Chapter 619: Despicable (1/2)

A spectral forest rose from the ground as Zac flashed forward, the trees immediately giving him a second sight as he tried to close the distance to the Second Elder. Most of the Cartava Clan cultivators seemed to be leaning toward mage-classes, which meant that turning the fight into a melee was his best bet at ending things quickly.

The Second Elder frowned as he looked at the forest that had sprung up around him. He pushed his hand forward, causing hundreds of runes to appear, each of them seemingly made out of steel. Zac could somewhat guess what was going on. The Grand Elder used lightning as an element, his insights probably stemming from the Base Power that powered this place.

The Second Elder instead had focused on the Memorysteel itself for inspiration.

Zac was a bit surprised none of them seemed to have insights into space even with all the spatial rifts around them, but he guessed it was simply too hard to gain insight into that Dao as an E-Grade cultivator in this place.

A sudden pang of danger dragged Zac out of his thoughts as a metal arrow shot straight toward him, coming from the closest rune. It contained a tremendous force, and the air itself was frayed as it flew straight toward him. But Zac only glanced at it before refocusing on his enemy as a chain lashed out to intercept.

The sharp sound of metal colliding echoed out as chain and arrow clashed and a small shockwave erupted. The chain of [Love’s Bond] was pushed away, but it was clearly Zac who came out victorious in the initial engagement. One of the links had a small white mark from where the arrowhead hit, but the whole arrow was disfigured as it fell to the ground.

One flash forward moved Zac almost a hundred meters, putting him just ten meters away from the old man. A radiant edge was already tearing through the air as [Chop] expanded to over fifteen meters, creating a vast kill-zone in front of him. The elder looked startled as he moved to run away, but he was far too slow. The blade bit into his torso before he could take more than a single step, instantly bisecting the old man.

However, Zac just frowned as the Second Elder supposedly died, and his worry was quickly confirmed as Zac found himself surrounded by over a hundred pitch-black spikes that reminded him of Alea’s ultimate attack. The bisected old man turned into streams of metal the next moment shooting toward him with extreme speed.

Destroying all the spikes around him would be too annoying so he immediately activated [Loamwalker] to flash away, but he didn’t even manage to take a single step before the two streams of metals reached his legs and turned into two manacles that felt as heavy as mountains. The sudden burden made him stumble, and the spikes shot toward him at that precise moment.

Zac’s Danger Sense screamed at him to get away, and the veins on his forehead pulsated as he forcibly took a step forward and disappeared with the help of his movement skill. It felt like the muscles in his legs would tear from the exertion, but a loud snap confirmed that he had forcibly broken the restrictive skills as he moved.

A green barrier appeared around Zac as he activated the first defensive charge of [Hatchetman’s Spirit], just in time as he crashed through a dozen of the black spikes. The barrier barely held as Zac escaped the encirclement, a testament to how powerful the attack was when counting the number of spikes left behind.

He appeared fifty meters away, and he turned around just in time to see a large spatial tear being created by the hundred remaining spikes. They had actually ripped a hole into space when they stabbed toward a singular point, and the air twisted and distorted as the rift swallowed everything around it before space mended itself.

There was no time for Zac to regain his footing though as one arrow after another shot toward him from the runes all around hum. Zac growled in annoyance as his chains turned into a blur, forming a defensive barrier even more effective than [Nature’s Barrier]. It was something he had come up with some time ago, but it only worked when there weren't too many projectiles to deal with.

The chains kept him safe for the time being, but he knew that this wasn’t a sustainable situation.

He had already spotted ten clones of the old man forming a circle around him, each of them forming different hand seals, no doubt preparing his next major attack. Massive outbursts of lightning and massive sigils clashing to his left was proof of a battle that was quickly reaching a fever pitch, and the three beasts to his right were already bloodied as the Tal-Eladar desperately held on for dear life.

The Second Elder had seized the momentum the moment Zac looked over at that very first arrow. It had given him a short window to teleport away while leaving behind a boobytrapped clone, even escaping Zac's improved senses from [Hatchetman's Spirit]. Zac knew he needed to break the stalemate, but it looked like the second elder wasn’t actually trying to take him out. He was just probing him while stalling for time, waiting for the others to finish up their fights.

Unfortunately, Zac saw no simple quick fix. The clones were extremely life-like, and Zac couldn’t actually tell which one was the real elder even with the help of [Cosmic Gaze]. Zac knew what he had to do, though he hated such tactics. But this was not the time to hesitate, and the lustrous halo of [Conformation of Supremacy] appeared behind his back while he also started infusing a storm of Cosmic Energy into [Nature’s Punishment].

The axe of the axe-man appeared inside the halo, and Zac shot toward the closest avatar. It was shredded into pieces by one swing of his E-Grade skill, the ground itself turned into a deep gorge from the force generated by the halo. The clone wasn’t the real elder this time either, and his body fell apart into liquid metal once more.

This blob didn’t shoot toward Zac, but it rather rose into the sky as it absorbed the metal runes in the area, forming one massive fractal. Zac spotted a similar fractal as large as a fist suddenly appear on his robe, and he felt a tremendous pressure like he was bound by unseen fetters. It reminded him of those annoying spiderlings he had fought during the final battle of the second Beast Wave, where each spider that attached to him increased the gravity.

This one mark added over ten times as much weight on his body, but Zac was also not the same person as he was back then. He bore the weight without a change in expression as he flashed toward the second clone. This one was right at the edge of his fractal forest, and it was the closest one to the Cartava Army.

The second avatar was destroyed in a single swing as well, and another massive fractal appeared, just as expected. The strain on his body more than doubled, but Zac only snorted as he pushed his free hand forward. An enormous crack in the sky appeared, but not right above him. It was instead above the army just a few hundred meters away, and the large wooden hand emerged in all its glory.

Zac wasted no time as he rushed forward, running away from the encirclement and his spectral forest. He was surprised to feel that the restraints increased by a whole tier after he left the circle the elder’s clones had set up, but he could still move almost freely supported by his almost inhuman amount of Strength.

Screams of confusion erupted among the natives as an emerald fractal appeared in the sky, immediately putting the soldiers under immense pressure. Confusion quickly turned to fear as a small sapling rapidly grew into a towering tree, with hundreds of branches shooting downward like spears.