Chapter 228: Three to one
Vacuse was happy. Very much happy! And it was because of a simple yet strange fact. In the past few months since he entered the Great Dungeon, a lot of people had tried to kill him, and although he had killed them back—most of them anyway—this was the first time he would be striking back immediately after someone plotted against him in the Great Dungeon.
Vacuse had missed his own pettiness, so he smiled happily at the leader of the Mistwalkers. "Three third circle Magus. Might be tricky, but you lot don’t have the power of the head supervisor."
"What nonsense are you speaking?" The leader with the bow growled, his eyes dark green like his arrows. "Surrender yourself, and we might forgive you for pointing a weapon at us."
Vacuse looked at him with amusement. "Is that so? You’ll forgive me? But why should I surrender? I can smell the fear in you. This is far from what you expected for your hunter team. It seems you have grown comfortable and lost what it means to fight."
The leader stiffened. "Y..."
Vacuse raised his hands. "Right now, Yukata will be trying to convince your enemies to attack your base. I don’t know how that will work out, but the guide said he would pull it off, and I gave him my promise to finish you here. The Mistwalker will be destroyed today."
"Why are we waiting? Let’s just kill him!" The Magus on the left said, his hand rising as a rolling fog of poison appeared, turning more liquid by the moment until the drops that fell hissed and burned the ground.
Without waiting for his leader’s command, he flung the attack, and at the same time, the other Magus did something that shook the ground and affected Vacuse’s balance.
Then the leader released his single arrow, which turned to three dozen in the air within a blink.
It was a superior attack worthy of a third circle Magus, but Vacuse wasn’t going to fight alone. It was a risk, but since he had decided to destroy them, there was no reason to hold back.
A beam of light shot out from his ring and resolved into the dragon construct mid-roar. Before the attacks even reached them, a concentrated beam of light appeared in its mouth, followed by a spinning formation.
Bam! Boom!
The very ground shuddered as the attacks collided. Dust rose into the air, and stones fell from the wall.
But everything didn’t go as Vacuse expected, as some of the poisonous acid from that Magus still managed to hit the dragon construct and even seemed to damage some of its enchantments, though nothing time wouldn’t fix.
The other side also got their fair share of the dragon construct’s attack. The stone wall that rose between them was punched through, and the earth Magus, who seemed to be planted solidly on the ground, got hit in the stomach.
"What an interesting start to the fight!" Vacuse exclaimed happily.
The other party didn’t think so, though. They were shocked to their core when they saw the dragon construct. Not because the thing resembled a vicious monster, but because the power that gathered around it was shocking.
"What is that thing?" the leader whispered.
Vacuse was much closer to the construct now, but the tunnel was too narrow for him to ride on its back to do battle as usual. In fact, his void creature, Sivan, would have been the better choice, but it had acquired some injuries from the previous fight and was still healing in the void.
He figured he would have to make do. A pity that the earth Magus didn’t die and was instead furiously consuming healing potions. But the one he found to be the biggest threat at the moment was the one with poison magic.
Vacuse’s eyes narrowed, his face becoming still and serious. He gathered his powers around him, and the corridor became darker as rolling masses of void energy floated around him.
Then, with a single push of his feet, a mighty jump that shattered the stone beneath him, he leaped forward like an arrow!
"Here he comes! Create stone spears while I use my arrow...!"
"Fuck! That monster thing is doing something again!"
A red beam of light shattered the air like a comet, heating it with its passage. It was followed by a deep rumbling sound as the stone dragon began to move forward.
The Mistwalkers panicked and froze for a moment as the sheer aura of the combat coming toward them pressed down heavily on them.
But then they regained their senses and unleashed their own attacks while doing their best to dodge the beam that seemed as if it would melt everything in its path.
Vacuse once again created his umbrella and poured all his power into it. Rith had told him that the technique lacked creativity and finesse, but he didn’t care. Maybe he would if he were fighting enemies closer to his stage.
He was still running when he saw the blaze of attacks coming his way, and there was simply no way for him to dodge them. With the dragon construct far behind, he couldn’t use it as a shield.
So instead, he increased his own speed, pouring void energy into his legs in such heavy doses that the ground shattered each time his feet touched it.
Everything blurred and narrowed, and by now he was already close to them, closer still to the rain of attacks.
He snapped his umbrella open and then leaped, turning his body into a spear and the umbrella into the tip. With that, he became a shooting comet, a dark one.
The Mistwalkers were shocked.
A third circle Magus running toward the combined attacks of three third circle Magus was stupid, no matter how much defensive power they had.
But it was exactly what was happening. And like a spear, Vacuse punched between all the attacks, the umbrella closing a little to accommodate.
And with that, he arrived in front of the bewildered Magus—specifically, in front of their leader.