Chương 196: B3 - Chapter 30: Face-off

Purple aether erupted in violent streaks around Morsh's daggers as the shadows at his feet coiled and snapped like a releasing spring. The assassin vanished into a blur of motion that turned the forest into a smear of dark green and violet. Seth's eyes tracked a flicker of steel, but his body lagged behind. Death closed the distance in a heartbeat. Seth tried to summon Dusk Scythes, yet the violet blades were already at his throat. Just as the weapons were about to cut, the hazel teardrops of his necklace flashed.

Colossus surged out and intercepted Morsh's attack with Quartz Armor. The assassin barely flinched and adjusted his grip mid-air. In nearly the same motion, he slashed his weapons in a cross-pattern; the enchanted steel tore through the stone armor of the scorpion with almost no resistance. Large chunks of shattered rock sprayed into the air like shrapnel as the blades bit deep into the chitinous shell beneath. Colossus let out a pained screech, and his tails lashed out in a furious counter.

At almost the same moment, Nightmare burst from his teardrop necklace and pounced, fangs aimed for the assassin's throat. Morsh spun in place, his body bending with impossible fluidity to evade the strike. In a display of fluidity, he slipped beneath Colossus's stabbing stingers and closed on Seth with twin daggers leading the charge. Dusk Scythes surged along Seth's forearms at last, shimmering with hungry light, yet Morsh's smile only widened. Sensing something amiss, Colossus unleashed Chitinous Taunt.

The compelling screech rippled outward with the intent to seize the assassin's focus. Morsh vanished in a puff of violet smoke before reappearing a dozen feet away, safely within the jagged shadows of a moss-covered boulder.

'No!' Colossus roared through Link, the bond trembling with a surge of frustration as the scorpion realized his spell had been dodged. Seth lunged after the assassin, boots digging gouges across the forest floor. He caught the subtle drop of Morsh's shoulder—the telltale sign of retreat. The assassin began to slip into invisibility, ready to disappear and cause the entire duration of Dusk Scythes to go to waste. Shit. Seth's thoughts raced as Morsh's outline began to dissolve.' As if I'd let him do that.'

Nightmare threw back his head and released the deafening howl of Predator Hunt. The sound tore through the clearing and sank straight into Morsh's ears. The assassin had finished turning invisible, but the sound tethered him to Nightmare. Through his bond with the direwolf, Seth knew the intruder's exact position and lunged forward, sweeping a shadow blade through seemingly empty air. The strike met solid resistance with a jarring thrum. Morsh had been forced to block.

His cold daggers appeared out of nothingness, having caught the scythes in a shower of sparks. In the same heartbeat, Nightmare used Shadow Step and appeared directly behind the assassin. He bit down with bone-crushing force, but the blue barrier of a Protecting Belt flared to life and absorbed the attack. Morsh hissed beneath his hood. A flash of emerald light burst from the bracelet on his wrist, and something shot into the sky. Seth glanced up.

It was an eagle with giant wings spread wide and translucent feathers that shimmered with a venomous green glow. He instinctively triggered Intermediate Identify. Hurricane Eagle Potential: Silver Tier Rank: 60 (Peak-Iron) Affinity: Wind Strength: 93 Arcane Power: 171 Toughness: 81 Well Capacity: 121 Agility: 122 Regeneration: 112 Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The beast wheeled once above the clearing before snapping its wings forward and unleashing a storm of razor-sharp wind blades toward Seth. Colossus rushed to him and cast the Sandstorm Dome to meet the projectiles in an explosive swirl of energy. Seth ignored the overhead chaos and redoubled his assault. He slashed at Morsh with a relentless flurry of Dusk Scythes, condensed shadow screeching against the metal of the assassin's daggers. Sparks of violet and black aether sprayed between them.

Suddenly, darkness flared from the assassin's boots and spread across the forest floor like spilled ink. It then rose up like skeletal hands to grip Seth's legs, anchor him to the earth, and slow him down. Seth gritted his teeth and pressed on, repeatedly checking his Well. Between the cost of Dusk Scythes and the Fine Storing Ring hanging empty on his finger, he would soon be fully spent—and the same was true for his partners. Both Nightmare and Colossus were running on scraps of aether.

Seth growled in frustration and unleashed a frantic barrage of slashes, but Morsh flowed through the shadow blades with maddening precision. Strikes he couldn't dodge were deflected with casual flicks of his daggers, as though he could read the path of the weapons before Seth had even completed the motion. Above them, the Hurricane Eagle kept up its relentless assault. Wind blades and compressed gusts crashed against Sandstorm Dome like falling hammers, making the shimmering barrier tremble harder with each impact.

