You're Leaking Soup!

“What is that?”

In the mental channel, Bloodsong asked blankly.

She had just slightly calmed down from the annoyance of her disguise being torn open, and for a moment, she couldn't keep up with Elias's leaping train of thought.

“Literally,”

Elias sighed in his mind.

“I mean freezing her, in the literal, physical sense.”

“Then we go up and light the lighthouse.”

“Well, I won't be of much help with that,”

Bloodsong replied very bluntly.

“My infernal magic doesn't really pair well with yours.”

“No matter,”

Elias said calmly.

“You just focus on finding a way to crowd-control her. Leave the rest to me.”

“That I can do,”

Bloodsong answered succinctly.

In truth, Elias's freezing plan wasn't some spur-of-the-moment whim.

It was a solution he had devised during the battle, taking a brief moment to consult with Old Ed.

In the vast majority of cases, this kind of logic-defying self-healing ability required maintaining the activity of the body's cells.

Now that he understood the core principle, the solution naturally presented itself.

Cold was undoubtedly the best antidote to reduce cellular activity and slow down metabolism.

As long as they could drop her body temperature below freezing, those frantically squirming self-healing buds of flesh would completely lose their drive to regenerate.

While Elias and Bloodsong held their brief conspiracy in the mental channel, Sarah, standing opposite them, was not idle either.

The translucent tentacles around her body began to grow frantically, completely filling the already cramped indoor space.

Sarah intended to rely on her regeneration speed and absolute numerical superiority to completely devour the two intruders before her.

Faced with this onslaught, Elias did not choose to launch a reckless head-on assault in search of a quick victory.

He took a deep breath, circulating the spirituality in his body through specific circuits.

Moonlight Veil and 【Traceless Step】 activated.

In an instant, his figure quietly faded into the air.

Immediately after, the Wind-Chaser Boots on his feet kicked up a flurry of dim afterimages.

He moved like a weightless gust of night wind, weaving frantically through the gaps between the dense tentacles.

His tactic was crystal clear: hit and run, never overstaying his welcome.

Using his stealth, he constantly circled Sarah's body, specifically targeting her tentacles with his blade.

The Thorn Cutlass traced a cold, sharp arc.

Slash once, reveal himself, and then immediately retreat to fade back into the shadows.

His footwork was as slippery as an oiled eel, giving Sarah absolutely no opportunity to grab him in retaliation.

Most lethally, every strike he landed was heavily infused with the freezing effect of 【Frostbite】.

Wherever the cutlass swept, bone-chillingly cold supernatural energy erupted instantly.

The severed ends of the tentacles were immediately coated in a thin layer of ice.

At first, a mocking sneer stretched across Sarah's grotesque face.

In her eyes, these minor slashes—which barely even counted as superficial wounds—were a completely futile, foolish effort.

To a Scale Four powerhouse with near-infinite regeneration, what did losing a few tentacles even matter?

They were nothing more than toys that could regrow in a matter of seconds.

However, this arrogant thought did not last long.

Very quickly, the sneer on Sarah's face froze completely.

She was shocked to discover that the more frantically she channeled her spirituality to regenerate, the more piercing the cold emanating from the frozen severed ends became.

The extreme cold began to paralyze her nerves and freeze her cells.

On the other side, the Dvorin girl, having revealed her pure-blooded demon true form, was clearly suppressing a bellyful of irritable rage with nowhere to vent.

After reverting to her original form, her style of attack became increasingly violent.

Her exquisite yet wild face was a mask of pure murderous intent.

Her repeating crossbow vibrated at high frequency, sending tracer rounds wrapped in blazing red light howling through the air.

Bloodsong moved at high speed along the edge of the corridor, the dagger in her hand similarly enveloped in roaring, dark-red flames.

Those infernal flames raged within the cramped space, constantly squeezing Sarah's room to maneuver along the trajectory of her shots.

The intertwining of frost and flame made Sarah suffer unspeakably.

She shrieked as a bizarre gray mist seeped from her body, and her figure began to turn illusory.

She attempted to trigger her signature Scale Four movement technique—【Mist Walk】—to escape this dead end.

As long as she transformed into an intangible thick mist, these physical restrictions and energy bombardments would lose all effect.

But just as her body was on the verge of fully misting, an unexpected turn of events occurred.

Bloodsong's slitted pupils glared right at her.

Sarah suddenly felt a pang of dread, and a bizarre urge to retreat actually welled up inside her.

Her half-misted body immediately reverted to a solid state.

“What kind of spell is this?!”

Elias, who had been lingering on the outskirts waiting for an opportunity, was incredibly sharp.

He instantly detected that fatal sliver of hesitation when Sarah's body reverted to solid form.

Then, he closed the distance rapidly.

He swept his cutlass.

With several wet squelches of a blade slicing into flesh, Elias cleanly severed all the numerous tentacles Sarah had just extended.

The severed limbs littered the floor, ice instantly forming over the cuts.

Having done all this, Elias complained urgently through the mental channel:

“If you had a spell like that, why didn't you use it earlier?”

While frantically pulling the trigger of her repeating crossbow, Bloodsong explained in his mind with a hint of grievance:

“It's 【Fearful Gaze】! I have to make eye contact with her for it to work.”

“How was I supposed to know if those eyes on her face were just for show!”

While their communication in the mental channel happened in the blink of an eye, the battle in reality did not pause for even a fraction of a second.

