66 Confrontation (2/2)
The hunched-back man barely visible under the shimmering dark aura that surrounded his body shouted in a voice that sounded like a painful scream.
Hartley dashed forward towards the man, his short red sword which was usually in his left hand was now replaced by a a similar sized silver sword. His battle with the scar face man in district 6 had damaged the red sword so he had to replace it with one from his collection this was a rank 2 spirit weapon, a little stronger than his original red sword.
His fist clasped tightly around the long silver sword in his right hand as he emerged from the forest of smoke-like tendrils, he was now like a blue ghost with vibrant white tendrils of smoke rising upwards from his body, he delivered a wicked forward thrust. The cloaked man's shimmering body turned to smoke and change position as if he was teleported diagonally ten meters backwards and to the left, wasting no time the cloaked man fired a fist at Hartley from fifteen meters away.
Another black tentacle shot forward from his outstretched fist, curled and arced towards Hartley who had to activate his advance state of focus. Everything approaching Hartley was now moving eight times slower.
Sweeping the short silver sword in his left hand from lowto mid-left, the silver short sword imbued with zero gravity met the ghostly tentacle like lightning and with a massive clang the tentacle wriggled and was diverted to his left accompanied by horrific screams.
Blue lightning sparks crackled around Hartley's feet, his robe fluttered as he moved to the right leaving a few after images, the ground rippled again like a stone being thrown in a calm lake.
Instantly six more tentacles behaving like smoke erupted from beneath the earth sending big chunks of earth exploding outwards in all direction.
The intricate web of black tentacles created a mesh formation as they darted down back towards Hartley. Hartley's brows became slick with sweat in an instant, his eyes squinted into slits, he invoked zero gravity on all the chunks of earth that was exploding outwards.
The random chunks of earth that were all falling down back to the earth from different heights, started to float upward again, Hartley hopped onto the nearest one and then onto the other in front of it at a higher elevation, He hopped four times in the blink of an eye like he was climbing a make-shift stairway and hurdled over the mesh of black tentacles landing with a forward roll on the other side.
The hunched back d man couldn't help but be impressed by the quick fluid maneuver.
”Join me!”he exclaimed again with a shrieking tone to his voice.
Hartley paid the man no mind, before the big chunks of earth could hit the ground again Hartley used gravity repel on them, the chunks fired at the speed of light towards the hunched back man leaving a trail of wet mud. The man immediately turned ghost-like dodging to his left, the chunks decimated the trees off in the distance with a loud crash as the tentacles behind Hartley fell back to the ground like water,and smoothly retreated back underground without a trace.
Hartley activated a 30x gravity field a hundred meters around him entrapping the man as he moved forward in a flowing fluid motion, the man stumbled and his legs dug into the wet mud, for the first time the man's body lost the dark shimmer and looked more human-like even though his face was still just a black outline.
When Hartley was within ten meters of the stumbling man, three humanoidblack apparitions about two meters tall, looking like living shadows left the man's body and screeched towards Hartley with horrific wails, not hindered by the gravity field they reached and slashed out their sword shapedhands at Hartley's throat in the blink of an eye.
Hartley used minute movement technique to skillfully dodge the blurry slashes as he retreated backwards from the onslaught, He moved quickly to the left in a semi circle leaving a plethora of life-like after images trying to isolate a single apparition while the cloaked man struggled with the heavenly force pressing down on everything...
The opportunity came when one of the apparitions broke away and attacked, Hartley was waiting for this, he applied 20x gravity to his long silver sword in his right hand, took a step forward and executed a uppercut strike whipping up a gust of wind and dust as his robes fluttered in the chilly winds of the spring evening. Hartley's eyes bulged as wide as saucers in surprise, the massive momentum of the sword passed through the dark figure without any resistance as it dispersed like smoke and reformed to the side with a forward thrust of its own sending the swirling dust from itself and back towards Hartley.
Hartley left deep cracked footprints in the soft ground as he struggled to dodge to the side, the blackhand of the dark figure went through Hartley's fluttering robe, his clothes charred black and crumbled like ashes blowing away without catching fire leaving his naked blue figure scrambling away in fright.