Chapter 256 : Vendetta (3)
Chapter 256: Vendetta (3)
The Blood Qi that flooded the area weighed down heavily on Il-mok’s body.
It felt like gravity had suddenly increased tenfold. Il-mok desperately drew internal energy from his dantian to resist the pressure.
"Gaaaaahhh!"
Apparently, the spell didn't distinguish between friend and foe as the last few Blood Cult warriors near Il-mok were crushed flat.
But those screams didn't last long. The men were completely pulverized, reduced to nothing more than mangled chunks of meat.
‘Crazy fucker...’
Il-mok gritted his teeth at the ruthless method of the old man called Third Elder.
Even now, the Blood Qi radiating from the altar was gathering toward the old man as he prepared to cast yet another spell.
As Il-mok realized the pressure crushing him was growing stronger with each passing second, he caught sight of the Ascension Sword humming with a low vibration.
Once again, without fail, the Ascension Sword absorbed the Blood Qi touching its blade.
Il-mok noticed the pressure had thinned slightly around the sword. He concentrated his internal energy and twisted his wrist, making the Ascension Sword spin in a circle and absorb the surrounding energy.
Vruummm.
The moment the pressure lifted, Il-mok utilized the Blood Qi absorbed by the sword to form a Sword Barrier to push back the Third Elder’s spell.
Whoosh!
Il-mok didn't waste the chance. He used his speed to burst out of the pressure zone.
To disrupt Third Elder's spellcasting, Il-mok swung his sword through the air in rapid succession.
Following the trajectories he traced, bundles of Sword Qi embroidered the air and flew toward the Third Elder.
"Heed my command!"
But the Third Elder raised his staff and chanted an incantation to form a Blood Qi barrier that easily neutralized Il-mok's Sword Qi flurries.
And that wasn't all. Countless hands suddenly sprouted from beneath his feet as if chasing after Il-mok who had escaped the zone.
He couldn't tell if they were ghost hands or zombie hands. Dozens of translucent crimson hands clawed wildly to grab Il-mok's legs. Il-mok had to swing his sword like crazy and keep moving just to stay out of their grasp.
CLANG!!
Just then, a loud resonance came from the altar.
While Il-mok was acting as bait, the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord had managed to break free from the spell and lunged at the Third Elder.
The sneak attack cracked the red barrier but failed to shatter it in a single blow.
Right then, a bolt of red lightning crashed down on Jeong Yeong's head as he thrusted his sword.
BOOM!!
Jeong Yeong must have expected the counter, because he dodged the lightning the second his attack failed.
What was absurd was that even during all this, spells kept flying toward Il-mok.
Whoosh!
Il-mok waved his sword to clear away a creeping mist when Jin Hayeon suddenly appeared to block his path,
‘This fucker really has every trick in the book.’
He thought he'd escaped the Formation, but he'd apparently been caught in another illusion spell instead.
But it wasn't perfect. Since Il-mok himself recognized it as an illusion, he cut through Jin Hayeon's phantom without hesitation.
Slash!
Il-mok himself didn't know the reason, but at some point, he'd stopped feeling any resistance to killing.
The reason he restrained himself from killing wasn't human nature or morality. It was closer to an objective judgment that something was changing within him. And that meant he could slice up his own friends without feeling a thing as long as he knew it was an illusion.
The image of Jin Hayeon vanished like smoke.
And as soon as the illusion cleared, he saw a giant fireball heading straight for his face.
"Oh, come on."
Il-mok immediately pushed his lightness skill to the limit and jumped high into the sky to barely dodge the fireball.
Thanks to jumping so high, he got a complete view of the surroundings.
He saw the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord darting here and there and the Third Elder chanting and making hand signs inside his shield.
'Is that... a body?'
And behind the Third Elder, right in the middle of the altar pit, lay a corpse.
'Don't tell me... that is the corpse of Blood Tears Heavenly Demon?’
The thought crossed Il-mok’s mind for a split second, but he quickly realized it made no sense.
The corpse looked too pristine that it was hard to believe this body had been dead for a hundred and sixty years. A hundred and sixty years is enough time to even turn the bones into dust.
While Il-mok was distracted by the weirdly fresh corpse, a giant ghost face appeared in the air to eat him.
It opened its huge mouth and lunged.
Il-mok dragged up every bit of internal energy he could muster from his dantian to form a Sword Force and chucked it all to the ghost face.
Slash!
A series of cutting sounds rang out, and the evil spirit's face scattered into pieces before dispersing into the void.
Il-mok had escaped another crisis, but his expression remained grim.
'There is no end to this.'
Every single spell the Third Elder cast was lethal. Casting such powerful spells in succession should have depleted his energy by now, yet the Third Elder was practically spamming spells.
And it wasn't hard for Il-mok to realize the reason why.
‘Blood Qi keeps flowing toward the center of the altar.’
At this rate, Il-mok would run out of internal energy and die long before he could kill the Third Elder.
As the old saying goes, fighting a sorcerer in their workshop is the equivalent of suicide.
But if he fled now, his companions might fall into Qi deviation from the Formation and die.
It was ironic that he was so worried about saving them right after slicing up one of their phantoms without a second thought, but he was too busy to notice the contradiction.
