Chapter 686: Killed in Action

As a steward and guard for the Shield of the Silver Lake family, Ake did not carry the Wilmot surname. His bloodline held no connection whatsoever to their once-glorious and great general.

But perhaps because of this—compared to those direct descendants living in debauchery beneath their ancestors' armored portraits, wallowing in the fading twilight of the family's past glory—it was an outsider like him who fully integrated the will of "Heartdrop" into his every word and deed, persistently upholding it.

Ake clearly knew that the strength of the six-armed serpentfolk before him far exceeded what he could handle.

If he acted strictly to maximize safety, his best course of action right now would be to fall back, protect Young Master Zanfrey, and carefully observe the battlefield.

He could wait until the black-haired adventurer named Xia Nan had worn himself down fighting the monster and both sides had revealed their trump cards before finding an opportunity to step in.

Even if Xia Nan gained the upper hand, Ake still shouldn't join the fray for safety's sake; he should just leave everything to the other man.

Furthermore, his crippled state—the empty right trouser leg—meant that no one could blame him for making such a choice.

Whether from a rational standpoint or a more emotional one, Ake had every reason to stay out of the fight and simply watch.

Yet clearly, judging by how he now charged the enemy with his shield raised, the middle-aged man had not made that choice.

For one thing, Xia Nan had already helped them many times.

To some extent, Zanfrey, Winsor, and Ake himself were only standing here safely because of the other man's intervention.

Given Ake's personality, it was impossible for him to just stand by indifferently and watch Xia Nan fight alone.

For another, this monster was incredibly powerful. Xia Nan seemed to hold a significant advantage, but the serpentfolk recovered instantly in the next second. There was no clear gap in strength between them, and the outcome of the battle remained entirely unknown.

Given all that, as a member of the party, how could he possibly exclude himself from the battle?

Thus, the scene Xia Nan witnessed unfolded.

The middle-aged man, missing his right leg, roared out as he fought through the pain. Wielding his heavy shield, he staggered forward, charging straight toward the serpentfolk.

A blue light, much like lake water, rippled across the surface of the shield. Driven by his fierce charge, it transformed into layers of translucent ripples trailing behind him, enveloping Ake himself within their glow.

At the same time, his roar not only boosted his own morale but also seemed to possess a special kind of "Taunt" ability.

It forced the six-armed serpentfolk, whose gaze had been locked firmly onto Xia Nan, to snap its head around and focus its attention on the rushing, watery-blue shield.

"Hiss!"

The serpent's cry echoed.

Driven by a suddenly surging fury provoked by the roar behind the shield, the serpentfolk subconsciously shifted its attack, surging forward to meet Ake's charge.

"Boom!"

The heavy, razor-sharp double-bladed greataxe fell with a deafening crash, accompanied by the piercing shriek of torn air as it blurred into a terrifying, fleeting phantom.

It struck the center of the shield!

The middle-aged man's forward momentum halted in an instant. The water-blue light swirling over the shield was blasted aside by the powerful impact, revealing the metallic surface beneath, which bore the engraved crest of the Shield of the Silver Lake family.

The serpentfolk monster's Strength attribute was vastly higher than any adventurer's on the battlefield. With a single strike, this axe blow completely arrested Ake's shield charge mid-stride.

But from another perspective, Even as his sturdy body trembled violently from the massive kinetic force slamming into the shield, even as he gritted his teeth hard enough to crack them while blood seeped from his lips, and even as the metal scraps binding his severed right leg dug deeply into the temple's stone tiles, Ake had still perfectly fulfilled his duty as the party's frontline Shield Warrior:

Drawing the enemy's attention while taking its attacks head-on.

He had bought his teammates enough time and created a genuine opportunity to counterattack.

"Howl!!!"

Xia Nan hadn't expected the half-legged Ake to perform so phenomenally. Having already unleashed [Fang Hunt] to charge over and relieve the pressure on him, Xia Nan sensed the shift in the battlefield's dynamics and instantly changed his approach.

He smoothly redirected his wooden sword, wreathed in orange-red flames, carving out a perfect arc as he slashed toward the enemy's back.

However, the reason the serpentfolk before him was so difficult to deal with was the three pairs of arms growing from its body.

Even though its defensive shield had been completely stripped away, and two of its arms were currently pushing down on the cleaving double-bladed greataxe, it still had the margin of error afforded by its remaining four arms.

Creak— It was the mournful whine of a bowstring being drawn to its absolute limit, groaning under the immense strain.

Locking onto the rapidly moving black wolf phantom took only an instant.

