Free Web NovelChapter 178: Beyond The Eastern Markers
There was a reason that the representatives were warned about going beyond the eastern markers.
Unlike here, the forest was a controlled environment, and the rank of beasts here had been purposefully limited to B, with the rest either being culled or pushed beyond the markers.
All that had been done in preparation for the festival, and the officials had hoped that the representatives weren’t stubborn enough to cross the markers.
Unfortunately, they were.
But they couldn’t stop the festival either, since this wasn’t the first time representatives had crossed beyond the designated festival grounds.
The problem was that, this time, they were genuinely in danger.
However, unless the king personally ordered the festival to be halted, it would continue, even if someone ended up seriously injured.
The moment Adrian and Conan crossed the eastern markers, it felt as if they had moved past some type of bubble, though they were still within the same forest.
So the bubble had to be some type of barrier if they had to guess.
But there wasn’t enough time for a guess, because the moment they stepped beyond the markers, they were greeted by a horde of beasts.
Ranging from C to A ranks.
"I guess this was why the markers exist," Conan muttered as he looked at the beasts.
There was no chance to sneak around them anymore since the beasts had already sensed their mana and were heading straight towards them.
"I’ll handle them," Conan muttered as his hair turned yellow, and the next second, he disappeared.
Adrian watched as Conan charged directly toward the beasts, quickly coming face-to-face with the one at the very front of the horde.
It was a bear-like beast and, like the others around it, a B-Rank monster.
Conan coated his fist in lightning, and the moment he was close enough, he slammed it into the beast, lifting the several-ton monster off the forest floor.
He didn’t stop after that attack as he quickly moved between the beasts, taking them out one at a time.
Before the beasts could realize that their numbers were thinning, there were only a few of them remaining.
Unfortunately for Conan, though, these few were all A-Rank, and before he attacked, a gorilla-like beast turned towards him, lifted its arm in the air, and slammed it into the ground, creating a large crater where it hit.
Although the fist didn’t reach Conan, the ground beneath him suddenly started rising, creating earth spikes and forcing him to retreat to safety.
He and Adrian looked at the five beasts before them. The group consisted of a Gorilla-like one, which wielded earth mana,
Beside it stood a massive wolf with dark green fur and glowing emerald eyes. The vines and roots coiling around it were a clear indication of its mana.
Behind them was a serpent nearly thirty meters long, coiled around the trunk of a giant tree.
Purple mist continuously escaped from between its fangs, corroding the bark wherever it touched.
There wasn’t truly something like poison mana, so perhaps a subtype?
The fourth beast resembled a giant hawk perched high above them with golden lightning wrapped all around it.
And finally, A deer. fгeewebnovёl.com
Or at least a beast that looked like one.
Among the five, it was the one that seemed the most intelligent, and unlike the others, its eyes were focused on Adrian instead of Conan.
The two groups observed each other for a while before the gorilla let out a roar, thumped its chest, and slammed its fists into the ground again.
As if a signal, the other beasts suddenly charged towards the two.
The deer suddenly disappeared from its position, appearing directly in front of Adrian with its crystal-like antlers glowing green.
Rather than disappear, it was more accurate to say it moved too fast for the eye to track.
At least, to normal eyes. Adrian, however, could track it just fine, and he managed to raise a shadow barrier just before the deer unleashed a blast of wind.
The deer darted out of the way a moment later, narrowly avoiding the barrier as it transformed into a shadow spike that shot forward, almost skewering it.
It then looked at Adrian with a lot more caution than before.
Whilst the two came to a temporary standstill, Conan was locked in a battle with the earth gorilla.
The creature slammed both its fists into the ground, raising a large earth wall that managed to block a lightning blast from him.
Seeing that lightning wasn’t working, Conan’s hair and eyes suddenly reverted to their normal brown, but that didn’t mean he had given up.
[Lightning module deactivated]
[Elemental fusion activated.]
He could have continued using lightning, but the beast was fast enough to react to those attacks. Realizing that speed alone wouldn’t be enough, Conan switched to a different element.
Or rather, he just stacked elements.
The beast looked at him with what seemed to be surprise, before slamming its fist into the earth wall, breaking it into multiple large rocks and launching them towards Conan.
Given that this little pest’s mana seemed different from its electric one earlier, the beast guessed that he wouldn’t be fast enough to dodge in time.
Unfortunately, it was completely wrong, because the next second,
BOOM!
A large crater was formed where Conan previously stood.
The gorilla-like beast didn’t get the chance to react before a bolt of lightning suddenly slammed into it, launching it backwards.
Conan’s line of thinking had been simple: if lightning wasn’t fast enough, then why not stack it with another fast element?
Wind.
And the result was unlike what he expected. He had moved so fast that even he found it hard to control,
Hence, the reason for the crater.
The beast tried standing again, but Conan wasn’t about to let that happen again. An electrically charged wind formed around the beast, completely charring it, despite how much it was struggling.
Seeing that the beast wasn’t going to escape, Conan turned towards the remaining three only to notice that Adrian’s clones had already taken care of them.
He then turned towards Adrian, who seemed to have wrapped up his fight with the deer a while ago and was just waiting for him to finish.
"Alvíss truly is a genius," Adrian muttered as he watched the gorilla stop struggling and the lightning wind disperse.
But before Conan could say anything in response, a voice came from behind,
"And here I thought Adrian was the only monster in this festival."
The two turned towards the voice, but Adrian already knew who it was, without even looking.
Coming from the other side of the forest was someone everyone else would recognize as Cassian, but Adrian knew that was far from the truth.
Cassian, or rather, Marion smiled as he looked directly at him,
"It’s been a while, Adrian."
