Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 850: Popcorn [GT Ranking Bonus Chapter]

"You good?" Asher asked, as he knew Teo had lost Vitality Points.

"I’m fine," Teo replied with a sigh.

He couldn’t help but shake his head. ’Taking on a Grave-class Monster or a Rank 6 Emovira isn’t an easy feat,’ he thought to himself as he knew he wouldn’t have been able to defeat the Monster by himself if Asher hadn’t interfered.

Although the Rank 6 Shadow Assassin and this Grave-class Monster were on the same level of scaling, they certainly didn’t possess the same level of power. Teo Swig had been able to keep up with the Rank 6 Shadow Assassin, but this Grave-class bird Monster was on an entirely different level despite sharing the same rank.

Before Asher could even speak, over a thousand flaming feathers shot toward them with blazing speed, aiming to impale them before exploding upon contact. But Asher simply snapped his fingers, and a portal tore open, swallowing the entire attack. Another portal opened half a kilometre away in the sky, and the redirected attack rained downward, engulfing a few unfortunate students. Upon contact, the feathers exploded in a chain of fiery detonations.

Asher ignored the Monster entirely, his eyes instead falling upon the ranking list. It had already dropped from twenty teams to fifteen teams in less than half an hour.

Asher looked around. Not all of the bird Monsters descended from the sky to fight. Some remained high above, constantly unleashing one devastating attack after another without the slightest hesitation. Constant explosions ripped through the battlefield. The sky was now filled with smoke, while burning buildings dominated the landscape beneath the crimson heavens. It looked like a scene pulled directly from the pages of a comic book, as though the apocalypse itself had descended upon the city.

Asher’s eyes shifted toward three Monsters perched together atop a skyscraper as they gazed down upon everything with their brilliantly burning eyes.

They were Crown-class Monsters, and unlike the Grave-class and Mark-class birds of their kind, they didn’t merely wield flames. They also possessed plasma-based attacks. The plasma beam Asher had blocked earlier had come directly from one of them, as he and Teo had been the only students floating in the sky at the time. Naturally, they had attempted to shoot him down.

"Let’s move," Asher stated, receiving a silent nod from Teo Swig.

The next moment, both of them vanished from where they stood before shooting forward in a blur of speed, racing toward the Monster that had unleashed the flaming feather attack earlier.

The Monster appeared to welcome their approach. It expanded its wings to their full span as Astra surged violently through its body, causing the flames surrounding it to intensify dramatically. Without missing a beat, it flapped its wings forward with tremendous force.

With that single motion, a cascading sea of flames erupted outward like a raging inferno given form. Orange fire instantly consumed everything in its path. Buildings, roads, pavements, it didn’t matter. Everything was burned and reduced to charred ruins and rivers of molten lava within moments.

Seeing the incoming attack, Asher simply smirked as he casually raised a hand. The next instant, the roaring sea of flames surging toward them came to an abrupt halt, as though time itself had been frozen.

The Monster was stunned. It couldn’t believe what it had just witnessed. Someone had actually taken control of its own attack.

Although such a feat should have been impossible, impossibilities had a habit of becoming reality whenever Asher was involved. The StellarFlame granted him dominion over all forms of fire, regardless of their origin. As long as it was a flame, as long as it burned, whether brilliantly or faintly, it fell beneath the authority of the StellarFlame.

Asher immediately created a massive opening through the raging sea of fire, and through that gap, Teo Swig burst forward. Leaping into the air, his glaive became wrapped in roaring currents of wind. Without the slightest hesitation, he hurled it forward like a javelin.

The Monster didn’t hesitate either. It immediately dove into the air from the building upon which it had been perched, allowing Teo Swig’s glaive to streak harmlessly past its previous position.

But Teo Swig wasn’t finished. He had no intention of losing his weapon on a battlefield. Manipulating the wind surrounding the glaive, he altered its trajectory while simultaneously increasing its momentum. The weapon curved sharply through the air before racing toward the bird once again with even greater speed.

But the Monster seemed to understand that even if it dodged again, Teo Swig would simply redirect the weapon yet again.

