Chapitre 55: Heart Wrenching
'What a dreadful aura this little thing had... Where could it have gone?' the decorated knight peacefully thought as the bottom of his armored feet easily caved in the skull of a fat red ogre.
The corpse was sent flying into a group of rabid animals.
The battlefield may have been changed to fit the wretch's preferences but the knight wasn't worried, it was impressive that such a weak monster could get so many monsters of all sorts of follow his will and even cooperate with one another, not to mention those strange, cage-like orbs and structures that popped out.
Still, the knight wasn't worried and for a simple reason, nothing here could get past his defenses, no monsters present was strong enough for this.
He was one of the silver knights having achieved the highest possible achievement after all, with was represented most clearly in his silver mana, which now had a slight tinge of dull gold.
It was nowhere as glorious or brilliant as the real thing, but it meant a great deal to the knights of silver.
Being at this level, the monsters found in this kingdom's simple forest wouldn't be able to put a single bruise on his body even if he was wearing any armor.
So he made sure to conserve his energy in case the situation turned for the worst for the others, who didn't enjoy as much protection as he did, the soldiers, knights, few adventurers as well as his two subordinates were holding their own now.
The torrential rains of living bodies from earlier had stopped and now that the structures had stopped expanding, everyone was managing to get a good read on the situation and stopped panicking.
If something unforeseen were to happen, he would be sure to step in, he didn't want to burn through his mana and stamina as what was locked behind the door flanked by dragon statues was definitely too dreadful to not be careful.
'Is that wretch a mage of some kind? A summoner? Surely, if it is taken out, the battle would only become that much simpler...' however he seemed to have vanished from existence.
Feeling a sudden hunch, the decorated knight swung his mace on the ground behind him, he reacted based on his instincts but it seemed like it was fluke as nothing was to be seen.
'I could have sworn-?' turning his head to look around, he found himself to not be surrounded by his subordinates or any of the monsters, instead, in their places, the very wretch he had been thinking about was there, in as many versions as there had been people and monsters.
This was the ability Axio had used to trick the dungeon core of Defy to shatter itself, aptly named, Illusion!
Although it was rather limited as it could only disguise others as something else or make one see objects that weren't there at all.
It didn't work on Axio himself, but this was no problem when he could easily hide in plain sight.
"Witless" provoked the knight, not fooled for even a second as he used his silver mana to boost his eyes, seeing that it didn't dispel the illusion, he instead tried boosting his brain, once again, it didn't work, so he moved on to the next thing, his mind itself.
The illusions quickly dissipated, fading away light sand sculptures, revealing the truth.
'Illusions that affect the mind without harming it at all... That wretch isn't normal in the slightest...' that much was easy to deduce but the decorated knight knew that this wasn't a simple case of something unusual happening.
It simply was against nature for a wretch to have this sort of powers without looking at least like a bloated mass of flesh close to its last breath.
And still, that was pushing it.
"Change of pl-" he was about to voice an order to his two subordinates, when he heard the sound of metal being scraped.
It wasn't a source of alarm in itself but the fact that it was coming from the inside of his helmet certainly was.
Before he could do anything about this, something made movement on his tongue and jumped down his trachea as coughing fit overtook him as he attempted to directed his mana to crush the foreign body, however, between the thing blocking his breathing and the fact that it began madly scratching on the sides.
It wasn't exactly ideal for focus, there was also the fact that he could only go by the physical feeling he was having as the thing was perfectly camouflaging its mana signature.
As it scratched and clawed at the soft tissue, it left its claws embedded in the flesh as well in its descent, until it fell right into a lung.
Without hesitation, the invader started growing larger, rupturing the lung it was in before scrambling around, pushing against organs and ribs as it searched for something.
Unfortunately for the knight, who was now one knee to the ground, desperatly trying to catch that thing with his mana, now that it was larger, it should have been simpler, however, the thing had such little mana that his mana didn't acknowledge it as something foreign.
"Fuck..!" he cursed, remembering how his silver mana, as it was meant to imitate the brilliant golden of a certain hero, was completely harmless to oneself and ones recognised allies too.
Everyone's mana, when left in its base form was more of less unable to harm the user, this could be trained to be changed, certainly, but why would anyone do that?
Feeling his heart being slashes, pierced and crushed, the decorated knight soon collapsed to the ground under the baffled look of everyone that had caught a sight of it, one moment, he had been all fine and well, the other, he was collapsed.
The man's corpse seemed to spasm a few times as rivers of blood seemed to trickle down onto the ground, until the chest piece of his armor was suddenly pushed off his body, revealing Axiolypito in all of his glory covering in blood and guts like when he was born.
He rose his fist in the air in a silent celebration under the stunned looks of nearly everyone around, some of them getting slaughtered due to forgetting that they had been locked into a deadly fight.
"Easy" he said before taking a bite out of the decorated knight's heart.
'This shit is bloody nice...'
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone