Soul of Negary

“Hm?” noticing something, Yadley quickly left the area and hid back into the darkness.

“So I was late…” Chris arrived at the battle area from another direction, unfortunately, the only thing waiting for him was two cold, dead bodies.

The air was filled with the scent of blood and a strange smell of gunpowder. Chris sighed, glanced at the two burning balls of fire, then put his gaze towards the darkness behind it.

The dark-gold Bizarre Scales immediately leapt out from the shade of the tree, due to the wound it received by tripping, the creature’s speed was considerably slower. Chris easily avoided its attack, rolled next to one of the bodies, picked up a sword and slashed the air, all within a single swift motion.

As several black threads were cut, Yadley jumped out from the other side. The muscles of his arm blackened and morphed into a huge tentacle that whipped itself towards Chris, the Bizarre Scales also turned around and charged at him again.

As the black tentacle struck his sword, Chris immediately let go of it and used the momentum to roll along the ground, at the same time avoiding the Bizarre Scales’ charge.

Yadley’s right hand that had turned into a tentacle directly struck the edge of the sword and received a small wound about the size of a finger. But small black threads came out from the opening of the wound and quickly sewed the wound back to normal.

I used the [Black Crow] germs to devour and replace all the muscles of my arm. Due to the limit of the human body, one arm can only contain so many muscles, but Lord Negary’s blessing has allowed me to surpass that limit!

As Yadley’s body trembled, a huge number of black substances began to gather at his arms, sprouting several tentacles from his shoulder. Each tentacle was made completely of [Black Crow] germs imitating muscles, the muscle tentacles madly writhed and struck his surroundings almost uncontrollably. The snapping sounds made by tentacles were an indication of how terrifying the force behind them was.

Chris quickly stood back up, rubbing the numbness out of his wrist.

The force of that tentacle hand was easily as strong as the wyvern, if a human body were to take that head-on, they would most likely snap in half.

If I didn’t already notice and purposefully let go of the sword, my arm would’ve already been broken.

“You’re already more monster than you are human” he commented as he saw Yadley sprout the jet-black muscle tentacles. In fact, right now he felt that the main body of the man called Yadley was actually the tentacles, while Yadley’s human parts were more of a burden to him.

“Bizarre Scales, charge! Kill him!”

Chris took a deep breath and began to move again. The Bizarre Scales’ lowered speed together with the dragon powder he was carrying made it so that the creature couldn’t touch him unless he was careless, but that also meant that his range of movement had been restricted.

Two of Yadley’s tentacles propped themselves on the ground to support him while the others wildly attacked their surroundings. The trees that stood in their ways were broken in half, the buildings that blocked them were smashed to rubble, Chris was actually feeling numb from the attacks through the intense shockwaves they gave off.

Against such violent tentacle attacks as well as the Bizarre Scales’ unpredictable ambushes, he had to spend all of his attention on dealing with these attacks without a moment of rest. Otherwise, if even one tentacle struck him, or if the Bizarre Scales managed to get on top of him, that would be his death.

“Why are you still persisting, give up! The [Black Crow] germs aren’t like human muscles, they won’t get tired or feel pain, but you will soon run out of stamina and fall” Yadley’s body was basically being hung on top of the black tentacles right now. Since all the [Black Crow] germs that made up other parts of his body had been gathered to make the muscle tentacles, his body now looked incredibly malnourished. If he didn’t have the two tentacles to prop himself up, he wouldn’t be able to even stand up straight.

It was also because of this that despite his tentacles practically going berserk, their speed and range weren’t anything special, otherwise, Chris wouldn’t have been able to hold out for so long.

“Give up your resistance, Chris! You can’t even win against me, let alone Lord Negary!!” Yadley slowly declared it like the truth: “Look at your feet, Chris, you’ve already lost”

Chris was shocked. He finally realized that the two tentacles that acted as Yadley’s support had become considerably thinner. While a large network of black threads made of germs had already been weaved on the ground, with Chris inside it.

The black threads pierced through Chris’ pants and the skin of his leg, constantly spreading through his body from that opening. They restrained Chris’ movements as the thick muscle tentacles attacked Chris directly.

“You’re the one who lost” Chris exhaled: “Deep Rhythm!”

Yadley immediately felt a bit discomfort, but he didn’t care: “Chris, your Deep Rhythm requires time to accumulate. But you’ve only managed to make contact with me during the short time that my threads pierced your body. At most, your Deep Rhythm can only make me feel a bit discomfort, other than that, it won’t do anything”

“So you still haven’t noticed?” Chris used Metal Rhythm on his arms to block the coming tentacles.

“You let the [Black Crow] consume so much of your body, then gathered them all to form these tentacles, that by itself had already created an imbalance within your rhythm. Your current thin and feeble body is proof of that. Thanks to you being poisoned and your own body’s rhythm being naturally unharmonious, my Deep Rhythm was nothing but a trigger”

“Poisoned…” Yadley turned his eyes towards the two slowly burning balls of fire, as well as the remaining ‘something’ that the two dead bodies had been chewing in their mouths, he immediately understood.

“You’re already losing your powers!” Chris received the attack head-on, but due to the imbalance within Yadley’s body, his tentacles had become considerably weaker and slower: “And my counter-attack starts here!”

“Rhythm Stripping Punch!” Chris threw punch after punch towards the basically stationary tentacles. His Rhythm Punch could attack an enemy’s weak points without them reacting in time, while his Stripping Rhythm caused the body to produce an immense repelling force against the unharmonious substances within one’s body. When combined together, each of Chris’ punches had the ability to secretly send that repelling force into the enemy’s body.

The restraining black threads that pierced into his legs broke as he delivered punch after punch into Yadley, finishing with a punch straight into his chest. The repelling force acted directly on Yadley’s heart, causing it to shatter and stop beating.

As he found Yadley’s life signs to slowly fade, Chris braced himself for the Bizarre Scales’ ambush. Although it seemed like he won very easily, he had already burned through most of his stamina, if Yadley had been able to prolong the battle just a bit more, he could have lost.

He literally had no way to deal with a Bizarre Scales right now. The only thing he could hope for was that without its master’s command, the Bizarre Scales would not attack him who had dragon powder on its own accord.

After Yadley died, the Bizarre Scales became considerably more beastly, it stared intently at Yadley’s corpse. It inched closer and closer to Yadley before letting out a roar, pounced on his corpse, opened its mouth full of fangs and ripped open Yadley’s throat without hesitation. A small skin pouch grafted into Yadley’s neck was punctured, spilling out what seemed to be golden blood.

Still keeping his eyes on the Bizarre Scales that was immersed in licking the golden blood away, Chris slowly backed off. He managed to defeat his opponent here, but he didn’t know how the others were doing.

While Chris was thinking that, a flash of light came out not too far away from where he was. Within this shroud of darkness, the light was particularly noticeable.