He could only focus entirely on finding a way to resolve this situation.
‘I can either knock the Third Elder off the altar or just survive until he runs out of Blood Qi... Wait a second. Blood Qi?'
A weird idea popped into Il-mok's head, and he quickly looked back.
There lay Beggar Chaser sprawled form.
He didn't know if the guy was dead, but it was clear he'd at least passed out from serious injuries.
After confirming Beggar Chaser's condition, Il-mok made his decision.
Pat!
The moment his feet touched the ground, he sprinted full speed toward a specific spot.
***
‘Worm-like bastards.’
Unlike what Il-mok thought, Third Elder felt like he was the one being hunted as he faced the two unwelcome intruders.
He was spamming spells using the massive energy at the altar, but that was a huge problem.
It meant he was burning through the fuel meant for the Grand Ritual.
The one fortunate thing about this was that new prey had appeared to supply additional energy and blood.
Third Elder calculated that if he used the Fifth Elder’s corpse, the bodies of his fellow cultists, and the corpses of the intruders, they would be enough to make up the deficit.
The Fifth Elder had died like an idiot, but his blood was still full of power, and the three intruders were strong too.
But his calculations were messed up by that masked bastard. Specifically, his sword is the problem.
‘How the hell does that bastard have a Blood Spirit Sword?’
Recognizing the object wasn’t difficult since he is an elder of the Blood Cult, and it’s a demonic item they personally made through their sorceries.
Judging by its strength and spirituality, it seemed to have absorbed the blood of well over a hundred people.
‘I’d love to torture the answers out of him if I have the time, but I have to finish the Grand Ritual first.'
The Third Elder remained confident. There was no way he would fail to kill two mere worms while wielding a near-infinite energy.
But that confidence was short-lived.
Seeing the masked intruder land and head toward a specific spot, the Third Elder’s eyes widened so much they looked as if they might pop out.
"You bastard!!!"
The Third Elder couldn’t help but stop his chants and let out a roar instead.
But the Third Elder’s reaction only made the masked man more certain, and he sneered as he plunged his sword into the ground.
And it’s understandable since he stuck one of the pathways that channels the Blood Qi to the altar’s center.
***
'Wow. You must have been starving.'
The moment he plunged the Ascension Sword into the pathway where Blood Qi flowed, the sword began greedily sucking up the Blood Qi.
Like a starving beggar devouring food, the Ascension Sword gulped down the Blood Qi frantically.
Il-mok found himself thinking,
‘Just because the ghosts are gone doesn’t mean it stopped being a demonic sword.’
Just then, spells came flying at Il-mok from all directions.
It was the Third Elder's desperate attempt to pull him away from that spot.
"Hehehe. Sharing is caring, old man."
But the Ascension Sword had already absorbed a tremendous amount of energy.
Il-mok circulated the energy transmitted through the Ascension Sword once through his body, then formed Force Qi and shattered the spells flying from all directions.
Then he plunged the Ascension Sword back into where the Blood Qi flowed to absorb more and rinse and repeat.
Countless flurries of crimson Sword Qi flew ceaselessly toward the Third Elder.
Every time he ran low on energy, he just plugged the sword back into the ground to replenish it.
Originally, Il-mok had resolved never to absorb the energy from the Ascension Sword into his body unless facing a life-or-death crisis.
But since this was exactly that life-or-death crisis, there was no reason to hesitate.
"Hahaha! Pew pew!"
As Il-mok shouted like a kid and fired off energy beams, the Third Elder’s face turned purple with rage.
At that moment, the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord seized the opportunity while Third Elder's attention was focused on Il-mok and launched a surprise attack.
BOOM!!
Once again, the Blood Qi barrier protecting the Third Elder blocked the path, but this time, a hole was finally punctured through the shield.
This time, the Third Elder immediately formed hand seals and blasted the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord away.
"You little roaches! I'll grind you up alive and drink your blood!!"
The Third Elder let out an enraged roar, waving his arms and moving his mouth like a madman to pour out spells.
But his opponent is Il-mok, who’d simply let his sword absorb the Blood Qi and reciprocated the barrage of spells with his own barrage of Sword Qis.
Meanwhile, Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord attacked Third Elder again. During that brief moment while Third Elder blocked Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord, Il-mok suddenly deployed his lightness skill.
He was not targeting the Third Elder.
The Blood Qi flowing through the spot where he'd planted the Ascension Sword almost dried up, so he was moving to another location.
Realizing Il-mok's purpose, Third Elder focused his spells on Il-mok again, but Il-mok had already started draining Blood Qi from another prime location with the Ascension Sword and managed to withstand the assault.
Meanwhile, the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord also grasped Il-mok's purpose and approached another Blood Qi pathway.
He didn't have an Ascension Sword, so he couldn't absorb and wield the Blood Qi.
Instead...
"Haaah!"
He swung his sword imbued with Force Qi like a madman and started demolishing that pathway.
One pathway completely dried up and withered. Another pathway was occupied by Il-mok with its energy being drained. And another third pathway was destroyed.
Third Elder's eyes rolled back completely.
"You sons of bitches! I'll tear you limb from limb!!!"