"There’s no need for that," I said, appearing behind Veyra and Drel, placing both hands firmly on their shoulders.
Before either of them could react, black ink surged from my palms. Death Root spread instantly across their backs and down their arms, the dark tendrils latching on and beginning their work without hesitation.
The chief’s reaction was imdiate. In a flash, he moved, his blade cut through in a clean horizontal arc, precise and lethal, but it cleaved nothing but an afterimage, as I was already gone.
I reappeared behind him, but the mont I materialized, he struck again, beams of compressed energy shooting toward from his palm with frightening speed, released as fast as I appeared.
But I warped laterally, letting the beams carve through the space I had occupied, and directed the black ink toward him as well. The tendrils lunged forward, splitting and converging, seeking purchase on his armor and limbs.
For a brief second, they connected, ink wrapping around his torso and leg.
And I thought to myself—
They’re done.
But much to my surprise, that wasn’t the case.
Drel reacted first, his form unraveling into a mass of twisting vines. The section where the black ink had latched onto him detached entirely, severed from the rest of his form before the corruption could spread further. The discarded vines blackened and dissolved as the ink consud them, but the core of his body reford a few steps away, intact.
The chief moved differently.
Instead of changing form, he did sothing far more controlled.
Mana flared around him—not explosively, but with precision. The energy condensed tightly against his body, and where the black ink had begun to spread, he forcibly expelled it by shedding a thin layer of mana-infused aura, almost like discarding a skin of pure energy.
The ink fell away, stripped from him before it could fully anchor.
I narrowed my eyes.
His mana manipulation was unusually refined—far beyond what I had seen from anyone else.
He had calculated the spread rate and removed it cleanly.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Veyra, however, did not possess the sa ans of escape.
The black ink had already spread too far across her torso and down her arm, and unlike Drel, she could not abandon her own body to shed the infected section. She tried to tear at it, tried to slice at the tendrils with her blades, but the ink only crawled faster, tightening and burrowing inward.
She scread as it began consuming her.
But what happened next caught even off guard.
The chief moved.
He appeared before her in a blur of controlled speed, and without the slightest hesitation, he drove his foot down onto her face with crushing force.
CRACK!
Her skull caved in instantly, and Veyra died before the ink could fully finish its work.
I furrowed my brow.
There had been no pause in his action. No internal conflict. No attempt to save her.
He had evaluated the situation in a fraction of a second and decided she was lost.
So rather than allow Death Root to complete its consumption and grant whatever I would gain from it, he ended her himself.
"Brutal."
He had cut off my gain and prevented from profiting from her innate ability.
Adding to my surprise was figuring out that Death Root could be countered.
Drel had escaped by shedding part of his transford body.
The chief had escaped by shedding mana with precise control.
It wasn’t a flaw in the skill itself.
If the counter was the expenditure of mana to forcibly expel the corruption, then the solution was simple—I could continue afflicting them until their reserves were exhausted. Once they no longer had mana to shed, Death Root would consu them completely.
In other words, they had escaped because I hadn’t committed enough ink.
"You..." the chief spoke, his golden eyes narrowing as he looked at directly. "Did you kill Jael?"
Ah.
So he knew who Jael was?
Co to think of it, Kharos always seed to stare at the black ink with familiarity when he first saw it.
’Had they once battled before?’ I wondered.
But Gork never told they had co into contact before, or was he not aware?
"Isn’t it obvious?" I replied to the question.
But that response seems to have pissed off soone.
"Damn you!" Drel roared.
Whether it was my response to his chief or Veyra’s death that pushed him over the edge, I couldn’t tell—but the rage was unmistakable.
His hands exploded outward into a mass of thick, reinforced vines, the plant matter surging and expanding as if fueled by pure fury. The ground cracked beneath him as the vines lashed forward in a wide arc, racing toward with lethal intent.
I used [Swap].
And in an instant, my position switched with the chief’s.
The surge of vines that Drel had launched caught the chief instead, coiling around his limbs and torso with violent force, the plant matter tightening as it sought to restrain him.
But in a burst of energy, the chief was instantly free, his blade shredding through the reinforced vines.
I had expected that, though. So before he could fully reset his stance, I hurled a massive ball of fla toward him.
BOOM!
The sphere of fire detonated on impact, heat bursting outward in an explosion, smoke and sparks swallowing his figure.
"Chief!!" Drel shouted, the fury in his voice replaced with worry.
But there was no need.
The smoke parted.
And the chief stepped out of it, armor blackened slightly by soot but otherwise untouched. The crimson inlays along his plates glowed faintly, as if they had absorbed the brunt of the heat rather than suffered from it.
I inhaled lightly at the sight.
Now this foe... might actually be entertaining.
Without breaking eye contact, I activated [Analyze].
[Na: Caius]
[Level: 72]
[Title: Drugar’s Chosen]
[Innate Ability: Architects Tyranny (S)]
An S-rank innate skill.
As expected, he was not a joke.
And his na...Caius. It was quite an uncommon na.
Footsteps and mana signatures began converging from multiple directions as reinforcents arrived, flooding into the courtyard and along the walls. Among them, I could sense several Chosen.
Eighteen in total.
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