Kraus’s bone sword carved an arc during his charge, the trail of green light it left behind blindingly bright.
Jie was only halfway through her flicker, her form not yet fully blurred, when the blade reached her.
The green light grazed her left shoulder. Though the wound was not deep, the spread of crystallization began the moment of contact. Dark green crystals expanded outward from the edges of the wound by several inches at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Jie flickered backward abruptly, her expression beneath the mask twisting. She clearly hadn't expected Kraus to have been hiding his strength for so long.
Kraus did not pursue her, as ‘9’ had already reached his back.
The chitinous arm of ‘9’ was still executing a second strike based on his previous momentum. This strike had been initiated the moment Kraus charged out, and it was now falling toward his back.
Kraus’s form blurred, and four afterimages staggered. ‘9’s blade hacked through the afterimages, passing through the phantoms and hitting nothing but air.
In the next moment, the bone sword swept back.
The arc of green light slashed into the chitinous ribs of ‘9’.
A crack was sliced into the carapace, and blackish-yellow fluid gushed out. However, the fluid solidified as soon as it reached the edge of the crack. Green crystals began to grow at the rift, spreading several inches along the surface of the carapace.
‘9’ was sent flying, his back slamming into the wall of a side alley. Two stone bricks shattered, and debris sprayed across the street.
He looked down at the expanding green crystals on his ribs, his expression changing drastically. He clearly knew this stuff was extremely difficult to deal with.
J’s reaction was incredibly fast. Black liquid erupted from the ground, coiling toward Kraus’s lower body from three directions simultaneously.
Kraus’s form flickered constantly, but there was nowhere to hide. This time, Kraus did not have Lake’s assistance, and the entire street was covered by the domain the Grey Covenant had just established.
The green light on Kraus’s bone sword flared intensely as he swept it outward. The green light cut into the liquid, and the liquid at the point of contact began to crystallize, dark green crystals spreading through the black water.
But J did not panic. He quickly shed the crystallized portions, and the liquid re-condensed from another direction, continuously attempting to drag down Kraus’s speed.
Rank 4 against rank 4; J’s judgment was clear. It was not cost-effective to engage in a war of attrition against a full-strength Kraus head-on.
But he didn't need to engage in a war of attrition.
The silver plate in Lu Yuan’s hand trembled, and the light of the inscriptions was rapidly dimming.
The silver-white waves receded from the street as quickly as a falling tide.
The suppression of Bronze City returned.
The ghostly blue inscription light on the walls reignited, and that layer of invisible shackles fell upon Kraus once more.
The green light on Kraus’s bone sword retreated sharply, shrinking from covering the entire blade to just a few inches around the edge. The bone sword shortened, the afterimages vanished, and his aura plummeted from its peak.
Lu Yuan saw the entire process; the silver plate’s effect had lasted only a dozen seconds, but in those seconds, Kraus had heavily wounded ‘9’, grazed Jie, and forced J back.
The three members of the Grey Covenant were in no hurry to rush in.
‘9’ stood up from the wall's ruins. The green crystals at the cracked carapace on his ribs were being slowly suppressed from the inside by the blackish-yellow fluid, slowing the rate of expansion. A layer of his chitinous arm peeled off, discarded along with the crystallization marks left from his parry, and new carapace grew from beneath—thicker and with denser patterns.
Clearly, time was running out, and the Grey Covenant was about to get serious.
Jie pressed a hand to the crystallization marks on her shoulder, her form flickering. That small patch of crystallized skin seemed to be erased from existence, revealing clean muscle tissue beneath. Her gaze grew cold, all previous playfulness and mockery vanished.
J was even more direct. His lower body liquefied and merged into the ground. A black liquid surface spread out from beneath his feet across a large area. His upper body remained human in form, but the entire ground became an extension of his body.
All three prepared to strike again.
Simultaneously, the suppression of Bronze City was consuming Kraus for them. Every second he stood there, Kraus’s condition deteriorated further.
But Kraus could not allow the Grey Covenant to wear him down, so Jie moved first.
Her form flickered, followed immediately by an invisible wave of mental erosion spreading out from her.
Under the suppression of Bronze City, Kraus’s movements visibly faltered for an instant. The green light on the bone sword flickered, and the dark green in his eyes dimmed for half a second.
In a suppressed state, mental defenses also declined.
‘9’ seized that half-second, his body suddenly erupting forward. Black liquid flowed constantly through the gaps in his carapace.
His chitinous arm slammed down from above, but the bone sword was already raised. Kraus managed to block it, the green light flashing at the point of collision. Another crystallization mark appeared on the chitinous arm, forcing ‘9’ to withdraw and change angles to avoid a prolonged stalemate with Kraus.
At the same time, a second blade from the side grazed the outside of Kraus’s right arm. The fabric was slashed open, flesh sprayed, and a large amount of black liquid lunged like it had caught the scent of blood, attempting to burrow into Kraus’s body.
Almost simultaneously, ‘9’s left hand hurled a fist-sized ball of black liquid, smashing it toward Kraus’s chest.
Kraus tilted his body to avoid the liquid projectile, which exploded against the wall behind him. White smoke rose from the stone wall before it rapidly collapsed. However, blackish-yellow fluid had already seeped into the wound on his right arm, burrowing into the muscle along the edges.
