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Chapter 216

The blade released by the woman, who was covered completely in darkness, moved in a graceful arc through the air, and as if it were a living thing with a will of its own, it returned to the woman’s hand, all the while spilling out a phosphorous-like, silver-white glitter.

It was fast. Lynette could clearly tell that it was truly fast, fast enough to cut the carotid artery of even a seasoned warrior strengthened by high level magic, and make them bleed out.

As the sound of the blade cutting finely and sharply through the air began to fade away, Lynette and the others also finished preparing for battle. From the shadows, Lynette pulled out an extremely rustic mace, Edward pulled out a custom whip made from the tendons and pelts of magic beasts, and Eliza stood in front of him while holding a one-handed axe and a shield.

Koura and the others were also done preparing. Koura, using his Perfect World as assistance, held a single small knife. Cacubus used her own ability, “Greed King,” to take all the magic power and other useless things around them, and transform it into power by absorbing ion particles, which created a battleaxe of darkness in her hand.

When Mace exited the interior of the Perfect World, he took out a rapid-fire bowgun with a quiver of 30 arrows, while Sheila held a single-edged sword, which curved similarly to a crescent moon.

Cacubus, Mace, Lynette, and Sheila, at almost the same time, all took a step forward toward the man and woman clad completely in black.

Even though the production area of the Tenkeiki was quite large in itself, since countless cultivation tanks were lined up, there was a high chance that a fight between this many people would cause damage to the facility.

The woman looked like she was about to throw her free-flying sword again, and the man gripped the shining silver orb in his left hand again, but in the moment that they repositioned themselves to attack Lynette and the others again, Dendrobium — Mace, now, activated his “Sight Jumper” skill.

Using this ability to make any object within his field of vision leap to any other point, he made Sheila and Cacubus move to be overhead the man and woman within a single nanosecond.

What caused them to react almost inhumanly fast to this surprise attack was not the bodies or conscious minds of the man and woman, but rather, the equipment that they had.

Sheila and Cacubus had both swung down their blades at lightning speed, but they were intercepted by the sword and orb, which left the hands of the man and woman on their own. The clash caused their blades to bounce back, and red and black sparks scattered in the air.

The blade and orb themselves had an automatic defense function built in to protect their users, and they were terrifyingly fast.

While Sheila and Cacubus repositioned themselves midair after their surprise attack was blocked, Mace took aim and fired his bowgun at the woman.

The bowgun, which can fire five arrows in a row, was loaded with magic arrows in groups of five, where the last four will automatically aim for the same target as the first arrow. The five arrows flew like shining comets through the dim light spilling from the cultivation tanks, but the blade flew out again to cut off four of the five arrows.

And then the fifth arrow was blocked by the woman herself. Since she was breaking into a place like this, she likely wasn’t the type of person to rely on weapons, but the way that she blocked the attack caught Edward and Lynette’s attention.

They thought they saw the woman’s arm wriggling around from inside her clothes, but then the fingertips of her right hand reached out and twisted the fifth arrow right out of the air.

Underneath her mask, the woman smiled proudly, but then that smile froze in place. Lynette was suddenly right in front of her, swinging her iron ingot-like mace as she slipped easily through the woman’s trained senses. She was already caught in Lynette’s range.

There was no mercy or hesitation in Lynette’s eyes as she looked at the woman. There were two thoughts in Lynette’s mind at this moment: she had to beat up this woman enough so that she could no longer resist, and she had to make her give up information, so she wouldn’t kill her.

「Hmph!」

Even though the mass of iron was swung down with such force that it made the woman feel like she would die, she still desperately moved to block the attack.

The woman’s left arm made a buzzing sound from inside her clothes and did “something,” causing it to grow two or three times larger, but even so, it only just barely caught Lynette’s attack. At the moment of collision, the sound of a hard object shattering resounded, and caused a rough wave of shock and pain to wash over the woman’s face.

「Your body truly is a mixture of human and beast. Your left arm is covered by a shell and scales. However, that is not enough」

In Lynette’s mind, she was reminded of the man who had cleaned up after Dran and the others on the day she first met them, the man who had gone by the false name of Yao.

