Chapter 159: Thunder Eagle!
Thank you! I will post the bonus Chapter for the goals of P.S and G.T later. Please be patient with me. (T_T)
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The female soldier’s eyes briefly became clear. She struggled to lift her head to look at him, her lips trembling as tears streamed down her pale face.
"Do not let... it come back..."
Erik immediately stepped back half a pace and did not throw another punch. "I will get you out of here. Hold on a little longer."
The female soldier seemed to want to nod, but the remaining black veins suddenly convulsed. Her whole body curled up, and her face was once again dragged back into that familiar twisted smile.
"Damn it! I hate toys that start talking on their own!"
Dark Mist crashed in like a tide. Erik twisted away from a black blade, but the moment his body accelerated, it trembled violently and a mouthful of hot blood suddenly spilled from his lips. He forced down the pain, braced his left hand against the ground, then used a burst of lightning to blast away the tentacles wrapping around his legs.
Seeing this, Elowen fired two arrows in rapid succession. One shattered the blade before him, while the other lodged in the mana behind the female soldier’s neck. The tentacles protecting that area were pulled aside, exposing a small bundle of twitching black roots.
"Erik! The left side of her neck!"
He heard her. Though his body had reached its limit, Erik still forced himself upright and sent the last of the Lightning Element from this acceleration burst into his legs. Dense sparks cracked the stone beneath his heels, but he no longer intended to strike her head, chest, or any vital area of the female soldier’s body.
He rushed forward, his left fist aimed directly at the bundle of black roots exposed beneath her collar.
But just before the blow landed, every tentacle around her suddenly contracted.
The swords, spikes, and claws that had been attacking so fiercely all dissolved into liquid. The female soldier lost the mana supporting her body, both knees collapsing onto the stone floor as her eyes became vacant once more.
Erik immediately restrained his fist, even as the Lightning Element rebounded through his mana pathways and sent a sharp pain through his chest. He could clearly feel an unusual change occurring inside the female soldier’s body.
A mass of glossy black liquid surged from the back of her neck.
It dragged dozens of thin tentacles with it, continuously twisting together and swelling in midair. The mass rapidly stretched into the shape of an adult woman.
Long silver-white hair flowed down both sides of her body, intertwined with writhing tentacles. Her body was covered in a layer of gleaming black matter, threaded with white patterns like a spiderweb.
Her face had almost no distinct eyes, nose, or mouth. Only a slightly slanted, blazing red cross appeared there, along with several other red symbols flickering across her chest and arms.
The black-haired female soldier collapsed beside them. Her breathing was weak, but Dark Mist was no longer jerking her body around. Erik used the little Wind Element he could still control to move her toward Elowen, away from the ground where the black liquid was gathering.
Elowen hurriedly supported the female soldier behind a slab of stone, then looked up at Erik. Blood still ran down his face, collecting on his chin and collar, while the Lightning Element around his legs had begun to flicker. She wanted to run over and support him, but the black woman who had just appeared slowly turned her head.
"You made me lose my host." That familiar sweet voice came from her mouthless face. "I was not done playing yet."
Erik looked at her, one hand lightly clutching his aching side. Only now could he clearly distinguish the enemy he needed to defeat from the innocent female soldier. He no longer had to fear that every punch might destroy the body of the person being possessed.
"She never chose to fight me." Erik lowered his voice and clenched his left fist. "But you did."
The black woman tilted her head. "Oh? So what are you going to do now?"
"Make you stop."
She laughed and took a light step back. But this time, Erik did not intend to let her drag out the fight any longer. He channeled every bit of Lightning Element he could still endure into his left arm, letting bolts of electricity coil tightly from his shoulder to his finger joints. His body had been warning him relentlessly, but he still chose to pour his last strength into one finishing blow.
[Contract Resonance Remaining: 00:40]
Erik stomped hard, Lightning Element erupting beneath his heels. His body shot forward, leaving a silver-violet streak of light through the room. The black woman immediately raised dozens of tentacles into a shield before her chest. Erik’s left punch shattered the first layer, but the black strands behind it had already coiled together, erecting new barriers one after another.
The woman was pushed back several steps. The red cross on her face flashed as her voice remained full of mockery.
"You think running fast is enough to catch me? How many more bursts of speed can that body withstand?"
Erik did not reply. His legs trembled after that charge, and the thick metallic taste still lingered in his throat. The electricity allowing his muscles to react faster than normal was also continuously straining his mana pathways.
Every time he forced more energy through his body, the pain in his chest worsened. He knew that if he continued trading injury for speed, his remaining strength would run out before his opponent fell.
