Chapter 112 — Lurking Shadows From the eyes of the Horar Black Snake, an almost human-like expression of mockery emerged.
BOOM!!!
A massive wave of Spiritual Power erupted, instantly repelling the green radiance.
Moreover, the contract array hovering in midair shuddered violently and then detonated with a deafening blast.
Bosain's chest took the blow as if struck by a sledgehammer, sending him hurtling backward.
Large swathes of his silver armor sheared away from his body, and a torrent of scarlet blood sprayed from his mouth.
"The contract backfired!" Lei Lin exclaimed from his vantage point nearby.
When a contract with a powerful creature failed, a
Judging by the situation, Bosain's mind had surely suffered a devastating blow! And his magically bonded Magical Items, linked to his Spirit, had taken no small amount of damage either.
Clatter-clatter-clatter!!!
Just as Bosain was still tumbling through the air, a white talisman suddenly rose from his body, and a ring of milky-white light enveloped his blood-spewing frame entirely.
The milky radiance was suffused with a resplendent, almost holy quality, and under its glow, Bosain's condition visibly recovered at a speed the naked eye could track.
"A disposable healing talisman?" Lei Lin caught a glimpse from the corner of his eye and identified the white talisman's origin.
"He really does carry plenty of good items!" Although Bosain hadn't suffered a crippling blow as planned, Lei Lin was still rather satisfied — after all, he had forced one of Bosain's trump cards out into the open.
Crafting such a talisman required a vast amount of rare resources, along with a tremendous amount of mana and energy from a formally ranked White Wizard. Even for someone like Bosain, he would never carry a second one.
"What's going on?!"
Jiamen and Xia Ya, watching Bosain go flying, still wore expressions of utter disbelief on their faces.
"The contract failed! Kill that damn black snake — quickly!"
Relin drew the Cross Sword from his waist. As the runes flashed, a layer of fine, frigid white ice crystals enveloped the blade.
Frost Alchemy Rune!!! A consumable alchemy rune designed specifically for attachment to weapons, it could temporarily boost a mundane weapon's power to near that of a low-level Magical Item. Once used, the ordinary weapon would be destroyed.
Relin's Cross Sword had been damaged long ago during the blood duel.
But that didn't matter. At Black Bone Forest Academy, ordinary longswords without any magical enhancements were available in whatever quantity one desired.
Relin hefted the enormous frost greatsword in his hands. The biting cold radiating from the blade drew sharp glances from both Jiamen and Xia Ya.
"I knew it!" Jiamen's heart screamed. "Relin survived the blood duel — of course he had a hidden card up his sleeve!"
"Hold it down! I'm going in!"
Relin glanced at the Horar Black Snake, still restrained by the green vines and the crimson long hair.
Having just suffered a devastating blow from Relin's sudden burst of Spiritual Power, the Horar Black Snake was thrashing its massive body violently, surging waves of raw power erupting from within.
Screeech!!!
Several vines and strands of hair snapped clean through. The expressions on Jiamen and Xia Ya's faces grew increasingly grim.
"Hurry! I can't hold it much longer!" Xia Ya shouted from the side.
"Cross Slash!!!"
Relin's muscles coiled and bulged, his entire frame seeming to swell a size larger.
"Detected: host has entered Knight's Secret Art state. Strength and agility increased! Constitution decreased!" The Chip's real-time monitoring feedback arrived almost instantly.
During his three years in Polar Night City, Relin had obtained Baron Jackson's Knight's explosive secret art.
This was a technique that surpassed even killing moves — and furthermore, it came from a Great Knight's hand, far superior to Relin's family-inherited Knight's secret art.
Under the Chip's formidable computational power, Relin had directly merged Jackson's Knight's secret art into his own Cross Sword secret art, dramatically optimizing the efficacy of the inherited technique.
The secret art Relin now wielded had reached the level of a Great Knight's. The aftereffects were milder, and the power far greater.
With a thunderous roar, Relin launched himself high into the air. The frost Cross greatsword carved two brilliant arcs through the sky.
The two arcs converged, forming a massive cross shape in midair. Frost crystallized continuously, ultimately coalescing into an enormous cross-shaped ice blade that slashed down toward the Horalar Black Snake!!!
Pfft!!!
The frost cross blade struck directly beneath the Horalar Black Snake's neck, scales shattering and spraying outward in showers, each one coated in a layer of frost.
At the wound on the Horalar Black Snake, a massive cross-shaped gash had already appeared. Frost crept relentlessly through it, and streams of snake blood—bright crimson tinged with streaks of black—seeped out freely.
"Hiss!!! Hiss!!!" The black snake unleashed a furious roar, thrashing its body wildly and snapping yet more vines and strands of red hair.
"Good! Keep up this power! Just a few more strikes and we can sever that head outright!"
Joy surfaced on Xaya's face.
"Hiss!" After its frenzy, the Horalar Black Snake abruptly fell into an eerie calm.
