Chapter 808 - And who might you be?

The moment I appear on the other side, an attack shoots towards me, a laser-like stream of oscillating mana.

A spherical trap barrier encompasses me, and more defensive arrays activate. Behind them, people begin to gather, all wearing the same suits as the men I just dealt with. All of it is happening in a central square room carved into the rock, from which five tunnels lead out, each with some sort of tubes sticking out of the walls, and machinery humming in the distance.

Another wave washes over me, and pressure threatens to push me to my knees. The beam widens, just barely splitting in front of me as I cut through it and send it to my sides. I notice constant waves searching for something in me, and when they do not find it, the attacks continue to intensify.

Realizing what it is, I recall the frequency of the implant I observed in the velnar’s head and mimic it, letting a check on me connect to it. It takes a few tries, but I succeed. For a short moment, the beam stops, the pressure and the barrier disappear, and the alarms fall silent in stark contrast to the erratic movements of the people gathered around.

One of them barely gets to scream as my lance stabs through him, carrying his body into the dark tunnel. Another man falls down, body pierced by Needle Point.

I move again, just in time as the barrier reappears and the pressure returns. The beam of mana shoots, moving through the wall, which cracks as it tracks me, and then locks onto me again. A burst of a nearly identical attack shoots from me, briefly pushing against the stream and then widening and blazing louder.

My counterattack pushes through the beam as the two of them fight for a brief moment before mine overwhelms it. It reaches the device, shooting it and destroying it entirely.

I use Wraith Dance to move to avoid the attack and then a few more times to dodge two men with high dexterity following me. Noting another man attempting to run away, my lance shoots at him, breaks through his barriers, and stabs him against the wall.

One of the fast men reaches me, swinging to stab his dagger into my chest, but a segment of a barrier appears in front of me, blocking it entirely with just a few ripples sent through the surface. The man disappears as if he had fallen into the ground. I track him with my eyes only, finding where he steps back to the surface. As he does so, I am already standing there, my body boosted by kinetic energy and mana, and a dagger manifests in my hand.

That dagger pierces through the barrier on his skin, through his armor and chainmail below, and into his heart. I move just a bit of thermal energy into the dagger and leave it stabbed there. It then explodes just as I Wraith Dance again to avoid the other speedster.

He dodges the explosion and quickly locates me, moving to track me down. He is a lumoran, and crystalline features covering his neck and forehead glow, sending a high-pitched noise, some sort of sonic attack, towards me while also attempting to disrupt my mana. From behind me, what seems like a spider with just four legs jumps from the shadows at me. Some sort of animal.

The man’s bond.

I hesitate, and the four-legged spider grabs me, stabbing its fangs into my arm.

My thermal energy burns the poison, and my mana rises up around me to deal with pressure, and all movement halts. I break through the natural barrier of the man and the spider and forcefully reactivate the teleportation array, sending them both away before disabling that array and overwriting it with my structure.

A lynthari and a human man exit the tunnels, the lynthari having a [Mana Crown] over his head. The human connects what is left of the defensive arrays, reactivating them and taking over the mana batteries, using them to power his domain that begins to expand with him at the center. Like ink, a pale red color seeps into the area, turning everything into that hue.

Before it even reaches me, the colors around me drain, and that effect expands further. It pushes against the pale red ink-colored domain and, faster than it began to expand, I make it shrink as if in reverse. It slams into the man, who gasps for breath as his control over the array and mana batteries slips out. The lynthari man who was there to serve as his mana battery doesn't even have time to fulfill his role.

[Eclipse - lvl 70 > Eclipse - lvl 71]

My domain strengthens, fills the air, and for a short moment, I power it with a pulse of black mana I quickly compress. My eyes read the frequency faster than the skill can change, and I break his [Mana Crown].

A huge amount of mana explodes from it, threatening to destroy the entire place just from the pressure, radiation, and friction releasing that amount causes. Yet before it even touches the lynthari’s hair, I take it over. All of that mana halts in my grasp, a ghost of an explosion caught in its previous state.

My blood surges through my veins, strengthening my other two traits. I move that mana, spinning it and sending it to the fake Mana Crown over my head. It is a massive amount, probably what I could gather in a week of constant effort by transferring the thermal energy of my Ignition Heart into mana.

I begin to wonder why I hadn’t killed the man and his bond and instead teleported them away, when the lynthari man, now without his crown, twists and vomits out a huge amount of blood. His body breaks apart, and from his insides, a baby falls to the ground, entirely covered in blood and guts.

That baby quickly grows with tearing flesh and cracking bones until it is the size of an adult mora, just as tall and slim as the three from the Crimson Forge. The mora just looks back at the corpse it appeared from and snickers before licking blood off its lips.

[Endo Knight - lvl ???]

“And who might you be-” he asks.

