Free Web NovelA cold wind billowed, tugging at Muen’s clothes.
Air laced with stench drilled into his lungs, but before it could trigger the instinctive nausea, it was drowned beneath an even thicker reek of blood.
In the wide streets and alleys, broken limbs of demonic beasts lay everywhere. Mixed flesh and gore—stuff even Muen couldn’t be bothered to burn with black flame—whirled and splattered, clinging to the ground and walls. This place looked less like a slaughterhouse and more like hell on earth.
Sticky blood streamed along the curb and poured into the Gulain River. The water rippled. Great schools of fish surged in, fighting over that delicious flesh packed with vast vitality, and then... the fish mutated in all kinds of uncontrollable ways. They sprouted savage claws and fangs, struggling as they devoured their own kind, and died.
Even the “winners” didn’t survive long, perishing to a terrifying ** inside their bodies that they couldn’t suppress.
“Just like last time... still hard to deal with.”
Muen paused atop a wall, breathing a little heavier, wiping blood off his forehead—he didn’t even know whose it was.
It was quiet around him for the moment. He tapped the hilt of his blade, his expression grim as he stared at the little girl floating in the air not far away.
No... the thing in front of him now couldn’t really be called a little girl anymore. It should be called...
a monster.
Every stitched seam had split open. The petite body that used to be hers had been stretched wide—so wide—like pitiful scraps hanging in a spiderweb.
Hideous, terrifying demonic-beast tentacles burst out of those torn stitches in a flood, swelling and writhing violently. Limbs of different colors and shapes were crudely pieced together, like every species of sea anemone in the world had each grown a single extra tendril, merging into a grotesque image that would make even the most deranged fantasy painter recoil in fear.
Massive dragon wings spread. The gale flowed upward, lifting that bloated, enormous body—made of who knew how many demonic ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) beast parts—in a way that completely defied common sense.
Countless blood-red threads dangled from that body, lively as living things as they drilled into every shadow in these streets and alleys. They reclaimed blood-meat here and there, and at the same time formed a predator’s net, lying in wait with bated breath.
From the split flesh, six more bone spears were pushed out by writhing limbs, wrapped in flame and lightning, all aimed at Muen.
All of it...
and yet the only thing that didn’t fit was the little girl’s pale face. Her eyeless gaze didn’t seem to focus anywhere. Her long crying echoed like a song.
But that face only met Muen for an instant before it was covered up again by the writhing beast-limbs.
She’d learned her lesson from last time. She gave Muen no chance to make eye contact—so he couldn’t ignite black flame on her soul from afar.
“No. I guess I should say... even scarier than last time. At least on the outside.”
Muen stopped tapping. Both hands tightened around the hilt.
“But even so... this time, I’m not letting you run!”
Sching—
In an instant, something sharp ripped through the air.
The little girl broke the rare peace first, forcing the fight into a second round.
Bone spears that had long been coiled and ready, driven by muscles thick as giant pythons, shot toward Muen with the howl of wind and thunder!
Muen inhaled hard and barked low. He didn’t dodge—he faced the incoming spears head-on.
Slash!
The alchemical cores behind him were already scorching hot—two of them resonating together, jointly slowing the time that flowed over Muen’s body.
So that one slash was, in truth, many slashes.
Blade light fell like moon-glow.
There was no moon tonight, so this blade light became the moon in the sky.
The bone spears were cleaved apart in a blink. Muen stepped in, pressing forward with the blade light still riding his edge, and continued the horizontal cut.
But in that instant, something in Muen’s mind stirred. A death-warning blared in his head. His gaze shifted slightly as he caught the death-intent that was brewing.
Several beast heads poked out of the surging flesh, jaws yawning open. Vast magic power gathered inside them in a frenzy.
Here it comes again...
Muen’s eyes sank.
Just like he’d noticed in the last fight, this little girl had lost her reason—but the instinct granted by that ** bloodline was still powerful and keen. After tasting how terrifying Muen’s black flame was, she did everything she could to avoid close contact with him.
That was also why Muen had gotten slightly checked in the first round earlier. Her body was bloated to this degree, yet with those dragon wings that commanded the gale, she could still move through the air at frightening speed, constantly pulling away from Muen’s attacks and widening the distance.
And because floating scrolls and flight scrolls were too hard to control and instead limited his mobility, this natural disadvantage—ground versus air—meant Muen couldn’t keep chasing her for long and stick to her.
Each time he went in, he only had a one-breath window.
Once that breath was spent, he had to pull back again.
Until you reached the fifth tier as a warrior—until you could freely sweep through the air—facing an enemy like this always came with that helplessness.
So...
what now?
Inside the slowed time, Muen thought at high speed.
His eyes locked onto the incoming torrent of magic... should he dodge for the moment?
From a rational standpoint, that was the safest choice.
But...
