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Chapter 233: Fighting Late Immortals
🕑 Added 2023-07-14 17:32:47 +0000 UTCPeople keep getting confused, so I will clarify something. An inspection screen looks like this:
Species, Cultivator Level (Cultivator Grade)
Faction: Faction Name (Faction Grade)
Title: Title Name
The Cultivator Grade part is omitted when the inspector and the person getting inspected are of the same Grade. So in this inspection screen,
Treant, Level 197
Faction: Triple Helix (C-Grade)
the person being inspected is Level 197, which corresponds to the D-Grade, and they belong to the C-Grade faction called Triple Helix.
Also, just as a refresher, the Grades so far look like this:
F-Grade: Levels 1-49
E-Grade: Levels 50-124
D-Grade: Levels 125-249
That's all. I hope everything is clear to everyone now, and enjoy the chapter!
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Brock danced with the Animal Kingdom guards. The Staff of Stone glided around him, its weight perfectly balanced as it tore into calves and elbows, heads and knees.
He wasn’t too experienced in battle, but he possessed more than enough strength to make up for it. His body was covered in well-toned muscles. Every time he swung, people went flying. Their weapons couldn’t reach him, and if they did, he would just clench his skin muscles to avoid any serious injuries.
“Brock Smash!” he shouted, bringing his staff down on a guard’s helmet. He fell asleep.
“Get the monkey!” Two other guards shouted, rushing for him, but Brock didn’t even look their way. A bald, muscular woman and a lithe man appeared to block them—she wore iron gauntlets, while he wielded a polished saber.
“Leave our bro alone!” they shouted—Brock and Guitar Bro had already educated them on the proper terminology.
The two former prisoners clashed with the two guards. All four of them were strong—at least as strong as Brock. He watched as they exchanged strikes but did not worry; they were his cage bros. Of course they would win.
After the cage bros had found a chest with their weapons, the camp had collapsed into a terrible battle. Brock was leading the charge, strong enough to defeat any weaklings and hold his ground against the stronger guards. Only a couple of them were decisively stronger than him, but there were similarly strong cage bros who had his back, allowing Brock to go bananas on the other guards.
Thanks to the cage bros’ resentment and berserk fighting, they were slowly but surely winning. A harsh melody came from the back, where Guitar Bro was going nuts on his guitar, and a phantasmal gate to hell had appeared over his head, spewing black mist. There was even a large red hand slowly emerging.
As for Brock, this was the first time in his life that he got into a proper large-scale battle—he found it very fun.
***
Jack observed his two opponents. One was the female centaur warden of the Animal Kingdom, who was in bad shape from his previous beating but could still fight. The other was Torm, the treant bounty hunter who was still fresh as a daisy.
One was Level 210, the other Level 197. Jack was 132.
The centaur started laughing. “You played yourself, Jack Rust! Join me, bounty hunter, and you can get the entire bounty. I just want my superiors to know I helped.”
The treant smiled. “Deal.”
Jack’s hopes of these two infighting were dashed. He couldn’t retreat either, as Brock and Vanderdecken were still down there. All he could do was fight them both, and hope for the best.
If worse came to worst, he could just use his Life Drop and hope nothing bad happened…though that would open an entirely new can of worms.
Jack readied himself. His purple aura flared to life, shrouding him in spectral flames formed of sheer willpower. His eyes narrowed. “Come!” he commanded, and the two immortals charged him.
The treant’s limbs morphed into vines. The hand of bark that Jack had once shaken was now a gigantic vine, growing through the air to spear him. Two more awaited at the treant’s legs, ready to assault him at the first opening.
The centaur was actually charging ahead of the treant. She knew Jack couldn’t destroy her in one blow, so she aimed to just disorient him by flooding him with pain. A sadistic smile adorned her blood-covered face, and all four of her legs galloped through the air to reach him faster.
Jack considered his two opponents coldly. Since he was on the weaker end, he had to fight wildly. He clenched his fists.
“SUFFER!” The centaur screamed as she reached him, thrusting her spear forward. A black aura shone on its tip. A vine came from behind her and above, seeking to impale Jack’s torso. The treant was clearly experienced—if he’d gone for the head, Jack could have dodged the attack, but now he was forced to block.