Its blazing eyes suddenly shone even brighter as it unleashed a scorching energy beam attack directly toward the glaive, intending to disintegrate it where it was. Neither wind nor ordinary flames possessed any hope of withstanding such searing heat.

But Asher was already moving. Tapping into his Space affinity once again, he effortlessly swapped the position of the glaive with a nearby rock, the plasma beam instantly obliterated the unfortunate rock instead.

Asher appeared in midair, floating directly above the bird as he increased the gravity surrounding the Monster.

The next instant, the creature plummeted from the sky exactly as any object would under overwhelming gravity. The moment it crashed into the ground, Teo Swig acted. Manipulating the earth beneath them, he created enormous rocky hands that surged upward before tightly restraining the bird in place.

But what could mere rock possibly accomplish against flames?

The Monster simply increased the temperature surrounding its body, and within a single second, the massive stone restraints melted into rivers of lava with effortless ease. The moment it was freed, its blazing eyes snapped toward the approaching Teo, who was charging forward with blinding speed.

The bird didn’t hesitate.

Opening its enormous beak, an immense sphere of raging flames condensed before its mouth like a miniature comet. Without the slightest hesitation, it unleashed the blazing projectile toward Teo with terrifying, scalding force.

Teo immediately slowed his advance, his hand slamming firmly against the ground as he erected a sturdy three-metre-tall earth wall directly before himself.

The instant the blazing sphere collided with the wall, it resembled the detonation of a miniature nuclear explosion. A titanic thunderous blast erupted outward, swallowing everything within a colossal firestorm that stretched over two kilometres in every direction.

The Monster finally rose to its feet before fixing its blazing gaze upon the churning smoke, attempting to determine whether Teo Swig had survived the devastating attack.

Unable to sense him, the enormous bird snapped its head towards the sky, its burning eyes eventually settling upon Asher, who remained floating high above with an amused smile while casually eating popcorn as he watched the battle between Teo Swig and the bird unfold.

Before the Monster could even make a move, Asher simply pointed downward toward the ground while tossing another piece of popcorn into his mouth.

As a Grave-class Monster, the bird possessed a considerable degree of intelligence. Its blazing eyes immediately shifted downward.

At that exact moment, Teo Swig burst from beneath the earth with explosive speed, his body becoming a blur. His glaive pointed skyward, now enveloped in both raging wind and molten flames. The attack instantly crashed into the bird’s throat with battering force.

Teo’s Astra energy surged violently as he increased the intensity of both his wind and flames. Every muscle in his body strained as he forced the glaive deeper and deeper into the Monster’s neck. But the bird thrashed about wildly, desperately attempting to throw Teo from its body.

Teo roared at the top of his lungs. His glaive sank deeper and deeper into the bird’s neck as raging wind and flames spiraled violently around the weapon without restraint. He continuously burned through his Astra reserves, refusing to release his grip.

After several agonizing seconds, the bird finally stopped moving.

Teo immediately ceased channeling his Astra before collapsing onto the ground, panting heavily as he stared at his glaive, which remained deeply embedded within the enormous bird’s neck.

Asher floated down while still holding his popcorn before speaking. "Nice job, but unfortunately, this is just the beginning."

His tone remained calm and indifferent to the destruction surrounding him, as though he stood above the chaos itself rather than within it.

Teo Swig’s lips twitched. He understood that Asher had treated his desperate life-and-death battle as nothing more than entertainment while casually eating popcorn. He simply shook his head, choosing to ignore the absurdity of it all.

He had won because he had deceived the Monster.

When he had blocked the flaming sphere with the earth wall, Teo Swig hadn’t been delusional enough to believe that his wall could actually withstand such terrifying flames. Therefore, the very instant he erected it, he immediately manipulated the earth beneath his feet and dove underground, patiently waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

That opportunity finally arrived when the Monster lowered its neck to inspect the ground, unknowingly falling into Asher’s subtle trap.

Teo Swig couldn’t help but feel proud of himself. After all, Rank 6 beings, or Grave-class Monsters, were never easy opponents to defeat.

Not everyone was as monstrously abnormal as Asher.