Chapter 225: A Presence Beyond S-Rank

The situation in Ashwick was improving. The monsters were being pushed back on every front, and even the battle against the A-rank Hollow was finally showing signs of coming to an end.

By this point, it had been driven all the way to the outskirts of the city, where it would do the least damage, giving Victor more freedom to unleash himself fully against the beast.

"Just die already," Victor shouted, the mana pouring off him gathering into a single powerful blast that he hurled at the beast.

He looked battered, not gravely wounded, but close to it. His clothes were torn in several places, and small cuts covered his arms and face, with traces of blood running down his cheek.

The battle against the Hollow had been more difficult than he had initially expected, forcing him to sustain quite a few injuries. However, he had also managed to inflict considerable damage on the beast in return. After repeatedly regenerating from every wound, the creature was finally beginning to show signs of exhaustion.

It was clear it couldn’t keep using that regenerative ability forever.

The creature had already regenerated dozens of wounds throughout the battle, but each time it did, its movements became slightly slower and its attacks less precise.

Victor hadn’t failed to notice this, and he now pushed even harder, determined to finish the battle before the beast could recover.

The attack, now taking the form of a spear of water and mana compressed to an extreme degree, launched forward with a deafening roar, moving at such tremendous speed that it reached the beast in an instant and struck it dead-on.

BOOM.

The blow exploded with tremendous force, sending the beast flying brutally, hurling it toward the edge of the nearby forest.

It was near the eastern edge of the forest, the area where Selena had entered to fight.

The attack did massive damage, leveling dozens of trees and gouging the ground into a crater, at the center of which the battered creature now lay, every limb broken, its wings shattered, barely clinging to life.

Seeing that it was still alive, Victor’s brow furrowed slightly, and he couldn’t help but curse under his breath.

"You really are an annoying thing, but it’s time we put an end to this farce," he said, raising his hand as another attack, just like the last one, began charging above it.

He’d already burned through a good portion of his strength on that last attack, but he still had enough left for one more, one that would be the last.

But just as he was about to finish preparing the strike, something shifted across the entire battlefield.

A chill ran down Victor’s spine, and he froze in place.

’What’s happening?’ he thought, alarmed, trying to pinpoint the source of the sudden change, but at that very moment, the hair on his arms stood on end, and his head snapped upward on instinct. That was when he saw it.

Victor’s heart seemed to stop as his gaze fixed on the sky, where a colossal fracture had just torn open between the clouds.

An Abyss portal.

And it was forming directly above Ashwick.

Victor didn’t even have time to react to the sight before a terrifying presence descended over the entire city all at once.

The pressure exploded outward in every direction.

For a moment, it felt as though the air itself had turned solid, unbearably heavy.

The weaker soldiers collapsed to the ground without even understanding what had happened, while the stronger ones, though managing to stay on their feet, struggled to breathe under that crushing weight.

The battlefield plunged into chaos.

The corrupted beasts began to roar, their auras erupting violently, growing suddenly far more powerful and vicious.

Even the Hollow that Victor had just beaten to within an inch of its life began to change.

Its body, moments ago nearly destroyed, started regenerating at a staggering speed, its aura climbing higher and higher.

A-Rank Early-Stage...

A-Rank Mid-Stage...

A-Rank Advanced-Stage...

And finally, before Victor’s disbelieving eyes, that pressure reached an entirely different level. It climbed to the very peak of A-Rank, just one step away from S-Rank.

Victor watched it all unfold, but there was nothing he could do. His body was completely frozen.

Every muscle refused to obey him, crushed beneath that terrifying presence.

And yet his eyes stayed locked on the sky.

Because something was descending through the portal.

At first, only a foot appeared.

Then the other.

Two impossibly long, slender legs followed, until a humanoid body slowly began to emerge from the fracture.

First the torso.

Then the arms, unnaturally long and thin, hanging limply at its sides, ending in sharp, claw like fingers.

Finally, the head appeared.

The creature stood at least several dozen meters tall.

Its body was slender, almost skeletal, and yet it radiated a sense of power so overwhelming that it was hard even to look at directly.

It was humanoid only in shape.

Its face was utterly featureless.

No nose, no mouth, no ears.

Only a single enormous vertical eye occupied nearly its entire face, unmoving and terrifying.

Its head was pointed and tilted slightly backward, while thin black veins branched across its pale skin, like cracks running through a surface on the verge of shattering.

For a few seconds, the creature hovered before the portal.

Then, slowly, its enormous eye moved downward and settled upon the land beneath it.

Victor immediately felt an absolute, bone chilling sense of death wash over him.

’W-what is that thing?’ He thought, barely managing to move his eyes as he tried to examine the creature.

And what he discovered left him breathless. That being’s presence was overwhelmingly strong, far, far beyond an S-rank, at a level entirely impossible for him to gauge.

He wasn’t certain of the exact nature of that being’s power, but it hardly mattered. It was stronger than an S-rank, and that alone was enough to make him realize that he, and this entire city, were doomed.