Chapter 1412 - 34: Goddess of Dawn

Chapter 1412: Chapter 34: Goddess of Dawn

Inside the stairwell between the fourth and fifth floors of St. Limen Fortress, Su Xiao slid Dragon Slash’s scabbard into his belt, the long blade sheathed, and walked up toward the stairs with D·Assassin held level in his hands.

The little assistant poked her head around nervously as she followed behind Su Xiao. With a gun in hand she was bold and jumpy; the moment she lost it, she chickened out instantly.

As Su Xiao stepped onto the stairs, the scorched, burnt smell coming from the fifth floor grew more and more obvious.

Right now the fifth floor was pitch black and charred, several walls blown down, with a few charred corpses lying on the floor.

Su Xiao put an extra bullet into each of the charred corpses. No matter how expensive D·Assassin’s bullets were, this was not the time to save ammo. If one of those charred corpses suddenly jumped up, even if he could take it down, he’d waste a few precious seconds.

[You have killed Archdeacon · Bilbo, you gain 5 points of Reincarnation Paradise Merit.]

Sure enough, someone had been playing dead on the floor and was sent off on the spot by Su Xiao’s finishing shot.

Su Xiao had already activated the mission’s auxiliary reconnaissance function; at this moment, Divine Envoy Du Bo · Yi Si was in the innermost room on the fifth floor.

To kill Du Bo · Yi Si, Su Xiao had to cut straight across the fifth floor and reach that innermost room. It sounded simple, but in reality, it was very difficult.

The fifth floor was the living quarters for the Sun Kingdom’s officers. Any rank at or above Archdeacon possessed inhuman combat strength. Among Archbishop, Bishop of Morning Light, and Divine Envoy, not everyone was a powerhouse, but over 60% had formidable combat effectiveness.

Take Du Bo · Yi Si, Su Xiao’s current target—he was a Divine Envoy whose status in the army was second only to that of a Great Envoy.

There were two kinds of Divine Envoys. One kind reached the position through seniority; these Divine Envoys were good at leading troops in battle and possessed strong command and leadership ability.

The second kind rose to the position through sheer personal martial prowess. They held rank without real authority, but were still respected, responsible for dealing with particularly thorny problems—in other words, they were the face of the Divine Court.

Su Xiao still didn’t know which type of Divine Envoy Du Bo · Yi Si was, but he knew one thing for sure: the officers’ dorms on the fifth floor were no easy place to storm, and he had no idea how many Sun Kingdom officers were in there.

An Apollo appeared in Su Xiao’s hand. Previously, the little assistant hadn’t known what Apollo did; after what had just happened, she’d personally experienced how terrifying Apollo really was.

"You’ve got to be kidding, again?"

The little assistant let out a groan. She even had the urge to jump out of the fortress through a lookout slit.

Su Xiao had just taken out Apollo when a series of doors opened. A total of seven Sun Kingdom officers walked out of their rooms, wielding all kinds of close combat weapons. Their bodies bore varying degrees of blast wounds; some unluckier ones were missing arms or legs.

From Su Xiao’s initial assessment, only four officers could still maintain peak combat effectiveness. The rest were either missing limbs or about to kick the bucket at any moment.

"O God of Dawn, we gather here before you. May your will be done on earth as it is in the heavens; may the dawn’s first light be holy, and dispel all evil upon the land..."

The seven Sun Kingdom officers chanted in unison. Their expressions were vacant, their tones perfectly aligned; you couldn’t even tell it was seven people speaking at once.

"Kill them!"

The little assistant shouted, her voice cracking. From the moment they’d met until now, Su Xiao had never seen the usually cheerful little assistant make that kind of face.

He didn’t need her to yell; Su Xiao had already raised the D·Assassin in his hand.

Pft, pft, pft...

Bullet after bullet shot toward the officers’ heads. After a few crisp impacts, the skulls of three half-crippled officers were shattered. In front of the remaining four, a layer of silver Barrier appeared, locking the bullets in place.

"Let our blood be the medium. We beseech you to descend in your true body, to defend your divine might, and Shelter those who are devout to you."

The four officers raised their respective weapons at the same time and slashed across their own throats.

Their throats were cut open, yet no blood spurted out; instead, pure White light particles drifted from the wounds—that was some kind of energy.

Su Xiao emptied D·Assassin’s magazine, then put D·Assassin away and advanced with his blade.

[Notice: Hunter has entered a Domain under the gaze of the God of Dawn. Your Power -20, Agility -20, Stamina -20, Charm -20.]

[Check complete: Hunter’s Power, Agility, and Intelligence Attributes are True Attributes. You are Immune to this Negative effect.]

[Your Charm Attributes are temporarily reduced by 20 points.]

[Due to heavy Gravity suppression, your Moving speed will be reduced by 50%–60%.]

