Chapter 93: The Function of the Breastplate

That feeling faded quickly.

Rod didn't notice anything different.

After Tally finished cleaning up the dripping Skyrocket, he finally put his clothes back on.

Only then did Naolin let out a breath of relief.

But in truth, her heart was itching.

Seeing such a rough scene, and with the Nu Yi Zhou's affection boost on top of it, she'd be lying if she said she didn't want to try putting that thing inside.

It had been quite a while; Lily must be worried by now.

Rod tucked away Rita and Luen's relics, not in a hurry to inspect them, and leapt up toward the temple above.

Naolin, meanwhile, returned to the interior of the labyrinth.

After all, appearing in that form still consumed a fair amount of strength.

Besides, there was one regrettable matter here.

Naolin's dragon soul was anchored at this spot in the open-air labyrinth; she couldn't leave until her dragon body was restored.

A short while later.

He arrived back at the floor from before.

Rod saw Lily had somehow produced a chair from somewhere, a handwritten notebook cradled in her hands.

She sat primly upright, her feet not reaching the ground, swaying gently in midair.

The moment she spotted Rod, the swaying stopped.

"Was it troublesome down below?"

Meaning: why did it take so long?

"It was fine, just a small matter."

Rod certainly wasn't going to tell Lily that over the past two hours they had held several rounds of complex physiological health education down there.

The halfling furrowed her small, pretty brows.

She didn't press further.

Beside her, the half-elf was bound hand and foot, a circular magic array on the ground pinning her firmly in place.

Compared to before Rod went down, the security had clearly been stepped up considerably.

Lily explained:

"Not long after you went down, she somehow broke free of my binding spell and tried to attack me. Is there some kind of smell?"

Rod hurriedly and covertly cast a 【Dust-Cleaning Art】.

"I can't smell anything. You're not hurt, are you?"

"Of course not. This one's a theory-type research student; her battlefield technique is pretty average. Look here, I'm reading her research notes."

Rod walked over to the half-elf's side.

He saw her lying face-down on the ground, dark bruises on her face, her black school robe covered in dust.

Seeing Rod, she struggled to lift her head and smile at him.

"This is my first time seeing a half-elf. Do they have any special innate spiritual arts?"

Rod didn't have much goodwill toward this one.

Enslaving her to serve as a meat-shield who takes blades and arrows for him wasn't out of the question.

"Unfortunately, half-elves don't inherit a single one of the elves' innate spiritual arts. Apart from a fairly long lifespan and short, small pointed ears, they're no different from normal humans."

"I see."

That rather dampened Rod's interest.

A run-of-the-mill researcher who can't fight.

"What is she researching?"

"Bio-weaving. This one's a madwoman — those snake-people below are her handiwork. Honestly, for a half-elf to have integrated herself into Bahadur, I get the feeling she's done more 'human-supremacist' deeds than the average human, and far more cruel ones at that."

Lily flipped forward through the notebook.

Then she stopped on a certain page and said: "Look at this — 【Research on Spiritual Defects and Potential Threats of Non-Human Creatures】. One of the key projects is elves; she bought a full twenty-eight exiled elves from the black market, and tried to find their defects using viruses, plagues, live dissection, and the like."

"And this one — 【Bio-Weaving and Racial Fusion Experiments】. The content is attempting to use bio-weaving spells to 'improve' the appearance and spirituality of non-human races, making them better suited to human society, or easier for humans to control."

She claimed in her notes that this was to promote harmonious coexistence between different races, but in reality it was to weaken the independence of other races and make them more dependent on and obedient to humans.

"Mm."

Such extreme experiments?

Rod's gaze slowly turned cold.

There was no need to keep this sort of trash around; she wasn't even worth enslaving.

"Heh, reading her notes, you can also see plenty of 'fellow travelers' doing the same kind of work."

Lily said with a cold laugh.

Suddenly, she froze, a faint spiritual light flashing across her body.

"Advanced Labyrinth Pass? 【Grudge-Pain Hatred Flame】? So this is the dragon soul's reward…"

Having said that, she was a little excited.

After all, the all-attribute special attack of Grudge Flame was an exceedingly rare effect on the continent.

"I had to fight hard to get this for you."

"Thank you!"

"Are you still keeping the half-elf? I'm going to kill her."

Rod drew his sword, Jin Guang dazzling.

"Suit yourself. If I hadn't been waiting for you, I'd have chopped her up long ago."

"Then I'll leave it to you. Grudges need killing to accumulate."

"Fine."

Both of them were fairly open-minded and didn't fuss over such things.

And the half-elf watched Lily walking over with her sword.

She immediately panicked.

She hurriedly shouted at Rod:

"Mr.! We're the same, you know!"

It seemed she assumed Rod enslaved other races because, like her, he was a human supremacist.

"No."

Rod let out a snort of laughter.

"You do it out of hatred. I do it out of love."

Having said that, Lily's short sword swung down, and blades of Qi shot out from the tip in succession.

Blood splattered across the wall, and the half-elf's head hit the ground.

"So this is Grudge Fire."

Lily pinched a small ball of purple-pink Grudge Fire in her left hand, her face full of wonder.

"Wait till you're in real combat and you'll know how useful it is. Careful!"

Boom!

The floor tiles cracked.

Rod appeared beside Lily and pulled her into his arms.

And beside them, the half-elf's headless corpse rapidly swelled to its limit.

Almost the instant Rod leapt away with Lily, it exploded like a corpse detonation.

Boom!

The blast force, under the super-strong defense of 【Dragon Scale Art】, didn't injure Rod at all. Instead, combined with the force of his leap, it sent them flying smoothly.

They crashed through the temple roof and shot up into the high sky.

Lily immediately cast a spell.

Several consecutive 【Spatial Shifts】 shortened the distance to the ground.

Rod held her, and with a thunderous crash, landed steadily.

"Sorry, I was careless."

The halfling gently slipped out of his embrace and said apologetically.

"I'm fine!"

For some reason, Rod across from her suddenly widened his eyes, staring at her in surprise.

Lily, not understanding why, thought she was injured and hurriedly looked down to check.

And that one look down—

She immediately knew why.

At this moment, her red leather breastplate had flipped outward down to her abdomen, caused by the shoulder straps breaking.

And Lily's pair of Bai Tu, which should have been petite and delicate—

Had now swelled a full dozen or so times over, two huge mounds piled on her chest, nearly bursting past the limits of that little white vest.

She was already a halfling with good long-leg proportions, and now her chest bore a pair of massively contrasting giant Bai Tu.

Rod froze on the spot in an instant.

Lily's face flushed bright red in a flash.

She hurriedly turned around, though her petite back couldn't possibly conceal these big Bai Tu.

She retied the red leather breastplate properly.

Blushing, she coughed lightly twice.

Rod came back to his senses and saw her chest had returned to its original flatness.

"A treasure?"

"Yes, it can shrink the chest so it doesn't get in the way of movement so much."

"I see."

"You're not allowed to tell anyone else!"

(End of chapter)