Chapter 1114 (1/2)

“Lightning Blast!” Ezekiel yelled. A bolt of cobalt electricity forked out of his hand and smashed into the chest of a Bloodbeast Wolf that hopped out of the nearby treeline with gnashing jaws. It whined and stumbled to the side, giving Ezekiel the chance to follow up with a sharp cut with his ax, cutting the skull of the thing in half.

Fresh blood began to dribble out of the cleft in the beast’s flesh, which would eventually cause the Bloodbeast to shrink, but the real problem with these monsters was that they didn’t possess actual bodies. Ezekiel wasn’t sure how they were made, but the process certainly produced beings that were difficult to put down. If he could find the maker and Take those Skills…

Just as Ezekiel was raising his ask and working up his noise to strike again, the woman was next to him, making the sign of the cross and then pointing to the Bloodbeast. “Rest in Peace.”

The Bloodbeast hissed and thrashed, but the spot where the woman had pointed began to go black. Very quickly that black blood turned to ash and flaked away. Within a few seconds, the Bloodbeast had faded to nothing, joining the growing piles of ash that surrounded the two of them.

Ezekiel favored the woman with a sidelong glance. This woman is obviously important, but if I had these Skills it would make everything much easier…

The woman noticed Ezekiel’s glance and returned his gaze with obvious venom. Still, Ezekiel didn’t have any intention to make any move to kill the woman. With his Eyes of Avarice, an Ancient rated Skill, failing to read the woman, a lot of Ezekiel’s confidence drained out of him. Better to stick to Ace’s plan.

A gorilla Bloodbeast that was barreling toward the woman from the side was twisted sideways as she shifted smoothly to meet it. The woman rapidly destroyed its momentum and then she kicked the side of its knee so hard that the joint ruptured in a gush of liquid. The Bloodbeast collapsed and the woman stepped over the body to continue backing up the path to her cottage with Ezekiel.

That made Ezekiel speculate that there was a limit to the number of times she could use the Rest in Peace Skill. She certainly seemed pale and exhausted in a way that Ezekiel hadn’t noticed before.

Although it was destroyed in the short term, the joint was ultimately built with blood. It would quickly heal. The past ten minutes had been a harsh lesson in how powerful the man behind the murders was, and why he had been able to move through the new Zone with impunity. They likely would have been overrun if it wasn’t for the woman’s Skill and Ace’s nascent image absolutely overwhelming the Bloodbeasts.

“Is this really all you can manage?” Dauntless rumbled, disappointment clear in his voice. The black visor of the motorcycle helmet was a cruelly reflecting the struggling face of the Vulture Bloodbeast as Dauntless seized its wings and began to pull them apart from its torso. Compared to the intimidating wingspan of this Vulture, Dauntless was relatively small. He could only barely stretch his arms wide enough to grab both of the shoulder joints.

Yet Dauntless’ grip was heavy in a way that couldn’t just be explained physically; it was also energized by the power of images. That rumbling and sloshing picture hanging in the air above him made it so that even foes above Level 50 were nothing.

The Vulture screeched and thrashed as it tried to shake off Dauntless’ grip. But very swiftly those screeches devolved into whines as Dauntless physically tore off the wing with a wet thwak that sounded like someone pulling a boot out of deep mud. Hot blood sprayed out of the ripped limb, covering the surrounding area.

The Iguana Bloodbeast righted itself from the crushing elbow Dauntless had smashed it with a few seconds earlier and charged to save its companion from further agony. Dauntless simply glanced over his shoulder and brought his leg around in a vicious kick that smashed the Iguana’s face inward. Blood spurted out of the Bloodbeast’s skull and drenched Dauntless’s leg. Then the masked man calmly turned and faced the headless Grizzly Bear he had already decapitated as it staggered toward him.

“Weak,” Dauntless said simply, completely covered in blood and surrounded by the dying remnants of the lion’s share of the Bloodbeasts that had attacked them. “So terribly weak.”

Behind him, Ace’s image was slowly coming into focus. It came in fits and starts, but now that most of the Bloodbeasts had been dealt with, Ezekiel had time to set his feet and consider the shifting color in the air above the distinctive motorcycle helmet.

The image that flickered as Dauntless moved was a towering figure of iron-bound wood and brackish water. As he twisted and stomped down to smash the head of a lesser Bloodbeast that was creeping up behind him, Dauntless seemed to be a drowned ship in the sea at night. Waves of forced crashed everywhere around him. The world he inhabited was characterized by stormy chaos. And yet Dauntless was implacable, capricious, shifting, and dangerous. Everything that came his way was devoured by the infinite depths of the sea that surrounded, leaving him the only enduring entity.

Then there was a shift. The remaining half dozen or so Bloodbeast cried and began to limp back toward the creek. Ezekiel felt an ominous feeling as he looked down at the water of the creek and noticed that it had shifted to become completely black.

“Heh, about damn time,” Dauntless grinned.

Even as Dauntless stepped up to stand before the creek, Ezekiel was glancing sideways at the woman who was slowly backing away. “Stay. We cannot protect you if you leave our side. And I doubt that those monsters would have much hesitation to strike while you are alone.”

“Protect me? Is that why you attacked me earlier? To protect me?” The woman asked sarcastically. But at the very least, she did stop moving away. Reminding her of the threat was likely much more helpful to them now than trying to force her to stay with violence. Ezekiel held the woman’s gaze until she looked down at the ground with gritted teeth, allowing her hair to swing forward and block her face.

“Well yes. I never said we were gentle people.” Ezekiel turned around right in time to see a figure emerging from the water. To Ezekiel’s surprise, the man was extremely old. Although his slick-backed hair was still black his face was lined and wrinkled. His limbs were covered with liver-spots and frail-looking. Perhaps strangest of all, he was sitting in a wheelchair made entirely of bone, pushed out of the stream by a humanoid Bloodbeast that was such a dark red that it appeared almost black.

The man’s gaze was a pure, chilling blue. Hovering in the air behind the man, much more condensed than any Ezekiel had ever seen, was a vivid image of a wan looking man with a long black cloak riding a horse. As the man appeared, the rider seemed to shiver and then slowly look up toward the waiting trio.

“You are hunting for me.” Rather than annoyed, the man seemed genuinely curious. “And yet I could not sense it. You used the woman…?”

Dauntless began to laugh and didn’t even acknowledge the man’s question. “Ahahaha! This is too much… are you serious? ‘I looked and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named death and all the wild demons of Earth followed behind him.’ Certainly, your ‘horse’ is pale, but isn’t this a little underwhelming?”