Chapter 478 - 478: Invasion [44]

Not with an explosion, but with an icy crack that rang through the battlefield like a shrill cry. The impact spread outward from Wes's frozen body, sending fractures through the layer of ice surrounding him as a delicate crystal pattern rapidly formed across the surface.

Zarah breathed heavily as she watched.

Did that do it?

She asked herself, her eyes remaining fixed on the frozen figure.

She had poured a considerable amount of mana into that attack, and after everything she had tried against Wes, she couldn't afford to assume the fight was over simply because he had been caught.

Slowly, she began walking toward him.

Unlike a Chosen, she didn't have a System that would immediately inform her whether her opponent had been killed. There would be no notification confirming her victory, no convenient message telling her that the enemy had fallen.

She had to rely on what she could see.

And what she saw made her slow down.

There was only red.

Two faint red points were visible through the layers of ice where Wes's eyes should have been.

Zarah's brow furrowed.

What did that mean? Was he still alive? Was that simply the mana he had been gathering before the attack?

She took another cautious step forward. Then another.

The battlefield had become strangely quiet around her, with only the faint crackling of ice and the distant sounds of the ongoing battle reaching her ears.

Zarah's grip tightened around her bow.

Something wasn't right. Then she heard it.

A wet, unsettling sound coming from within the frozen mass.

GURGLE... GURGLE

Zarah stopped.

It sounded almost like water boiling.

Her expression immediately became cautious.

GURGLE GURGLE GURGLE

The sound grew louder.

Then there was an explosion.

BOOM!

Zarah lunged backward, moving almost entirely on instinct. The warning had come a fraction of a second before the explosion, her heightened senses screaming at her that something was about to happen, and she trusted that instinct without hesitation.

The ice surrounding Wes shattered outward.

Zarah raised an arm to shield her face as fragments of frozen crystal flew through the air, but what caught her attention wasn't the ice.

It was the red.

A mass of red liquid burst from the shattered prison, spreading across the ground before surging back toward the center. At first, Zarah thought it was blood, but the sheer amount of mana contained within it immediately told her otherwise.

There was far too much energy packed into it.

The strange liquid moved like water, flowing across the frozen ground before gathering together in one place. It twisted and churned, pulling itself inward as though something was controlling every drop.

Then the mass began to rise.

First, it formed the outline of a body. Then arms. Then legs.

The shape continued taking form until the red substance completely resembled Wes.

For a moment, it remained liquid. Then the surface began to harden.

The strange red substance thickened, becoming denser and more solid until it transformed into flesh.

Wes stood before her once again. Whole.

A wide smile was plastered across his face.

Zarah's brow furrowed.

Her body felt heavy.

Her breathing had become noticeably harder, and she could feel the strain from everything she had already used throughout the battle settling into her muscles. She had poured so much mana into that attack because she had been certain it would finally put him down.

Yet somehow, he had survived.

Not only had he survived, but something about him felt different. Stronger.

The pressure radiating from his body was heavier than before, and the red energy flowing beneath his skin seemed far denser than it had been moments ago.

All of Zarah's senses were ringing, warning her that she was standing in front of something far more dangerous than the opponent she had been fighting moments ago.

Wes noticed the change in her expression and smiled.

"I can't believe you actually forced me to this point."

He let out a long sigh, almost as though he was disappointed that he had been pushed into revealing something he had wanted to keep hidden.

"In case you weren't aware, it's all blood."

Zarah's eyes narrowed.

Wes raised one finger.

A small amount of blood gathered at its tip before shooting upward like a thin stream.

It reached several meters into the air.

Then...

BOOM!

The blood exploded.

The blast wasn't nearly as powerful as the attack that had nearly destroyed the surrounding area, but the demonstration was enough to make Zarah's expression turn serious.

"That's how I'm able to cause those explosions," Wes explained.

He lowered his hand and glanced at the red liquid still moving beneath his skin.

"As for how I escaped your attack.I can push my elasticity to the point where my body literally becomes liquid."

Zarah's eyes widened slightly.

Wes grinned at her reaction.

"Insane, isn't it?"

He laughed.

"But there's a problem. I can't maintain that state for very long. My body can only stay like that for a limited amount of time before it starts falling apart."

His smile faded slightly.

"And reforming isn't exactly instant either. It takes me a while to pull everything back together and return to my normal form."

Wes stretched his fingers, watching the last traces of red energy disappear beneath his skin.

He looked almost annoyed by the limitation.

"As for the science behind it...I think this form was created because I have two abilities that shouldn't really have worked together. One skill makes my blood explode. And another makes my skin elastic. Somehow, those two abilities combined and gave me this. Interesting, isn't it?"

Zarah frowned.

She wasn't finding any of this funny or amusing.

In fact, she barely understood half of what Wes was talking about. His explanation about blood, elasticity, and somehow turning his entire body into liquid was far more complicated than she cared to think about in the middle of a fight.

But she had understood one important thing.

His strange liquid form had a time limit.

That was enough.

If she couldn't defeat him immediately, then she simply had to survive until that form reached its limit.

Wes...