Chapter 137: Winner Takes It
The darkness felt like a chilled water pool. Something was embracing him with only a bitter chillness. In this darkness, only his isolated consciousness remained awake.
How could he have ended up in this situation? Where did he go wrong? Or was it simply because Nerissa was too powerful for him to ever hope to fight?
Anyway, he felt like he was already dead. Complete silence covered him, and he didn’t know what to do next.
There was nothing here in this void, so maybe he could at least reflect on what had just happened?
Nerissa was physically absurdly strong and didn’t seem to rely on summoning her beast. Because of this, he had a terribly hard time fighting her directly.
Nerissa wasn’t a normal tamer. She didn’t rely on summoning her beast, instead amplifying the Skill Share to draw out her beast’s full potential for her own physical body.
This part was deeply confusing. Normally, no tamer should be more powerful than the beast itself while using Skill Share. Output was only meant to transfer from one to a hundred percent; to exceed a hundred percent meant completely destroying the natural threshold.
So... it didn’t make any sense.
Not unless he started thinking about it in a completely different way...
Terrence suddenly realized a hidden truth: what if Nerissa hadn’t just used Skill Share, but had actually fused her beast’s physical body into herself as a living layer of armor?
...
Terrence’s eyes suddenly snapped open, returning from the deepest, darkest place in his mind.
Up on the balcony, all Five Generals had excitement painted across their faces as they watched the tide of battle change once again in favor of Nerissa.
But Terrence’s eyes were entirely different this time around.
What could he even do in a desperate situation like this? Sure, summoning two, three, or four beasts was a surprising and highly commendable kind of talent. But in the end, it was just that—a talent.
Against a pure, high-speed brawler, he couldn’t do anything directly. If he had a beast with lightning-fast reaction speeds and massive physical strength, he might have had a fighting chance to win.
However, if he hadn’t summoned such a creature yet, then he simply didn’t have that kind of beast available in his immediate arsenal.
Arrogant confidence was building up within the Five Generals as they watched Nerissa choke the life out of him. Silently, they were cheering for Nerissa’s guaranteed victory.
No one was cheering for Terrence.
"Enough..." Terrence muttered in a weak, raspy tone as he ordered his beasts to stop attacking Nerissa unnecessarily.
Their physical strikes weren’t even damaging her through her barrier; they were just wasting their time and precious energy.
"Finally giving up?" Nerissa smirked, her face twisting as she tightened her crushing grip on his bruised neck.
Terrence was once again on the absolute brink of passing out, but he forced his failing mind to focus, navigating his System interface in a fraction of a second.
"Sure... you are ridiculously powerful compared to me... but it is impossible for even you to break what is a natural law for tamers..." Terrence wheezed out.
Nerissa’s brows furrowed in sudden confusion.
’Don’t tell me... he knows about it? But even if he knows, what could he possibly do about it right now?’
Nerissa wasn’t even a bit worried, but in the very next second, she encountered something she never could have expected.
The overwhelming power surging through her body from the Skill Share vanished like a popping bubble, disappearing in an instant. Her tight, crushing grip lost all its force, replaced by the natural, frail strength of her unamplified physical body.
Her slender frame finally made total sense.
With wide, violently trembling eyes, she couldn’t believe what had just happened to her.
She stared down at her trembling hands in absolute confusion, frantically trying to draw back her beast’s power and reactivate Skill Share, but her efforts yielded no result.
Her knees slowly weakened as her overwhelming confidence gradually shattered. She looked up at Terrence, her expression shifting rapidly from absolute arrogance to mounting terror.
It wasn’t just panic—for the first time in her life, she was genuinely fearing for her survival.
"No! No! What on earth did you just do to me?!"
Terrence finally overpowered her weakened hands, easily yanking her fingers away from his throat. He shoved her backward, forcing her to scramble blindly as she took a few staggers away from him.
Her desperate retreat came to a sudden halt as her back slammed into the solid, rocky chest of the Stone Golem standing right behind her.
She froze, slowly looking up at the towering golem, then back at Terrence, desperately searching his face for answers.
Terrence gasped heavily for air, rubbing his red, bruised throat with the palm of his hand to soothe the sharp pain.
"That was way too tight. Were you actually planning to choke me to death?" Terrence said, his tone entirely flat. He slowly raised his hand and pointed his index finger straight at her forehead, a sharp Dark Slash forming around his forearm. "I guess this game is finally over."
"Wait!"
Terrence was fully prepared to kill Nerissa right then and there, watching her proud confidence finally crumble into dust.
However, a loud, panicked voice echoing down from the Five Generals stopped his hand in mid-air.
Terrence shifted his cold attention up toward the speaking General before slowly shaking his head.
"Can you at least tell us... what did you just do to Nerissa?" the General asked, his voice trembling slightly.
Terrence let out a heavy sigh, shaking his head once more as he flatly declined to answer their question aloud.
But he already held the brilliant answer at the back of his mind.
’It was actually quite simple. Nerissa was using her contracted beast as an invisible layer of armor and an active source of amplified energy. She and her beast were acting as a single entity through the boosted Skill Share. Therefore, all I had to do was deploy the Beast Net straight through her aura to force-capture her bonded beast, instantly disconnecting their link and forcing a temporary break in their soul contract. I didn’t know if it was truly possible at first, but that near-death experience certainly made the idea work.’