Chapter 148: Worst Nightmare
Finally, Benton found the seventh wave at the edge of his spiritual sense, and he Quickstepped several hundred yards in front of them, placing himself between the beasts and the village. Immediately, he activated his Stealth technique and Quickstepped up to a branch of a tall tree, so he could get a visual.
He counted eighteen in the wave.
Perfect. Less than twenty as he’d predicted, and a reasonable number for him to attack on his own even given his lack of experience with beasts of that rank.
Time for some experimentation. First, gravity burst.
As he expected, the technique was not nearly as overpowering against the equivalent of a Golden Core cultivator as it had been on the lower ranked beasts. Instead of being completely immobilized, the creatures could resist the area effect but with difficulty. While they could crawl, they could not walk. They definitely could not run.
Benton had enough practice using the technique by that point that the strain of keeping it going was negligible, as was the drain on his qi pool. Worst case scenario, he’d consume one of his many spirit coins.
The next test was Chain Lightning, and as he had feared, it was almost worthless against the rank seven beasts. Well, worthless was only in comparison to the results he expected from his recent fights against relatively weak opponents, but still, he couldn’t just fling a few bolts and wipe out the entire wave. In fact, though the lightning penetrated qi shields and did damage, none of the beasts happened to have a qi aspect that was weak to the attack. Not only did all of them survive, but it would likely have taken dozens of direct hits to kill any of them.
He considered testing temperature manipulation as well, but he already had a good idea of how that would go. It would definitely be possible to kill the beasts in that manner given enough time and enough qi. That method just wasn’t helpful to him at that moment, though.
No, his best attack was the first one he’d conceptualized, the one meant for just such a scenario where he was fighting opponents of an equal or greater realm. He pulled his bow from his ring and nocked an arrow.
Benton didn’t consider himself nearly as good an archer as Yang Xiu because he hadn’t put in close to the amount of time practicing that she had. Still, with Chao Su’s training and Benton’s Mastery of both a general archery technique and a specific arrow technique, he was more than competent enough to hit a mostly immobilized target at a distance of a few hundred yards.
His Layered Variable Shield Breaker with Void Finisher had been created for just such a purpose. He drew back the bowstring and loosed. The arrow hit a Wind aspected elk right between the eyes.
Benton’s channeled Wood qi ate through the qi shield that was weak against that element, and when the arrowhead hit flesh, a sphere of Void qi disintegrated the beast’s head into nothingness.