Free Web NovelChapter 42: How To Wield 8 Butter Knives?
William closed the panel as the challengers stepped onto the platform. In a few seconds, they’d pop up here, and he sure as hell didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire, so he sidled over to the wall along with Lumina and Boom Fairy; they’d be supporting others from a safe distance.
Everyone was in position. Seabas gripped his two butter knives; William still had no damn clue where the other six would go. Cent stood, ready with his spear. Next to him were Aurel, Mutt, and Grey, while Nyx and Vrdyl hovered in the back, ready to bind and shoot.
This was going to be a straight-up brawl, no ambushes, no seed mines, just his squad versus the challengers. This way, William could watch his troops fight and take notes on what they needed to improve.
The moment the challengers appeared, William’s crew started closing the gap, eyes locked on their targets.
Croc was at the front, clutching Christian in his busted hand, while all nine bees buzzed behind him. He searched for the two bastards from the lower floor, but only spotted one: Seabas, who was closing toward him with the others. Seeing that tentacle bastard again, he couldn’t control himself anymore; he dropped Christian on the floor and charged at Seabas with his spiked hammer.
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A thin grin appeared on Seabas’s face as the brute charged him. He didn’t wait and started moving to the left, making the hulking lizard follow. That left the big-dicked bees and Christian stranded in the middle, facing off against Cent and his crew.
Once Seabas had some space, he spun to face the charging beast. The brute scraped his hammer along the floor, tossing debris, then swung it upward in a diagonal arc, aiming to smash Seabas’s smug mug into smithereens.
But the brute didn’t know two things: first, Seabas’s agility was second only to William’s; second, those six slithering tentacles on his back weren’t just some hair extensions. As the hammer closed in on his face, Seabas slipped aside with a burst of speed, and two tentacles shot toward the weapon.
His tentacles coiled around the hammer’s hilt, halting the swing high above. Meanwhile, his other four tentacles slid into the sheaths at his waist, each drawing a butter knife. Six knives now, two in his hands, four in his tentacles, he drove them all toward the brute.
Croc started to yank his hammer free, but froze at the sight of six knives glinting his way. Instantly, he activated his Dragonhide skill.
Seabas’s hands moved in first, aiming knives at the brute’s external obliques, right below his floating ribs, while two tentacles targeted the injured arm and the other two arched toward the brute’s throat. Every strike aimed for a spot that would really fuck up the lizard, and Croc knew it.
The first two knives rammed into Croc’s obliques. Seabas tried to drive them deep, but Croc’s scaled hide and that damn Dragonhide skill turned them aside, leaving only shallow cuts, but enough to make Croc clench his teeth as pain shot through his torso.
Next, Seabas’s tentacles closed in on Croc’s injured arm. One coiled around, jabbing a knife right into the crook of the elbow where the scales were softer, while another went for the open wound. This time, both blades sank in, drawing fresh blood.
Croc let out a guttural groan as pain flared up in his arm. Even through the pain, his eyes locked on the two remaining knives, both aimed at his neck. If this tentacled bastard managed to dig those in, it would be the end for him.
Sensing death slithering closer, Croc let go of his hammer and yanked his injured hand away to shake off the knives. With his grip gone, the hammer’s full weight crashed down on Seabas’s tentacles, forcing them to release it as the weapon smashed into the floor with a loud thud.
Seabas clicked his tongue at the sudden turn of events, but didn’t stop the last two knives, letting them slither straight for the lizard’s neck.
But right before they could hit, the brute arched his head back, dodging the blades at the last second. As the butter knives sliced past the air, Croc snapped his head forward, snatched both tentacles with his good hand, and yanked them toward himself.
Seabas staggered forward from the pull but played along, letting the brute think he was winning.
As Seabas came in range, Croc threw a blood dripping punch with his injured arm, aiming right for Seabas’s gut. But Seabas, quick as ever, took one step back and planted a hand on Croc’s zipping fist, and launched himself in an acrobatic front flip right over the brute’s head.
As Seabas flipped over the brute’s bald head, he swung the other two tentacles with knives flashing, and slashed the lizard’s upper back, carving a line from the trapezius down as he landed on his feet.
Croc jolted in agony, staggering forward from the fresh wound and releasing his grip on the tentacles. Now Seabas had all his tentacles free; he drew the last two knives from their sheaths, ready for the next round.
