Chương 455: Chapter 425: A Good Matchup?

Fulgarin – Level 139 Mawbound – Level 143"Huh. This isn't looking very good," Thalion muttered after identifying the leaders of both remaining groups.

"I'm going to burn them alive for what they did to my party," Ryan hissed through grinding teeth. His aura flared violently, so intense that it even scorched Thalion, who was still in the form of the Crippled Eclipsari. Dark tendrils continued to emerge from Thalion's body, greedily devouring the corpses scattered around them. What irritated Thalion most was how flawlessly the two enemy groups were working together. Had they already made a deal?

It had to be the case—otherwise they would have turned on each other by now. Or perhaps they simply weren't confident they could defeat Ryan. On second thought, Ryan had chosen to kill the devil leader instead of attacking these two groups directly. And there really weren't that many of them left. For a Chosen, finishing them should have been trivial. Unless Thalion's earlier assumption had been completely wrong.

If Kaelir had been here instead of Ryan, Thalion couldn't imagine either group surviving more than a few minutes.

"Ryan," Thalion said carefully, "you still have plenty of fuel left in the tank, right?" Ryan snapped his head toward him.

"Of course I'm at full strength. What kind of stupid question is that?" Thalion paused, then asked the real question.

"Then why did you help me? Don't get me wrong—I appreciate not being chased by the devil anymore—but why not kill those two instead?" It took Ryan a moment to process that. Then he nearly exploded.

"Because everyone else was already dead, and the devil was wide open! Killing him gave me an easier fight than taking on fifteen enemies at once!" … Okay. That actually made sense. Maybe I should test how well those two groups really work together, Thalion thought. The enemies continued to advance. The translucent, serpent-like beings—the Mawbound—glided forward roughly ten meters above the ground. The Fulgarin simply walked, crackling faintly with residual lightning.

Both groups moved at the same pace, side by side.

"Hey," Thalion called out loudly, "I'm just curious—how exactly are you planning to split the loot? There's quite a bit of treasure in all those spatial amulets." No response. Thalion sighed and decided to escalate. He pulled out the ice crystal and placed it on the ground in front of him. The effect was immediate. Ryan's heat vanished in an instant as frost crawled across the battlefield, coating metal, stone, and corpses alike. The sudden shift drew every eye toward the crystal.

Thalion quickly returned it to storage before anyone could react. Greed flared openly now. The Mawbound leader writhed in place, its translucent body rippling with agitation. Both factions halted, clearly reconsidering their approach.

"It seems this creature may be right, Ulnyx," the four-eyed Fulgarin leader said slowly.

"We should renegotiate. Also… what race is that thing?" Another Identify brushed across Thalion. Then the Fulgarin's eyes widened.

"An… E-Eclipsari? What the hell is something like you doing here? Did you cripple yourself just to enter the tutorial early?" Identify after Identify slammed into Thalion. The Mawbound leader spoke next, its voice sounding like fingernails scraping across slate.

"It seems you went too far by crippling yourself and are now stuck in E grade. Am I correct?" Thalion couldn't tell if the creature was grinning, but when three long tongues slid out of its massive circular maw and licked across the strange flesh around it, he took it as amusement.

"Ulnyx," the Fulgarin leader said calmly, pointing at Thalion, "that spatial amulet will be mine." Thalion frowned. That was odd. This form didn't even wear the amulet. Can they see it? Or is it normal that shapeshifters drop all their loot after dying? But they think I'm a crippled Eclipsari, not a shapeshifter. Eh, whatever. Next, they're going to fight each other over the amulet. This is working out far better than I anticipated. Thalion congratulated himself internally.

"You can have the spatial amulet," Ulnyx screeched, its massive mouth filled with jagged teeth.

"But I want to eat his body and fuse with the darkness affinity. I have never seen something this pure." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Its aura exploded outward violently.

"Ha! That's not how this is going to work," Ryan laughed beside Thalion. For once, the Chosen was absolutely right. This was the worst-case scenario.

"Whatever. Let's just kill them already," Thalion said, letting his power rise until it reached the same intensity as during the fight with the devil.

"We don't have much time, and there are still a lot of islands left. You saw what abilities they used, right?"

"The monster—this Ulnyx—swallows elemental skills," Ryan replied, his grin widening as his aura flared higher.

"The others fight with lightning. They shoot it, shape weapons out of it, the usual. I'll take them if you don't mind." Swallowing elemental skills… This was bad. They looked like melee fighters to Thalion, and he wasn't sure he wanted to make direct contact with that translucent skin.

"Hey, Ulnyx!" the Fulgarin leader shouted.

"Don't even think about eating him before he spits out the amulet. I still have enough poison to make your life hell."

"Yes, yes," Ulnyx hissed eagerly.

"Now let's get to work. I want his body."

"Good luck, Thalion!" Ryan laughed mockingly. Then his demeanor snapped from amusement to pure hatred as he shot straight toward the Fulgarin. Thalion, meanwhile, used his tendrils to catapult himself backward, away from the intense heat and the approaching attackers. Maybe this matchup… might actually be good. If the poison wasn't bait. The others shouldn't know what form he had available.

"Stop running from me, Eclipsari," Ulnyx hissed from behind him.