[Due to unknown energy Erosion, you will lose 6% Life Value per second (originally 12%; Blue Steel Shadow Energy has partially dispelled the energy Erosion).]

...

Su Xiao leapt backward repeatedly. The crushing pressure vanished, the stabbing pain all over his body disappeared, and his Life Value stopped dropping.

In midair, a mass of pure White energy gathered together, eventually forming a heart.

Thump~

The heart beat once, and the light around it flared brilliantly.

A moment later, a four-meter-tall white phantom appeared on the fifth layer of the fortress. It was a woman’s phantom; her face was blurred, the clearest manifested parts were those hands.

"We’re done."

The little assistant took two steps back, then grit her teeth and rushed in front of Su Xiao.

"Sir, I’ll cover you. Judging by how transparent it is, this thing won’t last long. Its weak point is shadow. I have a way to hold it back. We’ll go back to the fifth layer to carry out the mission after it disappears."

Obviously, the little assistant had seen this white phantom before. She’d fallen into depression back then, not really because of her partner’s death, but because all her close squadmates had died at this phantom’s hands.

"This thing... can probably last how long?"

Su Xiao looked the phantom up and down, a smile appearing on his face.

The little assistant clearly hadn’t expected Su Xiao to even have a smiling expression. Her mouth opened and closed; for a moment she didn’t know what to say.

"About... three to five minutes."

"That so, then we have to hurry."

"Right, the mission is what matters most..."

Su Xiao pushed the little assistant aside and stepped toward the phantom.

"Hey～"

The little assistant’s expression was rather spectacular. She’d made a huge mental preparation just to come out and cover the rear.

Thump, thump...

The four officers collapsed, blood spurting from their necks. The phantom turned its head, glancing at the four officers who’d fallen. With a wave of its hand, the wounds at their necks were wrapped in white light and slowly began to heal.

Su Xiao’s steps quickened, and in the end he broke into a full-speed charge.

Mid-charge, Su Xiao felt himself pierce through a thin membrane. After passing through it, sharp pain came from all over his body, and his speed plummeted.

The phantom turned its head. It sighed, as if pitying Su Xiao, yet the way it looked at him was like a god overlooking an ant.

The phantom’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. White light radiated from its entire body, like the first sun rising in the early morning.

A searing burn spread across his skin. Several Counter Shields floated out around Su Xiao as he slashed forward into empty air, sending a Blade Aura flying.

The Blade Aura cut through the phantom’s neck without any resistance, passing straight through. Judging from its appearance, it hadn’t affected the phantom at all. This thing was almost impossible to injure with physical attacks, unless the attack’s Strength surpassed a certain limit.

Su Xiao’s Life Value dropped like running water, falling to seventy percent in less than three seconds—and that was with his level of survival. An ordinary Fourth-tier Contractor only had to get close to this thing; they’d be dead in under five seconds.

This phantom had been summoned by those four officers of the Sun Kingdom; from the four Light Chains linking to their bodies, its movement range was very limited.

The reason Su Xiao rushed in wasn’t that some berserker soul in him was blazing, but because he sensed that this phantom was a massive concentration of life energy gathered into one.

If it were an enemy of this level formed by some other type of energy, Su Xiao would never take it head-on. But an enemy formed from life energy...

The phantom had little emotional fluctuation. It was merely a vessel for some consciousness. In this world, that consciousness was called the Goddess of Dawn, the deity worshiped by the Sun Kingdom.

The phantom didn’t seem to care much about Su Xiao. When he rushed to within five meters of it, it waved its hand.

With a swish, dense Light Blades swept past Su Xiao. The Counter Shields shattered in an instant, and seven bone-deep gashes opened across Su Xiao’s upper body.

Su Xiao’s figure suddenly vanished. When he appeared again, he was already right before the phantom. Blue smoke wrapped around his left arm, and his left hand was already pressed against the phantom’s abdomen.

The phantom’s body froze. Its ten fingers curled into claws, reaching to grab Su Xiao, but then it just stopped, utterly immovable.

"I heard you’re the God of Dawn?"

Red light shone in his eyes. Su Xiao, the left side of his body wrapped in blue smoke, tilted his head up.

"Ah!!"

A blood-chilling scream echoed through the entire fortress. The phantom no longer looked like some lofty god; the "god" was screaming.

A blue phantom appeared behind Su Xiao. This thing almost embodied the Demon Blade.

The Demon Blade Phantom’s eyes were blood-red. Its mouth opened to a grotesquely exaggerated extent, wider than its own head.

The Demon Blade Phantom bared a mouthful of Fangs and took a bite out of the white-light phantom, directly biting off its head and swallowing it down.

The "god’s" phantom convulsed once more, then went completely still.

PS: (Today’s update is a bit late. Mainly, writing six Chapters a day is a huge strain. Tomorrow we go back to updating at 6 p.m.)