Chapter 784: Tough Cookies

As he originally thought, these Tier 4s were abnormally strong. They also used kinetic energy so skillfully that he was taken aback. It was on the same level as some of the students back at the Shattered Winter School. Their techniques were refined, and their sense of combat was quite good.

He didn’t see any openings. At least none that he could exploit easily. Not when there were four of them. That woman with the bow was probably the biggest issue, though. For one, she could shoot arrows with more kinetic energy than anyone else in her group.

She also used kinetic energy to manipulate her arrows' flight. This meant she could not only manipulate trajectory, but also rotate them so quickly that the rotational force damaged his barriers more than it had any right to. At least one powerful Concept of Penetration was involved. Most likely something like an advanced Bow Concept was included as well. Maybe even something like bow intent, if something like that existed.

He danced between the three close-combat warriors with what felt like the grace of a drunken sailor. He tried not to be so clumsy; he really did. But they were all very competent in terms of hand-to-hand combat. Each of them had a strong foundation of solid technique and spoke of years of practice. Julius was pretty good in hand-to-hand himself, but against three equally skilled opponents, he quickly found himself on the defensive despite his superior physical abilities and awareness.

He felt his leg get kicked out from under him, and only his quick response let him stabilize his position with telekinesis through his aura. Still, this brief interruption gave the other two men the opening they needed.

Julius felt a fist with that same dangerous death and kinetic energy ripping toward his face. Right behind the fist came the sword, aimed at his chest. They were angled perfectly so that he couldn’t avoid one without getting hit by the other.

So instead of choosing between them, he chose the third option. His void energy wrapped around himself, and he teleported away. Both attacks missed him, and he reappeared ten feet away, void energy crackling over his limbs. His Concept of Space was on full blast; the Everlasting Void part of it fueled his void energy with so much power that he accidentally created two localized spatial tears.

From the outside, it might have looked like he was being pushed to the edge and that he had one step in the grave, but that was far from the truth. He had already made his preparations.

His senses extended out and locked onto the archer. Her kinetic energy focused on speed, and she had a separate stealth skill that hid her presence. It was a pretty darn good stealth skill too. It hid her mana, aura, and physical presence to the point that even his spatial skill struggled to track her.

However, hard didn’t mean impossible. He got just enough information from her movements, and after a few minutes to dissect the skill, he cracked it. Once he did that, she couldn’t hide from him. He adjusted his perception so her unique signature sat at the forefront of his mind, weaving his void energy into robust ribbons that twisted up his arms.

He leaned to the side, avoiding the arrow attempting to pierce his back. Then, before she could get away, he teleported to her location. His kinetic energy erupted like a volcano. The additional kinetic energy didn’t just help his foes. It helped him too; it just took a little more effort to harness it properly.

However, once he reached her, he created a large dome around himself and the archer with [Field of the Shattered Will]. All of the accumulated kinetic energy compressed everything within this space with tyrannical authority. He didn’t hold anything back.

Her will was different from what he expected. It was simultaneously lively and inert. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t strong. On the contrary, it was extremely stubborn and sturdy. He felt it slam up against his [Field of the Shattered Will], trying to disrupt and ignore the skill's impact on her.

She had an advantage because of her kinetic affinity, but Julius didn’t let that stop him. He might not be able to overwhelm her with pure skill, but when it came to brute force and domineering spirit, he didn’t think he’d lose out.

His soul exploded outward, and he made contact with her willpower the second it touched the field. She tried to rip apart every kinetic thread holding the field up. But it was no use. There was so much there, reinforced by an extremely strong will, which only made it a more fruitless endeavor.

The archer attempted to shoot another arrow at him, her arm pulling her bow back with practiced ease, demonstrating none of the stress her body was undoubtedly under. She quickly loosed the arrow, infusing what little she could into it. But the arrow fell limply to the ground, unable to withstand the immense pressure of his field.

She wasn’t able to either. Her body wasn’t as sturdy as the others. And he took advantage of that. He stepped in and pummeled her in the face with his void-covered fist, using every ounce of force he could gather. Her skull fractured from the impact, but he didn’t stop there, not when he didn’t have the time. Her comrades were already converging on their location.

He felt her try to pull away, but he grabbed her by the bow and dragged her back to him, slamming her with his own face. She tried to blast him with everything at her disposal, but he walked through it, taking whatever damage in exchange.

He wrapped her up and smashed his elbow into her nose, bashing it three more times for good measure. Then he brought up his knee and blasted it into her sternum in two quick consecutive blows.

He felt something in her chest shatter. She tried to get away from him, but he wasn’t about to let go so easily.

That being said, the other three were already on top of them. His kinetic-energy barrier could only hold them back for so long before it broke apart. Still, he had one last present to leave behind to delay them. He activated the marks he placed on each of their bodies and let them explode with void energy.

Unlike the troll from before, he could feel them fighting back against the marks. Their attempts to weaken the mark were impressive, using both kinetic and death energy to destabilize its structure before the void energy ripped them apart. However, this took substantial time and effort. Time their archer didn’t have.

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While they dealt with their presents, he unloaded on the archer. Her natural defenses, while not as sturdy as the other three, were still impressive. He hit her with attacks that would have eviscerated other Tier 4s with a single blow. But she took them like a dedicated tank.

Yet that still wasn’t enough to save her. He was relentless in his assault and eventually tore through the last layer of defense. His fist punched through her chest and destroyed her heart with a single pulse of void energy and ruinous aura. The black lines surging through her skin immediately halted, and she dropped to the ground, lifeless.

Once he was sure she was dead, he teleported away just in time to avoid the simultaneous bombardment.