"I want to eat you." Before shifting forms, Thalion needed answers. He turned mid-slide and exhaled a wave of umbral miasma straight at Ulnyx, who was flying toward him with its mouth wide open. A powerful suction formed. All of the umbral miasma was swallowed instantly. Thalion watched closely as the darkness flowed through the creature's translucent body. Then something strange happened. Runes appeared around the absorbed darkness, rotating and compressing it until it vanished completely.

A secnd later a thin black line formed along the creature's outer flesh.

"Yes… more… MORE!" Ulnyx roared, accelerating even faster. Now it was becoming difficult for Thalion to maintain distance, even with constant tendril-assisted movement. But there was one last thing he needed to test. As a wyvern, he wouldn't be able to evade something this fast. While sliding across solid stone, Thalion grabbed a massive rock and hurled it at his pursuer. He half-expected it to be bitten cleanly in half.

Instead, the stone ripped chunks out of Ulnyx's body—only for the flesh to rebound and snap back into place, as if was made of rubber. That was enough for Thalion. It was time to go on the offensive. Thalion stopped retreating and swung at the beast with his claw. Ulnyx ignored the attack entirely and opened its maw unnaturally wide, trying to swallow him whole. That was the moment Thalion shifted. Where the Crippled Eclipsari had stood, a massive wyvern emerged, the claw already mid-swing.

The sunlight returned instantly, but instead of shadow, the wyvern released a poisonous stench so potent that the other Mawbound froze in place. For the leader, help came too late. The massive claw slammed Ulnyx straight into the ground. <-- Mawbound were among the most lopsided creatures in the multiverse. Their vitality pools were absurd—easily exceeding three thousand even in F-grade. They fed on elemental energies, which made Mawbound nearly immune to most fighters.

After all, the majority of combatants tempered their bodies with an element at some point. In the presence of a Mawbound, they became the perfect meal. Even opponents without an elemental affinity struggled against them due to their absurd vitality pools, which often secured the Mawbound an easy victory. For a long time, they were considered one of the most feared entities in the System. Until someone discovered their weakness.

A single drop of poison or acid was enough to completely destabilize their internal energies, rendering them vulnerable to all forms of attack. In fact, even a tiny amount was enough to kill them over time—something that should have been impossible given their immense vitality. High vitality was normally the perfect counter to poison. Not for the Mawbound. Without a specialized antidote, exposure meant death. And even that antidote only worked against minimal contamination.

If the corruption spread too far, there was no saving them. Once this became known, nearly everyone in the System began carrying some form of poison, just in case they encountered a Mawbound. Their rise ended as abruptly as it had begun. They could no longer compete for resources, and their dominance collapsed just as spectacularly as it had flourished. Still, there was one possible path forward for them.

If a Mawbound consumed enough of a single affinity, that affinity could eventually grow strong enough to erase poison on contact. Achieving such a state normally required thousands of years, and almost none ever managed it. Those that did, however, became the terrifying apex predators they had once been. All of this was common knowledge across the wider multiverse. Thalion of course, knew none of it.

Had he known that even a single claw strike would have been enough to immobilize and kill Ulnyx, he wouldn't have used his poisonous breath to blow the poor thing up like a balloon. <-- Thalion had to admit—poison was far more effective than he had anticipated. Even without eyes, he could see how the underlings writhed in agony after their leader fell. Ulnyx no longer spoke, its body visibly dissolving from the inside.

In fact, after Thalion had grabbed it with his claw, the creature hadn't put up the slightest resistance. It could have been a trick. And since Thalion wasn't short on mana, he chose the safe option. He unleashed a full poisonous breath over the massive body. Clouds of green mist engulfed the creature, and a moment later, the kill notification appeared. Thalion beat his wings and soared into the air, intent on finishing the remaining Mawbound.

The powerful wingbeat scattered the poisonous clouds toward the onlookers still hovering nearby. The moment the diluted poison touched them, they dropped from the sky like dead birds. Thalion blinked.

"Huh… are they trying to fool me?" There had barely been any poison left in that drifting mist. Were they pretending to be dead? He prepared another breath. The instant he was in range, he unleashed it. The kill notifications that followed a second later surprised even him. What strange creatures. They could consume darkness capable of dissolving light—yet a trace of poison wiped them out completely.

Thalion's gaze shifted to Ryan, who had just finished off the Fulgarin leader and was chasing down the remaining fighters. Lightning crackled around them as they tried to slow him down, but Ryan simply ran through it, healing almost instantly. It looked like they had won this battle. They had secured one island. Not that it meant much. There were still many enemies ahead, and the closer one got to the Golden Lotus, the stronger the combatants became.

Instead of helping Ryan, Thalion landed and shifted back into his human form. He pulled out a chair, sat down, and retrieved the meatsticks he had bought earlier. He needed a distraction—something to clear his mind. Conquering every single island was far too extreme. It would take too long and drain them completely. Thalion bit into the first meatstick—and nearly spat it out. Ah. Right. I forgot the taste gets ruined after being stored in a spatial amulet.

Not long after, Ryan joined him, having killed most of the Fulgarin. A few had managed to escape back to their island.

"Do you already have a plan for what to do next?" Ryan asked, raising an eyebrow—clearly surprised that Thalion had finished his fight first.

"No," Thalion admitted.

"But the more I think about it, the worse it looks. Not only is every island ahead fortified, but we also have to make it all the way back after securing the fruit of the Golden Lotus. A lot of factions on the outer islands are probably just waiting for that moment." He stared at the massive leaves of the Golden Lotus as they slowly began to glow brighter and brighter. Time was not on their side.