Chapter 163: Who Is Your Young Lady?!
The corner of Ryan’s mouth twitched.
“Rex,” he said.
“Hm?”
“Keep an eye on your young lady.”
Rex froze for a second, then thumped his chest. The motion tugged at the wound at his waist, making him bare his teeth in pain, but he still puffed out his chest and declared, “Don’t worry! I’ll absolutely protect our young lady!”
“Who is your young lady?!”
Lillian’s face turned bright red at once. She glared at him, ready to snap back, but the mont she saw him clutching his wound and baring his teeth, the words that ca out changed.
“Y-you… are you alright?”
Rex grinned. “I’m fine, I’m fine, Miss!”
Lillian turned her face away and refused to look at him again.
Both of them turned their heads at the sa ti and looked toward Ryan.
That figure in dark gray was already walking toward the toad. He did not move quickly, but every step was steady. His boots sank into the mud and water with soft, wet sounds. The long blade hung at his side, the tip dragging through the mire and leaving behind a thin line.
Ryan walked forward one step at a ti.
The mud grew deeper and deeper beneath his feet, first swallowing his ankles, then his calves. The corroded pits blood across the marsh like black flowers. So were still smoking, while others had already cooled. He moved around them, placing each step carefully, only lifting his foot once he was sure of solid footing.
The toad was still struggling.
It had seen him.
Those crimson eyes turned toward him and locked onto him. Rage, pain, and sothing stranger still lurked in them—
Wariness.
It had sensed sothing.
Ryan stopped when he was thirty ters away.
He did not rush to attack. He simply stood there, watching that enormous creature as though he were studying a wounded beast, one that had been shot through by a hunter’s gun and was still thrashing in its death throes.
A body seven or eight ters tall, covered in knotted, hideous scales slick with milky-white pus.
Those crimson eyes were as large as washbasins, fixed straight on him.
Ryan drew in a deep breath.
He rembered what had happened just monts before.
The instant he erged from the forest, a golden panel had suddenly flashed before his eyes.
[Warning] Lillian Rosedale and Rex Holden have encountered mortal danger. Current probability of death: 65%.
He had gone still for one heartbeat.
Then he ran.
Wind and lightning Mana exploded beneath his feet without restraint, propelling him through the forest like a streak of light. Branches whipped across his face, leaving bloody lines, but he had no ti to wipe them away.
He had only known one thing.
Faster.
He had to get there faster.
When he passed a wind tunnel, he felt the violent surge of wind elent gathering there.
Syl’s voice had sounded in his heart.
“Borrow it.”
Ryan had raised a hand and seized that gale, twisting it into a tornado dozens of ters high. Giant trees had been ripped from the ground, drawn into the storm, then hurled back out.
He had driven that tornado straight into the depths of the marsh.
Then he had kept running.
He had arrived just in ti to see that tongue smashing down, to see Rex charge forward, to see Lillian on the verge of staking her life on that forbidden magic.
Fortunately—
He had made it in ti.
Ryan pulled himself out of the mory and tightened his grip on the blade in his hand.
Under the dim yellow light, the long blade glead with a cold white luster, like frozen ice.
The dragon-scale patterns etched along its edge were clear to the eye, each one seeming almost alive.
He raised his left hand, and flas spilled from his palm. Perhaps because of Syl’s Mana, they were bluish white, searingly hot flas.
They leaped in his hand like living things, like souls imprisoned for centuries that had finally found a way out.
That heat crawled up along his blood vessels, up his arm, over his shoulder, and finally into the long blade.
The blade lit up.
Bluish-white flas wrapped around it, coiling, leaping, burning.
The blade’s frigid gleam was dyed with the color of living heat. Cold and fire intertwined along its length, like ice and fla dancing together, like life and death eting each other’s gaze.
Ryan tightened his grip and continued forward.
The severed tongue lashed at him again.
Scarlet, still dripping blood, it looked like a dying giant python making one last desperate struggle. As it whipped through the air, it dragged a foul wind behind it, and the remaining barbs scread as they tore through empty space.
Ryan did not stop.
He charged straight at it.
At the instant the tongue was about to strike him, his figure blurred. Wind and lightning Mana burst beneath his feet at the sa ti, a dazzling explosion of blue and violet light flinging him diagonally aside like an arrow released from a bowstring.
The tongue swept past him.
At its closest, it ca within less than a foot of his face. He could even see scraps of flesh hanging from the barbs, could sll the stench of sothing long rotten.
He landed, then rose again.
The first wave of poisonous rain missed him.
That dark green pus-blood fell from above like a storm from hell. Ryan glanced up, the paths of every falling drop reflected clearly in his pupils.
One sidestep to the left avoided the largest droplet.
A forward roll dodged three smaller ones.
One hand braced against the ground, he twisted and sprang up to avoid another spray.
The poison splashed onto the ground where he had been standing only an instant earlier, hissing as it ate several deep pits into the mud.
He landed, then rose again.
Second step. Third. Fourth.
He moved like a gray shadow, weaving through the gaps between the poisonous rain and the lashing tongue. Every ti, the attacks missed him by the smallest possible margin.
Every ti, he slipped free at the final instant. The tongue chased him. The rain hunted him. But he always managed to slide through the cracks between them.
The toad grew frantic.
The tongue lashed faster. The poison fell thicker. It wanted to smash this annoying little insect flat, poison him to death, grind him into the mud.
Its body began to swell. The bulging boils along it burst one after another, and foul blood sprayed everywhere like fountains, covering the ground for dozens of ters in every direction.
Ryan suddenly stopped.
He stood on a patch of mud that had not yet been corroded, then lifted his head and looked at the tongue as it whipped toward him once more.
In that instant, ti seed to stretch.
He saw the tongue cutting through the air.
He saw those barbs glinting with a cold, deadly light in the dim yellow glow.
He saw the pus-blood dripping from its tip, tracing arc after arc of dark green through the air.
He heard the sound of the wind being torn apart, the toad’s heavy breathing, and his own heartbeat—
Thud. Thud. Thud.
He tightened his grip on the blade and charged straight toward the tongue.
The sword flashed.
That long blade wrapped in bluish-white flas struck the tongue.
Shhk—
The blade cut in.
The instant the flas touched the tongue, they exploded outward, scorching that section black. The barbs were burned to ash. The outer hide split and cracked, exposing the bright red flesh underneath. The mont that flesh was laid bare, the flas licked across it, and a sharp white smoke began to rise.
Dark green blood gushed from the wound, pouring over the flas. The blood was vaporized at once, hissing violently and producing an even thicker, fouler smoke.
A scream split the air.
The sound shook the entire marsh, made the reeds shudder from root to tip, and filled Ryan’s ears with a high, ringing hum.
The tongue snapped back.
Ryan landed and glanced at the blade.
The flas were still burning. Dark green blood clung to the steel, but it was already being consud by the fire, turning to smoke. Not even the smallest notch had appeared along the blade’s edge.
This thing feared fire.
He lifted his head and looked at the toad.
It was staring back at him.
Those crimson eyes no longer held rage. No longer pain.
Instead, they held—
Fear.
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