Chapter 626: Denizens of the Void (1/2)

Zac didn’t know whether it was lucky or unlucky that the terrifying creature went straight for him, but at least it would prevent the normal warriors from bearing the brunt of the terrifying creature. He quickly threw Emily to a side passage as he readied himself for battle.

“Attack it from a distance,” Zac shouted before he charged up [Rapturous Divide]. “It can’t survive in this dimension for long. The more we damage it the quicker we’ll be able to destroy it. “

A golden cloud entered the huge maw the next second, quickly followed by a black cloud imbued with the Fragment of the Coffin. A perfectly straight scar in space was ripped open, but Zac was shocked to see that it barely had any effect on the creature. The spatial divide had actually split the creature in two, but it almost looked like Zac’s attack was just an illusion.

There were no wounds, no nothing. It was like spatial tears had no effect on the Void Beast. Zac figured that he perhaps shouldn’t be too surprised considering that this thing usually lived in the folds between dimensions. The other warriors didn’t fare much better as pitch-black barriers that looked like small tiles of onyx appeared at the tip of the creature's legs, effortlessly swallowing any attack that came close. Only the Anointed managed to launch strikes with enough force to cause some minor cracks on the defensive shields, but they were repaired as quickly as they appeared.

Zac guessed what was going on and he quickly activated [Conformation of Supremacy], this time imbuing the skill with the image of the supreme shield. The creature was almost upon him by now, but Zac didn’t back away. Less than half of his people had passed the bridge by this point, and if Zac didn’t block now, then the bridge would be exposed to the Void Beast.

He couldn’t let that happen.

A growl escaped Zac’s lips as he rushed forward, meeting the beast head-on. His axe was empowered by the weight of the supreme shield in the avatar, and he swung it in a heroic arc right at the bottom of the beast's face, right beneath the massive mouth that reminded Zac of the Collector’s maw. He was hoping to crush its jaw and perhaps cut off a few of its legs in one go, but a huge barrier appeared to block its whole face, if one could call a large vortex a face.

Zac only hesitated for a second before he infused the strike with the Fragment of the Coffin and swung with all that he got. He didn’t really fear the beast itself, but rather the way that it had made all the attacks just disappear, like it was conjuring portals to the void. However, Zac felt there should be some limits to an ability like that, especially when he attacked in person and infused the strike with a Dao Fragment.

The world shuddered for an instant as the edge of [Verun’s Bite] hit the large barrier, like he had somehow been misaligned with the surroundings. But his vision quickly turned back to normal as a large crack spread across the black surface of the shielding. Zac didn’t get any chance to celebrate or follow up on his initial swing though as the creature slammed into him with the force of a runaway train.

His all-out swing hadn't even stopped the creature in its tracks, and Zac found himself completely overpowered.

A fiery axe shot into his body from the distance as Emily boosted him with her Strength-improving Axe. Hundreds of attacks also harassed the caterpillar to the point that it was completely engulfed by a blinding chaos of radiant Skills. Yet those shields kept swallowing everything while keeping the Void Beast safe, and it seemed completely intent on taking him down.

The only reason Zac didn’t get slammed into a wall, or even worse shot through the corridor and into the Void, was that he hurriedly launched the four chains of [Love’s Bond], each of them turning into anchors in the wall or the floor to stop him from getting pushed back. The chains were able to hold him in place, but that essentially put him in a vise that threatened to crush him.

He gripped the handle of [Verun's Bite] with his second hand, both his arms shaking from exertion. But it was simply impossible to force the Void Beast Back. Its short legs dug deep grooves in the Memorysteel ground as it kept the pressure up, and released more and more of that pitch-black smoke.

The cloud emitted a strange pressure that made Zac feel extremely uncomfortable, almost like when he had pushed his hand into the void. Even worse, there seemed to be no limits to how much of it could spew out from its gullet. Zac didn’t know whether the creature released it to lessen the burden of normal space on its body, or if it was meant as some sort of weapon.

In either case, it was poison to Zac, but he was unable to extricate himself. He was just ten meters from the corridor leading outside, and soldiers were still streaming across the bridge and into the square. Backing down would mean those people getting stuck. But he also wasn’t strong enough to force the creature back in his current state, so he could only push his worries aside as he activated [Hatchetman’s Rage].

The air twisted around him power surged through his arms, and the painful pressure was no longer so taxing. Zac shoved at the creature with everything he had, and he actually managed to force the Void Beast back a bit. It wasn’t much, but it gave Zac the breather he needed to launch another swing, this one empowered by his berserking skill.

The barrier cracked like a mirror in an instant, and the axe bit into flesh. However, a sense of annoyance flared up in Zac’s chest as his momentum suddenly disappeared the moment it touched the body of the caterpillar, making his all-out swing look like a slight love-tap.

Zac quickly realized the attack was more powerful than it seemed though as the legs on the creature’s back twitched, and a weird distortion rippled through its body before it returned to normal. Zac’s eyes lit up when he saw that his attacks were working, but he didn’t have the opportunity to launch another swing before his Danger Sense overpowered the furor brought on by [Hatchetman’s Rage].

A crackling ball of pure energy had formed inside the Void Beast’s abyssal maw, and Zac desperately veered out of the way, barely allowing him to dodge it as it shot out like a slow-moving cannonball. An extremely powerful suction ripped into his body, and Zac's eyes teared when he felt a piece of his chin actually being torn off and swallowed by the ball as it passed through.

A bloody wound on his shoulder was opened up as well, but at least he had managed to dodge a surefire kill. That terrifying ball definitely had the power to crush him into a meat cube and swallow him whole. But Zac still regretted his course of action when he remembered that the corridor and his people were on the other side.

What if the ball hit the bridge? The Memorysteel definitely couldn't take the force that hid in that attack.

Thick earthen walls thankfully rose from the ground the moment Zac dodged as Rhubat and a group of Anointed conjured one defensive barrier after another in an effort to block the sphere. It thankfully didn’t move very fast, but it was simply unstoppable in its advance. Massive holes appeared in the barriers as the ball simply ate them.