Chapter 134: Ugly Monster, Take This Physical Exorcism!

Celeste’s finger twitched, and she squeezed the trigger.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da—!

That wasn’t the sound of mere gunfire. It was the apocalyptic roar of a metal beast, a sound that instantly shattered the eerie, suffocating silence of the battlefield.

A tempest of steel, woven from a countless barrage of golden, holy-light-infused bullets, surged forth. It was a torrent of sacred destruction that disregarded everything but the most fundamental laws of physics as it screamed toward the Plague Emissary, Noth.

The look of astonishment on Noth’s face was instantly replaced by one of grim gravity.

He thrust the lantern in his hand across his chest. The ghostly fire trapped within it flared violently, erupting outward to form a thick, black-grey shield of wailing, tormented souls.

The golden barrage crashed into it.

Zzzzzzzzz—!

A piercing, sizzling shriek echoed through the cavern, like a red-hot branding iron being plunged into a block of solid ice.

Noth’s prideful soul-shield didn’t even last a single second against the sheer, overwhelming violence of the assault.

Across the shield’s surface, the twisted, spectral faces were thrown into a divine furnace. They let out silent, agonizing screams as they were frantically dissolved, purified, and utterly vaporized by the holy light.

“Damn it!”

Noth spoke for the first time, his voice a low and gravelly rasp, thick with the fury of one who has been deeply, fundamentally offended.

“What in the hells is this holy light?!”

He could feel it with chilling clarity. His pure, undiluted death energy was nothing more than kindling for his opponent’s bizarre, sacrilegious attack!

But he was, after all, a high commander of the Undead Scourge, a being with combat experience so vast it was almost a force of nature in itself.

Seeing his shield on the verge of collapse, he did not retreat. Instead, he slammed his lantern down hard against the ground.

“Bones as walls, corpse-frost as shield!”

A wave of ink-green death energy pulsed into the earth beneath him.

In the next instant, a new barrier rose from the ground—a bulwark of countless pale, skeletal remains, all fused together by jagged, dark-green ice crystals.

This time, the holy light bullets couldn’t melt the shield in a single, glorious instant.

The rounds slammed against the hardened bone and ice, producing a crisp staccato of ding-ding-dang-dang as they exploded into brilliant clusters of golden sparks.

The rate of erosion slowed dramatically.

Noth’s expenditure of death energy instantly dropped by more than seventy percent.

“Interesting.”

A morbid, unsettling smile reappeared on Noth’s deathly pale face.

“Since you enjoy using such a crude method of ‘purification,’then you shall taste my’gift’ as well!”

He gestured with his free hand. The ghost-fire in his lantern split into dozens of writhing tendrils, which twisted in the air and reformed into menacing, floating skulls. Each one radiated a thick, nauseating stench of plague and decay.

“Go,” he commanded, his voice a sibilant whisper. “Offer her the hymn of putrescence.”

Swish, swish, swish!

Dozens of plague-skulls, trailing sickly green after-images, drew eerie, curving arcs through the air as they converged on Celeste from all directions, their jaws wide to bite.

“Oh my, are we playing a bullet-hell game now?” Celeste teased, though the firepower erupting from her hands didn’t diminish in the slightest.

She began to move, stepping to the addictive, unheard beat of the music video playing in her mind. Her body swayed left and right with the rhythm, a twist of the waist here, a turn of the shoulder there; every single movement was filled with an absurd, almost hypnotic sense of rhythm.

“To the left~♪ dodge it~♪ To the right~♪ twist it~♪”

“Roll call~♪ begins now~♪ none of you~♪ can run away~♪”

The violent, full-auto barrage continued to suppress the bone-ice shield before her, pinning Noth in place.

But now, the muzzle of the AK in Celeste’s hands would occasionally snap away from its primary target, breaking its trajectory with absolute, impossible precision to intercept the incoming skulls.

Da! Da! Da!

It was no longer a wild spray. It was a series of crisp, lethal, three-round bursts.

Three golden bullets of holy light left the chamber, striking a plague-skull dead-on.

The skull detonated in mid-air, dissolving into a cloud of purified golden dust. Not a single trace of its plague-ridden aura managed to escape.

