Chapter 23: Is that really a man?!
"Come."
Erik’s voice wasn’t loud, but in the narrow corridor, those two words rang out with a strange clarity.
Dozens of red eyes immediately locked onto him.
The Echo Hunters at the front lowered their bodies, claws scraping against the stone floor, leaving long scratches behind. Black blood from the three corpses at Erik’s feet was still flowing into the cracks, making the stench in the air grow thicker and thicker.
The monster pack roared in unison.
Then they charged.
Outside the Trial Space, the secret group chat nearly exploded.
[Madam Ravia: What is he doing?]
[Madam Lilith: Why isn’t he using the Teleportation Talisman?]
[The Sleepless Madam: Get him out of there now!]
[Madam Ysera: Stop the trial! Immediately!]
Meira stared at the screen, the face that was always calm having completely lost its color.
She didn’t care whether the Awakening Fruit had reached sixty percent or not.
Nor did she care how strong Erik’s Heaven Gate might be in the future.
In her eyes at this moment there was only the image of a man standing alone before dozens of Black Iron grade monsters, with some individuals among them that had already reached Bronze.
Erik hadn’t opened the Heaven Gate.
He didn’t even possess a single complete combat skill.
One mistake was all it would take for him to die right there.
Meira immediately slammed her hand on the partition in front.
"Turn the car around!"
The female driver startled.
"Madam?"
"Go back to the Teleportation Center immediately!"
The magic car driving along the main avenue instantly changed direction.
At the same time, Meira continuously sent messages into the group.
[Meira: End the trial immediately!]
[Meira: Get Erik out right now!]
[Meira: He doesn’t need a complete Awakening Fruit!]
[Madam Ravia: Exactly! So what if the Heaven Gate is weak? I can provide him with resources for the rest of his life.]
[The Sleepless Madam: I can support him too. He doesn’t need to take risks like this.]
[Madam Lilith: As long as he’s alive, everything else can be worked out.]
[Meira: I’ll take care of him for the rest of his life. Stop the trial now!]
No one felt there was anything wrong with those words.
To the Succubi present in the group, Erik was more precious than any Awakening Fruit or high-grade Heaven Gate.
A man who was handsome, gentle, could cook, actively cared for his Succubus, and was willing to stand up and protect his woman.
Even if Erik could never fight for the rest of his life, all of them were still willing to support him under the best conditions.
After a few seconds of silence, the anonymous account finally replied.
[Anonymous user: Impossible.]
Meira immediately stared at those words.
[Meira: What did you say?]
[Anonymous user: Once a participant has entered the Core Trial Zone, the external system cannot forcibly end it.]
[Anonymous user: The Center can only monitor.]
[Anonymous user: To leave, Erik or Elowen must actively activate a Teleportation Talisman.]
Inside the car, Meira’s breathing turned ragged.
She stared at the screen, almost wanting to reach through the image herself, take the talisman out of Erik’s pocket, and activate it for him.
But Erik had no intention of doing that at all.
He simply drew his right foot back, opened the space bracelet, and stored the short sword away.
A different weapon appeared in his hand.
It was a long spear over two meters in length.
The shaft was a deep black, engraved with blue-silver magic runes. The spearhead was long and narrow, with small grooves on both sides giving off a faint purple light.
[Gale Thunder Spear.]
[Type: Personal weapon.]
[Gale attribute: Increases thrust speed, retrieval speed, and directional changes.]
[Thunder attribute: Increases piercing power, inflicts paralysis at the point of contact.]
[Status: Operating normally.]
Erik gripped the shaft with both hands to test it.
Its weight wasn’t light.
With his old body, just holding the long spear for an extended period would have been enough to make both his arms ache.
But right now, he felt almost no strain at all.
The Incubus Physique had increased his body’s strength to five times that of a normal person.
The combat suit on his body continued to amplify his overall strength by an additional three times.
Fifteen times.
Not to mention the acceleration shoes, warning glasses, impact-absorbing armor, along with the two Gale and Thunder attributes on the spear, all still fully operational.
Considering strength, speed, reflexes, and defensive capability alone, Erik at this moment was no longer inferior to a high-tier Bronze-grade Awakened.
He looked at the long spear in his hand and silently marveled.
The equipment Elowen bought really was a bit terrifying.
She hadn’t just prepared a few items for self-defense.
She had practically draped an entire combat machine onto his body.
The first Echo Hunter lunged.
Erik stomped hard on the stone floor, both hands driving the spear forward.
His movement was far from elegant.
The gap between his two hands wasn’t right, his shoulders were a bit stiff, and his center of gravity was shifted too far forward.
But the strength behind that thrust completely compensated for every flaw.
Whoosh!
The Gale effect erupted along the shaft.
The spearhead vanished from sight in the blink of an eye, piercing straight into the monster’s mouth.
Thunk!
Its head was completely run through.
The spearhead shattered the skull and emerged from the back of its neck along with a surge of faint purple electricity.
The monster’s body was still hurtling forward on its momentum, but Erik only stepped back half a pace and held it steady on the shaft.
The madams outside all stopped typing at once.
No one had thought Erik’s very first thrust would carry that kind of power.
But he still wasn’t used to handling the long spear.
When Erik tried to pull the weapon out, the monster’s head was already stuck fast on the spearhead.
Another one immediately circled past the corpse of its kind and lunged straight at his neck.
A red line appeared on the warning glasses.
Erik didn’t have time to retrieve the spear.
He let go with his left hand, tilted his body to dodge the bite, then drove his elbow into the monster’s neck.
Thwack!
A heavy sound of impact rang out.
