The Elusive Sorcerer

Chapter 139

The six of them, including the man who had been speaking to them, extended a hand with an open palm before a slightly cracked skull appeared in the blink of an eye.

Wearing a confident expression, the man smiled as he tossed the skull-shaped head toward them.

Just before the skull hit the ground covered with small plants, an explosion of white smoke erupted and enveloped all four of them.

Fwoosh...

Without having time to react, Aaron dropped the lantern into his shadow before trying to push the other three into it as well.

However, the smoke slowly dispersed with the night wind, revealing a creature with bright glowing red eyes in the darkness of the small forest, staring at the four people it apparently considered its enemies.

The man who had thrown the skull jumped down from a tree and landed right beside the creature before gently stroking its neck.

"There, there, there... Good boy..."

The creature's posture resembled a horse, yet it could hardly be called one because its head was covered by thick, soft dark-purple fur that glowed and mimicked a lion's mane.

Standing firmly on four legs, its body resembled that of an ordinary horse, except that only its bones remained. It possessed a normal tail and thick fur spiraling around its face. The creature, which was a jinn, snorted in contentment as its master touched it.

A Hollow with a contracted jinn.

He glanced over his shoulder and said coldly, "You can do whatever you want with them."

"Alright..." they replied coldly before jumping down from the branches where they had been standing.

It was Zavi's first time seeing such a creature, yet something about its appearance felt familiar and reminded him of the skeletal serpent that had once overwhelmed him.

'Damn. Are you a Receiver of Prisoner too?'

Zavi suspected the man shared similarities with him as he glanced at Aaron, who was staring at the jinn ahead with a tense face drenched in cold sweat.

"Sirius?" Zavi murmured, making sure.

Just as Zavi was about to look forward again, the jinn charged at them at incredible speed. Aaron immediately snapped out of his thoughts and blocked the jinn's attack with his shadow.

The other five naturally did not remain idle. Two of them, both women, attacked from another direction, with their primary target being Zavi Actitus.

Hana and Mine instinctively drew their pistols from their belts and quickly aimed at one of them.

Bang... Bang... Bang...

The gunshots echoed through the air, but all three bullets missed the three men approaching them from the opposite side.

From the right, exactly where Zavi stood, the two women attacked simultaneously with deadly smiles. A chill ran down Zavi's spine as he retreated and fired several consecutive shots.

Bang... Bang... Bang...

The two women moved with astonishing agility, almost surpassing the speed of sound as they zigzagged back and forth, causing Zavi's shots to miss in every direction.

'Where are they? Behind me? Left or right?'

Zavi realized the women were trying to separate him from his companions as they drove him away from the path leading to the businessman's mansion and into the small forest.

With only dim light and poor visibility despite being a Receiver, Zavi had to contend with thorny shrubs that constantly snagged on his coat.

He was forced to get out of there. Naturally, the two women did not make it easy, but he managed to deal with them and eventually returned to the edge of the mansion's concrete wall.

'That was insane. They treated me like a statue just to buy time while forcing me back here.'

Zavi decided to reunite with his companions, who seemed to be struggling against their opponents, and support them from a distance because he knew Prisoner was at a severe disadvantage in close combat.

Especially after the smoke appeared, supernatural entities such as wandering spirits and demons inhabiting the forest around the mansion joined the battle as well.

It was as though everything had been meticulously planned, as though they already knew one of their enemies was a Receiver of Exorcist.

Aaron fought while suppressing his exhaustion as he battled the jinn, its master, and the demons and wandering spirits that had made him their primary target.

'Damn it, I need a distraction. Where's Actitus now?'

Aaron fought with his left arm severed. Extraction was an ability capable of pulling out, separating, removing, or expelling something from its place of origin, whether physical objects, spiritual energy, emotions, shadows, curses, or supernatural beings.

Unwilling to become trapped in their plan, Aaron thought quickly, searching for a way to drive away the jinn that relentlessly attacked him.

A Hollow and his contracted jinn.

Aaron knew that to defeat both of them at once, he needed to separate the master from his contracted jinn so that the creature could no longer move as freely as before.

'Was the information Aaron Kwok gave me actually true? I know he was being hunted because of this ability, and he was dying after fighting a Hollow and his contracted jinn.'

Aaron thought as he expelled wandering spirits and demons without even looking behind him, keeping his focus fixed on the jinn while redirecting their attacks elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the plan he wanted to carry out proved impossible because the man immediately hid after summoning his jinn and was clearly waiting to strike whenever his target let down their guard.

Every time Aaron tried to pull out the jinn's soul, what he touched instead was the core of its existence. Unlike humans and ordinary living creatures, a jinn's soul and existence were fused into a single inseparable entity.

As a result, every attempt at Extraction triggered a spiritual tug-of-war, preventing the ability from forcibly grasping the jinn's true soul through mere contact.

Aaron clicked his tongue, occasionally glancing toward Hana and Mine, who were firing wildly at the people fighting them.

While dodging and enduring the jinn's attacks, he recalled Aaron Kwok's legacy once more.

'What a pain. No wonder he struggled so much fighting two Hollows and their contracted jinns.'

Aaron attempted to pull the jinn's soul again and again, yet every effort failed for reasons he still could not understand.

By extracting the fire from the lantern earlier, Aaron had at least gained some fortune while fighting the supernatural entities attacking him.