As Lynette and the woman’s left arm clashed, the blade moved autonomously and aimed for Lynette’s carotid artery, drawing its trajectory like a living snake as it drew near.

Then Mace’s Sight Jumper caught it, and threw it toward the back of the woman’s neck! So long as the law of inertia is followed, it seemed it would be inevitable that the woman would spew freshly spilled blood, but the blade smoothly avoided the woman’s body and then attacked Lynette once again.

However, the blade which could cut through thick steel armor, was knocked down by Edward’s whip just in time.

The whip, with the tip crossing over the speed of sound, boasted a hardness that even the blade could not cut, thanks to the magical hardening treatment applied to it, as well as the robustness of the material it was made of, which came from magic beasts.

「Did I make it? Cacubus, Koura!」

Edward almost let out a sigh, thinking that he had covered Lynette in time, but then he noticed that the man was trying to use the orb, so he shouted the names of his trusted artificial superhumans.

He did not give any specific orders. There weren’t any, but Edward had certain faith in them, that they would take action, more than he thought they would.

「Hah!」

Cacubus’ dark battleaxe went to slice the man’s right shoulder from behind, and the orb spun around violently, barely catching the attack.

Cacubus’ Greed King, which converts all things into energy, tried to steal the orb’s power, but it seems the orb itself had some kind of protection on it, so Cacubus couldn’t steal as much power as she wanted.

If the man had defended against the battleaxe with his own flesh, then enough power would have been stolen from him to make him fall to his knees where he stood, but that didn’t happen because the alarm bells of his warrior instincts had rung.

Koura, like Lynette, had a single knife as he closed in on the man head-on. However, in the short distance between them, he repeatedly entered and exited the Perfect World, purposefully creating a blind spot in the man’s awareness.

「How strange」

The man’s voice spilled out from behind his mask, and a black, ink-like liquid spilled down his legs and spread across the floor in front of Koura.

The moment Koura looked at it, countless eyes and mouths opened all over the surface of the ink. The eyes had pupils from round, to square, to all kinds of designs, and the mouths were only square-shaped, some with teeth interspersed randomly, or some with no teeth at all…

At this unusual sight that evoked a certain kind of madness, Koura followed her instincts as an artificial superhuman, and immediately jumped into Perfect World, while also retrieving Sheila, Cacubus, and Lynette, so they could all retreat back to where Mace was.

The encroachment of the ink overflowing from the man stopped when it reached the point where it could protect the man and the woman. The presence of countless living things could be felt from the ink, and numerous hostile gazes pierced Koura and the others.

「Those people, they are very strange」

As Koura muttered this in disgust, the man and the things inside the ink didn’t lower their guard in the slightest. They must recognize Koura’s surprise attack through the use of Perfect World as a considerable threat.

The orb and blade that the man and woman possessed were quite a threat on their own, but their wielders were also interesting themselves.

They slowly made their way back to the entrance behind them, while they looked at the faces of Lynette and the others one by one. Their gazes stopped when they saw Edward’s face.

「The archeologist of Arkrest Kingdom, Edward」

「Oh, you know who I am? It’s an honor. It would be nice if you could introduce yourselves as well, but it seems your profession isn’t one that allows you to.

By the way, after all this fighting, I don’t think we can reach our goals by fighting you, and I’m sure it’s the same for you.

There may be a few problems, but I’m sure our goals are similar. So even if we can’t work together, how about we form an alliance where we at least don’t get in each other’s way?」

Lynette admired Edward’s boldness, but the man and woman’s reaction to Edward’s proposal was not good. Or rather, their response wasn’t really much of a reaction.

If the man and woman had been ordered to kill all witnesses, they would have tried to take out Edward and the others, but they should have understood from this battle that that would not be an easy task.

Edward concluded that there must be at least a small chance that they would accept his proposal, if they see it as a way to wait for an opportunity to take them by surprise.

Lynette also thought it was slightly possible, but the man and woman continued to slowly back toward the open door while keeping their eyes on Lynette and the others.

「…Let’s go」

「Yeah」

After the figures of the man and woman disappeared behind the door, the ink that had spread across the floor followed after its master, and retreated behind the door as well. Since Edward did not give the order to pursue them, Lynette and the others waited until their presence had rapidly moved far away before they got out of their battle ready positions.