“If this keeps up, we’ll fall back into an endless war of attrition.”
Black flame danced, circling Muen and blocking any possible ambush, while also costing the little girl a huge amount of demonic-beast limbs just now.
And while the black flame could let Muen sustain the alchemical cores longer and help him recover from injuries, the drain on his mental strength was still terrifying. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
Every flicker of black flame felt like another needle being driven into the depths of his soul.
At this rate, his body wouldn’t be the first thing squeezed dry—his mind would.
“Can’t do that. Then it’s only...”
Muen lifted his head, staring at the incoming torrent of magic power, and at the monster that had become terrifying to the extreme.
The corner of his mouth...
curled into a grin that looked a little feral. A little mad.
“I like to think I’m a nimble assassin who prefers hanging on the edge and OB’ing, but in my experience... times like this mean only one thing.”
“Send it.”
He raised his hand.
A crescent arc of moonlight scattered.
Slash!
The torrent of magic crashed down and was instantly split apart by the blade light, but the scattered currents still swept across Muen, carving a deep wound into him.
Blood sprayed, but it was swallowed by Muen’s own black flame in the blink of an eye. The flame kept wavering, repairing his injuries.
Muen acted as if he didn’t even feel it. After cutting through the torrent, he kept pushing forward!
A heavy demonic-beast limb slammed down. Those scaled claws could easily crush a three-story building. In front of it, Muen looked unbelievably small.
But he still raised his hand.
One cut.
Black flame clung to the pure-white blade.
Like a flower of sin from hell, swaying inside a holy divine kingdom.
That invincibly sharp edge tore open the monster’s scales with ease. Then the black flame instantly invaded along the clean cut, swallowing great chunks of flesh. The agony of burning made the young girl’s crying mix with a pained wail.
Muen surged through the breach carved by the black flame. His twin blades crossed, moonlight like fangs.
One demonic-beast limb after another was shredded, burned, devoured. And of course, against that sheer quantity, bone spears and tentacles still slipped past the blade light and black flame’s blockade, landing on Muen’s body.
Bones snapped—he forced them back into place.
Flesh was pierced—he swallowed the enemy’s flesh to fill the holes.
The pain in his spirit had driven Muen’s eyes bloodshot, veins of red spreading, but the frenzy born of being cultivated by all manner of evil gods and anomalies—the twisted grin at his lips—was enough to make even a monster with a massive ** feel fear.
At last, amid that cry steeped in pain, Muen sensed every demonic-beast limb retreating. He snapped his head up and saw those gigantic dragon wings that blotted out the sky spread wide.
She was trying to pull back!
Everything happened in a flash. Muen’s battle qi surged. The breath he’d gathered still hadn’t dispersed, and the little girl’s instinct-driven reaction was impossibly fast.
But...
“I told you. This time, I’m not letting you run.”
Muen temporarily stowed one blade. He spread his five fingers, aiming at the little girl.
Battle qi churned.
In an instant, the power he’d stockpiled for so long burst forth like a flood released from a sluice gate, raging without end.
A warrior—fourth tier.
Even before tonight, Muen already had the qualification to step over that threshold.
He had deliberately saved it until now.
So that, in this moment, he could draw out more power.
And that extra power was for—
Thoom—
A vast, majestic bell toll echoed through the void, yet only Muen could hear it.
Now that he had advanced into the fourth tier, fully activating the two alchemical cores in his body and even making the third show faint signs of awakening, his connection to that artificial authority—the Eternal Bell—finally drew one step closer.
So the bell rang, and in this moment—
it stirred the laws.
An invisible domain spread outward, centered on Muen, rapidly expanding.
This domain was small. Right now it could only cover Muen and the monster in front of him.
For him at the moment, the domain’s purpose was instead to protect him—so he wouldn’t be drained straight into a dried-up corpse by that terrifying consumption.
Thoom—
The bell rang again.
Everything inside the domain arrived at complete stillness.
Time froze.
Two seconds.
Even the power of entering the fourth tier was only enough to stop that monster for a full two seconds.
But...
“That’s enough.”
Muen already had both blades in his hands.
Slash!
“More than enough!”
Slash!
Slash!
Slash!
Slash!
Slash!
Muen swung his blades like a madman. The black flame kept flickering and gnawing away. In those two seconds, he couldn’t say how many cuts he threw, or how many times he forced the black flame to surge.
At last, at the moment the domain collapsed—amid flying flesh that splattered and got swallowed—the little girl’s form reappeared.
It seemed that because most of the demonic-beast limbs had been severed, her small body—bound together by threads—had been stitched back up again. But she didn’t even have time to instinctively react to what had happened—
A blood-soaked figure was already in front of her.
Muen seized the little girl’s slender throat in one hand and slammed her down onto the ground. Then, like some deranged creep of an uncle, he stared at her and grinned viciously.
“I... got you.”
