Chapter 525: Ancient Ruins Expedition 5
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
"Aaggs! Aaggs!!"
Amidst the loud howling, a lizardman in front of Garen abruptly collapsed to the ground, the huge red single eye on its face leaking bright red blood slightly, dripping onto the floor and emitting a strange rotting smell.
Garen pulled back his right hand, his face slightly pale.
In just over ten minutes, he had killed more than ten of these lizardmen consecutively, so even he had to be somewhat mentally exhausted.
Straightening up his body and leaning onto the wall at the side, he once more picked up his water bottle and poured it into his mouth, the last drop of water reluctantly dripping into his mouth, moistening his dry lips, and causing Garen’s heart to be impatient as well.
"Who knows how long it will be before I can enter the third floor, these ruins are so huge, much bigger than what I had expected before." He watched as the lizardman on the ground slowly scattered into countless black dots of light, and the darkness around him rapidly disappeared as well, once more returning to the previous backdrop of pale blue mist.
He glanced backwards, and it was nothing but faint blue mist behind him, misty and blurred, nothing could be seen clearly at all, the tunnel seeming to stretch into infinity in the mist.
Taking a sharp breath, Garen continued to make his way forth. At the same time, he took that red button out of his pocket.
By now, the black robes all over his body had already been slightly damaged, after so many battles, even he could not keep himself from getting the slightest bit injured.
This was a space where totem power did not work, and he was only left with his own power physical martial skills and his body’s attributes.
Pressing the button, he instantly heard the crackle of static from inside.
"Is anyone there?" Garen asked softly.
There was no reply.
He did not keep the button, but instead Garen kept it held in his hand, and while he continued making progress, he would ask again every so often.
The lizardmen appeared again, these were not particularly hard to manage, but they just had special fist-fighting techniques, and were also faster than before. Still, compared to Garen, that was nothing.
After gaining the Doublecast ability, he had basically tested his limits. His body could only tolerate three uses of Doublecast within an hour, the explosive power of this technique was extremely terrifying.
When he was testing it, just one fist was enough to break a lizardman in half at the waist. The top half flew out extremely far, and the bottom half still did not move at all. The waist part in the middle, as well as a chunk of flesh, devolved into scraps.
In that instant, this technique had increased the power of his simple fist swing to twice the original power.
But the requirements for this technique were also undeniable. It took a tremendous toll on his heart and muscle tissues, if the Dragon’s Heart weren’t strong enough, even if his Intelligence met the mark, he probably would not have been able to achieve this technique either.
Of Garen’s physical battle skills, the most dominating was his Ten Thousand Mammoth Battle Skills, these martial skills, based off the original Mammoth Secret Technique Battle Skills, had direct attacking styles, because the Mammoth Secret Technique was a strength-type secret technique, making its style also very simple and direct.
Of these, the four killer moves were the basics of all of Garen’s physical battle skills, as for the Sky Dragon's Crisscross that he came to understand later, despite the lame name, it had pretty considerable power, and was the fusion of the most brutal parts of his fighting killer moves.
As Garen kept advancing, he started to consider how he could improve the fusion Sky Dragon's Crisscross further, to form a powerful move using the explosive power of Doublecast.
For this sort of move where he instantly and explosively stacks them on, if he used extremely complicated moves as the basis, it would definitely reduce the power in some way, extending the usage time. But if he used a move that was too simplistic, it would not have enough power.
Then he needed to find a balanced middle point.
After advancing for more than ten minutes, the corridor ahead of him began to extend long black shadows again.
Out of habit, Garen stopped his footsteps, waiting for the black shadows to completely engulf him. After all these days, he was already very used to these shadows attacking him, at any such time like this, there would definitely be shadow creatures on the attack.
Standing on the spot and awaiting it with concentration, Garen could vaguely feel that, right ahead of him, a shapely figure was slowly appearing in front of him.
In the darkness, the figure seemed to be glowing on its own, its clear image reflected into Garen’s eyes.
Standing in front of him, was a seductive woman’s body with all the proper curves.
A skintight black leather shirt on top, a short black skirt that would just only wrap her butt at the bottom, revealing a vague glimpse at the scenery under her skirt. Further down, there was even the shape of long and round legs.
This woman had a tall ponytail, her exposed skin pale as jade, two pitch-black swords hanging from her waist. Most eye-catching of all was the black mask on her face, with a pair of bright black almond-shaped eyes on the top half.
Just the eyes and the skin, as well as the shape of her features under the mask, was enough to tell Garen that she was definitely a fairly good-looking beauty.
But why would a beautiful woman suddenly show up in a place like this?
The suspicion flashed past his heart in an instant, and instantly fell on the darkness behind the woman, there were more tiny footsteps coming from there.
Two identically-dressed beauties in short skirts walked out once more, they stared at Garen with calm eyes, the lifeless pupils in their eyes long since scattered, but they gave Garen the impression that they were staring straight at him, as the three of them slowly drew the twin swords from their waists.
Clang! Clang clang!
There were three clanging sounds, and three of them beat their swords together at the same time, as though preparing to attack.
