Chapter 769: Slaughterhouse

Honeybun entered the fray too, and against mere Five-Star beasts, it had no need to hold back on defense.

The turtle shifted into his jade form, trading away the armor he didn’t need against such weak opponents, and became a blur, rocketing through the valley and tearing Stalkers apart with sharp claws.

Honeybun became a jade bullet leaving nothing but ruin in his wake.

The three newcomers stood frozen for a moment at the gate’s edge, barely able to process the display of power from Moon and his pets.

Their leader had charged a hundred elite beasts alone, dazed an entire pack, and was now cutting through powerful B-Rank body refiner beasts like they were nothing but cabbage.

His dual blades of ice and lightning painting the valley with a myriad of colorful deaths. His turtle, which had seemed strictly defensive, was moving faster than their eyes could follow, slaughtering Stalkers with ease.

_This... this is why he was so confident in himself...

They gulped, mouths dry, the sheer scale of Moon’s power hitting them all at once. The confidence suddenly made complete sense.

He hadn’t been boasting or being overconfident. In fact, he was rather understating.

"Hahahaha!" Garrett let out a roaring laugh, snapping out of his shock, and charged. "Well, don’t let the captain have all the fun! MOVE!"

Priya and Dmitri shook themselves free of their stupor and rushed in behind him, the team throwing themselves into the carnage, Garrett’s greatsword cleaving, Dmitri’s arrows flying, Priya bolstering them with support, cleaning up the Stalkers that Moon and Honeybun left in their wake.

Theo had already entered the battle before the rest of the team, not surprised by Moon’s shocking display of power, knowing that he still had yet to summon one his strongest ace cards, the Surpasser-Rank Lesser Elf Beast Soul that he had acquired during the Rivergate incident.

The valley descended into chaos, and at the center of it all, Moon danced through the beasts with two blades of frost and storm, a hundred elite predators dying around him, forcing the hidden ruler’s hand one corpse at a time.

The more he struck, the more pleased Moon became with his new Pseudo-Legendary skill.

Cryothunder-Assimilation was simply too powerful at his level.

Every strike to a vital area killed instantly, and even a blow to a non-lethal region like a leg or flank left the beast critically injured, the fused element crystallizing through the wound and spreading ruin from within. He wasn’t just killing the Mountain Stalkers. He was deleting them, each contact of his blades a death sentence regardless of where it landed.

But the power came at a cost.

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This was one of the rare moments where Moon actually felt his mana draining faster than he could replenish it. Sustaining Cryothunder across two blades, through Tempest Symphony’s relentless pace, while casting water spheres and lightning on top of it, consumed his reserves at a rate that even his enormous mana pool struggled to keep up with.

Still, it was more than worth the cost. The speed and destructive power the skill granted ended fights before his mana could run dry.

"Roar!!"

The Mountain Stalkers could do nothing but cry out as Moon and his team tore through them. They tried to group together, to mass their numbers against the intruders, but it only made them easier targets.

Moon simply waded into the clustered beasts and cut them down, grinning as his frozen, lightning-laced blades carved through pack after pack.

Within just a few minutes, more than half of the hundred beasts lay dead on the ground, drowning in their own blood.

The valley floor was painted red, corpses heaped across the stone, and as if the sky itself were weeping for the slaughter, it began to rain. The downpour came heavy and sudden, sheets of water pouring over the battlefield, drenching the living and the dead alike, washing rivers of red across the valley floor.

Dark clouds rolled in overhead, thick and churning.

And Moon’s own power answered the storm. Streaks of blue-white lightning crackled across the sky and arced along the ground as his Cryothunder blazed, the rain amplifying everything, water everywhere now, every puddle a weapon. His lightning chained further than ever, leaping from beast to beast across the soaked ground, the frost spreading faster through the rain-slicked air, the storm and his skill feeding each other.

The battlefield had become a drowned, electrified killing field, blue light flashing across red water, and Moon stood at the center of it, two blades of ice and storm reaping the Mountain Stalkers in waves, the rain plastering his hair to his face, his momentum unstoppable.

The team fought on around him, Garrett’s greatsword cleaving through the downpour, Dmitri’s arrows flying true despite the rain, Priya’s support keeping them all standing, Honeybun a jade blur cutting through the chaos, Mirage and his clone trampling and scattering the beasts.

Half the valley’s defenders were already dead.

And somewhere beyond the slaughter, the hidden ruler could no longer pretend this was something it could ignore.

"Help!" Priya’s voice cut through the rain as a Mountain Stalker broke off from the main engagement, fixing on her as its target.

She hurled a spell at the approaching beast, but the golden-streaked Stalker tanked it without flinching, shrugging off the damage as though it were nothing worth noticing. These core-valley beasts were pure body-refiners, and against their raw durability, her attacks simply couldn’t dig deep enough to matter.

Garrett’s head snapped around at her cry, but before he could move to help, a Mountain Stalker slammed into him from the front, then another almost immediately after, forcing him to defend himself. Their claws raked across him, and blood seeped through his shirt where his skin was cut, though his high constitution kept the wounds shallow, minor injuries at worst.

"Damn it!" Garrett gritted his teeth and swung his greatsword in a wide arc, the heavy blade forcing the two Stalkers back, buying himself the space to break away. He turned and rushed toward the back line, racing to reach Priya.