Kraus did not hesitate. A wisp of green light separated from the bone sword to cover the wound on his right arm, forcibly wrapping the liquid at the edges of the wound before it peeled away.
J gave Kraus no time to breathe.
The liquid surface beneath his feet surged violently, forming a two-meter-high black wave-wall that pushed directly toward Kraus. Kraus repeated his previous tactic, sweeping his bone sword as the green light cut into the wave-wall, causing the liquid at the contact point to crystallize.
But this time, J did not retreat. More liquid poured up from the ground, surging in a volume that far exceeded the speed of the crystallization's spread, directly drowning those green crystals.
The speed of the crystallization could not keep up with the speed of the black liquid's expansion.
J intended to forcibly crush Kraus in a very short amount of time.
Jie initiated a second flicker at the same time, and the mental erosion wave spread once more—stronger than the last. Kraus’s footsteps faltered.
‘9’ charged in head-on at the same instant, his chitinous arm hacking down with gathered strength while his left hand hurled two liquid projectiles.
J’s liquid surface erupted from beneath Kraus’s feet, coiling around his left ankle. The black liquid began to corrode through his leather boot.
Three lines of attack fell simultaneously.
Kraus’s eyes turned cold, and the green light on his body flared brilliantly. He was enveloped by several afterimages as he instantly crystallized the liquid near him. Instead of retreating, Kraus advanced. The moment his bone sword blocked ‘9’, his left hand, wreathed in green light, reached out to grab him.
‘9’ was not slow to react. His body was instantly enveloped in black liquid, and like a moth emerging from a cocoon, he vanished from behind the liquid in an instant.
Kraus’s left hand caught the shell formed by the liquid ‘9’ had left behind. In an instant, the entire mass was covered in green crystals.
At the same time, the walls of Bronze City flared again. An even more powerful sense of oppression swept in from the distance, forcing Kraus to abandon his plan to pursue.
J seized the moment Kraus stalled, immediately pouring in more liquid to drown the layer of crystals.
The leather boot at Kraus’s ankle had already been corroded away, revealing the reddened skin beneath.
Kraus’s green light grew dimmer and dimmer. The bone sword shrank to the length of a short-blade, and his breathing became ragged.
‘9’ attacked again, his chitinous arm hacking down with a third strike. This blow was heavier than any before, striking Kraus’s right shoulder and cutting deep into the flesh. A large amount of blackish-yellow fluid seeped into the wound.
Kraus tried to use the green energy to seal the wound, but it was too deep. The crystallization only sealed the surface layer, while the fluid had already burrowed deep into his flesh.
J’s liquid simultaneously enveloped his left calf. Corrosion began.
Lu Yuan watched all of this from the base of the wall, frantic with worry, but he lacked the ability to intervene.
After its first activation, the silver plate seemed to have entered a cooldown period. No matter how Lu Yuan called to it, there was no response.
Finally, at the moment Kraus was struck by the blade, Lu Yuan felt a faint fluctuation from the inscriptions on the silver plate. It was the same as the first time, but he did not activate it the same way. Instead, he forcibly poured his own Sanity into it, forcing the inscriptions to pry at the power of Bronze City.
The inscriptions on the silver plate lit up, but the brightness was much weaker than the first time. Under his forced interference, the ghostly blue inscription light on the walls began to retreat, receding reluctantly.
The silver plate in Lu Yuan’s hand shook violently, and a crack appeared across the inscription patterns.
In the next moment, the silver plate shattered, fragments spilling from between his fingers. It had originally had two uses left, but they had been forcibly consumed at once.
Nevertheless, the silver-white wave still spread outward.
The suppression of Bronze City loosened briefly.
Kraus seized these few seconds. The bone sword surged in size, and the green light swept back, first severing the liquid on his left calf, which he shattered with a kick after it crystallized, then forcing ‘9’ back with a return strike.
Then he turned toward Jie.
This time, Kraus was dead set on targeting Jie. His form flickered out, and ‘9’s chitinous arm chased after him the moment he charged, hacking into his back.
Kraus’s expression did not change.
Among the four afterimages behind him, one shattered. The moment it broke, the injury ‘9’ had inflicted on Kraus vanished. Where the fabric on his back had been torn, the skin beneath was perfectly intact.
It wasn't just his back that recovered; his right arm, his ankle—all his wounds vanished completely.
The pupils of ‘9’ shrank violently. He clearly hadn't expected Kraus’s pathway to possess such an ability.
Kraus’s speed did not slow in the slightest. He grabbed Jie’s head, and the green light in his palm exploded upon contact.
Jie let out a roar. Her voice was completely different from her previous coquettish tone, filled with pain and madness.
Her body suddenly shriveled, and she squeezed out from between Kraus’s fingers in a posture that defied human anatomy.
Half of her face was scorched by the green light, and a corner of her mask had shattered, revealing a wound where charred flesh and crystals were intermingled.
She flickered ten paces away, her form trembling. That single strike had clearly inflicted a massive injury upon her.
Lu Yuan saw the entire process. That shattered afterimage had absorbed all the damage for Kraus.
Four shadows, and one had broken. This meant Kraus could still tank three more lethal hits.
This was the trump card he had been hiding all along.
Rate on N.U.