Tap... Tap...

Aaron dashed toward the jinn and pressed his cold hand against its forehead.

This time, he did not try to pull out the jinn's soul.

Instead, Aaron attempted to expel it.

The attempt succeeded as the jinn was blasted backward with tremendous force, creating a shockwave powerful enough to topple nearby trees and stir up a storm of dust.

The violent gust instantly halted the battle involving Aaron, the jinn, and the three men. Their attention shifted to the jinn's body flying through the air before crashing down and disappearing into the dust storm.

Realizing that expulsion alone would not be enough, Aaron immediately searched for the man who controlled the contracted jinn.

The moment he caught the sound of hurried footsteps to his left, a sharp grin appeared on Aaron's lips as he moved toward the rustling leaves scattered across the ground.

"Found you..." Aaron said in a cold, intimidating tone.

The man's face turned pale as he continued running, fear consuming his thoughts while realizing Aaron was preparing to aim at one of his limbs.

"I'm sorry, forgive me. Please, please don't kill me!" the man shouted desperately.

Unwilling to waste the opportunity, Aaron calmly pulled the trigger.

A barrage of bullets struck the man's limbs one after another, allowing fresh blood to pour from the wounds.

"Aghh... It hurts, this hurts, damn it..."

The man who had been so confident when he first revealed himself was now facing someone who had endured countless hardships and was fully capable of killing him.

Bang... Bang...

The final two bullets tore through the bones of the man's skull, leaving holes on both the right and left sides as fresh blood streamed across his terrified face.

With an indifferent expression, Aaron immediately turned around, allowing spent casings to fly in various directions as he walked away.

After only a few steps, Aaron stiffened when he heard a sharp snort directly behind his neck.

Aaron spun around instantly, but he was too late. A blast of wind slammed into him with such force that it hurled him back toward his previous position, causing him to bounce several times before passing Hana and Mine, who were still fighting, and Zavi, who stood atop a tree branch.

His body crashed into the edge of the mansion wall, producing a series of cracking sounds before the wall collapsed and buried Aaron alive beneath the rubble.

With a powerful shove, Aaron lifted the chunks of concrete and threw them aside.

The moment he cleared away the rubble that had nearly buried him alive, Aaron was startled when the jinn suddenly appeared directly in front of his face.

This time, Aaron managed to react by extracting the wall itself and instantly transforming it into a shadow barrier to protect himself.

The shadow shattered as something smashed through it at incredible speed, sending Aaron flying into the mansion building.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch, this is even more troublesome than I imagined." Aaron stretched his neck as he stood, swaying slightly forward.

Seeing that the jinn had not moved from its position because it knew Aaron would attempt the same expulsion technique again, the creature began analyzing Aaron's weaknesses before deciding how to kill him in an instant.

Before Aaron could think further, he appeared beside the jinn and thrust out his palm with a serious expression.

Whoosh...

The jinn's body was blasted backward once again, producing the same devastating shockwave as before.

Aaron bent over, breathing in ragged gasps, yet he forced himself to endure as he watched the jinn with his own eyes.

As a final measure, Aaron separated his own shadow before launching himself toward the jinn that had been struck by the combination of shadow and Extraction's expulsion.

Upon reaching it, he pulled out the venom from the box jellyfish that had nearly killed him before and transferred that venom into the jinn's body in an attempt to kill it.

Although the jinn reacted, the amount of venom Aaron had extracted from himself was not enough to kill it, and the creature let out an ear-splitting scream.

Knowing what might happen next, Aaron quickly retreated, uncertain of what would follow. He had truly run out of ideas for defeating a supernatural creature unlike any he had faced before.

'Damn it. What am I supposed to do? Kill the man? That's completely pointless because the jinn would probably make its owner ignore death itself.'

Aaron clicked his tongue as deep uncertainty filled his mind. Letting out a long sigh, he advanced once more and extracted fear itself, which required direct contact with the creature's physical body.

The jinn screamed with all its might. The sound alone was enough to plunge the remaining guards, who had just returned from investigating the source of the explosions, into overwhelming terror. Their knees weakened as nausea rose from their stomachs.

Not far from the mansion, Hana and Mine froze because they possessed no antidote from Munien, the Recipestele contracted by Mine. As a result, both of them and the three men collapsed to the ground, consumed by fear.

Several dozen meters away from them, Zavi still stood atop a tree, his footing nearly giving way as he heard the horrifying scream.

He almost fell.

Yet this fear was nowhere near as powerful as what Rhythm Mystical had inflicted on him before. Even so, that fear, tiny as a microbe, nearly killed Zavi for the third time.

'This is far more chaotic than I expected.'

Zavi watched the two women who had already found his location, but both wore dazed expressions while repeatedly muttering a single name.

"Zavi Actitus."

Then came the next words.

"I will get the money."

Even in such a situation, Zavi admired their determination, though his own condition was nearly as bad as theirs for reasons he himself could not understand.

The place where Zavi stood was not far from the mansion, which had begun collapsing after he witnessed Aaron fighting the jinn earlier.

'Where is he now? Is he alright?'

Zavi worried that Aaron had died in that attack after watching him chase the jinn toward where it had landed.

After being trapped for far too long within an invisible restraint, Zavi wished for only one thing:

That this sudden battle would not claim the lives of his companions.