Transmigration: I Made A Deal With A Man in Yellow

Chapter 30: Hunting praying mantises with a scythe [6]

I crouched and touched one of the dead bodies, absorbing its mana. Other than drawing mana from the air, you could also replenish it from dead monsters.

Though you had to be careful not to get mana poisoned. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

I hadn’t bothered absorbing earlier since I had double the mana reserves of a normal Ascendant, but now I needed to. Keeping the Darkness Sense circle active at its full spread consumed a lot, and with the Apex-class beast’s speed, I couldn’t afford to let it down.

Even if my mana ran low, I had plenty of bodies around to draw from. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

I lowered my scythe slightly, ready for the praying mantis to make its move.

Honestly, even though the beast was blindingly fast, I could probably kill it easily if I switched to the katana. But that would defeat the whole point of being here, so that was a no.

We stared at each other without moving.

Clap!

The sound rang out and the beast vanished.

My eyes swept left and right, searching.

Then a clap from my right. I instinctively ducked and slashed upward, my scythe colliding against the mantis’s scythe-leg as it appeared above me, and then it vanished again with another clap.

It reappeared behind me this time, just outside the darkness circle’s range, and launched itself at me.

With a thought, spikes erupted from the darkness and drove toward it. The mantis wove between them with uncanny speed, its figure flickering in and out as it closed the distance.

Instead of waiting for it to reach me, I dashed toward it, scythe tearing through the air aimed at its head. We met in the middle, our scythes crashing against each other and throwing off sparks.

I parried a left hook and countered with a low sweep while more spikes rose from the ground beneath the beast, threatening to impale it.

The giant mantis drove one scythe down to block my sweep while the other cut through the spikes closing in on it.

But even as those fell, more spikes rose in their place.

Using the momentum of my spin, I pivoted on my feet and delivered a diagonal slash toward its thorax.

The beast, seeming to realize the spikes had no end, vanished with a clap and reappeared twenty meters away, raising a cloud of dust when its feet touched the ground.

My scythe cut nothing but air.

"Tsk. Ezio, is that clapping sound coming from its wings?" I asked.

’Yes. They flap so fast that when they strike its abdomen, they create that clap. And as you’ve probably already realized, the reason it moves the way it does is because it uses the wind from its wings for propulsion rather than actual flight. It’s...’

"...A wind-type insect beast." I finished the sentence.

That explained everything. By combining short bursts from its wing flaps with its wind ability, the giant praying mantis could launch itself like a bullet in any direction.

That was how it had covered 300 meters of distance in just a few minutes.

A clever beast. With those scythe-legs and that kind of speed, most prey wouldn’t know what happened until it was already over.

The giant mantis kept up its assault, blinking around me and occasionally bursting straight at me to try and cut me in half, but it failed every time.

My senses were on high alert and the darkness spikes kept forcing it back.

Eventually the beast figured out that pushing through the darkness circle wasn’t working, so it stopped and waited, the smart predator it was, for the circle to collapse on its own.

"Clever. It knows I can’t keep this up all day." I said, genuinely impressed. But I wasn’t going to wait around for my mana to give out.

I poured mana into my legs and burst forward, scythe trailing behind me in both hands.

The moment I closed in, the beast dashed away again, careful to stay off the darkness circle.

"No you don’t." I hurled my scythe to the left, where I predicted the mantis would appear next.

It appeared exactly there, clearly caught off guard, and would have lost its head if it hadn’t snapped one of its front legs up just in time to deflect the blade.

The scythe was knocked away and clattered on the ground.

Hiisss!

The beast hissed, clearly pleased to see me disarmed.

One wing flap, one clap, and it was gone.

I felt the presence surge in from my left and spun to meet it. This time the mantis didn’t come from a single direction. Both scythes came at once, one sweeping down toward my thighs, the other slicing toward my head. It was like a hug that would cut me into thirds.

With no time to form a ground spike, I flooded mana into my body and jumped backward through the gap between the two blades, twisting my body like a corkscrew to thread through them cleanly.

All I lost was a single strand of hair.

The moment I cleared the scythes, I snapped my left leg out and drove a kick into its thorax with everything I had.

Something cracked on impact and the giant mantis went sailing back, crashing through dozens of bamboo stalks.

I landed on one knee, one hand on the ground, the other raised.

Superhero landing.

Please, tell me that wasn’t cool, I dare you.

Hiiiisss!!

The mantis’s furious screech was my cue.

I sprinted toward my scythe on the ground and snatched it up just before the mantis reappeared and slammed into me, sending me flying.