Or take it.
Unfortunately, the attacks came in sync, and he couldn’t deal with both of them at the same time. His punch struck the spear tip, sending it and its wielder flying away as the vine struck Jack’s chest, piercing shallowly into the skin. The Neutron Star Body, Jack’s defensive skill, was strained to its limit.
He caught the flicker of surprise on the treant’s face as the vine didn’t reach his organs, but that was all he had time to see. The vine hadn’t stopped growing. Instead, it accelerated, pushing Jack along as it sought to nail him into the ground. If that happened, he would be cleanly skewered.
He was falling at extreme speed. With no time to think, he grabbed the vine and pushed himself away from it, then flew sideways to barely escape its trajectory. The vine kept going. A fraction of a second later, he heard it crash into the ground, embedding itself deep inside the rock.
The power of that vine was no joke.
The centaur was on him again. With a wailing sound that upset his heart and shook his mind, she threw her spear at him. It fell like a dark comet. Jack twirled himself in the air, barely dodging the attack, but even being in the vicinity of that speartip made him feel like he was burned alive. He howled in pain.
“Suffer!” the centaur cried out again, licking the blood from her lips. “Oh, I’ll enjoy this!”
Jack felt his fury rise. This woman wasn’t causing him any fear—only an urge to fight back. Two vines were crashing down from the sky, one coming from the left and one from the right, but he ignored them.
“You think you’re scary?” he asked the centaur. “Let me show you real terror.”
He stepped through space to appear behind her. The vines tore through empty air where he used to stand, and it took the centaur a moment to realize what had happened.
“Teleportation!” the treant’s shocked voice came from higher up in the sky, but Jack was completely focused on his soon-to-be victim. He didn’t strike out right away. Rather, he invested all of his focus into activating Brutalizing Aura, the skill of terror he had inherited from his previous Class, Fiend of the Iron Fist.
Instantly, the air around him was dyed in the color of blood. Jack’s hair fluttered in the wind as his form was covered in darkness, leaving only his eyes shining red. Tendrils of shadow reached down to lay on the centaur, who tried to fight them off, but they were incorporeal.
Jack channeled his twin understanding of Power and Weakness. With the power gap between the two of them, he was in absolute control of her fate. But he wouldn’t just kill her; he would brutalize her. She would die in gore and iron.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
The centaur’s Dao of Pain rose to shield her soul. Unfortunately, not only was it weaker than Jack’s Dao, it was also the completely wrong Dao to defend against this kind of attack. Its resistances melted under the pressure of Jack’s Brutalizing Aura, and all it achieved was to enhance the pain of her eventual defeat.
The centaur’s Dao Domain had been activated at some point. So had Jack’s. It crushed down on her, and as her resolve wavered, her Domain shattered, crushed under the iron grip of the Fist. The centaur was left holding her head in her hands and wailing for mercy.
Jack wasn’t an idiot to let an enemy go—much less an enemy with such a twisted Dao.
He punched her in the face and nailed her into the ground far below, cracking the rocks and forming a crater. Without the protection of her Dao, her defenses had fallen—her head now lay broken in the center of the crater, dead beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Level-up! You have reached Level 133.
Level-up! You have reached Level 134.
Level-up! You have reached Level 135.
Level-up! You have reached Level 136.
Jack turned to regard the treant, panting but wrathful. “So, you want my head,” he said darkly. “Come take it, if you dare.”
The treant clearly didn’t dare. His gaze was filled with apprehension, and his eyes scanned the area widely in search of something he could use. Unfortunately, there was nothing—and, given the teleportation skill that Jack had just exhibited, he couldn’t escape, either.
“Let’s forget about this,” he tried. “I only scratched your skin. Let bygones be bygones, and I can offer you—”
Jack’s laughter interrupted him. “When you thought I was weak, you didn’t hesitate to attack me and even glower about it. Now that you can no longer bully me, you want to just leave like nothing happened? As if! No, Torm; you started this fight. You will finish it.”
Torm gritted his teeth. Escape was not an option, as he clearly didn’t specialize in speed, and neither was negotiation. All he could do was fight.
