The Highest Bounty

Chapter 218: The Arena

In the strange domain where many broken swords were buried, Roland’s repeated provocations finally got to Tagore’s head as the latter transformed into a one hundred meter long, blood-red, nine-tailed beast.

An air of extreme brutality and bloodlust spread out from his body, adding to the already uncanny environment and making it even more eery.

Roland became a little warier. He was a peak demigod powerhouse, and as a 5-star monster, he had killed more than one deity. Nevertheless, Tagore had changed his form, and he felt slightly threatened by it. It showed how fearful Tagore’s strength was.

Tagore fixed his eyes on Roland. Although Roland could not see Tagore’s eyes, he knew very well that Tagore was unhappy. He did not know what caused Tagore’s sudden outbreak. He had a vague feeling that it had something to do with the cat teaser. “Could it be… He doesn’t like the cat teaser? It was advertised as a toy that no cat can refuse… Damn it, it seems like I’ve been cheated by an advertisement once more. I’ll find a lawyer and sue the company that sells the cat teaser when I get back!”

After staring at Roland for a moment, Tagore lowered his eyes a little, and they landed on the cat teaser. Almost at the same time, he growled angrily at Roland and attacked him.

Roland noticed the movement in Tagore’s eyes which allowed him to determine the reason for Tagore’s anger.

“It was that damned cat teaser! Whichever company sold it, they’re dead!” Roland scolded as he defended himself.

Tagore’s attack was capable of ripping space. Even in Roland’s personal domain, space still appeared to be ripped apart under Tagore’s attack. With each claw, he ripped a black gash through space. The slashes looked like irregular man-eating mouths as they kept growing and extending outward like ripples.

Attacks with spatial elements were capable of causing way more damage compared to ordinary attacks. Especially since Tagore had become bigger, each blow he made was as powerful as a peak demigod powerhouse’s attack.

Nevertheless, Roland was still able to block most of his attacks.

Roland only held a single sword in his hand. Before the terrifying black, man-eating mouth, he seemed extremely small. However, whenever one of the black fissures approached him, he would merely lift the tip of his sword and the black man-eating mouth would vanish into the ether.

Out of nowhere, an attack missed its mark and hit the ground in the distance. The terrible attack did not create a loud explosion but fell quietly into the ground. The ground, however, began to shake violently and the place Tagore had hit was left with a crack that quickly widened and spread out. After a few minutes or so, everything finally came to a halt. The attack left more than just a gully. It managed to cut the ground in half and left behind a canyon hundreds of meters wide with unforeseeable depth.

Tagore’s attack had obviously impacted the nature of Roland’s domain. In other words, as long as his attack power or cumulative attack power reached a certain point, it was likely to break Roland’s domain. In a way, he was already a powerhouse like Roland.

Having suffered three waves of such attacks in his domain, Roland knew that he could not let Tagore vent his anger however he wanted to. If his domain ended up being broken, it would be a problem as it would take time to repair. More importantly, he was in a downtown area with Tagore. The moment the domain was broken, the impact of the two demigods would wreak havoc over the large areas nearby, causing many casualties.

“I’m sorry, kitty, but I have to do this for everyone’s safety.” Roland had been defending passively all this while, and he knew it was not going to work out if things continued the same way. After cutting through Tagore’s attack with one strike, he raised his hand and pointed the tip of his sword toward Tagore.

His actions immediately alarmed Tagore as the latter was well aware of danger as well.

In fact, it was very dangerous.

The moment the tip of Roland’s sword locked onto Tagore, the ground beneath them began to vibrate, and strange murmurs began to be heard coming from the ground. It started with just a few sounds and gradually increased as it got denser. All of a sudden, a sword broke free from the ground and shot at Tagore at lightning speed. Followed by it was a second sword, then a third… Sword after sword shot out from the ground as if they were living beings. What seemed like countless colorful lightning bolts flashed through the sky as each one of them was wildly headed in Tagore’s direction.

Tagore’s gigantic body was instantly swallowed up by the thousands of long swords of various shapes…

…

Biggie stood in a round arena. He remembered clearly that he had fought in the arena before. Strange ciphertext and symbols were engraved in the middle of the arena. On the other hand, the surrounding circular stands were exactly how he remembered them.

