Chapter 242: Adrian's Wrath [7]
'Where…'
Fafnir didn't even blink. His vision simply changed.
He was still in an arena, but it wasn't the same arena as before.
This arena… looked like the inside of a volcano.
The floor was made of magma with floating slabs of dark stone.
The walls were made of the same dark stone, and several cracks in the walls burst with flames.
The place even had a ceiling, which was dripping magma continuously in random places.
The temperature here exceeded that in the arena. If Fafnir had lungs and tried to breathe, his lungs would have burned immediately.
For the first time since the beginning of the fight, Fafnir felt the scythe of death pressed against his neck.
'Where am I? Where are the others? What about the duchess and Anas?'
The most likely possibility was that everything was a hallucination, maybe made by Adrian's relics or one of his abilities.
Yes, a man with the Stone Aspect and the Fire Aspect creating a hallucination of a volcano made of fire and stone. It was very possible.
'But… my trait is literally supposed to resist mental attacks!'
Everything took less than a second before he was here. His trait was supposed to at least show some resistance.
"This place is real."
Fafnir heard a voice nearby, finally snapping out of his daze.
Adrian was standing at the edge, his legs sinking casually in the magma.
"That's your chance to switch. You aren't going to win now. No one is watching us, not even the duchess. We're technically still in the arena, but inside a subspace."
Fafnir's eyes widened at Adrian's explanation.
'Subspace?'
Fafnir knew what a subspace was.
It was like the place in which Dante found Greed's mask. It was like the Ring of Greed that could store various items inside it despite its small size. It was like how Fafnir himself turned himself into a spatial storage.
Clank!
Adrian clapped, causing a metallic sound as he explained casually: "It's called Wrath's Domain. With my current capabilities, it's just a temporary subspace that allows us to have a heated fight without any external elements."
BAM!
Without wasting a second, Fafnir charged immediately toward him, tens of shadow arms rising weakly from his body.
He could think about all that later. He had to kill him now!
BAM!
Within half a second, Fafnir cut the distance and delivered a punch with his draconic arm to Adrian's head.
Simultaneously, the shadow arms wrapped around Adrian's figure and began to absorb his vitality, increasing Fafnir's strength slightly.
"Hmph!" Adrian casually unleashed a fire burst from his body, burning all the shadow arms.
The next moment, he delivered an explosive punch to Fafnir's stomach, slamming him into a wall covered with magma.
Fafnir immediately jumped to the closest stone slab and checked his body.
"...!"
To his surprise, the force of that punch made a big hole in Fafnir's body. It wasn't the size of Adrian's hand, the hole literally left his arms and legs barely connected like the edges of an empty square!
"Haha, surprised?" Adrian cracked his neck and said: "Seriously, did you think that I didn't understand your small trick?"
"You absorbed some of my vitality, yes, but that didn't decrease my strength… because I never relied on my real physical strength to begin with."
"Fafnir, I have been using the Force Aspect since the beginning! Every single physical attack was simply a spell or a technique that drained mana and spiritual energy! The vitality didn't make a big difference. I just used less energy whenever I felt my vitality getting absorbed!"
"So here I am ordering you for one last time, switch with the other before I burn you to ashes. I won't leave anything for you to regenerate."
As he finished his words, a small horn rose from the side of his head.
His red mask that had three faces, furious and calm and sad, split into three and covered Adrian's head completely.
Segments of metal spread from his gauntlets and covered his body, creating a real armor with a flaming cape and dog heads on the chest, the knees, and the elbows.
And finally, four extra thick arms of stone and flames burst off his back, fists clenched and ready to fight.
They were made of mana, spiritual energy… and a third energy that was orange.
That same energy covered the gauntlets now, the same gauntlets that were never touched by mana since the beginning.
"..."
Fafnir's mind went blank immediately as his body slowly regenerated, struggling against the heat. He was trying to process the sight in front of him.
Three shadows.
A mask with three faces.
Three pairs of arms.
The pattern simply repeated itself.
The Stone Aspect that he hadn't used when he fought Dante even for defense. The woman was the one who used it.
The Force Aspect that was also used by the same woman who had the Stone Aspect.
The intense flames that were stronger than anything a Rank 2 could produce.
The amount of mana and spiritual energy that simply didn't end despite the number of attacks he unleashed.
Everything was connecting in Fafnir's head.
The orange horn that rose from the side of Adrian's head.
The dog faces on the gauntlets, the mask, and the armor.
And finally… the orange energy.
'He is… a demon.'
Adrian wasn't human anymore. Somehow, he got a bloodline.
Greed, Lust, Sloth, Pride, Envy, Gluttony, and Wrath — These were the Seven Deadly Sins.
And among them, the Sin of Wrath was shown as a three-headed hellish dog.
According to some ancient rumours, the Sin of Wrath loved to call it Cerberus.
Fafnir was never fighting a human. He was fighting a demon of wrath!
"Well, you're close, actually." Greed appeared casually in the subspace: "He followed you to the White Abyss. The change happened there. Can you remember what else was there?"
Fafnir's face almost paled despite being a shadow.
'It was… the mask. A subspace that had a fragment of you alongside other items you kept.'
"Correct." Greed nodded: "And do you think I'm the only one of the Seven Deadly Sins who has scattered relics?"
Fafnir finally realized the true identity of Adrian, or the new true identity, to be precise.
"Adrian's situation is close to your master's, ironically."
"Fafnir, you're looking at a man with two Wrath relics, a weapon and a mask!"