"Swish!"

Seemingly utilizing some unknown, special technique, the arrow—which should have flown straight under such immense force—bizarrely carved out a curved trajectory.

It spun at high speeds as it flew through the air. Aided by the fungal hyphae clinging to its fletching, it dragged a dark purple trail in its wake.

His sharp Perception kicked in, and a sudden sense of alarm flared in his heart.

Realizing that he couldn't simply block and deflect this strike with his Arm Shield like before, Xia Nan had no choice but to halt his headlong charge wrapped in the black wolf phantom. He raised his sword and shield, tracking the arrow's bizarre, wavering flight path through the air.

Ultimately, guided by his Perception, he seized the opportunity and slashed out with his sword. With the most precise timing and angle, he struck down the arrow the second it entered his attack range.

It seemed as if a massive sequence of maneuvers had just taken place.

But in reality, from the moment the serpentfolk drew the bow to the moment Xia Nan swung his sword, the entire exchange took less than two seconds.

It could not have been any briefer.

Yet it was exactly this opening—barely the span of a single breath—that gave the serpentfolk monster an opportunity to counterattack.

Its greataxe remained pressed against the iron shield in front of it, pushing down with even greater force, firmly pinning the shield-bearing Ake in place.

The scaled arms on its left and right sides bent, gathering power, the daggers in their hands glinting with cold light.

It was entirely foreseeable that in the very next second, when the serpentfolk's two Short Daggers—looted from the gnome rogue—stabbed around the shield into his back, Ake, fully suppressed by the force from the front, would die without any suspense.

But at this tense moment, sudden roars echoed from the serpentfolk's left and right—voices that hadn't been heard in the battle thus far.

"Shhhk!"

"Hummm!!!"

The surface of a longsword was wreathed in a faint green glimmer. A soft breeze echoed in the surrounding air, and phantom leaves formed of energy seemed to drift down around it.

The blade had come from Winsor, but it was obvious that such a phenomenon was absolutely beyond the capabilities of a young fisherman who hadn't even acquired a Class Level.

Following the five slender, powerful, dark-skinned fingers tightly gripping the hilt upward, what came into view was the delicate face of the Half-Drow Yexi, marked by intense agony yet brimming with fighting spirit.

At the same time, on the serpentfolk's other side, the human Warrior who had suffered a mental breakdown alongside the Half-Drow had reignited a sliver of his fighting spirit.

Gripping a one-handed Faceted Hammer he had also just borrowed from Zanfrey, he forcefully executed a combat technique entirely unsuited for his current weapon, swinging the hammer toward the enemy as if he were wielding an axe.

Both of them had been severely traumatized by the serpentfolk's initial heavy blows. That lingering mental shock had caused them to completely lose their ability to fight upon encountering the mutated serpentfolk monster again.

But when Xia Nan severed two of the creature's arms with a single sword strike right in front of everyone, even though the serpentfolk rapidly regenerated them in the very next second, it had nonetheless slightly alleviated the crushing mental weight of fear bearing down on the two adventurers, allowing them to recover a modicum of their will to fight.

At this moment, having borrowed weapons from the two youths, Winsor and Zanfrey, they stepped into the center of the battlefield.

And at a critical juncture, they provided their party members with support.

Faced with attacks from both its left and right, the serpentfolk monster currently had two arms controlling the greataxe to suppress Ake, two arms that had just finished drawing and firing the bow, and two remaining arms in the midst of charging up a strike with its Short Daggers.

This created a window of opportunity for the two adventurers to attack.

The monster reacted promptly. Risking the tearing of the fungal hyphae in its arm muscles, it forcefully aborted its built-up momentum, twisting the pair of arms that had been gathering power as if breaking them. Amidst blood spraying from the fissures in its skin, it reversed the daggers, crossing them to block the metal Faceted Hammer smashing toward the side of its head.

But this inevitably allowed Yexi on the other side to use every ounce of her strength. Screaming, she drove her longsword upward, viciously stabbing it right into the creature's chest.

Her mind might not have fully recovered, and her physical condition was far from its peak, but she was still a veteran adventurer with rich combat experience.

On the surface, Yexi's strike seemed hasty, but in reality, it was aimed with absolute precision squarely at the serpentfolk monster's heart.

Schk— The blade angled upward, driven by the Half-Drow, and pierced completely through the serpentfolk monster's powerfully beating heart. The tip of the blade tore out through the skin on its back.

Did... did it work?

Time seemed to freeze for an instant.