Its head jerked to the side, but it still wasn’t dead.
Erik didn’t wait for it to recover.
He stepped in close, grabbed the skin at the back of its neck and yanked down hard. At the same time, his knee slammed straight up into the monster’s lower jaw.
Crack!
The jaw shattered.
Several jagged teeth flew off onto the stone floor.
Erik immediately kicked it in the chest, sending the body flying backward and crashing into two more that were charging in.
Then he gripped the shaft with both hands and wrenched it free.
The spearhead tore out of the first monster’s head, trailing a spray of black blood along with small arcs of electricity.
Two more had closed in.
Erik spun the shaft in a horizontal sweep.
Thwap!
The shaft smashed into the first one’s foreleg.
Fifteen times the strength bent the leg joint to an unnatural angle. The monster’s body lost its balance and crashed hard to the ground.
Erik stomped down on its neck.
Crack!
A dry sound of bone breaking rang out.
The remaining one opened its mouth and bit down on his arm.
Sharp teeth scraped across the armor protecting his forearm, sending out a spray of sparks.
Erik didn’t pull his arm back.
He let it bite down on the armor, grabbed its neck with his other hand, spun his body, and slammed the entire creature into the wall beside him.
BAM!
Stone fragments flew everywhere.
Before the monster had even fallen, Erik had already smashed the butt of the spear into its temple.
The first time, the skull caved in.
The second time, black blood splattered up the wall.
By the third time, the body finally stopped convulsing.
Erik’s movements didn’t look like those of a trained swordsman or spearman.
There was no elegant technique.
There was no graceful form.
He simply used everything available to him.
The long spear.
His elbow.
His knee.
His foot.
Even the monsters’ own bodies.
Erik didn’t know any refined martial arts.
But he knew how to make the thing in front of him stop moving.
[Madam Ravia: He...]
[Madam Ysera: Did he just use his knee to shatter that monster’s jaw?]
[The Sleepless Madam: Is that really Erik?]
[Madam Lilith: I thought he was only trying to stall for time so he could use the Teleportation Talisman.]
Meira was also stunned.
Her hand was still resting on the Center’s emergency call button, but she had forgotten to press it.
On the screen, Erik not only didn’t run but actually stepped forward.
The monster pack continued to flood in.
Three lunged at him from the front at the same time.
Erik lowered the spear and thrust straight at the one in the middle. The spearhead pierced through the eye socket, but the other two had already flanked him on both sides.
A set of claws struck his left shoulder.
Clang!
The armor dented, and the impact sent Erik sliding nearly two meters across the stone floor.
But he didn’t fall.
Erik spun his body following the very force of that push, using the butt of the spear to slam into the neck of the monster on his right.
The moment it staggered, Erik’s hand snatched one of its forelegs.
He let out a low growl, hauled hard, and swung its entire body.
The monster was lifted off the ground.
Erik used it like a living club and slammed it straight into the remaining one.
BAM!
The two bodies crashed into each other.
Snapping bones along with agonized screeches rang out through the corridor.
Erik tossed the carcass to one side, planted his foot on the chest of the one lying on the ground, and drove the spear through its head.
The spearhead sank deep into the stone floor.
Purple electricity ran along the monster’s skull, making its four legs twitch hard a few times before going still.
Erik’s movements were still a bit clumsy.
Sometimes he used too much force.
Sometimes he retrieved the spear a bit slower than necessary.
But after every engagement, he adapted a little faster.
The way he gripped the spear gradually stabilized.
The spacing between his feet became more balanced.
He began to know how to use the weapon’s length to keep the monsters outside the range of their claws.
Each mistake only appeared once.
In the private room on the upper floor of the club, Vylana and Laviana were looking at the image on the large screen.
Vylana’s face had completely lost the smug look she usually had.
She sat on the edge of her chair, both hands gripping her dress, eyes not blinking once.
"Is that really Erik?"
Laviana didn’t answer.
She had lived a very long time, had seen countless Awakened fight, and had also witnessed battlefields far more brutal than the scene before her.
But this was the first time Laviana had ever seen a man pick up a weapon and stand alone before an entire pack of monsters.
Not running.
Not calling for help.
Not waiting for a Succubus to step up and protect him either.
He was truly fighting.
A dark shadow suddenly crawled out from a crack in the corridor ceiling.
It was another Pack Leader Hunter.
The Bronze-grade aura from its body made the surrounding monsters immediately part to both sides.
It moved without a sound, lunging straight at Erik from behind.
Vylana jumped to her feet.
"Behind you!"
Of course Erik couldn’t hear her.
But a red warning had already appeared on the glasses over his eyes.
He didn’t turn his head.
The instant the claws were about to reach his nape, Erik suddenly dropped his body low. The claws swept over his black hair, only cutting a few strands.
He braced one hand on the stone floor, twisted his hips, and simultaneously thrust the spear backward behind him.
The Gale and Thunder effects erupted at once.
Thunk!
The spearhead pierced up through the monster’s chin, shattered the entire head, and emerged from the top of the skull.
Purple electricity immediately engulfed its body.
Black blood splattered onto Erik’s back along with his hair.
He stood up, planted his foot on the monster’s chest, and wrenched the spear free.
The heavy corpse collapsed.
Vylana was still standing beside her chair, her mouth slightly open but unable to produce a single sound.
Laviana slowly drew in a deep breath.
The scene was both bloody and violent.
But the man in the middle of that corridor had become so powerful that she couldn’t take her eyes away.
Erik spun the spear, flicking the black blood off the tip of the weapon.
Then he continued forward.