Chapter 581: Growing Horror [2]
Everyone within the arena felt the dreadful aura radiating from the bubble.
Every fighter below Surpasser rank buckled where they stood.
The Three-Star and Four-Star Evolvers who had still been resisting felt their weapons drop before they could understand what was going on. Their hands rushed towards their chest, clutching their clothes. Their knees threatened to give out, their bodies shaking uncontrollably in place.
Some tried to run and found their legs unable to obey the command. The malevolent pressure radiating from the bubble made even breathing difficult. Sweat rolled down faces that hadn’t broken a sweat during hours of combat.
The dark organisation’s own elites weren’t spared. They were also subjected to the torment of the radiating energy, their eyes going wide, teeth clattering.
Even the Surpassers flinched.
Moon felt it press against him harder than he had expected.
His remaining hand tightened on his sword until his knuckles turned white. The pressure sat on his shoulders like a hand designed to crush him specifically, targeting him personally.
Life Burn was still holding his body together, but his focus wobbled. The aura wasn’t just cold, it felt old. Ancient. Something that had existed long before any of the fighters standing in the arena had been born.
Ace was showing him exactly what he had feared.
His face darkened. Given the enormity and magnitude of the aura, and how it was pressing on everyone present, Moon instantly knew that Ace had yet to gain control over this power.
He was still in his transformation phase.
Alaric’s expression had changed drastically too. His usually stoic and composed face was no longer present. His eyes were narrowed, and his jaw was clenched. He had felt what Moon had felt and understood what it meant.
He raised his sword.
"ATTACK IT! NOW!"
The command thundered across the arena. Every remaining Evolver gritted their teeth, forcing themselves to endure the overwhelming pressure as they desperately tried to cast their spells.
Tom’s golden fire condensed into a fresh lance that streaked toward the bubble. Farid’s four element threads slammed into the outer surface from four angles.
Sierra’s arrows tore through the sky in a devastating volley, each infused with a different element and each carrying enough destructive force to reduce an entire neighborhood to rubble.
Alaric’s radiant light poured out of his sword in a single directed beam, its intensity so bright the arena’s rubble cast crisp shadows in every direction. The beam struck the bubble’s surface and drove into it.
The bubble bent under the barrage of attacks, but never broke.
The impact rippled across its surface, warping the water’s shape, but the containment held. Klein’s channel was holding it together from inside. Whatever mana network he had woven into the structure was absorbing the strikes.
Then, New Avalon’s Evolvers finally managed to regain some control of their bodies, and began to help.
The surviving dark organization fighters, those still standing across the perimeter, still capable of channeling any mana at all, raised their hands together.
Their auras flared as their remaining spiritual energy began to flow outward toward the bubble in visible streams of dark red light. Dozens of streams converged on Klein’s bubble from various parts of the arena, feeding into it and reinforcing the surface with borrowed strength.
The bubble that was slowly losing began to regain strength, holding against the attacks.
Moon glanced at the dark organisation’s elites. Their faces were euphoric.
They likely believed they would truly be rewarded for this.
"Fools... If he could discard two Ascenders to accomplish his goals... what makes you think he wouldn’t discard you as well?"
Their euphoric smiles did not last for long. Within five seconds, their skin color began to turn pale. Then, their eyes began to shiver and roll back into their skulls as screams tore from their throats in ragged breaths.
Their bodies began to wilt in real time as their limbs went thin and dry as if being sucked out through invisible tubes. Their armor sagged around them.
Their hair rapidly turned grey, then white. Their faces sunk into the hollow, papery shapes of bodies that had been starved for months.
Quickly, their screams began to fade as their throats lost the moisture to produce them properly.
Moon watched them die one by one. He could tell some of them wanted to stop, but they couldn’t. Something inside them wouldn’t let go of the connection. Their bodies kept feeding the bubble or what was inside of it, even as their consciousness fought to break away.
Suddenly, above each elite, the indestructible fragment they had been carrying rose slowly into the air. It floated out through the fabric of their clothing, hovering above their heads.
Each bone began to glow with a dark red aura that pulsed in rhythm with the mana being drained from the elite’s body.
The elites had been carrying them for years. Whatever the master had told them, they had accepted. They had gone into battle proud to carry the mark of their organization.
And now, at the master’s signal, they were being drained to death.
"What..." A Surpasser near the eastern perimeter whispered, his voice barely audible in the ongoing chaos around him. "What is that?"
"They’re being consumed by these bones." Someone else muttered nearby.
"So this is the mysterious effect the bones had..." Sierra muttered under her breath, her face darkening. As one of the highest figures within the Association, she naturally knew about the mysterious dark organisation bones, but even she never knew the hidden effect of them.
Now, she was watching it in real time, like everyone else.
Alaric’s beam kept pushing against the bubble.
A Four-Star Association Evolver stared at one of the wilting elites in horror. "So they were all nothing but cannon fodder... from the beginning...?!"
The looks on the Elite’s faces were filled with the horror of betrayal.
They had believed something, but the reality was completely different.
Moon watched with his teeth pressed together.
"We can’t let him finish whatever he is doing... but nothing is working!"