Ake maintained his forward lunge, both hands holding the shield up against the crushing pressure. The immense force bearing down from above filled his eyes with bloodshot veins, and his tightly clenched jaw made his masseter muscles bulge prominently beneath his skin.

With his line of sight largely obscured by the heavy shield, he could see the approaching figures of the two adventurers, but he couldn't see exactly what they had done.

The human Warrior Benny's face was drenched in sweat. A bizarre mix of fear and fury flickered in his wide eyes as he forcefully used his own willpower to fight the mental brand the monster had previously left on his psyche.

The blue veins on his thick arms looked as if they were about to burst through his skin. The sparks from his Faceted Hammer clashing with the Short Daggers still lingered in the air, not yet fully extinguished.

The Half-Drow Yexi was deathly pale. Fear still lingered in her crystalline eyes, but compared to the others, she showed far more ecstasy.

The familiar tactile feedback traveling up from the longsword in her hands let her confirm with absolute certainty that her blade had pierced the enemy's heart.

And simultaneously, a short distance away from the three of them...

Xia Nan, who had been forced to stop his advance due to the bizarre arrow, closed the distance once again, relying on the explosive speed granted by [Fang Hunt].

Because he was observing from an outside angle, he could see nearly the complete picture of the battlefield ahead.

Whether it was the two adventurers of the "Shadow Raven" attacking from the flanks, Ake forcibly tanking the blow with his shield, or the monster in the center with its heart pierced.

It seemed the battle had ended at this moment, finally drawing to a close.

However, according to the habits Xia Nan had developed after the Ash secret realm, even knowing the enemy was dead, he would still step forward, swing his flaming straight sword, and hack at the serpentfolk's neck to finish it off for good.

But at this exact moment, a sense of danger from the serpentfolk monster ahead—far more intense and lethal than what he had felt upon first encountering it—suddenly erupted from the depths of his heart.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the dark purple hyphae from the fungal carpet below silently writhing and swaying.

There was absolutely no time to think.

Xia Nan slammed on the brakes almost instantaneously, his leather boots carving two deep grooves into the fungal carpet.

He raised his Snake-Scale Arm Shield on the left to protect his front, overlapping it with the flame-wreathed wooden sword, [Azure Pine], in a mirrored defensive posture.

His legs pushed off violently. As he leaped backward, he shouted a warning to his teammates, "Watch out!"

The flow of time, which had seemingly slowed down under the effect of his extreme focus as if a pause button had been hit, instantly resumed its normal pace.

Wrapped in a dark astral wind, his figure flew backward, his warning echoing through the temple.

Simultaneously, those hyphae swaying gently on the fungal carpet began to writhe and rapidly climb onto the serpentfolk's body in a startlingly ferocious manner.

Tangling, compressing, coagulating.

And then—release!

"Boom!!!"

In the center of the battlefield, it was as if a bomb made entirely of fungal hyphae had suddenly detonated.

The ensuing shockwave swept up a cloud of spores, transforming into a violent, dark purple slipstream that tore through the air.

The fungal threads, which had previously seemed soft and powerless, suddenly hardened as if transforming from "water" into "ice." Centered on the serpentfolk's body, they turned into sharp mycelial spikes that exploded in all directions.

The Half-Drow named Yexi, positioned just below the serpentfolk monster's flank and gripping a longsword tightly with both hands, had no chance to dodge. Just a moment prior, the Half-Drow's heart had been pounding with wild joy after piercing the enemy's heart.

The violently erupting fungal spikes blasted away half of Yexi's head, killing the Half-Drow on the spot.

The human Warrior Benny suffered an even more gruesome death. His tall, burly frame forced him to endure a much larger area of danger during the fungal bombardment.

Two fungal spikes struck him. The one driving downward pierced his lower abdomen and burst out from the base of his spine; the one shooting upward slammed into his chest and tore out from just below the back of his neck.

He didn't even have time to struggle. He died instantly, his corpse simultaneously ripped into upper and lower halves.

Ake was already holding up his shield to withstand the crushing weight of the serpentfolk's massive axe. The fungal threads blasting out from the front completely exhausted the very last sliver of strength in his body.

Spewing blood from his mouth, he was blasted straight backward.

Fortunately, his tower shield was large enough. All three spikes aimed at him slammed into the heavy shield. Though they left deep gouges on the surface, they ultimately failed to completely shatter his defense. However, the immense force accompanying the strikes transferred through the shield directly into his body.

This plunged the middle-aged man, who was already in an overly weakened state, into a critical condition, leaving him hovering on the brink of death.