Bab 82: Rising Tide Under Attack
Emile's scimitar slid across the neck of one of the black, slimy creatures. Purple liquid spewed from the wound and soaked the icy gravel floors.
[Chosen Sea Crawler Slain]
Before the Crawlers body could hit the ground, a flash of white light ignited the surroundings. Emile's figure blurred across the battlefield and arrived inside another pack of the Crawlers.
His sword split one of the creatures in half upon arriving and then decimated the remaining four. This was his routine at the moment.
[Chosen Sea Crawler Slain] x 5
Just as he finished defeating the group of creatures, an exorbitant burst of air crashed into his back. A split second later, a golden blur rocketed past him and crashed into a two-story building; destroying the main support beam and crumbling the building to the ground.
From the rubble, a red-headed valkyrie emerged. She raised her hand and wiped a smudge of crimson blood from her cheek then spit more of it to the side.
"This mother******!" Willow yelled moments before hammer-jumping across Emile once more.
Hammer-jumping, by the way, is the term Emile has created for Willow's acceleration technique with her hammer. Whenever she needs to cross a vast distance, Willow aims her back at her target and then slams her hammer into the ground.
The sheer force of the impact generates enough of an implosion that the kinetic energy reflected onto Willow propels her through the air just as fast as Emile's charm does to him.
Emile followed her afterimage with his eyes, she flew past his head higher into the air and crashed into a bulbous sea creature. The monster, taking up the space of a building, is nothing more than a fat ball of sludge.
No arms or legs, no eyes or ears, it was like a supercharged slime, but was also the greatest threat Emile and Willow have encountered.
Luckily, though, the sludge doesn't have many attacks. All they've seen it do so far is absorb the kinetic energy from Willow and Emile and send it back at them. It's a creature that perfectly counters Willow.
Emile, on the other hand, is able to damage the creature with his scimitar, but they're mere paper cuts to a behemoth. Even when Emile pierced the slop, instead of cutting it, his sword didn't reach deep enough to damage any internal organs, if it had any to begin with.
Another gust of wind and Willow propelled through the air, toppling two buildings in the process. Meanwhile, while Willow dealt with the black slop, Emile was in charge of rescue and extraction.
He ran from building to building, entering each of them and screaming out to find any stragglers. So far he's safely extracted four people, two parents and their kids, but he needed to work faster.
He ran through an alleyway connecting two rings of Rising Tide and emerged in the commercial district. Immediately, he was surrounded by a seemingly endless wave of Sea Crawlers.
The Sea Crawlers were rampant, but they weren't particularly powerful. From what Emile has gathered after slaying so many of them, they don't harbor any specific extraordinary Gift.
They stand at about five feet four inches and run at a middling pace. The reason they're dangerous, in fact, is the coat of slime that's covering their bodies.
Emile's tried to grapple them, pin them to the ground, and catch them in various holds, but they're remarkably slippery. He can only hurt them with the edge of his blade since it cuts through the slime.
The balloon heads of the many Sea Crawlers turned in unison towards Emile. Before engaging with them, however, Emile summoned his soul's stats.
[Soul Rank: Chosen]
[Soul Saturation: 57/1000]
[Soul Essence: 249/500
[Gift: Breath of Essence]
[Description: Accelerate cell growth and division and increase soul essence production]
[Enhancement: Breath of Essence is applied to self]
[Relics: Enlightened Nimbus Charm, Enlightened Royal Scimitar]
'Enough for two bursts of speed'
Emile's eyes rapidly maneuvered between the many Sea Crawlers moving towards him. Within a second, he memorized the location and number of all of them.
'Seventy-three Crawlers and two bursts'
'It's doable'
A flash of light struck and Emile cut through the approaching Crawlers. With just that burst, his scimitar split fourteen crawlers in half.
Emile slid across the gravel to stop himself and then quickly turned around, another flash of light immediately following. Once more, Emile's scimitar slid through the bellies of the Crawlers like butter and another seventeen dissipated into natural essence.
[Chosen Sea Crawlers Slain] x 31
Now on his own, without the aid of Willow or his Nimbus Charm, Emile brandished his sword and whipped the purple liquid off its surface. He lowered his center of gravity and took his starting stance.
'Maybe I should use the charm's light to attract stragglers'
Emile swung his sword and a Crawler's arm dropped to the floor.
'But I have to get somewhere a lot of people could see'
Emile parried an incoming suction arm, like leeches the Sea Crawlers main attack was using their tube-like arm to rapidly drain their victims of blood, eventually killing them.
He pierced the chest of another Crawler and ripped the scimitar out of its stomach, slashing sideways against the chest of another Crawler.
Finding an instant of breathing room, Emile craned his neck and glanced at his aerial surroundings. Five blocks away, backtracking past Willow and the gigantic sludge, the kingdom's bell tower erected into the sky.
'People can see the light from there'
'Or you could just ring the bell, idiot'
Emile made up his mind, after clearing this street from the Crawlers he would journey to the bell tower and strike the bell. Either he'd get the attention of the survivors like he planned, or the invading creatures would be attracted to the bell.
Either way, it pulled the attention of a group one way or another and both seemed helpful. Emile's attention re-focused on the Crawlers around him and he continued his slaughter, although now it wasn't aimless.
Hadiah
-- Hadiah diterima Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone