Rick was panicking inside.
He exerted his strength past its limits, chasing the Faceless Reaper—while wracking his brain to figure out how it knew exactly what to attack. If it could sohow sense exactly where the special flower was, that would defeat the purpose of the patch of flowers across the bubble.
It was made to waste the enemy’s ti with how many replicas there were within the bubble.
But the Faceless Reaper knew exactly which patch to attack.
Slash!
Swish!
All phantoms, controlled by the Faceless Reaper, dropped what they were doing—and blocked Rick’s charge. Each one of them attacked with their scythe-arms. But knowing how bad it was going to be for the holy land if the Faceless Reaper succeeded, Rick forced his body to move.
He dodged each attack that ca his way.
Every missed strike quaked the ground, but Rick anchored himself firmly and kept going.
So of the attacks that ca too fast he parried, only enough to keep his charging montum alive, never breaking his speed. He maneuvered through more than a dozen phantoms that consecutively took turns to attack him with impeccable footwork.
It seed almost like he was gliding through the battlefield.
Nothing could deter him from reaching the Faceless Reaper before it was too late.
Clang!
A deafening clang echoed as the Faceless Reaper’s scythe arms slamd against the barrier protecting the patch of flowers from a vertical slash. At once, the trees encircling the patch of flowers flared with energy, their leaves igniting with radiant light as the array woven into them awakened.
Expecting such hardness from the barrier, it moved again.
From its Pouch of Slaughter, a bead of blood ca out and suspended right before the barrier.
The Faceless Reaper slashed again, angling the tip to carve through the blood bead.
Upon breaking the blood bead, splashing it back into its liquid form, sothing odd happened.
Ti seed to fracture.
For a fleeting heartbeat, the world slowed, and every droplet of blood suspended in the air shimred with an unnatural hum, throbbing with voidal energy. The crimson spray clung to the Faceless Reaper’s scythe-arm, sheathing the sharp edge in a living mantle of blood.
Then—an instant surge, a pulse like the beat of so monstrous heart—split reality.
Rick could see from the scythe-arm’s edge blood a perfect double wrought of blood, an exact replica that mirrored—the scythe-arm perfectly. Both blades moved as one. In the span of a blink, they turned into a blur and struck.
Not once, or twice, but a hundred tis in rapid succession.
Each ti it connected with the protective barrier, the air scread, and the barrier resounded.
It whimpered beneath the rciless barrage.
Once the Faceless Reaper pulled back, the cacophony of tal and force created one deafening clang, a hundred steely noises that happened so fast that it rged into one. A sound so sharp it even rattled the bones and split the ears.
Boom!
A shockwave of blood erupted outward, lashing the surroundings in a violent crimson gust.
Rick’s eyes widened completely when the barrier shuddered beneath the onslaught, and spiderweb cracks crawled across its surface. His heart lurched as once again, he still underestimated the Faceless Reaper in his mind, as he didn’t think the barrier would not be able to last even for a second.
’I can’t let it reach the flower!"
Gritting his teeth, Rick made another step and pressed the sole of his foot deep into the soil.
Blood and life energy rushed to his muscles as he blasted forward with all his might.
A minute ago, he was considering restraining himself so that he wouldn’t make his condition worse, but that thought evaporated when he realized the holy land was really about to be breached. As one of the noble knights, he simply couldn’t let that happen.
Bam!
Rick body-slamd the Faceless Reaper, knocking it a hundred ters away.
It braced itself for impact, but the force drove it back, carving twin trenches into the soil as it screeched across the ground. Regaining its stance, the Faceless Reaper fixed its gaze ahead, intent on finishing the annoying knight once and for all—only to find him already upon it.
His sword was raised high—the muscles in his arm bulged along with his life energy.
"Hraagh!!"
BOOM!
Grunting heavily, Rick’s sword slamd against the earth and shattered it.
Huge chunks of the ground were thrown skyward—from the impact, while the ground underneath him sank from the sheer force. It was a devastating strike backed with the raw power of a high-tier Master Immortal Spirit and hundreds of years of technique perfection.
So powerful that even the Faceless Reaper dodged the attack instead of taking it head-on.
Even it could feel danger from that attack.
Instead of engaging, the Faceless Reaper called for its phantoms as it backed away.
"No, you don’t! Raaagghh!!"
Clang!
Rick grabbed his sword with two hands as if it were a bastard sword and hacked the ground with it.
As opposed to sending the force coursing into the ground, he retained it within the sword and shattered the blade into dozens of pieces. Shards of steel sward ahead and circled around the area like a storm of tal, trapping Rick, the Faceless Reaper, and several phantoms in this do.
In the following fifteen seconds, it was a total brawl.
Rick charged with fierce determination.
A phantom lunged, its scythe-arm cleaving the air with a shrill whistle—the edge keen enough to shear through anything in its path. But Rick’s sharpened instincts prevailed; he brought his hands together in a precise slap, seizing the blade mid-swing and halting its deadly montum in perfect stillness.
Such a move shocked even the phantom as its body seed to tense for a fraction of a second.
Then, Rick twisted the scythe arm and pulled it down to his knee.
Brutally, he broke the phantom’s scythe-arm, forcing out a howl and spilling blood everywhere.
