Chapter 327: Billionaires Brawl (1/2)
A massive wave of electricity slammed into Zac’s shield as he imbued himself with the Dao of Hardness. The ball had been something similar to his own [Thunder Punishment], though the energies were far more concentrated. It gave up the massive area of [Thunder Punishment] but instead gained a far greater intensity.
A scream from behind told Zac that his shield wasn't' able to properly block out the energies as it was, and he tried imbuing [Immutable Bulwark] with the Dao of Sanctuary to see if it would change anything. The shield quickly started transforming, turning into something that looked like a wall that circled his group.
The Dao imbuement apparently changed the way the shield worked, where it gave up some of its strength to instead be able to protect from all directions. Luckily the durability of the shield was still enough even though it was spread out over a wider area. The problem was that the Miasmic consumption drastically increased, though he would be able to keep it up for some time before he started to run out of energy.
But Zac didn’t want to wait for his attacker to tire himself or herself out, and he looked in all directions for the source of the attack. But it was impossible to see a thing through the storm of lightning outside the protective shield, and he could only growl in frustration. Joanna meanwhile looked ready to rip the Dragonwing manager into pieces as she threw him down on the ground and pointed her spear at him.
“What’s going on?” she spat out through grit teeth. “Who’s attacking us?”
“I swear I do not know! We have had some friction with the Union lately, perhaps it’s them?” the manager frantically said, trying to keep his head as far away from the spearhead as possible.
Soon enough the lightning storm abated, but Zac barely had time to glance around before a dozen more spheres flew toward them, releasing an inferno of flames that tried to eat through his protective layers.
Zac sighed as he realized that whoever was attacking them was unwittingly a pretty good counter to his undead class. He had activated [Deathwish] the moment he realized they were under attack, but he sensed that it hadn’t been used even once. It meant the skill didn’t work against treasures, allowing their attacker to go on as he pleased without receiving any retribution.
“Do you want me to help out?” Verana suddenly asked from behind, not sounding alarmed in the slightest even though flames raged all around them.
“No need,” Zac said after a brief pause. “Protect the others while I deal with this.”
Verana would likely not have too much trouble dealing with this attacker, but Zac wanted to gain some experience in fighting in his undead form. He had only fought dumb animals when using Undying Bulwark, most of them turned even more rabid and irrational from the Darkness in the caverns beneath the Eastern Trigram Sect. Fighting a person in disadvantageous conditions felt like a pretty good way to find the limitations and strengths of his current class.
Finally, Zac managed to spot a hooded figure in the distance, and he immediately activated [Inquisitive Eye] to get some idea about their attacker. But either the man possessed tremendous Intelligence, or more likely he owned a protective treasure because Zac could not even get the man’s name from the skill.
The limits of the ocular skill were once shining through, and Zac was starting to wonder if it was even worth that he relearned and evolved the skill for his undead form. But he was still unable to get his hands on a better option, as the only ancillary skill that the lowest floor of his Dao Repository contained was [Thousand Faces]. Hopefully, there would be some more options for supportive skills on the next floor, as those were the only skills that seemed to work for both his classes.
It looked like the man in the distance was imbuing yet another ball with Cosmic Energy, though this one shuddered with another type of energy than electricity. Zac didn’t want to give him time to lob yet another of those things at him and slammed his shield into the ground with a roar.
A huge shockwave of spikes ripped out of the ground and pushed toward the masked man with great speed, destroying anything in its path. It was the attack engraved into the shield itself, and its effect was even better than Zac had expected. The attacker looked up in alarm, but before he could move the wave of spikes was upon him.
A green shimmer appeared around the masked attacker, and the spikes immediately turned into a murky liquid formed a corrosive pool on the ground. Zac tsk’ed in annoyance and pushed forward, inwardly annoyed with the lack of movement options in his undead class.
But he was still extraordinarily fast due to his massive pool of Dexterity, and Zac was upon the man before he could finish fueling the next offensive array. But the masked attacker seemed to possess an almost endless bag of tricks, and two of his rings lit up when Zac swung his sword down with furious momentum.
The man disappeared in the blink of an eye, replaced with a large head of a humanoid skeleton that radiated extremely sinister energies. Zac’s brows rose in surprise, but before he had time to create any distance the skeleton spewed out a large gust of a grey haze, covering every inch of his body.
Zac froze for a second, but he soon realized the odd attack simply had no effect on him. He once again thanked the cheat-like constitution of a Draugr, realizing that the mist was likely some poison his undead body was immune to. He swung his huge tower shield with a grunt, creating a gust that blew the mists away, and he immediately spotted the man in the distance.