Seabas watched the brute thrash, a smirk curling his lips. With all eight knives out, he could finally filet this oversized lizard to his heart’s content.
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While Seabas was busy showing off his athletic skills, another battle—No, a bee beatdown was happening at the center.
The instant Cent and his crew squared up, five high-ranking bees shot at them, leaving the four intermediates to guard their lord. Who was staring at William’s side in pure horror.
As soon as the gap closed, the bees launched their front stingers; ten lances glided toward William’s crew. Seeing the incoming stingers, Aurel stepped up and cracked his wings together in a "half clap", activating his SkyHunter Gale skill.
A tornado-force gust exploded from the wings, blasting the incoming stingers straight back the way they came. All ten went back twice as fast, and two unlucky bees in the line of the gale took their own stingers.
A couple of bees got skewered by their own stingers, letting out sharp screeches before crashing to the floor, twitching like bugs that just got stomped. Two down out of five, and all thanks to their own skill. Aurel glanced at the fallen, head high and eyes glittering with pride.
With the field cleared of flying lances, Cent wasted no time; he barreled straight at the remaining high-rank bees while the rest of the crew advanced on the intermediate ones guarding Christian.
Now that their front stingers were gone, the high-ranking bees panicked. Seeing Cent charging, spear ready, they activated Elemental Stinger skill, channeling their affinity to their ass stingers. Two turned fire-red, the others buzzing electric yellow with lightning affinity.
Stingers blazing with their affinity, the bees zipped at Cent from different directions, curling their abdomens forward, jutting their stingers outwards like erect dicks.
Seeing them coming, Cent dug in his hooves and locked into a defensive stance. As the first stinger came at him from the front, he triggered his skill: Static Thrust. Using every inch of his spear’s length, he jabbed forward, skewering the bee right next to its red-hot stinger. The bug screeched, splattering goo from the hole everywhere as Cent yanked his weapon free.
The freshly impaled bee fell on the floor, twitching in agony. He eyed the last two, both coming from different angles. There was no way he could block both; he’d have to take a hit from one of them.
He raised his spear at one, bracing his side for the incoming sting. But as both the bees came in, Cent stabbed one of them in the same way, using his skill. At the same time, he was gritting his teeth for a stinger, but it never came. Instead, something zipped past his side.
It was Aurel, seeing Cent in a tight spot; he kicked off with Gale Antlers, launching himself forward with boosted speed. Just as the stinger was about to connect, Aurel’s antlers slammed into the bee’s side, right at the base of its wings.
The sharp tines pierced through chitin and fuzz, as the bee let out a screech, still skidding forward until Aurel planted his eagle claw to a stop and shook the thing off his antlers. In just a couple of minutes, Aurel and Cent had absolutely trashed the whole lot.
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A little ways off, another bee massacre was underway, and, to everyone’s shock, Mutt was the star of the show. Yeah, that same useless, lazy-ass mutt who normally did nothing but sleep and eat.
Their fight was hilariously one-sided. When three bees left their broken lord to attack, they launched their stingers, only for Nyx to whip out her new Wind Cutter skill, sending a slicing arc of wind that clipped two stingers out of the air. Vrdyl followed up with Binding Vines, snagging two more.
That left just two stingers flying at Mutt. Did he run? Hell no. With all the swagger of a mutt who’d survived arrow traps and just got an agility boost, he sidestepped them with his tongue lolling out, openly taunting the bees.
After dodging the stingers, Mutt didn’t give the bees a second to breathe. He bolted at the nearest one and, with a flash of his Shadow Flick skill, sank his fangs deep into its abdomen. The bee screeched and thrashed, but all it managed was to rip its own flesh until it crashed to the ground, leaking gooey juice everywhere.
Seeing one of their own get chomped, the other two lost their shit and tried to charge him with their ass-stingers primed. But before they could even close the gap, Nyx used her skill Wind Arrow, sending an arrow nailing right in its glossy eyeball, while Vrdyl’s vines lashed out, binding the last one in place.
Grey stalked up to the bound bee, which was pounding the air with its stinger, trying to break out of the vines. He planted himself under its butt and started hacking away with those razor-sharp hands. Goo spattered everywhere as he carved his way into its guts, but Grey didn’t give a single shit and kept going until the bee finally stopped twitching.
Meanwhile, Mutt dashed over to the other bee, who was thrashing around on the floor with one eye blinded, and finished it off with a bite.
