Chapter 270
"You seem displeased," Lucious said politely.
Lucious smiled. It was a faint, immaculate curving of his lips that didn't reach his dark eyes. He casually brushed a speck of dust off his dark suit cuff. "If I turn this little fortress to ash and erase these noisy tethers of yours... will you finally show me something interesting?"
Rudra tightened his grip on Extortion. The pure white lightning sparked aggressively against the tough draconic leather of his gloves, seeking a target it could not reach.
He didn't answer immediately. He looked past the man in the suit, taking in the sheer devastation spread across his courtyard.
Piaro was kneeling in the dirt near the fountain. He was bleeding heavily from the severed stump of his right shoulder. The farmer hadn't dropped his gaze. He gripped his hand plow tightly in his left hand, his muscles tensed. He was fully prepared to attack, sacrificing his life if Lucious took another step.
Singuled was completely unresponsive on the crushed stones nearby. The veteran knight's dark aura was entirely burned out. The Beastmen chieftains were scattered across the yard in various states of ruin. Their animal vitality was the only thing keeping their chests rising and falling in shallow, painful gasps.
A heavy, suffocating knot formed in Rudra's stomach. The metallic smell of blood mixed with the dust in the air.
He had called them here. He had explicitly ordered Mumud to use mass teleportation to bring his core forces into the courtyard to handle the threat. He had relied on his numbers, confident that his guild and his strongest knights could manage whatever had bypassed his perimeter.
Now, they were just targets bleeding on his cobblestones, pinned down by a aura they couldn't fight.
He needed to get them out.
Rudra knew the skill [Mumud's Mass Teleport] as well. He had learned it directly from Mumud some time ago. He opened his peripheral interface, checking his resources. The mana cost to move Singuled, Piaro, the Beastmen, and the unconscious knights was incredibly high. Under the 99% suppression field, where his mana regeneration was locked at zero he could possibly teleport 5 of them at most
He decided to try it anyway.
He lowered the tip of his staff and pointed his left hand at the cobblestones. Faint blue sparks flickered at his fingertips. He strained, trying to force the ambient mana into the first runic circle.
Lucious watched him. The Devil Monarch didn't move to attack. He just looked mildly amused, waiting to snip the magic like a loose thread the second it formed.
Before Rudra could push the magic into the dirt, the air above the courtyard cracked.
It sounded exactly like a window shattering. Jagged black lines spider-webbed across the sky, peeling back the heavy red mist of the sanctuary. The oppressive, crushing red aura that blanketed the city was violently punctured, leaking ozone and raw atmospheric pressure.
Four people stepped out of the rift.
Rudra dropped his hand. The blue sparks fizzled out. He didn't know who they were, but the ambient pressure in the courtyard shifted immediately.
Near the broken barracks door, a Genesis guild member named Viper suddenly materialized, logging back into the game after a long break. Viper looked at the crushed cobblestones, the bleeding NPCs, the man in the dark suit, and the shattered sky.
"Nope," Viper muttered, and instantly logged back out.
Lucious tilted his head. The polite, pristine smile faded just a fraction. He observed the four new arrivals.
"True Transcendents," Lucious murmured. His voice carried a trace of genuine curiosity. "I was not aware this world harbored such a gathering of them in this quantity."
True Transcendants? Rudra thought quizzically.
The newcomers looked back. A loud man with a giant sword whistled. He rested the heavy blade on his shoulder.
"That is not a normal monster," the loud man said. "A clone of an unidentified Absolute? This trip just got a lot more tiresome."
A man in loose, casual fighting clothes took the vanguard. He didn't take a dramatic stance. He just walked right into Lucious's personal space and threw a simple punch with perfect form.
The punch connected, exceeding the exception of Rudra and, by the looks of it, even Lucious's. It cleanly bypassed the oppressive aura and sank into Lucious's chest. A tiny tear appeared on the Devil Monarch's lapel, and a single drop of dark blood rolled down the fabric.
"Huh," the martial artist grunted, sounding mildly surprised that it barely damaged the clone despite the hit making contact perfectly.
He pulled his fist back and stepped in to do it again, putting his shoulder into the motion to widen the opening.
Lucious didn't look angry. He just tilted his head. His dark, depthless eyes tracked the physical flow of the martial artist's fist for a microsecond. He was mildly amused that his absolute defense could be bypassed purely through physical martial arts.
Lucious simply raised his hand and caught the punch.
He mirrored the exact same penetration technique perfectly, multiplied the force using his own defence-penetrative skill with the divine and demonic power, and sent a vastly superior shockwave straight back down the man's arm.
The bones in the martial artist's arm snapped with a loud, sickening crunch.
He stumbled backward. His relaxed stance unraveled entirely. He stared at his right arm. It hung at a weird, unnatural angle beneath his sleeve. His hand trembled violently, entirely unable to close its fingers into a fist.
"Well. That's broken," the man groaned, grabbing his elbow with his good hand as he looked quite surprised that his defence penetration was copied and improved this much by someone else.
A man wearing a paint-stained smock sighed loudly from the back of the group.
"You always rush in, Ken," the painter complained.
He pulled a large, wide-bristled brush from his belt. He just painted a thick, vertical stroke of ultramarine blue directly onto the empty air.
The paint instantly liquefied. It turned into a roaring, physical waterfall that crashed down between Lucious and the injured martial artist, named Ken, washing heavily over the cobblestones.
Lucious casually sidestepped the crashing water. He looked down at his polished leather shoes, frowning slightly at the damp spots on the leather.