He didn’t stay back, though, and before they could realize it, he was already back in their midst. His fists were still covered in black blood and void energy. He targeted the swordsman first. The additional reach of the sword made it harder to calculate optimal distance control.

So he crossed the distance, eating a fist to the back of the head and got stabbed in the gut by the sword. Still, he accomplished his goal and wrapped his arms around the swordsman. With an explosive pulse of kinetic energy, he flew them both away. He wanted to isolate them since they fought too well together.

The man’s weapon was still stuck inside Julius, and his only option was to release kinetic and death energy through the sword. The kinetic energy tried to rip him apart, but [Lord of the Dying Sun] drank up the kinetic energy greedily, using it to further reinforce Julius’s body.

As for the death energy, it was trying to consume Julius’s organs. Each second seemed to increase the death energy's potency. Unfortunate for it, Julius had the perfect counter to this insidious energy.

His life mana bloomed, and like a raging sun, it disintegrated every ounce of death energy that entered his body. [Phoenix Incarnate] was more than enough to handle the unpleasant mana and aura.

Only then did he begin to infuse the man with void energy. At first, he planned to set the swordsman ablaze with ruinous flames, as he’d done with the rogue. But he wanted to see what happened when someone unfamiliar with void energy was directly exposed to a large amount of it.

It took a considerable amount of void energy and willpower to even break through the man’s natural barrier and will, but Julius eventually succeeded. He jammed a thin needle of sharpened aura straight into the man’s soul, creating the opening he needed.

He did all of this and then immediately slammed into a building.

Julius didn't bother to get back up. He kept hold of the swordsman in the pile of rubble and pressed his knee to the man’s chest. He took a brief look at the listless eyes of the man underneath him and let the void energy do the rest.

It was safe to say the results weren’t pretty. Void energy wasn’t meant to be contained within human flesh, something Julius had prior experience with. It was too volatile and unnatural to be consumed so easily.

So it wasn’t a surprise when the swordsman started lashing out wildly. The death mana in his veins exploded with activity, desperately trying to beat back the void energy. But it was struggling to do so. If anything, it made the container that was holding the death energy fall apart, and the man’s skin split open. Death energy exploded outward in angry waves and hit Julius right in the face.

Julius flinched. Not from the damage he was receiving, but because some of the death energy made it into his mouth, tainting his mouth as if someone dragged his entire tongue through a pile of pig shit.

He immediately tried to cleanse it with some aura, but that didn’t work. Realizing that he needed to stop the taint at its source, he didn’t hold back and absolutely flooded the swordsman with more void energy. He wrapped his face in a protective barrier, so that the expelled death energy didn’t continue getting into his mouth.

It took less than five seconds for the void energy to run its course. The Tier 4 was pretty sturdy, but constantly unraveling from a notoriously violet space magic variant, backed by a powerful Authority and a brand-new Space Concept, was too much to handle. All that was left of the swordsman was a half-mutilated corpse.

Yet despite the cruel manner of their death, Julius could have sworn he saw something that looked like relief on the man’s face. As if he had been released from a torturous existence.

He didn’t get to think about it for long, though, because the other two warriors had already made their way to his position. He felt one of their fists tearing towards the back of his head, and he quickly created a void barrier at an angle, deflecting it.

Then he pivoted and drove his leg into the other warrior’s hip. His void energy penetrated their flesh as he activated another mark. This combination of attacks did more damage than expected, more than the sum of its parts.

The entire left chunk of the warrior’s hip was deleted from existence. They collapsed to the ground, like marionettes with their strings cut. Julius then stepped forward and drove his knee up into the man’s chin. A spike of mana formed over the knee. He had been holding back on his mana so far, but not now. He used [Primordial Armaments] to create a construct of true destruction, and with a brutal squelch, it slammed through the man’s defenses and pierced straight into his brain.

Julius then detonated the collected void energy, along with the mark he'd placed. The warrior was dead before he hit the floor.

Julius then turned to the final warrior left standing. This was the same one who used the dangerous kinetic and death skill. He also seemed to be a bit tougher than the others, which was already saying a lot.

However, before he dashed in, he quickly sent a concentrated burst of fire mana into his mouth. The death energy was still lingering on his tongue, and each time he moved his mouth, he got another nasty dose of it.

So instead of trying to cleanse it, he just got rid of the problem. He burned his whole tongue off until there was no trace of the death energy remaining. Only when he no longer tasted any disgusting energy did he regenerate his tongue and refocus on the lone surviving warrior.

He stepped in and met the man head-on. He didn't care about taking damage; he wanted to use this opportunity to improve his hand-to-hand skills. He slapped aside the lightning-quick jab to the face and barely parried the uppercut that snuck in from below his line of sight.

He was smaller than his opponent, and hence his reach was shorter. So he decided to close the distance slowly; it was only a few inches, but the change was dramatic. He used the full motion of his limbs while his opponent tried to clinch Julius by the neck and slam his knees into his stomach.

Julius welcomed it, though. He could deal with the punishment and shot a fist straight into the man's neck, grabbing the man's knee when it pummeled into his stomach. He picked up the larger man by the leg and, with a burst of kinetic energy, slammed him down onto the ground.

Julius quickly smothered him, using bursts of kinetic energy to mimic greater weight and keep his opponent from bucking him off. He mounted the man's chest and rained down blow after blow. He ignored the punches he took in return, focusing only on dishing out as much damage as possible.

He used everything at his disposal. His fists, his elbows, even his face were fair game. He brutally swarmed the man with everything he had, not slowing down until he felt his opponent's body go limp underneath him.

Only then did he roll off the man with a soft groan.