Chapter 583: Overrun (1/2)

A shockwave erupted from Zac’s body, causing the closest wolves to be thrown away as their bodies twisted and deformed. Zac wasn’t focused on that though, but rather the three-meter halo that had appeared behind him. It was a circle that shone in silver, though the silver of a honed blade rather than the moonlight that drowned out the area.

It was covered in dense scripts, but the true core of the skill was the image in the middle of the halo.

It was the deceptively unadorned axe that Zac had witnessed in his very first Dao Vision, the weapon of the axe-man who had singlehandedly caused the death of both the divine faction and most likely a whole world. The axe looked almost exactly the same as how Zac remembered it when it was stabbed into the ground next to the endless chasm, and the image infused the halo with an almost blinding sharpness.

“Supremacy,” Zac muttered as he started running forward, each step causing cracks to spread for dozens of meters.

His momentum was rapidly growing as his spectral forest rose around him, giving him perfect vantage of the incoming wolves. He realized that there were as many invisible wolves approaching as visible ones, but he didn’t worry. The heaviness and sharpness of the halo behind him coursed through his body, and it was ready to be released at moment's notice.

Zac swung [Verun’s Bite] toward the closest clump of wolves when they were just twenty meters away, and pained yowls cut through the incessant roars of the vast wolf pack. The mournful cries were immediately cut short though as a dozen E-Grade wolves were flung away like they were pieces of trash, their bodies mangled almost beyond recognition. The ground itself was crushed and split apart as well, forming a deep chasm that stretched almost fifty meters before the power in Zac's swing lost its strength.

That was just the beginning though, as one swing after another started reaping the lives of the vanguard of the wolves, to the point that his killing speed surpassed that of the other three combined. Waves of moonlight drowned him both from above and from the wolves themselves, but this new skill wasn't as easily worn down as [Chop]. The halo was connected to Zac himself and almost impervious to the effect while the strikes were instantaneous, not allowing for the slightest weakening before the damage was already done.

His targets weren’t cleanly bisected as they would have been from [Rapturous Divide] or the final swing of [Blighted Cut], but they rather looked like they had been cut and bludgeoned simultaneously. Wherever Zac turned his attention a wave of carnage would soon follow as long as the halo behind his back remained.

Each swing of his axe contained not only his own strength, but it also contained a fragment of the boundless conviction and power of the original wielder of the simple woodman's axe. The blood of the wolves was already dying the whole area red, and a shocking stream of Cosmic Energy was entering Zac's body from the kill.

There were simply too many wolves to stop them all from reaching the Thea and the others, so he could only focus on the most powerful-looking squads. The others would be able to deal with the peak F-Grade wolves and their recently evolved brothers, but only Zac could kill the ones who were approaching middle E-Grade quickly enough.

Five packs was enough to almost open up his next node, and Zac was forced to trap the rest as to not break a node in the middle of the battle. It almost looked like he formed a sanguine cloud that rotated around him as he flashed back and forth among the trees, each jump with [Loamwalker] resulting in the death of even more wolves.

These elite wolves weren't dumb brutes that simply took Zac's attacks lying, and his whole body was covered in wounds caused by razor-sharp claws and hundreds of energy-attacks that they could launch from their foreheads. Their bodies were extremely sturdy as well, and if it wasn't for the added sharpness of his swings, he would eventually have been overrun by their sheer numbers.

It was all thanks to his recently acquired skill; [Conformation of Supremacy], the skill in the Dao Repository that was linked to the Strength Attribute. It didn't conjure a massive weapon like [Deforestation] or any fantastical sights like [Rapturous Divide]. It simply infused his normal swings with the power of the object depicted in the avatar.

The axe-man in his Dao Vision had almost split a whole world apart with a swing of his axe, but Zac obviously couldn't quite reach that level with his swings. But it still produced an effect far beyond the destruction he could cause with his most similar skill; [Unholy Strike], while also having a slew of other benefits.

First of all, [Conformation of Supremacy] didn't need to be charged for every attack like the skill he got from Mhal required. The halo did dim down a bit after every attack, but Zac could push more Cosmic Energy into it to reignite its power. The effect also wasn't limited to an increase in physical strength, but it rather imbued his swings with a mysterious energy based on the avatar, almost like it gained an additional Dao Seed.

The only downsides to the skill were the high energy consumption and the fact that the skill could be considered a mid-range attack at best since it didn't actually launch any projectiles. The damage caused by Zac's swings were rather just an outburst of the force contained in his attacks.

It had been a pretty big disappointment to see that the Endurance-based defensive skill clashed with [Deforestation], forcing him to give up on getting a new defensive skill now that [Nature’s Barrier] was lagging behind. However, the fact that the Strength-based skill didn’t clash with a single one of his skills felt like a huge windfall. It was the third skill he had picked up, and his only regret was that he couldn’t get it in his Draugr side as well.

The skill was simple and direct, just how Zac liked it. He was only was able to infuse it with his Fragment of the Axe at the moment, but some Dao limitations weren’t that uncommon with early proficiency skills.

The fact that the picture within the halo looked just like the axe in his Dao Vision obviously wasn’t a coincidence, but the skill actually had no connection to that axe-wielding master at all. [Conformation of Supremacy] was rather a blank slate, where you could create your own avatar of supremacy.

The image was interchangeable, and it could be different every time the skill was activated. However, the better the image resonated with your current intent, the more power it would provide, albeit at a higher energy-consumption.