Chapter 322: You Absolutely Must Not Kill Her

"Yes, and no."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Drake genuinely felt bewildered.

"Actually..."

"What?" Seeing the System hesitate, Drake felt an inexplicable premonition stir within him.

That sensation grew increasingly intense as Im's face continued to peel away.

"Watch out!"

The System suddenly shrieked. Im, who had seemingly been sprawled motionless on the ground, erupted into motion, rocketing straight toward Drake in the blink of an eye.

"Phantom Shadow... Sky Burial!"

A strange, dark object materialized in Im's hand. Looking like a solid black rod, it stabbed directly toward the core of the Demon Warder.

Drake gritted his teeth and threw his hands up to evade, but he was a fraction too slow. The black rod instantly extended manifold, piercing clean through the body of the Demon Warder.

The point of penetration landed precisely where a heart would be located.

For a normal human being, the immediate reflex to secure a kill was to target either the head or the heart.

Hitting the head under these circumstances was clearly out of the question, making the heart the primary choice.

"Drake!" Weitian's pupils constricted as the smile on her face vanished entirely.

"Impossible! How could this..."

The onlookers gasped in horror.

Everyone who had been marveling at the sheer presence and power of the Demon Warder moments ago was suddenly struck dumb with terror.

The situation had flipped with terrifying speed.

"It's over..." A corner of Im's mouth curved upward into a triumphant smile, though it instantly froze in place.

"How is this possible?!"

In the next heartbeat, the mechanical arm of the Demon Warder shot forward and clamped tightly around the black rod, while its other fist hammered straight into Im's body.

This time, Im was completely caught off guard. Drake's punch drove her straight down into the earth, triggering another violent tremor across the ground.

Drake sneered inwardly. The Demon Warder didn't have a heart to begin with.

Trying to use standard human anatomy to defeat a vessel of this caliber was sheer folly.

Forged from exotic, high-density alloys, the Demon Warder could not be pierced in any traditional sense. That dark beam was nothing more than a dense concentration of energy shaped to look like a physical spear.

The actual structural damage to the vessel was negligible.

Even Drake, who was sharing sensory feedback with the Demon Warder, only felt a mild wave of discomfort and minor strain—nothing of any consequence.

CRACK!

A crisp fracturing sound echoed through the air. Drake paused for a fraction of a second, and in the next moment, the mask-like shell covering Im's face—already a web of dense fissures—shattered entirely into fine dust.

The facial plates peeled away piece by piece.

Beneath was a young woman's face, completely distinct from her previous visage.

That face possessed a stunning, pristine purity and an enchanting allure that left Drake momentarily rooted to the spot.

"This face..." Drake's pupils shrank to needlepoints. He felt a lingering sense of déjà vu, as though that countenance tugged at memories buried deep within his soul...

Why? Why do I feel such an intimate familiarity...?

Who on earth... is this person?!

"You bastard!" Im erupted into motion once more. Drake immediately steadied himself and engaged her head-on.

He was not about to leave himself open to another careless strike.

BOOM!

The shockwaves of their direct collision pulverized everything in the immediate vicinity. Drake's brows knit together in deep, agonizing confusion.

Why do I feel such an overwhelming sense of familiarity? Where on earth could I have ever seen her? Why is my chest suddenly filled with such unyielding anxiety?!

Midway through the intense exchange of blows, panic began to cloud his focus.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Acting on sheer instinct, Drake sought to draw Im away from the congested battlefield, deliberately guiding her trajectory out toward the open sea during their exchange.

Im seemed to share the same objective, offering no resistance and shadowing Drake's movements as they traded blows in a high-speed aerial chase.

Before long, they had left the primary engagement zone far behind.

"What are you doing?! Focus! Is this really the time to let your mind wander?!" The System looked ready to pull its hair out, exasperated by Drake's sudden clumsiness.

Why on earth was this guy falling apart now?

How could he be so unreliable at the absolute climax of a war, acting even more distracted than he had over Weitian earlier?

What was wrong with him?!

"System! Can you check the identity of this face? Who on earth is she? Can you do it?!" Drake blurted out urgently.

"Huh?!" The System blinked, utterly baffled by the erratic demand.

"Can you or can't you?!"

"I... I suppose I can try." The System twitched a tiny paw, looking deeply perplexed.

It already possessed a general understanding of Im's origins, but this particular face was a first for it as well.

"Alright! I'm counting on you!" Drake implored gravely.

"R—Really counting on me?!" The System froze for a second before its expression hardened. "Understood! Leave this to me."

With that, it turned its focus toward scanning Im's exposed features.

As the battle dragged on, Drake slipped further and further into a defensive disadvantage. While he had previously relied on spatial instantaneous movement to suppress Im's mobility, his absent-mindedness now caused him to absorb blow after blow.

"Demon Warder..." Drake's expression darkened as he felt a dull throb of distress ripple through the vessel's neural link.

Such erratic, selfish maneuvering was completely unfair to his partner. He wasn't fighting alone anymore; he had a companion sharing this battlefield with him. Was it really acceptable to fight with such reckless disregard?

Doubt clouded his mind.

Suddenly, his gaze sharpened. No matter what, I need to handle the enemy right in front of me first!

"Spatial Tremor!"

Drake threw punch after punch in rapid succession, stacking cascading shockwaves of spatial vibration that slammed squarely into Im's frame.

BOOM!

With a final concussive blow, Drake blasted Im backward, pinning her hard against the sheer stone face of the Red Line and leaving a massive crater in her wake.

Im wrenched herself free from the fractured rock wall with visible difficulty, then rocketed straight back up into the firmament.

"I refuse to believe there is any power in this world greater than my own!"

Meanwhile, having just ascended to the upper rim of the Red Line, Daolang watched Im charge upward to engage Drake, freezing mid-stride as his eyes widened in sheer, agonizing disbelief.

"Impossible! Th... This is impossible?! Why..."

A towering, hardened man known across the seas, Daolang completely lost his composure, muttering incoherently as two streams of clear tears quietly overflowed his eyes...

Unaware of the tears streaming down his own face.

"Spatial Compression!"

The moment Im burst into the upper atmosphere, spatial coordinates from all four directions clamped inward like a vice, pinning her completely in place.

Channeling the full weight of his spatial mastery, Drake rained down blow after blow, unleashing cascading spatial fractures and shockwaves.

Each strike carried the destructive might to shatter mountains and shift seas. Though they were still far from the ocean surface below, the sheer kinetic pressure was already stirring towering swells across the water.

"Scarlet Rainbow Sword!" Stretching out a mechanical hand, Drake willed a colossal spatial blade into existence within the Demon Warder's grasp.

It was a giant sword forged from condensed spatial energy, packed with immense dimensional forces while granting him absolute command over the surrounding space.

The sheer latent energy humming within the blade made even Drake's heart skip a beat.

With this single strike... everything should finally reach its conclusion...

"This is..." Inside Drake's mind, the System's eyes widened to their absolute limit. Stunned into total disbelief, it slumped heavily onto the floor of the mindscape.

Completely oblivious to the System's reaction, Drake poured every remaining ounce of power into the blade and swung it downward!

A razor-thin crescent of blinding light instantly expanded into a boundless horizontal plane, cleaving straight toward Im's exposed neck.

"You absolutely must not kill her!!"

A desperate, tear-torn roar pierced straight through the chaos of the battlefield. At the edge of the Red Line, Daolang screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing across the entire expanse of the ocean...