In the sky above, the two formidable figures faced each other, standing on air. The sheer intensity of their presence made it difficult for Charles to even breathe.
A faint black mist enveloped the man, obscuring his features from Charles’s view. With a sweep of his long sleeve, the black mist began to spread, gradually covering a vast portion of the sky.
Even the Devouring Serpent, which was on the verge of breaking through to the sixth tier, was utterly terrified by the display. Despite the excruciating pain coursing through its body, it dared not make a sound.
Charles shifted his gaze to the other side.
The swirling blue vortex had almost drained the Nine Hell River dry, with the riverbed faintly visible. The woman, with a delicate point of her toe in the void, stood atop the towering waterspout.
“This Devouring Serpent, with eight of its nine heads already severed by me, is nearly subdued. For you to now claim that you were the first to discover it is rather audacious,” the blue-haired woman said, her voice crisp and melodic. Sensing the formidable strength of the newcomer, her tone was measured, lacking any overt hostility.
“Audacious?” The man in the black robe let out a cold snort, then pointed to the severely wounded body of the Devouring Serpent. “A month ago, I discovered this Devouring Serpent as it was about to ascend. It barely escaped from me, but not without sustaining serious injuries. Otherwise, do you think you could have defeated it so easily with your strength?”
Following the direction of the man’s finger, Charles noticed three black wounds on the serpent’s abdomen. A quick glance at the system’s status for the Devouring Serpent confirmed that it was indeed suffering from serpent venom, likely from the Serpentkin.
It seemed the man was telling the truth.
However, Emma clearly intended to subdue this ferocious beast and make it her Mystical Beast. Given the high price she must have paid during the pursuit, she was unlikely to hand over the Devouring Serpent now that it was within her grasp.
Charles surmised that a fierce battle was inevitable tonight.
In the sky above, seeing the woman remain silent, the man slightly softened his stance. “The Serpentkin and Genosha have been at peace for a century. I am not an unreasonable man. How about this: I take the beast core, bones, and scales, and you can have the rest of the materials. What do you say?”
“You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you? Doing nothing and expecting to reap the rewards? But I intend to subdue this Devouring Serpent as my Mystical Beast, not kill it,” the woman’s voice echoed coldly from the other side of the sky.
“In that case, let’s see if you have what it takes!” The man wasted no more words. His aura surged, and black mist poured out from his body, gradually forming a suit of black armor around him. Wielding a jet-black spear, he swung it through the air, whipping up a fierce gale around him.
“If it’s a fight you want, then I’ll give you one,” the woman responded calmly, showing no trace of fear.
Her six Mystical Beasts circled around her, and as the blue-ringed octopus moved, the Nine Hell River erupted in towering waves, sending water columns hundreds of meters high shooting into the sky.
“So this is… the terrifying power of a Level 7 Beast Master?” Charles muttered to himself, drenched from head to toe as the waves pounded against him. Spitting out a mouthful of water, he clung desperately to a nearby giant tree.
He stared up at the sky in awe. On one side, a cyan light had spread across half of the heavens, resembling an ocean. On the other, a black storm was brewing, threatening to swallow even the starlight. The sky was like a powder keg soaked in gasoline, ready to explode at the slightest spark.
Charles wasn’t too confident in the woman named Emma. Though she was undoubtedly one of the most powerful figures in Genosha, she had only recently advanced to Level 7 Beast Master, roughly equivalent to a Level 61. Moreover, she hadn’t yet tamed her seventh Mystical Beast, which meant her strength was somewhat diminished.
As the waves surged, dozens of water columns formed in front of Emma’s Mystical Beast, the blue-ringed octopus. Gradually, they coalesced into a massive water dragon, a hundred meters long, which spiraled toward the man.
Wherever the water dragon passed, the ferocious beasts in the forest below scattered in terror, their eyes wide with fear as they fled in all directions.
Charles quickly darted back another hundred meters, terrified of being caught up in the water dragon’s wrath.
“Fool!” the man sneered as he watched the enormous blue dragon hurtle toward him. Behind him, the storm raged more fiercely, gradually forming an even larger black serpent that charged headlong into the water dragon.
In the sky above, the two colossal beasts collided, unleashing a brilliant light that made it as bright as day. Charles shielded his eyes with his hand, barely avoiding being blinded by the intense glare.
“Lightning Demon Ape!!!”
Moments later, the sound of an explosion roared through the air, accompanied by a shockwave that blasted the trees in the center of the battlefield into splinters, some of which struck Charles.
The massive dragon, weighing millions of tons, shattered into countless droplets after the explosion, triggering a brief but intense downpour.
The river water from the Nine Hell River surged like a flash flood, sweeping away everything in its path. Countless low-level ferocious beasts were washed into the river by the deluge.
It took every ounce of strength Charles had to break free from the floodwaters, struggling to climb onto a nearby hill that stood above the chaos.
As he looked up at the two powerful figures locked in battle in the sky, his eyes burned with excitement. This was the first time he had witnessed a battle of this magnitude, and with just a single move, Emma had triggered a localized flash flood.
And this was only the beginning.
After the water dragon dispersed, the Nine Hell River roared back to life, as water energy began to gather once more in front of Emma, slowly forming into a massive net.
[Network of Constraints]! Charles recognized the skill as belonging to Emma’s Mystical Beast, the blue-ringed octopus.
The overwhelming waves gradually wove into a massive spherical net, trapping the man inside, leaving no room for escape. The water net began to contract…
The black serpent, conjured from the hurricane, along with the man beside it, was quickly ensnared by the web.
But in just a blink of an eye, another explosion echoed across the sky, and the once-impenetrable net shattered into a shower of water droplets. A colossal figure, with the upper body of a man and the lower body of a snake, burst free from the net’s restraints.
Emma’s two attacks had failed to inflict any harm on the man, but the relentless assault had clearly worn down his patience. frёewebηovel.cѳm
Joshua, now revealed in his true Serpentkin form, stood ten meters tall, wielding a black spear. With a powerful swing towards the woman, the black mist around him condensed into a razor-sharp blade.
As the wind blade surged forward, even the starlight seemed to warp around it. Watching the attack approach, Emma frowned slightly. Her six Mystical Beasts each activated their defensive skills, gradually forming a water-blue shield in front of her: “Sea Phantom Shield!”
As the massive shield solidified, the wind blade was already upon her, crashing directly into the shield.
A sharp, grating sound, like metal scraping against metal, echoed from the point where the wind blade met the water shield. Under the force of the collision, Emma began to lose ground, and cracks started to spread across the surface of the shield.
“Crack!!!”
With a clear, shattering sound, the giant shield exploded into fragments, dissolving into a spray of water droplets that fell like rain once more.
Though the water shield had absorbed most of the wind blade’s power, a residual force still broke through, striking Emma in the chest. A stream of crimson blood began to pour from the wound.
“It’s over,” the Serpentkin man scoffed, lunging toward her with his spear.
Injured and under the relentless assault of the man, Emma was clearly struggling to defend herself, retreating step by step in the sky.
Blue and black streaks of light clashed repeatedly in mid-air. Emma had already activated her Bestial Soul Merge, unleashing a brief surge of power in a desperate, last-ditch effort.
“Lightning Demon Ape!”
Shockwaves continuously erupted from the aerial battle, carving deep, bottomless trenches into the mountains and ground below.
“Vice Principal seems to be injured. If this continues, something terrible is bound to happen!”
“These Serpentkin are truly shameless. They waited until we and the Devouring Serpent were both exhausted from fighting and then swooped in to claim the prize!”
“But… if even the Vice Principal can’t defeat him, what can we, just Level 3 Beast Masters, possibly do?”
On the other side of the hill, a group of Nova Academy students, who had also taken refuge from the floodwaters, looked up at the sky with worried expressions.
They had noticed Charles by now, but their attention was so fixated on the battle above that they completely ignored him.
With a blade of foxtail grass between his teeth, Charles silently watched the unfolding drama, almost as if he needed a small chair to settle in and enjoy the show.
He could see clearly that Emma was no match for the Serpentkin man named Joshua. In his estimation, she would be defeated in less than a minute.
But despite everything, they were both humans, and Charles didn’t want to see Emma killed by a Serpentkin, especially considering that she had saved him on the Nine Hell River just a short while ago.
Charles opened the system interface, scanning for any tips on the Serpentkin man’s weaknesses.
[Weakness]: Wind attribute abilities rely on absorbing wind energy from the environment to enhance combat power. In windy conditions, his attacks are significantly strengthened. However, if the wind in the environment is cut off, his combat effectiveness will be greatly reduced.
“A place without wind…” Charles muttered to himself.
The battle was taking place high in the sky, where the wind was strong—naturally an ideal environment for wind-based combat. It was like how a forest benefits wood attributes or a volcano benefits fire attributes.
Up in the sky, Emma was being relentlessly pushed back by the Serpentkin man, her body covered in wounds.
She had clearly underestimated her opponent. After her exhausting battle with the Devouring Serpent, she hadn’t had time to recover, and now she was clearly no match for this Serpentkin.
Just as despair began to creep in, a strange voice called out from the ground below: “Don’t fight him in the air! Get to the ground, or better yet, into the water!”
Though the voice was faint, her advanced hearing as a Level 7 Beast Master allowed her to catch even the slightest sound within several kilometers.
The words jolted her to the realization that she had made a grave mistake. Why was she fighting an opponent with wind attributes in the air, his domain?
Seeing the blue figure plummet toward the Nine Hell River, the Serpentkin man’s eyes flashed with malice as he too descended, though not toward the woman—he aimed straight for the source of that voice: “Boy, you’re asking for death!”