章 39: Chapter 39

"Fast, rearrange yourselves into a defensive position. I want everyone to have a partner to cover their backs. Half come with me, half make sure that the Esvert doesn't suffer any damage. Esvert cultivators, assist us with ranged attacks and make sure not to get killed. This fight can be difficult." Naz shouted as he began to charge toward the mantis. "Come at me, little bug. I'm going to make a pair of razor blades with those arms that you have there. "

As if reacting to Naz's taunts, the mantis flapped its wings a few times, advancing multiple meters each time it did that, so it closed the distance between it and Naz in just a few seconds.

When they were just ten meters from each other, the energy coating the mantis' arms suddenly became even bigger and sharper, and the beast made a few attacks toward Naz, sending a few air slashes flying toward him.

"If that thing is using martial arts, I should show it that it's not special and that we humans can do it too," Naz said with a smile.

Suddenly, Naz's body began to contract itself, making him a bit shorter and thinner, while his arms began to shine with blue energy. As if he had become lighter, he began to move at a much higher speed, evading the mantis attacks with ease and closing distances with it.

"You can attack from far away, but let's see how good you are at close combat." Naz thought to himself.

As fast as lightning, he threw at the beast a combo of five punches directed at five different points on its body, but as he was executing those attacks, he felt that something wasn't feeling right.

"This thing is hard, like, really, really hard." Naz thought while he felt how his punches were doing practically no damage to the beast.

Suddenly, he looked at the beast's face, and in its compound eyes, he could see the killing intent of the beast for a fraction of a second before it slashed toward him.

The attack was fast, so fast that Naz couldn't hope to dodge it, so he decided to block it with his arms, as they would be much more resilient than the rest of his body thanks to the coating of energy that his martial arts created. But things didn't go as he expected, and the mantis blade cut through his flesh until it touched the bone, where it got stuck for a few seconds before releasing itself.

Naz's reaction was to scream in pain and try to distance himself from the beast, a feat that he only managed to do when his team appeared around the beast and began to attack it with all their might.

In the next few seconds, energy projectiles from the Esvert cultivators began to land on the beast's body one after another, which, combined with the hits that the Guburg cultivators were managing to land on it, made the mantis enter a defensive position from where it was pretty difficult for it to attack.

As Naz managed to get away from the enemy, Agathe and another Esvert cultivator neared him to tend his wounds and make sure that he didn't bleed out.

"That thing is strong. It is much stronger than anything that I have ever fought against, so I think we can confirm that it is the reason for the stampede. " Naz said this with a mix of laughter and grunts of pain as his wounds were being treated. "Not only does it have a great offensive and be very fast, but it is also very durable. I don't think that I have managed to do any damage to it."

As he said that, the sky began to become darker little by little, as black clouds began to concentrate above the mountain.

"To be sincere, I don't think the others are doing any better than you," Agathe said in a very serious tone.

After hearing that, he turned himself back to see how his team was now exhausted and struggling to land any hits on the beast as it managed to make a few cuts on their bodies from time to time while evading their attacks.

The fight continued for a few more minutes until the beast suddenly made a few movements much faster than those from before, managed to catch by surprise one of the cultivators, and with a swift movement, it cut his head off his shoulders.

This incident caused the cultivators' control over the beast to weaken, allowing it to attack more freely, managing to hurt most of them and even kill a few more.

At that point, the battlefield was in chaos, and Naz did his best to return to the fight even though he couldn't use one of his arms. Sadly, even with him returning to the fight, the beast managed to hold the upper hand and continued to weaken its enemies little by little.

"Are we really going to lose this fight and die here?" Agathe thought to herself while trembling in fear.

Suddenly, a cracking noise was heard from the sky, and a lightning bolt fell on the beast, killing it instantly.