Rick grabbed the broken part with both hands, leaped, and stabbed it straight at the phantom’s face.
He managed to kill one, but blood exploded out of his mouth.
"Heurghk!"
From behind, another phantom swung and struck his torso hard.
Even though the top-tier armor he was wearing was strong enough to protect him from the sharpness of the scythe-arm, the blunt force still perated through his body, forcing his internal organs to clench as his bones rattled.
In that mont, his vision blurred.
He saw his own lifeblood crossing his vision, already turning an uncanny shade of blue due to the poison.
But a knight’s spirit is unyielding, unbreakable.
Rick bit down on his tongue hard, drawing blood, snapping his vision and mind to focus.
Snapping out of his daze, he grabbed the scythe-arm with both hands and hurled the phantom straight to the storm of tal shards. Its body was stabbed and hacked countless tis inside the storm, but Rick had no ti to watch as he raised his arms and blocked another attack.
He slapped it away and leaped to dodge a sweeping slash.
Blasting life energy from his back, he leaped onto another phantom, grabbed its head, and headbutted it with strength. Blood trickled down his forehead, but he kept going, attacking and dodging at the sa ti as he fought inside the tal storm.
For a good minute, he persisted.
At this point, his body was already weak and bleeding, but it was the sa for the phantoms.
Out of all of them, he surprisingly managed to kill three despite being surrounded.
But his predicant could only beco worse.
"Rrraagghk!!" Rick’s roar thundered as he ripped a phantom’s head cleanly from its torso, forcing the head to bid goodbye to the shoulders for good. His vision swam, his thoughts dulled, and his limbs were burning with numbness, but he still fought on. "If you want the holy land, you will have to go through !!"
Rick exhaled roughly and turned around.
His breath faltered when he found a blood bead suspended right behind him.
Like a shadow, the Faceless Reaper hacked its scythe-arm, using the sa move it did to the barrier.
In an instant, the cacophony of tallic clangs resounded—as Rick was struck a hundred tis in a span of a second. His chestplate shattered in an instant, and his diaphragm convulsed as a very sudden tightness assaulted his chest.
"Heurghh...?!"
Rick was blasted away like a rag doll.
His body pierced out of the storm of tal shards and bounced across the ground hard until the wall.
Reacting quickly, the land summoned tender roots to cushion his crash, but the damage was too much.
Even as he crashed there, he couldn’t stand up again, gargling on his own blood.
The Faceless Reaper scanned the silence as the storm of tal shards faded, a sign that Rick was out of the count—their fragnts raining down with hollow clinks against the ground. Now, there was nothing standing between it and the special flower.
All that remained after this was the slaughter of the people behind the wall.
Swoosh!
Moving like a blur, the Faceless Reaper roared and made one final slash.
Upon impact, the barrier splintered apart—and the fragrance of the flower patch spilled into the air, rich and intoxicating. Even the Faceless Reaper—despite the chaos roiling within its hollow form—paused to savor the scent, finding it disturbingly pleasant.
But with s shake of its head, it broke free of the scent entanglent and stepped inside.
At the very heart of the patch, there was a flower that stood out.
It blood like a wound made beautiful—the petals a deep purple, veined with violet light that pulsed faintly as if alive. Each curve glead with a wet sheen, while its dark tendrils coiled like pure obsidian thorns, guarding the bloom’s heart.
Despite only being the size of a rose flower, the roots were long, creating a bed underneath it.
Reaching out its hand towards the flower, the thorns lashed out.
But another phantom ca and got in the way, allowing the thorns to latch onto it while the Faceless Reaper grabbed the flower and plucked it. As soon as it was detached from the roots, the ground shook hard as if there was an earthquake.
The Faceless Reaper looked at the wall and saw the translucent barrier collapsing.
A phenonon caught the soldiers off guard.
Looking over their shoulders, the soldiers’ expressions paled upon witnessing the barrier protecting the holy land crumble. It had never been taken down for hundreds of years; the bubble survived a lot worse invasions, so seeing it crumbling was completely shocking.
But then again, unlike in the past, there were no high-ranking nobles around.
Most of them were occupied by the Voidal Monarch, the White Mask, and none could co to aid them.
Screams of despair rattled the air as the soldiers began to cry.
All of them who were in the middle of a battle and fought like beasts earlier cried like a baby, collapsing to the ground as they witnessed the holy land being tainted. None of them expected the situation to be this bad.
Like usual, the situation will be handled before it can even reach the heart of the bubble.
But not this ti.
First, the strong bubble suddenly cracked, allowing the voidal monsters to breach through.
Second, the invaders could glide through the first layer of traps.
And lastly, the invaders knew exactly where the special flower was.
It was almost like heaven was supporting the voidal monsters instead of them.
Among the soldiers, the one who refused to do Rick’s direct order earlier was the first one to snap out of his daze. Through tear-blurred vision reached for a talisman in his pocket. He activated it with his own blood and spoke to it, "Lift the bridge and evacuate the people."
As soon as he said that, the soldier collapsed to the ground.
His eyes trailed down to the ground, despair gripping him tight.
But even as a few seconds passed, the bridge was never lifted, which was odd.
He raised his head to look at the bridge, wondering why the people inside weren’t responding, but then, the closed gate made a cracking, thunderous noise before it swung open with a slam.
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