It stopped struggling, but the scales across its body began flickering with a dark luminescence, emanating waves of Negative Energy that felt intensely familiar to Relin.
"Shadow System energy particles! Be careful—" Relin recalled the data the Chip had provided and immediately called out.
But it was already a step too late!
Without a sound, half of the Horalar Black Snake's body suddenly turned translucent—first the scales, then the serpentine skin, the muscles, the bones…
The transparency spread rapidly across the entire serpent. The massive body, dozens of meters long, vanished in an instant.
"What is that? Some kind of invisibility spell? But what use is it when its main body is already bound by two Magical Items?" Xaya asked in confusion.
"It's not an invisibility spell—it's a stealth technique that can negate attacks!"
Clatter!! Clatter!! The countless green vines and red strands that had been coiled around the Horalar Black Snake suddenly seemed to lose their target, as if they had been gripping nothing but empty air. They slid loose and collapsed to the ground.
"Such a spell effect?" Jiamen's pupils contracted sharply. "This is completely beyond a Zero-level Spell—it has the power of a formal Wizard spell! Why didn't it use this before?"
"Because the cost is enormous. And it can't sustain a second use!"
Relin guessed that this shadow stealth was an innate ability the Horalar Black Snake had comprehended upon reaching maturity, and that it had been fortunate enough to retain it through its devolution.
The effect was fully comparable to a standard first-level Wizard spell. Relin could barely imagine what it would have been like when the Horalar Black Snake was at the height of its power.
"Even a formal Wizard probably wouldn't be able to detect them — they'd just be swallowed alive in sheer terror!"
"Quick! Type-3 defensive formation!" Relin roared.
Whoosh! Knowing there wasn't a moment to spare, Jiamen and Shaya immediately fell back to Relin's side, and even Porsain joined them with a grim expression.
The four of them formed an odd defensive array, standing in a rough triangle as a ring of vines and long hair spread outward around them, locking all four securely inside.
This was one of the coordinated formations they had previously discussed.
Invisible enemies were the most terrifying of all! Relin stared tensely at his surroundings, having no idea when the Horalar Black Snake would strike again.
Under the effects of the Light spell, the entire cavern was flooded with bright illumination.
On the dry earthen ground, apart from a few scales and scattered pools of blood, there was no trace of the black snake whatsoever.
It was as though that massive serpentine body had simply vanished into thin air.
"Be careful! This is very similar to a first-level Shadow System spell — Shadow Lurking. I once saw an elder in my clan cast it. As long as the time limit hasn't expired or the caster chooses to reveal themselves to attack, they are completely phantasmal in the material world…"
Porsain spoke in rapid, frantic bursts, tinged with a note of barely contained exasperation.
Relin fully understood his frustration. After losing a scroll worth tens of thousands of Magic Stones and a life-saving protective talisman on top of that, no one would be in a good mood.
"Then what do we do? Just keep waiting for it to come out?" Jiamen manipulated his vines to lash at the surrounding rock walls with a measure of unwillingness, but aside from kicking up clouds of limestone dust, it accomplished nothing.
"Snake-type creatures are extraordinarily vengeful. It's impossible for it to simply leave like that. Perhaps… it's right around us, searching for an opportunity…"
Relin's voice drifted off into a near whisper, causing Shaya to tense up involuntarily and clutch the Magical Item — that wooden comb — tightly in her hand.
"Chip! Can you detect the Horalar Black Snake?" Relin asked silently in his mind.
"Scan: no targets found! No thermal signatures! No large biological energy reactions detected in the vicinity!" The Chip delivered its feedback, making Relin's expression grow even darker.
Against the spells of a formal Wizard, the Chip was still somewhat powerless.
Whoosh! Suddenly, roughly a dozen meters in front of Jiamen, several translucent scales materialized in midair — then vanished just as quickly.
"There!" Jiamen's eyes lit up as dozens of vines wove together into a massive net and lunged forward.
Immediately, Xia Ya launched a green fireball that shot after the net.
Bang!!! The massive green vine net caught nothing, draping across the ground.
The fireball blasted a crater into the ground, but there was no trace of the giant serpent.
"Hmm?"
This was pure instinct from the soul—the Chip and his detection spells showed absolutely nothing.
But he trusted his spiritual instinct completely. Leylin immediately made his decision, rolling on the spot, instantly vacating his original position.
"Hsss!!!"
Behind where Leylin had been standing, the void flickered, and the massive form of the Horalar Giant Serpent materialized.
Fierce light radiated from its enormous head. Its maw gaped wide, clamping down on Xia Ya near Leylin's original position and biting her in half. Her upper body was drawn into the serpent's mouth, being continuously chewed.
Crack!!!
A violent explosion erupted within the serpent's jaws, and a mass of purple flame spread directly inside its mouth.
The massive energy fluctuations caused Leylin's Chip to frantically sound alarms.
"It's Xia Ya! She detonated her Magical Items before she died!"
Jiamen exclaimed in disbelief.