Free Web NovelChapter 21: Terror Master’s Minion
Arthur burped after eating them completely, along with their magic items, and went back into stealth.
"You...killed them." Mira was dazed. "Do you know what will happen? All four of them have Epic-rank Adventurers as parents. One of them is especially strong."
"28th Global-ranked guild, Blazing Wings." Aidan cracked his neck as he walked towards Mira. "You don’t need to worry about them attacking me. It’s you who needs to change your life to escape from their radar."
Mira let out a hollow smile. "It’s fine. We can just end this. I’ll go to them and tell them I killed them. Thanks."
"I didn’t have to accept a devil’s hand to kill them."
Suddenly, Mira raised her hand in a claw-like manner, startled as she was not in control of that hand, and dug her nails into her other hand, drawing some blood.
As soon as the blood hit the ground, intense black smoke burst out before a demonic Joker-like being appeared.
[Terror Master’s Minion]
[Rank: Tier-9]
—Attributes—
[Attack = SSS-6]
[Speed = SSS-8]
[Defense = SSS-9]
[Health = SSS-7]
[Control = SSS-9]
"You foolish insect! How dare you reject the grace of Terror Master!"
After snarling that at Mira, the Joker turned to Aidan. "So this is the one who changed your mind."
"It’s time to die."
Aidan’s eyes were shining. "Wow."
He was elated.
"Hey, I have a question. Can you summon some strong Terrors? Like Tier-10 and Epic-rank ones?"
"Huh?" Terror Master’s Minion was confused. Suddenly, a flash occurred in his demonic eyes.
"You...you are that ant who grew wings in our great Master’s domain?" Terror master’s minions’ grin widened towards his eyes. "You will die. Even if I have to kill myself."
"Then go ahead and try." Aidan rolled his neck, unbothered. "I’ve been wanting some experience to power up."
"GLADLY!"
The Terror Master’s Minion threw both arms wide, and the demonic Joker grin split its face from ear to ear.
It didn’t attack.
It dug its own clawed hand into its own chest.
"DEATH IS A SMALL PRICE TO BRING YOU TO MASTER!"
Black smoke poured out of the wound in a screaming gush, and the Minion’s Tier-9 body began to collapse inward, every scrap of its power, its rank, its essence, folding down into a single dense point of dark light suspended in the air.
[Warning. The Terror Master’s Minion is sacrificing its own existence to forcibly tear open a Terror Tear.]
’Oh, that’s a thing they can do.’ Aidan’s eyes narrowed.
The point of dark light cracked.
CHIIIZRRR!
A vertical slit ripped open in the middle of the warehouse, ten meters tall, its edges burning with that same hazy blue-purple flame Aidan had seen once before, in another dimension, in another life that had only happened weeks ago.
No countdown.
No dormant period. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
The Minion had paid with its whole self to make this one open instantly.
[Emergency Quest completed.]
[The Terror Master’s Minion has been eliminated, and the targeted Hunter has been prevented from turning into a Terror Harbinger.]
[Rewards delivered to your inventory.]
’Completed, huh.’ A corner of Aidan’s mind logged it. ’Killed itself and finished my quest for me. Considerate.’
But the rest of him was already moving, because the slit was widening, and Mira was still standing right next to it with that black smoke curling off her hand and her eyes wide for the first time since he’d met her.
"Arthur."
’Master.’
"Change her face. Hair, eyes, all of it. Completely different from now. Then wrap her in a barrier and keep her out of this."
’Understood.’
A ribbon of exotic light, the same pixel-sheen that coated Arthur when he turned invisible, slithered down from the shimmering air and washed over Mira.
She flinched.
Her long black ponytail bled to a soft ash-grey. Her dark, flat eyes turned pale amber. The lines of her face shifted, cheekbones, jaw, the set of her brow, until the girl standing there was a stranger nobody from Blazing Wings would ever recognize.
A dome of golden light folded shut around her, humming, layered, solid.
"Stay in there, you’ll be safe." Aidan didn’t look back at her.
The Terror Tear finished tearing open.
And three things stepped out.
The first was tall and gaunt, plated in black bone armor, dragging a jagged greatsword that scraped sparks off the concrete. The second was hunched and broad, four arms, each gripping a different wicked blade, its face a smooth mask of carved gold with no eyes at all. The third was slender and almost elegant, a long glaive spinning lazily in one hand, its head crowned with curling horns that dripped that blue-purple fire.
All three of them radiated wrongness. Demonic. Eldritch. The kind of shape a mind refused to hold for too long.
Aidan inspected them.
[Terror Knight] — [Rank: Epic]
[Terror Reaver] — [Rank: Epic]
[Terror Glaivedancer] — [Rank: Epic]
Three Epic-rank Terrors.
In a sealed warehouse. In the middle of a city.
If even one of them got loose, it would carve through a population the way a knife goes through water.
The three Terrors fanned out, their hollow attention sweeping the warehouse, and they did not look at Aidan first.
They looked at the dome of golden light around Mira.
They looked at the dragon, which they could not see but could clearly feel.
The gaunt one raised its greatsword.
’Master.’ Arthur’s voice rumbled, and there was something different in it now. Restraint, barely held. ’Let me.’ ƒгeewёbnovel.com
"They’re all yours, buddy."
The shimmer overhead pulsed once, and then the air itself moved.
Light, lightning, and some exotic thing Aidan still couldn’t name folded down out of nowhere and snapped shut around the three Terrors all at once, a cage of crackling neon bars that hummed with Legendary-rank pressure.
The Terror Knight swung its greatsword into the bars.
The bars didn’t even ring.
The blade rebounded, and the Knight staggered, and for the first time the three eldritch things went very, very still, the way prey goes still.
Because they could feel it now.
The gap.
Epic-rank against Legendary-rank wasn’t a fight. It was a category error. Arthur had folded two whole stages of power into a prison and barely spent a thought on it.
’They are caught, Master. They cannot break this.’ Arthur’s voice trembled, eager, almost shy. ’And... Master, I want to ask something.’
"Go for it."
’...I can feel it. A path opening. I want to trigger an evolution. To birth a new ability. But I must withdraw into myself to do it. The prison will hold without me watching. May I?’
Aidan grinned. "You’re asking permission to get stronger? Do it, you big show-off."
’Thank you, Master! Wait for the amazing surprise.’
Above the trapped Terrors, the invisible dragon shimmered into view, just for a moment, before folding in on himself. Particles of digital light streamed inward, neon patterns spiraling, until Arthur was sealed inside an exotic cocoon, half cyber, half living, threaded through with crackling lightning and slow-pulsing circuit lines of gold and crimson.
It hung in the air, beautiful and strange, humming with quiet power.
The three Epic-rank Terrors hammered at their prison from inside.
Nothing budged.
"Yeah, save your energy," Aidan told them, not unkindly. "He set it before he tucked in. You’re not going anywhere."
He turned his back on three of the deadliest things this city had ever almost seen, hands sliding into his pockets, and let out a slow breath.
The warehouse was quiet again, mostly. The crackle of the cage. The hum of the cocoon. The muffled, baffled silence of a girl in a golden dome watching her entire reality get rearranged.
’Now then.’ Aidan’s eyes glinted.
The Emergency Quest was done. The moment the Minion had thrown its life away to crack that Tear, the system had paid out, and Aidan hadn’t even had time to look at what he’d earned.
He looked now.
[Quest Rewards]
— 10 x Omni-Slot Machine Tickets
— 1 x Random Treasure Chest
’Ten tickets and a chest.’ Aidan rubbed his hands together, suddenly looking a lot less like a man standing ten feet from three caged horrors and a lot more like a kid on a birthday morning.
First, it was time to open the chest.
’Let’s see what you’ve got for me.’
He focused on the Random Treasure Chest sitting in his inventory, and in his mind it floated up, ornate and heavy, its lid sealed with a glowing clasp.
He flicked it open.