Now, just one lonely bee stood between them and the whimpering lord, and all four started closing in.
As the rest of the squad rolled up on the last intermediate bees guarding their broken lord, Christian’s eyes went wide with terror. He started skidding backward, leaving a yellow piss trail on the floor. "N-N-Naw... h-how the can an F-rank F-fairy L-O-R-D have m-monsters like th-these?!"
He hadn’t always been this broken. When he first landed on this floor, sure, he was in shock, but not totally shattered. To understand how he ended up like this, we have to go back to when the brute dropped him on his face.
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"Shit, why so rough, man!" Christian groaned, rubbing his nose after landing face-first on the floor. He glanced up just in time to see the brute charging after that same tentacle bastard from the platform below.
He checked the thing’s status panel, and his eyes nearly bugged out of his skull. "A...A...A Rank? H-How? But—No..." he stammered, frozen by the realization that the tentacled freak was ranked even higher than his own brute.
There’s a noticeable gap as ranks go up, not overwhelming, but enough that if an A and a B rank go at it, the higher rank is pretty much guaranteed to win. That’s just how it is.
When Lady Sara handed him a token for a B-rank troop for this challenge, he’d wondered why she bothered. Even without this, he figured he could handle F-rank fairies with his C-rank bees. But seeing an A-rank on the field? Even Lady Sara had underestimated this lord.
Christian shook off some of his shock and looked hopefully at the rest of William’s crew, praying they were all low rank. There was still a chance, if his bees could kill the others, maybe they could gang up on the tentacle bastard and win.
But when he really looked, his jaw hit the floor. He only counted two fairies among them, just two! The rest? A horse with a human sticking out of it, a winged deer, a walking mushroom ninja, and a wolf. Just a plain, ordinary wolf. Or so he thought.
And when he peeked at their status and saw two B ranks, pure, icy terror seized his guts. He knew he was screwed. Still, a sliver of hope clung on, maybe his brute, maybe even one of his bees, could pull off a miracle and save his sorry ass.
Desperate to be useful, he finally activated his trait for the first time since arriving: Hive Order. Supposedly, it’d bump up the bees’ stats by a quarter and make their teamwork better. freeweɓnovel.cøm
But as he watched his brute get overwhelmed, and his bees drop like flies, that last shred of hope shriveled up and died. He curled up, hands over his face, spirit shattered. "N-N-No... h-how, m-man... h-how?! I-I c-c-an’t g-go o-out l-like th-this! G-G-God pl-ease, n-naw!"
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Back in the present, William hung back with Lumina and Boom Fairy, a wide grin plastered on his face as he watched his squad absolutely trash Christian’s sorry excuse for an army. Pride and surprise tangled in his chest, he’d known his crew could fight, but damn, seeing it in action was something else.
First, there was Seabas, if you could call it a fight. Honestly, it was more like he was putting on a show, dancing around the big lizard while slicing at every weak and soft spot Croc had.
Right now, Croc was practically bathing in his own blood, groaning and huffing as he tossed his hammer weakly at Seabas with all the force he had left. The poor bastard barely had enough strength left to lift the damn thing, let alone land a hit.
Despite all the blood, not a single drop stained Seabas’s clothes. William could tell the bastard wasn’t even breaking a sweat: calm body language, that smug little smirk, he was having the fun while filleting the big lizard.
Next up, Cent and Aurel. William had expected a struggle, but those two tore through five high-rankers in minutes, tossing them around like toys.
Then there were the fairies, plus Mutt and Grey. Lumina and Boom fairy were ready to help them, but when they saw Mutt getting the first kill, their eyes went wide. They didn’t even have time to move as they took three intermediates. Mutt has proven William dead wrong about his lazy ass.
And then there was Christian. William had half a mind to grab a beer with the guy at the end, but now he genuinely wondered how the hell Christian was still breathing.
Sure, William could’ve ended this shitshow early and put the poor bastard out of his misery, but where’s the fun, or the training in that? His squad needed the real fight. Cruel for Christian? Yes. Did William care? Not a bit. He’d put him down quick when it was over, no hard feelings.
With the last bee down, William locked eyes with the brute, who let out a guttural screech and triggered his Last Cry skill, burning up every point of Mana and Aura for one final, desperate swing at Seabas. That was William’s cue. "Let’s end this shit," he muttered, then shot forward toward the brute.
