Chapter 221: Greed’s Suspicious Behaviour
"FIRST DEATH!"
"CHEER FOR THE SILVER KNIGHT!"
"HELL YEAH!"
Fafnir listened silently as the people cheered for him. They looked extremely happy, seeing a fellow human completely crushed.
However, Fafnir didn’t share those emotions with them. Killing a person wasn’t something to feel so excited about.
Maybe that woman had a husband, parents, children, or friends, and maybe they had watched as Fafnir killed her brutally. Fafnir wasn’t going to show an emotion like excitement in front of them.
That woman had died simply because she stood in his way of winning this competition, not because he loved to kill people. For his master, Fafnir was ready to slaughter even dragons if he could.
He simply crouched, grabbed the woman’s core from between her crushed bones and brain matter, and threw it to the front of the gate.
’I will take it after I finish this stage.’
Fafnir couldn’t absorb the Cores of Existence and send the essence to his master anymore, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep the cores. If his master suddenly returned, he’d immediately absorb all the cores he had gathered in the past five months.
’Another one?’
Suddenly, tens of shadows attacked Fafnir at the same time in a dark world. After less than a second, he turned around with a flaming quadruple slash.
Slash!
Fafnir didn’t even see the person properly, but the man was already sliced into pieces, soaking Fafnir in blood.
Shadows of Future was a shadow technique that used Fafnir’s knowledge regarding time and misfortune to predict future attacks.
That was the closest thing he could create that was similar to Dante’s idea about seeing the future.
Due to the nature of misfortune, Fafnir couldn’t make an accurate prediction. Instead, the technique showed him the most likely misfortune scenarios and highlighted their possibilities by how dark the shadows were.
With such a great technique, predicting most attacks was easy!
At first glance, it’d look like an easy job for Fafnir. The people were weak, slow, and fragile against his attacks. However, it was more complicated than that because of "him".
Fafnir slashed his sword in the air forcefully, throwing the blood of his victims away. Then he looked at his side.
Adrian was staring at him suspiciously. He had not moved even a step and didn’t look at anything else except Fafnir himself.
That confirmed it for him... Adrian wasn’t here to win. He was here for Dante.
Now, his target seemed to have changed into Fafnir.
"If you want to fight, lunge forward." Fafnir wrote using flaming shadows, gripping his sword threateningly.
"Not yet." Adrian shook his head: "We will do it properly after this stage. I want everyone to see, unless you bring him here right now." After dropping a hint at wanting to fight Dante, Adrian stepped backward.
But at the next moment, a man with a hammer lunged at him with explosive speed—
BOOM!
—only to explode himself in the process.
Adrian simply pointed a finger at the man, and at the next moment, the man erupted into flames.
Adrian stared at the fallen body of the attacker indifferently. He swung two fingers upward, causing a pillar of flame to burst from the floor and swallow him completely.
For a moment, Fafnir had the urge to attack Adrian by surprise, but he eventually decided otherwise.
’He looks dangerous. It’s better to observe him first.’
Fafnir had only 60% of the strength of his master.
He was confident that his master was likely the strongest Rank 2 in existence, but Fafnir wasn’t Dante. He couldn’t be arrogant and overestimate himself.
Plus, Adrian wouldn’t be underestimated even by Dante himself, not after his disappearance and his suspicious actions. And the fact that Fafnir couldn’t use his demonic energy and silver Ether here only made it worse.
"Why don’t you use the mask?" Greed suddenly appeared and whispered: "Just wear the mask and start using your demonic energy. No one would notice."
Fafnir ignored Greed and slashed toward an incoming attack. Once his sword met the steel of a mace, he deflected it with ease and kicked the wielder away.
What Greed had just said was the most terrifying realization that Fafnir had a few months ago.
Because apparently, he could now summon the Greed relics, the weapon and the mask!
Yes, Greed had always had the ability to give permission to Fafnir to summon those relics, but he never told anyone about that. Not to Dante, and not to Fafnir himself.
It was kept as a secret until they were separated. Now, Dante had no way to know about that.
Fafnir almost summoned the mask once, only to confirm it then stopped immediately.
’I won’t fall for something as stupid as that.’
There was a high chance that Greed could see both Dante and Fafnir despite one of them being in the Abyss.
What if his plan was to make Fafnir take the mask from Dante at the most critical moment?
Dante would be trying to hide with the mask, and suddenly, the mask would disappear.
That was extremely dangerous!
And only Greed knew when it was a perfect time to ruin Dante’s day.
’I’d rather die than take one of his relics, and I’m not even exaggerating. At least I’ll go to my master if I die now.’
Fafnir charged toward the man he had kicked earlier and grabbed him by his hair. The man suddenly began to lose his vitality with a few strings of shadows invading his body through his head.
"Sto—" the man tried to escape and surrender, but he couldn’t continue his sentence.
After only a few seconds, he turned into a pale, skinny corpse and fell lifeless onto the floor.
As for Fafnir... his body was stronger for a temporary period of time.
Shadow Technique — Vitality Parasite!
A self-made technique that took advantage of the fact that Fafnir was a living shadow.
He used the Shadow Aspect’s nature to absorb the vitality of its targets and turned himself into the root of the attack.
That way, the absorbed vitality was directed to Fafnir himself!
Fafnir clenched his fist to get used to his new strength and charged toward the closest competitor at a blurry speed, leaving a shadowy afterimages behind.
The absorbed vitality was only temporary. He had to use it as fast as possible and absorb more vitality.
And everyone in this arena... except for two people, was his prey.