"You three, still have your wills?" Garen could not help but ask, if they still had wills, then he could communicate with them to some degree.
Unfortunately, the three of them did not reply, and just stomped their foot, abruptly disappearing into the darkness, instantly leaving only their six black blades slicing through the air towards Garen in the dark.
The blades were not particularly fast, howling as they cut through the air.
Garen did not dare to let his guard down, after walking all the way here, he had noticed that his opponents had been getting stronger and stronger, so it would not be any different here.
His right palm pierced and flipped towards the wall.
Fwah!
A large piece of stone was torn off the wall and smashed towards the six black swords.
Garen quickly took two steps back, lifted his Tower Shield and shoved it forward.
The edges of the huge shield had long since been sharpened by Garen after these continuous days of use, and was comparable to the sturdiest war swords.
The edge of the shield met with the first black sword.
There was a flash of sparks in the darkness, a splash of fireworks from the clash between weapons.
The black sword was flung far away, wholly undamaged, it just spun a few times in the air, and was soon slicing towards his direction again. The other black swords took turns attacking the Tower Shield, leaving some deep cuts into its surface, and were flung out as well, though they returned quickly and continued their attack.
Garen brandished the shield, and knocked away the black swords once more.
Time after time, the black swords were relentless, every time they were knocked away, they would be completely undamaged, whereas the nicks on the shield grew larger and larger.
Garen frowned slightly, he had knocked the black swords towards the other black swords a few times, at first planning to harm the wielders of the black swords, but strangely, there was nothing behind the black swords but air.
But Garen had clearly seen the three beautiful female swordsmen before, and his senses could even clearly tell if they were real or illusion, with no chance of a mistake.
The black swords were not fast, neither were they very strong, but they just took no damage, no matter how hard he hit them, at the most he would leave some white marks on them, but Garen’s Tower Shield, on the other hand, was getting more and more damaged.
Garen watched the black swords’ attack patterns, movement routes, and the details about his surroundings carefully, over and over again.
The time ticked by, and Garen maintained a constant pace, knocking the black swords away time and time again, but the opponents seemed to know no weariness, sticking to him like glue.
"So that’s how it is?"
Finally, he vaguely noticed a clue.
When the black sword’s attack made contact with its opponent, its wielder would appear from a split second, other than that, there was no other flaw.
He could only attack the swordswoman at the exact moment the black sword hit him. And this instant was extremely short, just a hint of distraction and it would pass.
Once he had an idea in his heart, Garen instantly took the initiative and waved the shield as he advanced, forcing the black sword back.
In the darkness, the tiny bits of golden sparks kept lighting up, accompanied with the sound of clashing blades. Garen separated two of the swords away cleverly, and kept them alone in one area.
Psst!
Instantly, the Tower Shield in his hand split down the middle to form two large chunks, and Garen carried them each in one hand.
With two deep whooshes of the wind, one of the two Tower Shields blocked four of the blade attacks at once, while the other one smashed towards the two isolated swords.
The Tower Shield had a large area, just a light wave could take up most of the space in the tunnel. The black swords could not go around it, and had to face it head-on.
Clang clang! Bam!
Garen kicked out one leg, and a blurred figure behind those two swords was instantly kicked away, plastering onto the left-side wall with a bang, bringing down a rain of debris with it.
He could see that the figure that flew out was one of the women from just now.
After discovering the trick to it, Garen repeated it accordingly, and within two minutes, the other two women were also grievously injured and lying on the ground, their bodies revealed. The black swords also fell to the ground, becoming normal weapons.
The three of them were only average in their physical strength and endurance, it was just that ability they had to hide themselves completely that was very challenging, but it just happened to be countered by Garen, an expert peak-level fighter with plenty of fighting experience. Compared to the ability to control even the smallest split-second opportunity, no totem user could match the number of life-and-death battles Garen had experienced in the Secret Technique World.
The three women figures lay on the ground, but somehow were still breathing, after taking one of Garen’s lightning kicks, even the lizardmen from before were on the brink of death, what was more these weaker female bodies.
Garen walked over, bent down, and picked up one woman by her hair.
"Can you speak?"
Her eyes were wide open, but had no intention of replying.
Garen slapped her twice. After two loud smacks, she seemed to react somewhat, her tightly-closed long legs underneath her short skirt twitching subconsciously, as though she wanted to escape Garen’s control. But her seriously injured body could no longer move, that kick contained Garen’s shock technique, and had instantly destroyed most of the woman’s internal tissues and organs. According to a normal person’s body condition, it was a miracle that she could still move now.
"Do you have no will?" Garen frowned, and pulled off the woman’s black mask.
There was no jade-white skin under the mask, only a mess of blood and flesh, the whole bottom half of her face was rotten and dark red, she did not even have lips, only trembling rotting meat, as though covered with maggots.
The terrible odor made Garen frown deeply, this body truly hated intense stenches.
He looked at the woman from top to bottom, and suddenly tore off the woman’s clothes, with a yank, he revealed the skin underneath the leather clothes, this part was all fair and white, with a clean white chest cloth tying her breasts.
"So everything other than the face is normal?"