Chapter 127
Several waves of needles caught him on the way.
They punched through. Seventy, eighty holes leaking blood across his frame.
"Son of a bitch!"
"Ordinary defensive barriers don’t stop these things!"
"Is it that corrosive demonic coating?"
"The Beast race built its whole pride on the body..."
"...and I can’t do a thing about a handful of needles!"
"Can’t beat her, and can’t dodge her."
"So what the hell am I supposed to do?"
Arcturus’s composure was coming apart.
The holes multiplied by the second and he hadn’t caught a glimpse of her face or position.
He was target practice, that was all.
"She relocates after every salvo, every counter I throw hits air, this Demon Emperor is too devilish."
"In a certain sense she’s worse than Demon Ancestor Soren!"
"At least you can see the Demon Ancestor, you can touch him! I can’t even find this one’s shadow!"
"The demon race only has three branches."
"True Demon, like the Demon Ancestor, then High Demon and Dwarf Demon."
"The difference comes down to stature, and size, that’s it."
"Not like the Beast race or Spirit race, where every tribe carries its own innate abilities, its own beast form, its own traits."
"The demon branches don’t work that way."
"Which means..."
"True Demon, High Demon, Dwarf Demon, none have innate racial powers for invisibility or absolute concealment!"
"So how has it been this long..."
"...and I still haven’t seen her shadow?"
No answer.
And with her interceptions stacking up, the Falling Cherry Spirit Emperor was pulling away.
Arcturus could barely register his fluctuations anymore.
He stopped noticing the holes in his body, his face went grey, his knees loosened.
"It’s over, it’s finished."
"I might as well sit down and wait to die."
"Demon Ancestor Soren is going to..."
Another needle came through the air.
It went through his throat.
And missed the carotid and every critical vessel by a precise margin, his voice went with it.
Blood sprayed from his neck, he had no idea what she wanted, wasn’t the point to buy the Spirit Emperor time?
He’s already past my range, so why hasn’t the shooting stopped?
For a second, the whole thing struck him as wrong.
Then the pain forced him back to the business of not being hit.
If he could just pull this Demon Emperor into the open, trade his life for hers.
At least he’d have something to hand Soren, but the gap was too obvious.
A pipe dream and nothing more.
Something flashed behind his remaining focus, an idea, another needle came at his back, he caught it in the corner of his eye, he didn’t dodge, he let it go through a section of his spine.
It punched clean out the front and buried itself in a shattered boulder ahead, trailing blood.
Arcturus twisted his face into agony, he swayed a few times, then he hit the ground hard.
A few feeble twitches, and he stopped moving.
Spiritual energy bled off his body while blood pooled into the dirt around him, a convincing picture of a man freshly killed.
Playing dead, hoping the shooter would come out to confirm.
It took discipline.
The instant he committed to holding the act, a needle came out of nowhere and pinned itself in his right buttock.
Endure, two more, together.
One took him in the back of the neck, the other went into his left eye.
Credit where it was due, Arcturus’s tolerance for pain was the real thing.
A needle in the neck was something a seasoned fighter could ride out. A needle in the eyeball was not, no ordinary man holds still through that.
At minimum the lid clamps shut on reflex, Arcturus stayed rigid as an actual corpse, not one muscle moved.
If an eye was the price of pulling her into the open, he’d pay it.
What worried him was the other outcome, that she’d finish her probes, decide he was dead, and leave without showing her face.
Then he’d have gone through all of it for nothing.
About ten seconds later, a woman in a flowing black dress materialized a short way in front of him.
The way Cecilia arrived was peculiar, like stepping out of an invisible spatial portal.
Except the air showed no distortion at all, no fluctuations from a teleportation formation either.
Less stepping out of a portal, more condensing into being out of pure nothing.
Good heavens.
What a woman.
Those eyes, bright as stars over a black field.
Even with the lower half of her face behind a thin veil, Arcturus would stake decades of expertise on it.
She was several times the beauty Mira was, peerless, genuinely peerless.
Damn it, what time is it? Why can’t I keep my brain on a leash?
Inwardly, Arcturus cursed himself without mercy.
Cecilia came toward him without a sound.
Two meters between them.
He ran the numbers.
Not yet.
He was carrying critical injuries, his body wouldn’t move at full speed, two meters was more than enough room for a movement specialist to pull back clean.
Lash out now and everything he’d endured went to waste.
He needed her closer, the plan was sound.
But she sensed something, for reasons he never learned.
She stopped at exactly one meter.
Then circled behind him without a sound, into his blind spot.
An Upper-Tier Beast Emperor’s senses could catch the faintest disturbance in the air.
From those currents he could read an opponent’s trajectory, posture, even what their face was doing.
The uncanny part was this, Cecilia registered as thin air.
His gut screamed, she’s still moving in.
He couldn’t have said how many inches she was off his back.
You little brat.
I am the Patriarch of the Sky Sparrow Beast Tribe, a genuine Upper-Tier Beast Emperor.
You thought you’d make a fool of me?
Today this old man takes you alive, drags you back, and hands you to the Demon Ancestor for his personal enjoyment.
If catching you costs an eye, that’s cheap.
Arcturus exploded off the ground, he twisted his bulk in midair, fingers curled into claws.
He tore backward into the space behind him.
By his estimate she was hovering a meter out.
A full-force claw threw a shockwave across hundreds of meters, inside a one-meter radius that force landed like a point-blank strike, she’d be looking at a moderate injury at minimum.