Bloodsong seized the opening from Sarah's interrupted mist-form. The infernal fire inside her body traveled along the crossbow bolts, pinning themselves one after another into Sarah's body with absolute precision.

The scorching flames began to burn inside her translucent, mutated carapace.

From a distance, she looked like a glass lantern.

“Ah—! You damned vermin!!”

Sarah shrieked in agonizing pain that sounded entirely non-human.

The burning of those flames on a soulful level pushed her negative spirituality to the brink of collapse.

After suffering several consecutive major setbacks, she no longer dared to casually use Filthy Puppet Threads to control Bloodsong.

Within the blind spot where the dense flames and frost intertwined, a slender tentacle that had been hiding in the darkness suddenly whipped up from the floor without warning.

The tentacle abruptly wrapped around Bloodsong's right wrist just as she was about to shoot, pulling it violently to the side.

This small movement was timed with perfect precision.

Bloodsong's expression changed dramatically.

Subjected to this sudden, strange force, the trajectory of the powerful tracer round she was supposed to shoot into Sarah's face instantly veered off-course.

The bolt, carrying scorching hot flames, actually shot straight toward Elias's back!

The sudden, lethal sense of danger rising from his back made the hair on Elias's body stand on end.

Teetering on the line between life and death, he made an awkward side-step almost purely on instinct.

Boom!

The bolt grazed a few strands of his hair as it flew past, leaving behind a burning sensation.

Finally, it slammed hard into the stone wall to his side, exploding into a shower of blinding sparks and a small wave of fire.

Elias broke into a cold sweat.

He whipped his head around, glaring furiously at Bloodsong, and barked in exasperation through the mental channel:

“Who the hell were you aiming at, me or her?!”

“Friendly fire, seriously?!”

Bloodsong gritted her teeth, struggling desperately.

“My hand has a mind of its own right now!”

Before her voice even faded, she reverse-gripped her dagger with her other hand, bringing forth a thick wave of infernal fire.

She cleanly and decisively sliced through the slender tentacle wrapped around her.

However, this brief moment of chaos was more than enough for the cunning Sarah to seize an opportunity to counterattack.

Taking advantage of the split second Elias was forced to reveal himself to dodge...

A cruel, sadistic smile spread across Sarah's face.

She raised her remaining tentacles high, the negative spirituality within her body surging like a tidal wave.

Elias, who was about to find another angle to hide, suddenly froze in place.

There was no physical impact or restraint on the surface of his body.

Yet at that very moment, Elias felt a violent, churning upheaval surge deep within his chest and abdomen.

It felt as if a malicious hand had reached deep into his belly.

And temporarily rearranged his heart, stomach, liver, and all his other internal organs.

The displaced organs squeezed against one another.

The sheer physical agony instantly turned his face as pale as paper.

Beads of cold sweat poured down his face.

Suffering from this heavy blow, his footsteps finally slowed by half a beat.

And in a life-or-death duel between transcendents, half a beat was more than enough to decide the outcome.

A vicious gleam flared in Sarah's eyes. Seizing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, over a dozen translucent tentacles hidden in the shadows of the ceiling dropped down like venomous snakes.

These tentacles transformed into a torrential downpour, raining down upon Elias to skewer him.

At this critical juncture, Elias gritted his teeth, forcing down the intense nausea brought on by the pain.

With a single thought, he shifted his Moonlight Barrier upward to block the attack.

Clatter!

The dense tentacles rained down upon the barrier's surface, the sheer force pressing him down to one knee.

While maintaining her assault from above, Sarah drew out several more tentacles, aiming them at the open gaps around Elias's body.

“【Visceral Misalignment】.”

Seeing Elias cornered, Bloodsong let out a low shout through the mental channel and rushed forward.

The infernal flames inside her body erupted violently from her palms.

The wild wave of fire incinerated those translucent tentacles to ashes, one by one.

Having done so, she grabbed the pale Elias and quickly pulled him back.

Noticing his almost bloodless cheeks, Bloodsong warned him urgently in his mind with a grave expression:

“Stay focused! This spell causes a temporary physical misalignment of your organs' spiritual projection.”

“That's so damn cheap...”

Elias suppressed the intense pain in his belly while keeping his eyes locked on Sarah, who was currently raging from the burns of the infernal fire.

The situation was growing increasingly critical, and they were running out of time.

“Do you still have enough spirituality left?”

Elias propped himself up with his cutlass and stood straight, asking in his mind in a deep voice.

Bloodsong checked her nearly depleted spiritual core. Her voice sounded somewhat frustrated and lacked confidence.

“Not much.”

She looked anxiously at the translucent flesh buds that had begun to squirm once again.

“What do we do?”

“Don't panic. It's not a big deal.”

A fierce, ruthless light flashed in Elias's eyes.

“Use that skill from earlier again.”

“Which skill?”

Bloodsong paused for a moment.

“That death glare of yours.”

Elias urged her quickly in his mind.

“It's 【Fearful Gaze】!” Bloodsong corrected him with emphasis.

“Whatever.”

“Just find a way to hard-CC her. As long as you can make her lock eyes with you, even for a single second!”

“Alright.”

Bloodsong nodded heavily.

The girl suddenly took a violent step forward.

Her slitted pupils glared across the distance, locking onto Sarah.

Then, she cleared her throat and yelled at Sarah by the top of the stairs:

“Old lady!”

Bloodsong raised her hand and pointed at the slime dripping down Sarah's leg.

“You're leaking soup!”