Alone in the vast arena, Biggie looked at his hands that were back to normal. The saber hanging from the right side of his waist was a familiar black color.

He remembered the arena very well. Every once in a while, he was forced to participate in solo combat. Each time, he faced only one person, but his opponents were always extremely strong. Either one of them had to kill the other in order to leave the arena. He would be fed with countless body strengthening agents before each battle and then fed with countless body repair agents right after. The constant stimulation of various medicines caused his body to mutate into a state different from normal people.

Biggie stood opposite a gate made of unknown metal. The gate was a hundred meters wide and thirty meters high. Behind the heavy gates was a battle cage.

The battle cage was where each challenger appeared, and the one being challenged had to arrive in advance and wait in the arena. Biggie was undoubtedly the one being challenged now, which was why he had appeared in the center of the arena.

As he watched on, the heavy gates slowly began to rise while the sound of chains being dragged were heard.

Biggie knew that his opponent was about to appear.

This time, it would be an unprecedented challenge for him. He was only a Rank-11 Gene Body and there seemed to be more than one demigod amongst the challengers. There fourteen gene levels if one included becoming a demigod as one of them. After becoming a demigod, one’s combat effectiveness would increase by a hundredfold from when they were a Rank-13 Gene Body. In other terms, it was the equivalent to two big ranks. Hence, in order to fight a demigod, Biggie’s combat effectiveness had to at least exceed four big ranks his own Gene Level.

Biggie was not too worried about it. He had chosen to fight because he was confident. After his battle with Halley, his memories of wielding a saber had been awakened. The battles that followed also played a part in helping him get back his familiarity with the blade. In fact, his current attacks had increased in strength by about ten thousand fold his original combat effectiveness. Otherwise, it would not have been that easy for him to overwhelm those people in the room who were capable of fighting across three big ranks.

Even before the gates were fully open, people could be seen moving around in the battle cage.

Several figures were heading toward Biggie. On the other hand, two gunners had begun launching attacks in the distance. Terrifying and dense gunfire, wrapped in Righteous Force, streaked through the sky like meteors falling from space.

Biggie knew that standing still would make him a target for the gunners. Hence, he moved from side to side, dodging their shots. His primary target was the two gunners. The two gunsmiths were both Peak Rank-13 Gene Body powerhouses, only one step away from becoming demigods.

Sensing Biggie’s intentions, the two gunners ran in separate directions. Additionally, others immediately stepped forward to stop him.

Nevertheless, the current Biggie was different. Holding his saber in one hand, he swung and shot black energy out of his blade. Then, an ink-colored crescent moon flew forward and sliced the three Rank-13 Gene Bodies who were trying to intercept him in half.

Seeing his own attack, Biggie realized that what had come out of the blade was not completely Righteous Force–Darkness had added another strange form of energy. The energy clearly ranked higher than Righteous Force as it easily tore apart the three Rank-13 Gene Bodies who had Righteous Force protecting them. It managed to cut them in half like tofu.

Biggie, who had initially attacked with the intention of forcing the enemy to retreat was surprised to see the effectiveness of his attack. He had expected his attack to wound them lightly at the very most.

Nevertheless, Biggie did not change targets as gunners were often very tricky to deal with. If the average martial arts practitioner was ever attacked by a team of people, killing the gunner was the first thing they should do. That was because the moment one met a team assistant gunner, one would be hampered in battle. Nevertheless, the main point was that although Biggie’s combat effectiveness had increased by a large margin, his defense had not changed. Facing a Rank-13 gunner, it was likely that he would suffer a fatal injury the moment he showed any signs of weakness.

The two gunners were hunted down by Biggie and killed. As for those who tried to stop him, other than three demigod powerhouses, they were all killed by Biggie.

Biggie managed to kill twenty-three out of the ninety-nine enemies he had to face in less than 10 minutes. Additionally, the number of kills he had was still increasing.

While Biggie was able to kill Rank-13 Gene Bodies with his attacks, his attacks seemed to do very limited damage to demigods.

Therefore, what he did was very simple–he did not fight the demigods directly. Each time a demigod caught up with him, he would dish out a single blow and focus his attack on the rest.

After half an hour, only four men were left in the vast arena–Biggie and three other demigods.