354 - The Surgery
The two-headed troll's roar was loud. Emitting a vibration that rattled the red leaves of the nearby trees.
It charged with the grace of a falling rockslide. It was swinging its pair of massive clubs in wide, destructive arcs. Both were made from the thighbones of some even larger beast.
To a normal man, this was a nightmare. To Judge Jack, it was simply a nuisance.
Jack didn't even bother to move and dodge the attack. In the contrary, he planted his feet to the ground and swung the [Judgement Warhammer] in his hand toward the clubs. The collision sounded like a huge boulder cracking in half.
CRASH! The troll's right club shattered into splinters. And the beast's right arm was forced back with a devastating power. It was such a great violence that the shoulder socket of the troll got dislocated.
Compared to the Crimson Mammoth he had just put down, this troll summon was a joke. The mammoth had possessed a primal, ancient weight. This troll was merely a physical construct of borrowed eldritch energy. The only thing remarkable about it was just its size and bad temper.
Jack stepped into the troll's reach. His [Chains of Vengeance] hissed as they uncoiled from his left bracer. The chains lashed out like metallic vipers. Wrapping around the troll’s two necks.
With a brutal jerk, Jack brought the two heads down. Slamming the troll's upper body to the ground. BOOM! The sound of skulls colliding colliding against the earth was wet and heavy.
While Jack was dismantling the frontline muscle, the rest of the team shifted into a practiced, lethal rhythm.
Reina used [Absolute Blink] expertly. She erased the distance between points in space without much efforts. One moment she was ten meters away. The next, she was behind the corrosive liquid sorcerer.
Her dual handguns barked in rapid, rhythmic cracks. She didn't aim for the vital parts of the body. Instead she aimed for the joints of his limbs.
The sorcerer barely had time to raise a shimmering green shield before Reina's bullets pierced through. Shattering the energy barrier and injured his elbows. Rendering the sorcerer's arms helpless.
The man roared and spat a burst of corrosive acid from his mouth. Aimed toward Reina's face. But he was too slow.
Reina had blinked away. Almost instantly after she damaged her opponent's arms. The glob of acid melted the ground where she had stood.
Nearby, Aella was a miniature storm of destruction. The little girl's face was a mask of serious concentration. Her piercing blue eyes seemed to glow with the eerie reddish light of the void.
She didn't even use her [Voidfire Blink]. Instead, she used her voidfire revolver to rain barrage of deadly voidfire bullets to her opponents.
When the three skeletal centaurs summoned by the Undeath Sect warlock tried to trample her, Aella didn't flinch. She fired multiple times. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The voidfire rounds exploded upon impact. Throwing the skeletal centaurs backward. Turning the ancient, summoned bones of the undead creatures into fine white ash before they could even hit the forest floor.
From above, the tactical support was launched toward the opponent's leader, Crimson Shark. Ned sat perched on a thick branch. Hidden behind the foliage. His steamrune sniper rifle barked once. BANG!
He wasn't looking for the kill. He was looking for the disruption of the warlock's spell casting. And for incapacitating the man when possible.
The high-velocity round from Ned pierced Crimson Shark's shoulder. Forcing the caster to swore loudly and restart his incantation.
On another tree branch, Barnaby also acted. He changed the rhythm of his lute playing. His fingers now flew across the strings in a frantic, driving tempo.
The support music this time was his new song, the "Battle of the Ancient Ruin". Composed after an inspiration that came with the crew's experience in the Barrentree Island.
It was a song of power that heightened the senses and quickened the reaction speed of allies, while sowing discord in the minds of sentient enemies.
The sound of the music was buffing the team's physical speed and mental clarity. To the opponents, however, the music sounded like the screams of the damned. Making their movements slightly more sluggish and their aim unsteady.
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The battle reached its crescendo quickly...
Jack had managed to force the troll's huge body down to the ground. He then swung his war hammer in a vertical arc. The hammerhead, glowing red with primordial energy, caught both heads of the troll consecutively. BOOM! BOOM!
The creature's twin heads were crushed like fragile eggs. The summon instantly dissipated into a cloud of foul-smelling ether.
Jack turned his gaze toward the Undeath Sect warlock who had shapeshifted into a revenant. He was about to target that guy. But Jack saw Reina had already moved to end that particular opponent.
The shapeshifted revenant was an unholy undead creature. A cursed creature who would bring a lot of trouble against most of its opponents. But for Reina, undead opponent was one of the easiest target.
She had loaded her handguns with special holy bullets. The crew members had lots of these kinds of bullets. They had practically unlimited amount of holy water after all, due to the [Grail of Prosperity] they kept in the Mirror Mansion.
She blinked directly into the revenant's personal space. The barrels of her two handguns were aimed at its chest and head.
BANG! BANG!
The creature painful shriek was immediately cut short. The holy energy reacted violently with the revenant's necrotic nature. The shapeshifted creature didn't just die. It was unraveled. Its form dissolved into harmless white mist.
Aella, meanwhile, had used her [Voidfire Blink] and appeared behind the warlock from the Undeath Sect who had summoned the undead centaurs. Her voidfire revolver spat a blazing voidfire bullet.
BANG! The bullet traced a lethal arc. Piercing the warlock's heart from the back. Killing him instantly. The summons and the two threats from the Undeath Sect were gone. Now, only the three troublesome carriers of demon seeds were left.
Jack dropped his [Judgement Warhammer] and thrusted his arms forward. The [Chains of Vengeance] snaked out and entangled the remaining three enemies affiliated with the Glorious Pirates.
Reina holstered her handguns and summoned his illusionary fog. Engulfing the three with that. Attempting to knock them out.
Ned had also abandoned his sniper rifle and drawn his mystic grimoire. Casting [Sleeping Charm], aimed at the three surviving target.
Within minutes, the three pirates were incapacitated. Lying unconscious on the damp, reddish moss of the forest floor.
Jack re-activated his [Incarnation Shift]. In an instant, his hulking rakshasa form receded. His muscles shrank. His mane was retracted back to his short hair. And his reddish black skin faded... until he was once again became the composed, human mercenary... Jack Night.
He stepped over the wreckage.
Rune fluttered silently at his shoulder. She had also returned back to her mechanical fairy form. Her light was pulsing in a steady, clinical blue color.
"Now, let's try this demon seed harvesting idea." Jack said. Observing the fallen pirates seriously. These people created more trouble being dead than being alive. He had to fix that.
He knelt beside a pirate. A man marked with no sign of a demon-pact. But, Jack's [Eyes of Judgement] informed him that this person indeed carried a demon seed in his heart.
"This will look ridiculous." Jack muttered. "We'll look like a crazy scientist experimenting with fallen human bodies."
"Or a mad torturer who enjoys cutting the heart of a half-dead person." Reina commented. "Do you want me to do that, Dear? I've got some experience in cutting people heart."
"Nah. I'll do it." Jack replied. Pulling a specialized kit from his pack.
He withdrew a steamrune-enhanced scalpel from his [Spatial Belt]. It was a device he created recently. Specially design for emergency surgery. The blade of the scalpel seemed to emit a low, rhythmic vibration.
Jack also took the [Mystic Voodoo Doll] from his system inventory.
He made a small cut on the pirate's finger and put a drop of blood on the doll. Now, he could control the man's senses.
Immediately, he lowered the unconscious pirate's sense of pain to its lowest level. He didn't need the complication of the 'patient' to wake up from pain during the surgery.
"Be vigilant!" Jack warned his team members. "If it looks like the surgery will fail, get ready for a battle."
He then worked with cold, mechanical focus. To anyone else, it would look like a messy, gruesome procedure. To Jack, it was simply maintenance. Just like when he worked with his steamrune creations.
He made a precise incision into the chest of the first pirate. His hands moved with eerie grace. He didn't waste time on blood flow or shock. He navigated the human anatomy like a clockmaker.
Just a few moments later, he withdrew a pulsing, obsidian-like seed. One that glowed in eerie grey color. The demon seed. He dropped it into the ground. Where it shriveled and went dark.
The pirate didn't survive the surgery. He was dead as soon as the seed was taken out of his heart. But Jack didn't really care about the man's life. He did the surgery not to save the man. But to prevent the threat of the demon appearance.
Jack moved to another pirate and did the next surgery. It produced the same result with the first one. He extracted the seeds successfully. And the pirates died when he did so.
But at least, their bodies were no longer ticking time bombs for demonic birth.
"One remains." Jack muttered. Turning his attention to Crimson Shark.
This guy had the color word 'crimson' stuck in his name. Just like the Crimson Mammoth. But their power levels were too far apart.
This Crimson Shark was too weak. It was no surprise Leon could defeat him easily and beat him severely in yesterday's match. Instead, being able to reach the semifinal in the Battle King Duel with such weak power should be the surprise.
Jack moved with the same efficiency as the previous two. He took a drop of the man's blood and activated the voodoo doll. And then, he began the chest surgery.
But, as Jack was about to plunge the scalpel in, the pirate's eyes snapped open. The color of the pupils wasn't the original brown. The pupils were blazing crimson in color. One that seemed to absorb the reddish light of the nearby trees.
The pirate let out a strangled, inhuman shriek...
His body contorted. Limbs were snapping and rearranging themselves with the sound of dry wood breaking.
Jack tried to stab his scalpel to the transforming pirate's body. But the unstable flesh and skin were surprisingly very strong and tough. Too difficult to pierce.
"Get back!" Jack shouted.