The sight was truly gruesome.
Ellen's body was completely covered in poisonous thorns launched by Calvin's beast, embedded in his flesh like black branches forcibly sprouting within him. In a few moments, he staggered and then collapsed to the ground, drenched in sticky green poison.
Leeward saw this clearly... and felt nothing.
Just a second later, Ellen's body began to rot before his eyes. The flesh shrank, the skin blackened, and it dried out like the trunk of a dead tree, until it became a rigid, lifeless black mass.
Leeward quickly leaped back, using a piece of arrow ether, flitting between the arrows he created in the air. He knew that he had less than a quarter of his Spirit Field density left.
I must finish this quickly... Calvin's beast is badly damaged, and I don't think he has any more tricks up his sleeve... but I don't even have a weapon to fight with... I'll just do it like this
He thought to himself, as he made up his mind internally
On the other side, Calvin's monster had become like a madman. He was screaming in hysterical pain, his green blood splattering on the ground, releasing a sharp odor like that of pungent chemical drugs.
He fixed his gaze on Leeward, then charged at him with his one remaining arm, swirling it wildly and delivering erratic, successive blows.
Leeward moved swiftly between the arrows, dodging attacks with calculated difficulty. However, he began to amplify his right hand with dense spiritual energy, which reduced the efficiency of the Aether piece, making his movements relatively slower... but still sufficient against a wounded monster.
Leeward closed his eyes.
He felt his heartbeat with unprecedented clarity... the blood flowing through his veins... the energy rubbing against the cells of his body...
Then he felt it.
The Steine.
A wild energy like electricity, but quieter and warmer at the same time, like a living current pulsing from within. He drew it from his blood and heart, and directed it toward his right hand
There... cinema merged with spiritual energy
Complete.
As if the two energies were extensions of each other, yet the stenma possessed a clear superiority, a primal, savage nature asserting its presence within the muscles.
Dancing yellow sparks surrounded his hand, the result of the friction of the two energies within his tissues, so that his hand appeared as the center of a silent storm.
Leeward opened his eyes.
A suitable moment.
In the stands, Cante was watching from afar, and he immediately sensed that energy of Leeward's. His eyes widened visibly.
Amid the noise and chaos of the crowd, he focused his gaze precisely on the scene.
It wasn't ordinary stenma... sublime stenma... how could someone like him possess it?
At that moment, Leeward leaped from the arrow he was standing on, and launched like a rocket toward Calvin's monster, his fist poised with power.
He whispered softly
Soul-Break... Rezept Dosh
Then he delivered a devastating punch to the monster's face.
The Soul-Break attack—known among Ascenderes as Rezept Dosh—was a Level 2 technique focused on crushing the soul before the body.
The monster's face instantly shrunk under the impact, and Leeward's hand pierced his head so hard that Calvin's eyes completely exploded, while his soul took massive damage.
The next moment, the monster's body sent flying through the air at terrifying speed, before crashing heavily into the stands below the Ascenderes' entrance gate—the same gate through which Leeward, Knight, and Ellen had entered Danic Arena.
Chaos erupted in the stands immediately.
"Oh dear, run!"
"This damned monster is going to kill us!"
"Oh dear... among all the stands, he landed right here!"
Screams and panic filled the air, and people scrambled to escape in every direction.
But Calvin's monster... was not yet dead
He was on the brink of death, and that only drove him crazier. He staggered to his feet and began attacking everyone around him indiscriminately, screaming from the depths of his chest with a voice like the howl of hell.
His brain was almost shattered, and he had lost his sight completely, which made him see every living thing near him as an enemy.
The only instinct left inside him was survival... and the annihilation of the threat.
In front of the Ascender entrance gate, the two guards moved immediately to stop him and save the crowd.
"Damn it, hurry! We have to catch him before it's too late!"
one of them shouted, running at full speed.
"The boss is going to be furious about this..."
The other replied, knowing that Higgy would never be satisfied with what had happened in the ring today.
Up above, Canty could have stepped in and easily killed Calvin's monster... but he didn't.
He chose to observe.
His attention was entirely on Leeward.
"I have to follow him.... This guy must be involved in.
Stealing a fortune... someone with such sublime stinma... must be a big deal within some criminal organization.
He rose from his stone seat, ready to leave Danic Arena and stay outside to observe Leeward's movements.
His gaze was grim... sharp... full of suspicion.
A Razipte-Dush punch... given that he's mastered such a difficult-to-learn technique... that only increases the suspicions surrounding him.
Leeward landed lightly on the ground, then closed his spirit field and stopped the flow of stinma within him. He had less than a quarter of his spirit density left.
I'll leave quickly... that person must be distracted. And the only way is with a piece of loudspeaker ether.
He was almost certain of his deduction.
The person he had seen inside the spirit-waterer Kante's shop was the same one he had been tracking. He also realized, to some extent, that he had used a spirit instrument called the Earth-Air Echo to follow him undetected
That is a spiritual instrument... I don't know exactly how it works, but from its name, the Echo of Earth and Air, it must be manipulating spiritual particles, releasing echoes or emissions that can be tracked
He wasn't entirely sure of his analysis, but the only way to disrupt the tracking was to create a heavy spiritual noise, and that could be achieved with the megaphone's ether fragment.
Leeward walked over to Ellen's rotting body, and there he spotted the fragment nearby. He bent down and picked it up immediately, then took the spear that Ellen had been holding.
He put the arrow fragment into his pocket and sprinted toward the Ascended Gate through which he had previously entered Danic Arena.
It was time to put the plan he had devised in his mind into action.
Everything went according to plan... except for one detail... that person... if he was able to detect me despite my use of the megaphone... that would be a complicated problem for me.
There were no guards near the entrance to the Ascended Preparation and Recording Hall.
Leeward walked right in, his single eye holding a grim, unwavering gaze.
Behind the recording table stood a guard. She looked at him as soon as he entered and said,
"Sir, Ascended are not allowed until after the exhibition."
The spear pierced her head
The weapon shot out with deadly speed until her body was pressed against the wall behind her, and she died instantly. The attack was so sudden and precise that it left her no chance to scream or resist.
I don't want any witnesses.
He whispered to himself as he moved toward the bags of silver.
Blood spurted from the guard's head, and her body began to collapse slowly face down, in a gruesome and cruel scene.
Killing her wasn't motivated by cruelty or sadism.
But if he had kept her alive... even unconscious... she would have woken up later, and she would have remembered his features, and she would have testified that he was the one who stole the bags of silver... and that would have created a new problem on top of his already complicated ones.
For him, what he had done was a necessity.
Eliminating a problem... before it grew.
The best way to solve a problem... is to crush it... not solve it... nor run away from it.
He took two bags of silver, each weighing about five kilograms.
He carried them over his shoulder, then headed toward a back door
Outside, it was utter chaos.
Spectators began to surge out of the Danic Arena through the main gate, a deafening roar filling the space. Some were running aimlessly into the nearby streets, which were now packed with fleeing humans.
Inside the stands, the guards were desperately trying to kill Calvin's monster.
But the nearly insane beast was charging at them furiously. Some of the guards fell dead, not from weakness, but because the monster's one remaining arm was still covered in poisonous thorns.
The poison carried by a Level 5 monster... was impossible for anyone below Level 5 to endure.
Suddenly, the monster leaped out of the stands, completely blinded by a Razipte Dush punch that tore its face apart.
It stood atop the outer wall of the Danic Arena, screaming from the mouth in its chest. A sound more like the howl of a creature from hell—then it leaped out.
It landed in the middle of a nearby street... where a large number of spectators were trying to escape.
Oh my God... he's following us!"
Run! This bastard isn't finished yet!
People began to push and shove, some falling to the ground, trampled underfoot by others... until they died, suffocated and crushed.
Canty watched all of this... and didn't intervene.
His attention wasn't on the monster... but on Leeward.
He searched for him with his eyes in the chaos... but couldn't find him.
He's probably still inside Dannek Arena... I'll wait for him to come out.
Canty stood watching the utter chaos before him.
He was seeing humans killing each other... unintentionally... simply for survival.
And that scene... didn't stir any sympathy in him.
It only confirmed his conviction.
Humans... are nothing but selfish creatures.
When circumstances become dire, they go so far as to kill each other.other... just to save themselves from death.
Although death... is inevitable...
inescapable...
even if a person lives for a thousand years...