Chapter 348: Encircled By Late Stage Domain Masters
Chapter 348: Encircled By Late Stage Domain Masters
Rhain’s footsteps abruptly halted.
He raised his arm, entirely blocking Lyra’s path.
"What is it?" Lyra frowned, her hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of her rapier.
The golden light in Rhain’s dark grey eyes faded, but his gaze remained locked onto the rocky ridge hidden within the toxic dark fog ahead.
"My, my... to think you actually noticed us so easily. Your perception is truly monstrous for a mere Core Formation bug, Rhain Voss."
A chillingly mocking voice drifted through the path ahead of them.
Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!
Without triggering even a microscopic fluctuation of essence, five unadorned figures materialized, completely surrounding Rhain and Lyra from all directions.
Lyra’s crimson eyes narrowed sharply as she looked at the five men.
Then, as she recognized the faces she had seen in the royal palace, her beautiful face turned deathly pale.
"You..." Lyra exclaimed, "You are the personal guards of Lucius!"
BOOM—!!!
As if answering her realization, the five men stopped concealing their strength.
Five mighty auras erupted simultaneously, violently blowing away the toxic fog and locking the space around Rhain and Lyra into an inescapable cage.
The overwhelming pressure bearing down on them was so dense it felt as if the sky itself had collapsed.
All five of them were late-stage Domain Master Realm experts!
And standing right among them, glaring at Rhain with bloodshot eyes full of venomous hatred, was a familiar face.
Veydris.
The 7th-level Domain Master who had previously pierced Rhain’s heart outside Stormveil City.
But what made the situation truly desperate was that Veydris—a man who had nearly killed Rhain with a single strike—was visibly the weakest aura in the entire squad.
The other four radiated the suffocating presence of 8th and 9th-level Domain Masters!
Veydris stepped forward, a vicious, mocking sneer twisting his face.
"You were incredibly lucky to get away from my hands twice, boy," Veydris spat, his eyes burning with ominous premonition. "But today, your luck runs out. Neither the Stormveil Academy nor the Valdris Royal Academy are here to protect you. You have nowhere left to run."
Lyra’s hand trembled slightly against her rapier.
"Rhain..." Lyra whispered, her brows knitted together in a frown, "What do we do? I can hold my ground against an early-stage Domain Master, but these are all late-stage experts! They are simply out of our league!"
Rhain remained completely silent.
His mind was spinning at lightning speed, rationally analyzing the catastrophic lineup before him.
Fighting five late-stage Domain Masters head-on, especially when four of them were at the 8th and 9th levels, was fundamentally impossible at his current cultivation realm.
Seeing his silence, Lyra turned her furious, crimson eyes back to the assassins.
"Are you not afraid of the Valdris Royal Academy’s retaliation?" Lyra shouted fiercely, trying to use the only leverage they had. "If we die here, Old Dean will kill you all!"
The five assassins simply threw their heads back and burst into mocking laughter.
"Retaliation?" the leading assassin scoffed, his eyes flashing with disdain. "This is the Sunless Umbral Basin, little girl. No one will ever find out how you died here. The world will simply assume you succumbed to the mutated beasts and the miasma."
"What should we do with the girl, Commander?" another assassin asked, his gaze sweeping over Lyra. "His Highness only ordered the death of Rhain Voss."
"Kill her too," Veydris stated ruthlessly. "If she is spared, she will expose the fact that we were the ones who killed him. We will undoubtedly die if that happens. She has to die as well."
The assassin on the right licked his lips, his eyes sweeping over Lyra’s perfectly proportioned figure with a disgusting, lustful glint.
"It would be a waste to just kill her," the man suggested lecherously. "She is one of the greatest beauties of our dynasty, and the strongest female prodigy of her generation. Why don’t we enjoy her first before we snap her neck? No one will ever know."
"Hahaha! Good idea!" the others laughed in agreement.
Lyra’s beautiful face flushed bright red with indignant rage.
"You filthy, disgusting pigs!" Lyra cursed viciously, her hands trembling with fury. "I would rather burn my own body to ashes than let you touch a single piece of my clothing!"
Before she could recklessly charge forward, a strong hand firmly grasped her shoulder, pulling her firmly behind a broad back.
Rhain stepped in front of her, entirely shielding her from the assassins’ vile gazes.
"Your primary target is me," Rhain stated, his voice turning cold and merciless like a blade, "Keep your filthy thoughts to yourselves and stay away from her."
The assassins sneered, utterly unbothered by Rhain’s warning.
"Don’t worry, boy," the commander laughed mockingly. "We have plenty of time. We will deal with her properly after we get rid of you!"
Despite the fundamentally impossible odds, Lyra stubbornly refused to cower.
"Crimson Tempest Rend!"
Swoosh—!
She drew her rapier, stepping firmly up to Rhain’s side.
"I am not hiding behind you!" Lyra declared fiercely, an orange-crimson fire erupting from her body.
Her True Heavenly Flame blazed as she prepared to fight and die beside him.
Rhain glanced at the stubborn girl, a faint trace of approval flashing deep within his eyes, but he knew her flames couldn’t harm these men in the slightest.
The five late-stage Domain Masters sneered at their pathetic defiance.
"Foolish bugs. DIE!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The five assassins unleashed their powers simultaneously.
Five late-stage Domains overlapping and compressing the space into an inescapable death trap.
They didn’t hold back; they launched their most devastating, all-out attacks together, intending to obliterate Rhain in a single, overwhelming combined strike.
A cataclysmic wave of destructive essence crashed toward them, carrying the force to flatten a mountain range.
’I cannot block this with my own power,’ Rhain calculated instantly.
But it’s not like he hadn’t expected this kind of situation.
Knowing how cunning and vicious Lucuis was, he already knew that he could face a situation like this in the Sunless Umbral Basin.
That’s why, he was already prepared.
With a flick of his wrist, a blinding flash of spatial light illuminated the gloomy forest.
An ancient mirror forged from unknown divine crystal materialized in his grasp.
Emperor-Grade Artifact: Heavenly Illusion Piercing Mirror!
Rhain poured all of his vast, ocean-like Soul Power directly into the artifact.
Buzz—!
The Emperor-Grade mirror activated instantly, projecting a blindingly radiant golden light that formed a barrier in front of Rhain and Lyra.
The combined strike of the five late-stage Domain Masters crashed heavily into the golden light.
But the mirror did not suffer a single crack.
Instead, the ancient arrays within the Emperor-Grade artifact erupted with an even brighter, blinding golden light, momentarily illuminating the entire space around them.
"WHAT?!" Veydris shrieked, his eyes widening as he saw the sudden intense golden light blinding his vision.
BOOM—!!!
The colossal mass of destructive energy was vigorously rebounded directly back at the five assassins—but with double its original destructive force!
"AARRRGGGHHH!"
The five late-stage Domain Masters were blasted backward through the air.
Their domains shattered like fragile glass, and they coughed up massive mouthfuls of pitch-black blood as the doubled force pulverized their ribs and rattled their internal organs.
Veydris, being the weakest, was sent crashing through several dead trees, heavily wounded.
While the assassins were momentarily stunned and severely injured, Rhain did not waste a single millisecond.
With another flash of spatial light, a colossal golden bell materialized in the sky above him.
Emperor-Grade Artifact: Monarch’s Soul-Sealing Bell!
DONG—!!!
An enchanting bell toll rang out, radiating a shockwave of pure spiritual authority across the wasteland.
Veydris and the other assassins instantly recognized the artifact.
They knew perfectly well that Rhain possessed this bell, but they were far too heavily injured and completely dumbfounded by the terrifying rebound of the Emperor-Grade mirror to coat their ears with isolating essence in time!
The soundwave bypassed their vulnerable mental defenses easily, striking their spiritual seas directly.
Their bodies went completely rigid.
Their souls were entirely paralyzed on the spot.
Rhain knew that the paralysis effect of the bell would only last a few precious seconds against late-stage Domain Master experts.
He could not kill five of them before they broke free.
He abruptly turned, grabbing the stunned Lyra tightly by her slender wrist.
"We are leaving!"
Boundless Sky Wind!
Rhain’s body blurred into a streak of light.
Dragging Lyra along with him, he plunged directly into the deepest, most dangerous depths of the Sunless Umbral Basin without a single moment of hesitation.