“Don’t force my hand!” he roared, pulling out a glowing green vial from his pocket. One of his vines had turned back into an arm at some point. “I don’t want to use this here, but you will die if I do! This is your last chance! Let the matter drop!”
“Fuck you! If I don’t kill you today, I am no man!”
Torm was a decisive individual. Seeing that Jack wasn’t budging, he popped off the vial’s cork with his thumb and gulped it down. Instantly, he doubled over in pain. Green veins appeared under his bark skin, pulsing like flames.
In the next moment, a green aura that almost seemed alive erupted from his body. It stretched for miles around. The miasmic clouds were dispersed, revealing a dark sky interspersed with stars. Torm hovered in the middle of it, staring down Jack with the might of a God. Green fire slithered out from under his skin, like his innards were on fire, but the intense power he radiated was an entire tier higher than it used to be.
“You made me do this!” he shouted. “Now, die!”
The air exploded in rings as Torm dove down, reaching Jack in an instant. His domain shrouded them both. Jack’s domain rose to resist, but it was suppressed to a five-foot radius around his body, like someone trying to punch a forest wildfire and having to retreat.
Torm’s charge carried a desperate air about it. He was like a cornered animal, or someone who had nothing to lose. His newly-gained power was quickly evaporating; by the time he reached Jack, only ninety percent remained. It was clear that whatever he had used was really burning his body from the inside.
But that didn’t make his attack any less terrifying. In the instant before Torm arrived, Jack realized that maybe he should have activated his Life Drop already, but it was too late. There was no way he could dodge in time. He tried using Space Walk, but even space was locked down by the other man’s domain, making his skill useless.
The treant was upon him. Both arms stretched into vines, which crashed down like columns from the sky. Torm howled.
Jack set his jaw. If there was no way out, he could only go forward. A purple aura flared in the green. It couldn’t absorb the sounds and colors, but Jack poured all his remaining power into it, birthing a purple sun that could momentarily rival the real one in brightness. This punch was so strong that Jack could barely control it—the most powerful strike he had ever unleashed.
He shot it forth. His punch instantly reached a tremendous speed, meeting the vines at the very apex of its trajectory. A purple tail blossomed behind it, showering the world with stars.
“VINE DESCENT!” Torm shouted.
“METEOR PUNCH!”
The point of impact exploded. Green and purple flames spread across the sky, filling it for miles in all directions. Jack’s face and chest were burned from the shockwave. All bones in his arm cracked. His fist was completely mangled. The vines broke and burned away, revealing a stunned Torm who was launched away from the explosion and into the sky, spitting out a long line of green blood.
A booming sound followed, spreading across the sky as a sphere of visible shockwave, tearing into the rock below and carving it like a scythe. Jack remained anchored in the center of the explosion, crossing his arms before his head to protect himself. The pain was tremendous, both from his ruined arm, as well as his burnt face and chest.
But he remained, while Torm was gone. He had won the exchange. The battle, too. With the rate of burning in Torm’s body, there was no way he was up for another round, even if he wasn’t dead already—which he probably was.
Level-up! You have reached Level 137.
Level-up! You have reached Level 138.
Level-up! You have reached Level 139.
Scratch that—he definitely was dead.
Jack had fought two high-level immortals and won. The power he had exhibited, the victory he had achieved… He raised his other fist into the air and roared in triumph.
Gone were the days of his weakness. Now, he was strong enough to take on the world and win. He was strong enough to go to war.
He was a true immortal. And let the hearts of his enemies swim in fear, because he was coming for them, and there was nothing they could do about it.
Comments
Vortozan
Loved it, thank you for the read! Can’t wait to see where you take us next 🎉
Monadologist
It is nice to see him cut loose a bit though. He went through hell on the Trial planet and is way more advanced than anyone expected him to be at this stage, so it only stands to reason that the folks sent off to bring him in would be at least temporarily, until they recalibrate, under-powered to be able to stop him. If you never see him curbstomp someone this eventually becomes the usual cultivation grind of being overpowered but always for some reason being the underdog in every single situation.
Firinen
I hope you intend for the two slain enemies to only be weaklings in the multiverse who wouldn't have reached C Grade either way. He needs some perspective for there will be stronger enemies at a similar level who even when they are no Lords or Elites, will challenge Jack much more with their level disparity.
