had always maintained his mask even during his time in the army. Since warts on his face due to mana imbalance were genuine, no one cared about seeing his face. Those who had seen his face deleted that incident from their memory because the warts were truly horrible to look at.

Nobody was aware of what had happened with Tumko. But after he and his squad mates retired from the army, it was said that they started robbing the wealthy. They would often target the rich families within the duchy of Nightshade and loot a lot of their ancestral ranking resources.

But one day, Tumko and his ex-soldiers serving as his thief gang ran away after a heist had turned wrong. Tumko's team tried to run away from the unknown pursuers that were hunting them. When the hunt started involving high-ranking entities, not many were able to succeed. Since half of Tumko's team was reported to be dead by high-ranking entities openly targeting them in various cities each of the members had tried to hide in, the news of this incident couldn't be kept secret from the masses.

That's why the remaining members of the Tumko's team decided to seek shelter in the Badlands. But that didn't stop their pursuers. By then, even Edinbug's army had gotten involved. The members were ex-soldiers after all. They knew a lot more about Badlands than normal rankers. So they had chosen a path that was only known to army personnel.

The members of Tumko's team had managed to breach the security array and entered the controlled area normally only available to the army. They had done this to get away from the potential guild-hired mercenaries that could have been hired by an unknown force.

The news kept on getting updated and started turning more bizarre as the days passed by. It was reported that Tumko's team had managed to disappear into the Badlands. Nobody knew where they could have wandered off to. Since the historian's spells and other tracking techniques and artefacts didn't work that well in the Badlands, Tumko's team managed to keep the details of its disappearance a secret from the rest of the world. A few years passed by without any news about Tumko and his squad.

But everything changed when one of Tumko's team members decided to supposedly betray him. He ran back to the kingdom of Edinburgh and decided to spill the beans.

The betrayer revealed that their squad had come across an unexplored dungeon with D-Rank ratings by accident during one of their clean-up missions while they were serving in the army. They all entered it to escape potential pursuers sent by the Edinburgh army and the unknown force that was after them.

The betrayer stated that they had come to realize that the dungeon was a precious as well as dangerous find. So everybody in their team decided to come to visit it after they got ready to do so.

But the route and the plan they had formed to enter the dungeon after their service in the army got over was the same one they had used to enter the controlled region.

This was not how they had planned to visit the dungeon. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Tumko's team entered the unexplored dungeon with their lives on the line.

A lot of members of Tumko's team had died during the sudden dungeon raid because it was filled with a lot of monsters. It was all thanks to the military gear, resources and supplies the team had stocked up on that half of them managed to stay alive.

But big risks were sometimes followed by bigger rewards. After clearing the dungeon of its monsters, they found unbelievable riches and ranking resources inside the subspace.

The quality and quantity of the resources the betrayer said Tumko's team had found made the masses question the authenticity of the news. But it was still within the realm of possibility.

But there was one artefact the betrayer had said they found in the dungeon that sent the kingdom of Edinburgh into an uproar.

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AN: Tumko Darata has been first mentioned in chapter 15. Eren's weird masks that he often wears are inspired by him. ;)