Immediately, her muzzle flicked to the other side. Another three-round burst, and the skull attacking from her flank was blasted out of the sky.

Her body was still swaying to the phantom music, a dance of chaotic joy, but the weapon in her hands had become the Grim Reaper’s own paintbrush. She was precisely sniping every single deadly “musical note” that flew toward her on the battlefield, erasing them from existence.

The seamless, dazzling switch between wild, suppressive fire and surgically precise bursts was a sight to behold.

—

The three primary battlefields had been established.

“Go for the king first! Leave that goblin to us!”

The moment Celeste had transformed, Selene, Su Wan, and Xia Lian had exchanged a single, tacit glance.

From the very beginning, they had no intention of engaging the three seemingly ferocious bosses—the Frost Troll, the Yeti, and the Necromancer.

Their target, from start to finish, was one and only one.

The Goblin King sitting on his throne, spouting absolute filth—Girousse!

Just as Eldara became a black shadow and rushed toward Korlak the Frost Troll Warlord, and Baroque led his knights to engage Noinam the Yeti Leader, the three women moved as one.

“Hah!” Selene roared, hoisting the colossal shield, Immovable Mountain. She became an unstoppable heavy tank, a human bulldozer charging forward with ferocious momentum.

Su Wan’s figure flickered, and countless fine ice crystals swirled around her like a winter storm as she followed closely in Selene’s wake.

Xia Lian said nothing. She didn’t choose a straight-line sprint. Instead, she used nimble, darting footwork to weave through the chaotic battlefield, using monster corpses and the uneven terrain as cover, closing the distance in near-perfect silence.

Their objective was crystal clear: exploit the fact that the three main bodyguards were occupied to launch a decapitation strike on the disgusting goblin himself.

Girousse watched the battlefield instantly fracture, a flash of astonishment crossing his face. But that surprise was quickly replaced by an even more morbid, fanatical glee.

“Interesting! So very interesting! Now this is more like it! This is the grand welcome ceremony I deserve!”

He watched Selene and the other two rush straight for him, not with fear, but with a mocking curl of his lips as he licked them. His eyes were full of derision.

“Relying on you three little dowry items to challenge me? How naive! Allow me to show you the true meaning of a will’s collapse!”

He suddenly spread his arms wide. A massive, potent mental force erupted from him, becoming an invisible storm that swept toward all three women simultaneously.

However, the psychic tempest—a force powerful enough to twist wills and crush the souls of lesser beings—dissipated with a bizarre fizzle the moment it touched them. It didn’t so much as ruffle their hair.

Selene even had the presence of mind to shoot him a contemptuous thumbs-down.

“Huh?” The smile on Girousse’s face froze, and his beady little eyes widened in disbelief.

“Impossible! My Mental Domination… why is it useless against you?!”

The “art” he prided himself on, the power that defined him, had utterly failed.

In the time it took him to voice his shock, Selene had already closed the distance. She leaped high into the air, the longsword Light of Dawn in her hand blazing with infused holy light as she brought it down in a vicious arc aimed straight for his head.

“Ugly monster, taste my sword!”

“Waya!” Girousse shrieked, his composure shattering into pure panic.

He frantically chanted an incantation, his voice cracking and changing pitch. “Black… Black goat’s… foot skin! Uh… Shadow… wall!”

A crooked, translucent shadow shield that emitted the faint, foul smell of old socks materialized around him.

With a single slash from Selene, the shield popped like a soap bubble.

Girousse tumbled from his ragged throne, losing all semblance of dignity as he scrambled away.

Only then did it truly dawn on him. These three inconspicuous “dowry items” were not only completely immune to his mental powers, but their combat strength was more ferocious than he could have imagined.

“Damn it! What kind of monsters are you?!” he screamed, clumsily dodging a volley of razor-sharp ice cones that followed immediately from Su Wan.

His answer was a cold, steel-tipped arrow, shot by Xia Lian from a tricky, low angle, that buried itself in his ankle.

Girousse stumbled, his feet tangling beneath him. He nearly fell face-first into the dirt, looking even more pathetic than before.

[Elysian’s Note:

Having a good time with the story?

Every single bit helps immensely:

Thanks a ton for making this journey possible!]