From behind the stone slab, Elowen saw blood continue to flow from Erik’s ear. She wanted to run to him, but the newly rescued female soldier still lay unconscious beside her, while tendrils of Dark Mist swept across the open ground. Elowen had no choice but to keep her bow raised and fire a wind arrow, shattering the tentacles trying to surround him from behind.
"Erik! Enough! You will die!"
Erik heard her. He wanted to turn back and tell her everything would be all right, but at that moment, the black woman spread both hands and pulled Dark Mist over the exit.
Tentacles slammed into the stone floor, blocking the last gaps between the guard station and the forest. The enemy had no intention of letting them escape.
"I only wanted to play with you for a little while." Her voice slowed, no longer carrying its earlier playfulness. "But a man who dares to smash apart my body and look at me with those eyes... I cannot let you leave."
Erik looked at the black wall closing in behind Elowen and finally made his decision. He could not keep the Lightning Element confined to only his arms and legs. If he wanted to break through the encirclement in one strike, he had to gather all his remaining energy, even if his body was not strong enough to bear it.
He took a deep breath and opened the mana pathways around his Heavenly Gate.
At once, hundreds of silver-violet bolts burst from every part of his body. They struck the broken stones, making the ground crackle and pop as the fissures beneath Erik’s feet spread like a spiderweb. A charred wooden beam was struck by an arc of lightning and shattered in midair. Fine dust was swept upward by the current, floating around him like a layer of glowing mist.
The black woman instinctively stepped back. She had taken Erik’s punch and knew exactly how dangerous his strength was.
But this time, the elemental currents surging from him were not concentrated solely in his fist. They covered his entire body, especially his back, where they gathered into two massive streams of electricity so intense that the air around them began to crack violently.
"What are you going to do now?!" she asked, her voice losing its composure for the first time.
Erik did not answer. He lowered his head, shoulders shaking under the pressure crushing his chest. A mouthful of blood surged up his throat, forcing him to grit his teeth and swallow it back.
Blood ran from his nose over his lips, while another red line seeped from his right ear. Even so, he forced the two electrical currents behind his back to keep expanding.
The two streams of light suddenly split into hundreds of smaller branches.
They stretched outward, curving into sharp feathers made of lightning. Each branch connected to the next, forming a vast framework that took the shape of a pair of brilliant eagle wings behind Erik. They were not wings of flesh and blood. Every feather was a moving stream of mana, constantly exploding and reforming.
Silver-violet light spilled across the collapsed walls, illuminating Elowen’s face and the glossy black fluid covering the enemy’s body. The Dark Mist near the entrance was forced back in waves, while any tentacles that touched the edge of the wings convulsed and broke apart into thin strands of smoke. The stone beneath Erik cracked even deeper, pebbles flung into the air and spinning wildly within the pressure.
Elowen forgot to draw her bowstring.
She had always known Erik did not want to live as someone who only needed to be protected, but she had never imagined he could stand in the middle of a battlefield with wings of thunder behind his back. The sight made her heart tremble, while tightening her fear more than ever. She saw the blood staining his collar, saw the fingers of his left hand twitching from the overload, and understood that this breathtakingly beautiful light was being sustained by what remained of Erik’s endurance.
"Erik..." she called his name softly, the hand holding her bow trembling.
On the other side of the room, the black woman had stopped laughing as well. She instinctively extended more tentacles before herself. The red cross on her face flashed repeatedly as the lightning wings widened, nearly covering the wall behind Erik. For the first time, she did not know whether to move forward and stop him or immediately seek a way out of a man’s attack range.
A notification flashed in Erik’s mind.
[Contract Resonance Remaining: 00:20]
He glanced at the number.
Twenty seconds.
That was not enough time for another battle, but it was enough to pour every last bit of his power into one strike.
Erik lowered his center of gravity. The lightning wings behind him rose in unison, currents running along their edges before gathering at their sharp, blade-like tips. The terrifying pressure forced the surrounding dust away in a circular clearing, while cracks in the stone floor continued spreading all the way to the walls.
He slowly raised his head. His cold eyes locked onto the black woman, while his left fist tightened amid dancing bolts of lightning.
In a voice hoarse with pain, Erik growled each word.
"Thunder... Eagle!"
BAM!!!!
The moment he called out those words, a piercing cry rang from the lightning wings, sharp as an eagle tearing through the wind.
KREEEE!!!!!
But it was not only one cry. Dozens of raptor calls at different pitches overlapped at once, so intense that the stone walls shook, as though a flock of enormous eagles had screamed together in the middle of a storm, becoming a shockwave that blasted outward like a violent gale.
At that moment, a translucent eye-shaped symbol hovered overhead, watching this mad battle.