Strength: D- (Power far exceeding lions and tigers, but still at the bottom among Heroic Spirits)
Endurance: D- (Body tough as a reef in waves; can stand tall in battle formations)
Shane quickly scanned the updated stats in his consciousness. In fact, he had naturally broken through this morning. After adapting for a whole day, the strength throughout his body was now as familiar as his own arm.
Next, he glanced around at the "guests" whose skin had keratinized and were emitting inhuman howls.
They seemed to have completely lost consciousness, full of aggression, and were gradually closing in.
"I'll leave this to you," Shane spoke very fast. Without waiting for Erza's response, he leaped up, deftly flipping out of the large hole he had broken in the roof.
"Leave it to me!" Erza responded subconsciously, reaching confidently for her waist, only to grab empty air.
"Wait, where's my sword?" She hurriedly looked up and shouted at the hole.
But Shane's figure had long disappeared, leaving her surrounded in the center by a group of monsters with drooling mouths and fierce eyes.
"Bastard!" Erza's shoulders trembled with anger. She made a mental note to get back at Shane later and decided that the first thing she would do after this was get a weapon of her own. Counting on this guy was too unreliable!
Seeing the nearest "person" pouncing with a roar, she gritted her teeth and scanned the wooden table beside her.
With no time to hesitate, she let out a clear shout, grabbed the table leg, and swung it violently, smashing the person back a few steps. The wooden table was unexpectedly sturdy, only making a muffled thud.
Erza's eyes lit up. She immediately gripped the table leg tightly, held it high, and assumed an imposing stance like holding a guandao single-handedly.
Using the table as a weapon, she stood ready for battle!
At the same time, Shane, who had leaped onto the roof, stabilized his figure, his sharp gaze immediately casting around.
The scene before him made his heart sink. The streets and buildings outside the tavern had completely disappeared, replaced by an empty, pitch-black void.
Only the tavern beneath his feet was like an isolated island, emitting dim, flickering light from within.
"Arash's eyes are better at physical observation; they aren't good with illusions and barriers..."
Shane sighed, raised his hand, and fired three arrows in rapid succession.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The bowstring vibrated, and three streams of light shot out in a triangle formation. But instead of disappearing into the darkness, they seemed to hit an invisible wall, exploding with muffled impacts and fleeting sparks in the distance.
Almost at the same time the arrows hit, the beastly howls below suddenly became more miserable and manic, causing the entire tavern to vibrate slightly.
"Shane, what did you do?!" Erza's voice came from below, carrying a hint of exasperation.
She swung the heavy wooden table with all her might, smashing back a mutated attacker. Under the immense force, the table finally gave way and snapped with a crack.
But her reaction was extremely fast. She immediately flipped her hand to grip the remaining table leg, continuing to fight as if wielding a short staff. "These guys suddenly got more frantic!"
"Hmm? Can't Erza even handle small fry transformed from ordinary people?" Standing on the roof, Shane pinched his earlobe, a trace of doubt flashing across his face.
Totally forgetting that when he switched to Archer, the weapons he had manifested for Erza also disappeared.
"Really, did you get lazy after wiping out a group of bandits? Erza, you're slacking off."
Muttering in a voice only he could hear, his hands didn't stop moving at all.
The bowstring vibrated continuously. Arrows condensed with Magic Power were like meteors, continuously bombarding the same spot on the "invisible wall" he had just probed. After the probe just now, he had confirmed that this darkness was not a void, but some kind of physical barrier or wall.
"If something is blocking the way, breaking it first is never wrong."
Shane nodded, feeling the surging power in his body and the full feedback from the bowstring in his hand.
This feeling of unleashing hearty output was unprecedented. He even felt that if he used his full power, the arrows shot from his hand could easily level a hilltop!
It was just a pity that the works he brought were on Noel's cart and had no chance to be used.
Otherwise, pairing physical arrows with the crimson longbow could raise the power by another level.
The mutated crowd below became increasingly manic with his continuous attacks, and the tavern's vibration became more and more obvious, the wooden structure groaning in pain.
But apart from the vibration and the monsters' howling, the barrier in the distance showed no obvious change.
Shane couldn't help frowning: "Can't even break this? Is the firepower actually insufficient?"
This was unexpected.
Releasing Arash's True Name was his strongest method currently. If even this couldn't forcibly break it... the only brute force solution he could think of was using the Noble Phantasm directly...
But Arash's Noble Phantasm was undoubtedly the anecdote of that legend—the Star Arrow that crossed 2,500 kilometers.
The price of shooting that ultimate arrow was the fragmentation of the user's own body. That was a god-realm archery technique that even a physique that had never known illness and remained healthy for a lifetime couldn't withstand.
So even though he had mastered Arash's True Name for so long, Shane had never tried to use this Noble Phantasm.
"Forget it, no better way. Let's focus on one point and try again." He took a deep breath, preparing to draw the bowstring fully and try a few more times. If it really didn't work, he could only wait for the only communicative attendant to return.
Just then—
BOOM!!!!!!
A roar far louder and duller than any noise before, like something being forcibly crushed, came violently from outside the barrier!
Shane's pupils shrank, and he looked up sharply.
Immediately after, right before his eyes, the area that had remained unmoved despite being continuously bombarded by arrows...
At this moment, it was like the most fragile glass, instantly covered with countless dense, crisscrossing cracks!
Crack, crackle... Crash—!
Accompanied by the clear sound of shattering, the darkness constituting the barrier completely collapsed and peeled off, turning into black specks of light drifting in the sky.
Gentle and bright moonlight poured in like flowing water from the large hole broken open, illuminating this enclosed space.
A figure, treading on moonlight and the not-yet-dissipated black fragments, walked in slowly.
Shane instantly became alert to the extreme. Without even thinking, he drew the bowstring to a full moon instantly. The arrow tip, flashing with dangerous magical brilliance, pointed straight at the newcomer, ready to fire!
The other party, however, didn't care about the arrow aimed at him at all. He casually threw something he was carrying onto the ground.
Shane's heart shook, noticing that this was exactly the attendant who had disappeared earlier. At this moment, his clothes were tattered, lacking his previous proper composure, lying unconscious like mud.
The newcomer scratched his messy red hair, wearing a look of hungover weariness on his face, and let out a long yawn.
Then, he squinted at Shane on the roof, who looked ready to face a formidable enemy, his tone dissatisfied:
"Kid, can you not point such dangerous magic at your Big Brother?"