Chapter 244: The Treacherous Mist (4)
Using [Wind Blast], Ruvian launched himself toward Arlok at tremendous speed. Simultaneously, [Body Enhancement] coursed through his arm as his hand slowly clenched into a fist.
’Alright... brace yourself, friend.’
Boom!
Ruvian’s fist crashed into the point just beneath the jaw.
Arlok’s head snapped violently backward.
The warrior’s pupils quivered before instantly losing focus. The furious light burning within his eyes faded away, replaced by complete emptiness.
His towering body remained rooted in place for a moment, swaying slightly as though refusing to acknowledge what had happened.
Then, his knees gave out. Like a mountain collapsing, Arlok’s enormous body crashed onto the floor.
He did not rise again. (+300PP)
Ruvian turned around, spotting several arrows hurtling toward him. He slipped past each one with precise footwork before launching himself straight at the archer.
But before he could reach Horren, Yerin cut him off.
"You’re not going anyway..."
Ruvian came to an abrupt halt for a brief moment before summoning [The Endseeker] from his dimensional storage.
"Well... I’m not."
’I mean, literally. We are stuck in this realm, after all.’
The sword materialized in his grasp. As his fingers tightened around the hilt, he immediately activated its enchantment.
A powerful surge of strength coursed through his body.
Without giving him a moment to adjust, Yerin lunged forward, both fists wreathed in blazing flames.
Since he had already studied Yerin’s fighting style and hand-to-hand combat patterns, it took Ruvian only a few parries and deflections to read her movements.
Seizing the opening, he slipped behind her and swung the hilt of [The Endseeker] toward the back of her neck.
But Yerin reacted at the last instant.
She lowered her body and swept her leg across the ground.
Ruvian immediately leaped over the sweeping kick, only to hear the familiar whistle of arrows cutting through the air.
"Tch." Ruvian clicked his tongue.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
With several swift motions, he knocked each incoming arrow aside with the blade of his katana before closing the distance once more.
She saw Ruvian coming at her and so, she raised both arms to guard.
Ruvian drove a sharp kick into her crossed forearms, forcing them upward. In the same motion, he spun on his heel and delivered a crushing roundhouse to the side of her neck.
Thud!
Yerin’s body froze.
The flames surrounding her fists flickered before vanishing altogether.
Her eyes lost focus as the strength left her limbs. A moment later, she collapsed onto the ground, unconscious. (+300PP)
Panting heavily, Ruvian lifted his gaze toward Horren.
Through the drifting mist, he saw the archer’s hands trembling as another mana-forged arrow slowly took shape between his fingers before settling onto the bowstring.
Ruvian calmly began walking toward him.
"Hey, Horren. That’s enough."
A faint sigh escaped his lips.
"Give me a break here."
Twang!
The arrow shot toward him.
Ruvian casually tilted his blade, knocking it aside with a single motion before continuing forward without slowing his pace.
Another arrow came, and just like before... he easily blocked it.
Before long, the distance between them had narrowed to only a few metres. Strangely, Horren stopped firing. His bow slowly lowered before slipping from his grasp, landing softly on the ground.
’Huh?’
Ruvian frowned in confusion. Through the mist, he saw Horren’s eyes gradually redden before tears quietly welled up within them.
"I’m sorry, Grandma..." His voice trembled. "I... I couldn’t avenge you. I’m not strong enough to hunt that beast yet. I..."
Horren lowered his head.
"I’m weak. I–I can’t even aim properly..."
Ruvian’s eyes widened. He quietly withdrew a long breath, calming his thoughts before silently stepping behind Horren.
His hand rose.
Thud.
A precise chop landed against the side of Horren’s neck.
Horren’s body went limp almost immediately. Without another word, he collapsed onto the floor, unconscious. (+300PP)
Ruvian inspected his [Runeheart].
Mana Essence: [2,362/5,400]
"That should be enough."
Afterward, Ruvian walked over to his teammates and gathered their unconscious bodies into one place, laying them close beside one another.
Then, Ruvian took a few minutes to recover his Mana Essence, waiting until it climbed back to 3,000. Only then did he lift his gaze toward the mist shrouding the surrounding realm.
This was his third option.
Defeat his teammates and leave them unconscious without triggering the bracelets’ safety protection enchantment, all while avoiding a direct confrontation with the Voidspawn.
Yeah, there was no need for that.
Escaping this realm did not necessarily require defeating the Voidspawn.
That was merely the most straightforward solution.
There was still another way.
As long as the ability sustaining this realm was disrupted, even for a brief moment, the entire construct would begin to unravel.
And to accomplish that...
Ruvian never had to confront the creature directly.
And so, before attempting it, Ruvian activated [Power Scaling] one last time, raising his Mana Control from D-Rank to C-Rank. (-3,750PP)
It was a necessary precaution.
He could not afford even the slightest mistake.
Once everything was ready, he slowly raised his hand toward the mist covering the realm.
His eyes narrowed.
Then, without another word, Ruvian cast the spell.
[Disturb Magic]
*****
[Edvoss’s POV]
Morning should have arrived by now. The sun should have been rising, painting the eastern horizon with the first light of dawn. Instead, the world remained buried beneath an oppressive darkness.
Edvoss waited in silence.
There was nothing else for him to do. Every bit of his attention was fixed on the clearing before him, his senses stretched to their limit. The opportunity he had been waiting for would come eventually. Whether it lasted a second or merely the blink of an eye did not matter. The moment it appeared, he would move.
Then, a subtle disturbance brushed against Edvoss’s perception.
His [Shadow Sense] and [Heightened Sense] had been active the entire time. The problem was that the forest was saturated with countless traces of mana, all overlapping one another until they became little more than background noise.
Under normal circumstances, separating one fluctuation from another would have been nearly impossible.
Fortunately, that was precisely what the spell excelled at.
All Edvoss had to do was narrow its focus until every insignificant trace faded away, leaving only the signature he had been waiting for.
Then, his eyes snapped toward his right.
A faint anomaly rippled through the sea of mana, standing out like a single drop of ink spreading across a clear lake — the warped mana was beginning to collapse.
Edvoss’s expression sharpened.
"Finally"
The space before him suddenly distorted.
The surrounding mist twisted into a massive vortex, folding inward as though the world itself had been wrung apart. Layers of invisible space rippled one after another, revealing countless cracks that spread through the air like shattered glass.
Then, the realm broke.
With a violent surge of mana, the hidden dimension collapsed upon itself. The pale mist erupted outward.
Several scholars were violently expelled from the distortion before crashing onto the grounding. And out of those scholars, only a single person landed perfectly.
At almost the same instant, another figure emerged.
It was a gaunt creature no larger than a child, its body wrapped in drifting strands of pale mist. Its elongated limbs ended in black, needle-like claws, while its eyeless face constantly rippled as though it could not decide what shape it wished to take.
The Malice Voidspawn had been dragged out alongside them.
Then, a second was not even wasted.
Edvoss vanished from where he stood, reappearing directly in front of the creature before it could even comprehend what was happening. It neither reacted nor attempted to retreat, its mind failing to perceive that the instructor had already crossed the distance between them.
Only when Edvoss’s presence finally registered did the creature realize that a gaping hole had already been blasted through its abdomen — blood erupting from its back in a violent spray as Edvoss’s hand remained thrust clean through its body.
[You have slain a Phantom Riftcrawler!]
[You have received +15 Mana Resonance!]
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[Chapter 244: The Treacherous Mist (4)]
Plot Points= 8,500