Before he even finishes those words, [Empyrean Lance] stabs through his chest and causes him to lose his balance. He reaches out as he falls, grabbing the human who previously used the domain and killing the man, tearing off his head along with the spine.

The mora is twice as tall as the human was and entirely covered in the blood and guts of the lynthari, making him look even more terrifying. The spine he just tore hardens and grows into a sword, while he tears chunks off the human man's body and shoves them into his own chest, where they join with him, healing the wound I just caused.

“So you would rather play.” his laugh fills the intersection of the three tunnels, and he attacks.

His body moves in an animalistic, near unpredictable way. His speed is high, even for how tall he is. The edges of his body turn to a blur that almost looks like transparent blue and green afterimages left behind. The spine sword in his hand grows even further into a greatsword, taller than he is, as he swings it at me.

Both he and the weapon halt mid movement, held there by me, as a dozen quickly made projectiles pierce through his body, tearing it to pieces.

I follow the movement of mana, and another bloodied baby climbs out of the body of one of the corpses and begins to grow rapidly. Before the mora can fully reform, I boost my body and grab the spine greatsword. I shorten the distance between us and slam the sword against the almost fully reformed mora, who resists by putting out his forearm. It gets cut through, and the sword stabs into his shoulder.

Even so, the mora pushes strong and stands up tall, twice my height and covered in blood.

He smiles as I let go of the sword, and he grabs it.

When kinetic energy explodes from me, he puts the sword between us and is thrown through the room to crash against the wall with a sickening crunch.

As I shoot more blasts at him, the corpse next to me, the one he climbed out of, swells and explodes with surprising force. Before the explosion even reaches me, mana surrounds me in a barrier that gets splashed in red blood and pieces of flesh. It partially blocks my view, but through my other senses, I track the mora’s movement as his spine sword swings down with great force, those green and blue afterimages tracking it as well.

The spine sword smashes through my barrier as I step to the side, and it slams into the ground next to me. Before the area can explode from the impact, I absorb all kinetic energy and, in one smooth movement, step closer to the mora and hit his knee as I release that burst in an explosion. It causes him to sway and fall to his knees, his body finally no longer towering over me so much.

He still holds the spine sword and swings to attack me, but before it touches me, another high pitched blast of kinetic energy explodes against his body. In the next moment, flames surround me, bursting forth and incinerating every remaining corpse in the area.

No notification about the kill comes, and I can’t feel the mora’s presence anywhere in the complex. For a moment, I stand there before a decision is made.

I take off my glasses, and my trait activates further as I scan the area within the effect of my released [Eclipse]. I force my mind into overdrive until I find what I have been looking for, a faint connection that allowed the mora to use his skill through the people he marked, allowing him to appear here.

My mind spirals through the connection, taking it over, restoring it, and strengthening it. I drain a chunk of my mana to power the effort and then teleport through that very same connection.

The place I find myself in is very different from the underground tunnels. This one is clean, with white walls made of some sort of stone and many potted trees placed all around. There is even a small fountain nearby. In the middle of that stark white room stands a mora flanked by two women of his kind, while the corpse of a third lies on the floor. One of them is putting a white fur robe over his bloodied body while he gives orders to the other.

As I appear, he turns to me, his yellow eyes widening as he lets out a hiss before [Empyrean Lance] stabs through him and throws him to the floor. I swing my hand, and like a torrential wave, golden flames blaze ahead, burning both women and reaching towards the male mora.

[You have defeated Blood Mage - lvl 256]

[You have defeated Farseeing Elementalist - lvl 191]

The fire twists mid air, chasing the Endo Knight's beast-like movements. I pivot the stream to track him, the flames lashing against the walls and incinerating the trees as he continues to dodge.

Thick pillars fall from the ceiling toward me as defensive arrays activate, but more mana floods around my body, forming a partial suit of armor around me. It is only the upper half, yet it towers three times my height. The pillars crash against that armor, melting some of my mana and partially disrupting it, but the armor holds, blocking the defensive mechanism.

One of the armor’s massive arms moves to grab the mora, who jumps over it and spins to avoid a barrage of my projectiles. He shouts in a way that shakes the air, and the flames reaching toward him die off in a shockwave.

The thick metal doors marking the single entrance to the room begin to open, but I halt their movement, absorbing all the kinetic energy as someone outside tries to force them open.

Then, more mana floods from me, making the armor thicker just as a hole opens in the floor. From it, a greatsword made of pale, dried-up bone, broken on one side to create a jagged edge, shoots up, and the mora grabs it. With that beast like grace, he takes a step to the side. Still bloodied and draped in the white fur robe, he bows slightly and shows me his teeth.

"Please enlighten me, what caused me to be the target of your hunt?" he asks, readying his body for an attack.

"Consider it a preventative measure," I say, my mana tightening around the room.

He gets no more words from me as more projectiles shoot at him.