Cracks of unstable light rippled across its surface, warning it was close to collapse. Morsh's aura darkened. Shadows spilled from his skin, wrapping around his limbs and smearing his outline into a dark blur. He accelerated once more beyond the limits of Seth's sight. The assassin's blades began to land. They cut through Seth's Protecting Belt, then carved jagged cuts and shallow slashes across both his body and Nightmare's.

Feeling like his back was against the wall for the first time in weeks, Seth clenched his fists and poured most of his remaining aether into Beastmaster Rage. The spell fed like a starving predator, devouring most of the remaining aether in his Well before erupting outward in a crimson wave. A blood-red veil descended over the vision of Seth, Nightmare, and Colossus, drowning the world beneath a surge of savage adrenaline.

Their speed and strength spiked, muscles tightening with unnatural power as the spell forced their bodies beyond their physical limits. Morsh's dark eyes widened underneath his hood. The effortless grace vanished from his movements as he suddenly struggled to keep pace with Seth's renewed assault. Dusk Scythes tore through the air faster and heavier than before, each strike carrying brutal force. At last, one of the shadow blades broke through. The sizzling edge slashed across the assassin's left shoulder.

Morsh winced, and a hiss of pain escaped him as dark blood began to soak into his brown cloak. Before Seth could savor turning the tide, a black sphere erupted outward from the assassin. Darkness swallowed everything at once—forest, sunlight, even the shapes of Seth's companions. Seth felt Sandstorm Dome shatter at the same time, and with the barrier gone, the eagle's wind spell rained down on them in a merciless barrage. Morsh swept his daggers ahead, his movements hidden by the unnatural darkness.

Tracking the attacks without sight became incredibly difficult, even with Predator Hunt. Seth relied on the raw instincts of his core to dodge the whistling blades of wind and Nightmare's spell to avoid the assassin's dagger. Yet Morsh's weapons still found flesh. Pain lanced across Seth's body, and beside him, he heard Nightmare grunt repeatedly in pain.

The Toughness boost granted by Colossus's Desert Aegis was the only thing that kept the two of them alive, turning what should have been deadly wounds into searing, yet nonfatal cuts. The duration of Dusk Scythes ended, and the shadow blades along Seth's forearms vanished. He checked his Well and felt only traces of aether at its bottom. Just as he prepared to use his Null-affinity aura spell to recover what he could from the surrounding darkness, Morsh materialized ahead of him.

The assassin's teeth flashed in a cruel smile through the gloom as he pulled a thick, ornate scroll from his pouch. Seth wasted no time and cast Intermediate Identify on it. Lightning Wrath (Flawless) Instant spell-scroll Tier: Iron Grade: Legendary Seth's blood ran cold. Sensing the impending catastrophe, Colossus lunged forward, his massive body moving to shield both Seth and Nightmare. But Seth was already charging toward Morsh as well, boots kicking up clods of dirt and dead leaves.

As the assassin channeled aether into the scroll to trigger it, every single muscle of Seth tensed. He forced the Null-affinity whirlpool inside his Well to spin at a terrifying, unprecedented speed, pushing the limits of the spell to outpace the activation of the assassin's scroll. A cold, suffocating sensation erupted around Seth as aether from every source surged toward him.

The wind spells from the eagle overhead flickered and veered off course mid-air, while the dense shadows surrounding them trembled on the verge of collapse. Above all, the violet lightning gathering around the scroll in Morsh's hand began to wane—the energy meant to form the Legendary spell was torn away instead, rushing toward Seth and pouring eagerly into his depleted Well. Seth remembered how he had altered Ravenous Arrow by forcing the Null affinity to serve a single, starving purpose.

Within his Well, he still sensed the same strange energy thrashing against the dark chains that imprisoned it. Using his core as a bridge, Seth reached inward, seized the energy, and fed it into the whirlpool spinning inside his Well. At once, a primal fury rose within his core. The inner beast took offense that any foreign force dared trespass in its territory, as if the very aether around Seth was seeking to challenge its dominance.

Seth used that wrath to impose a single, absolute law upon the grooves of his Null spell: devour everything. The pulling aura around Seth expanded. It created a dead zone with a dozen-foot radius where every scrap of aether was ripped from its natural state and reduced to fuel. Morsh's eyes widened in shock. His hands clenched around the parchment, and his face contorted as he desperately tried to activate the scroll. Yet every ounce of aether he fed it was ripped free and dragged into Seth to fill his Well.

The shadow sphere around them fractured and dissolved, returning the forest to its natural state, while the stolen aether poured into Seth along with the energy unraveled from the eagle's spells above. Even as his Well raced toward its limit, Seth kept the starving whirlpool spinning inside him with the primal outrage of the world's strongest predator. The instant he could no longer absorb another drop of aether, he forced the overflow through Link, flooding the Wells of both Colossus and Nightmare.

Until not a single trace of aether remained within the area around them. Until the scroll in Morsh's hand crumbled into ash.