Chapter 88: Getting Revenge [II]

The feeling of adding Soul mana into each step he took was exhilarating... not only did it strengthen Klaus’s physical attack power but his mana as well.

It was an entirely new intoxicating sensation.

Distinct from the heavy metallic rigidity of his Metal Magic or the sharp swirl of his Wind Affinity... This one felt completely divine to use.

As Klaus bounded effortlessly through the dense sprawling canopy of Yerefall Grove, he actively pushed the ghostly white energy directly into the soles of his reinforced leather boots.

The raw magical output reacted violently with the physical world. Every single time his foot made contact with a branch, the white energy flared propelling him forward with physics-defying momentum and leaving glowing footprints that dissolved into the wind.

’Though I can feel it draining really quickly...’ Klaus thought.

His brow furrowed slightly behind his face as his mind constantly monitored his internal core.

It was a highly volatile resource.

The exact moment he channeled the white energy into a physical enhancement, his extremely limited reserves plummeted at an alarming rate, flashing warning signs in his mind.

But that was the highly exploitable beauty of his current situation.

His Soul Mana drained rapidly, but at the exact same time, it was refilling so effectively he had unlimited small reserves of Soul Mana.

It was a high-speed loop.

So effectively, as long as he didn’t attempt to violently cast a massive, ultimate-tier spell that required his entire pool all at once, he could continuously coat his basic physical attacks and movements in a low-level divine aura.

As he shot above the snake, Klaus held onto the hilt of his blade and looked toward the ground below.

The Yerefall Grove was a blur of vibrant green leaves and glowing pink petals beneath him.

Through the gaps in the timber, he tracked the massive thrashing blue scales of the Tier 3 beast.

’And now to—’

WHOOSH!

The deafening sound of violently displaced air completely shattered the established rhythm of the fight.

In a terrifying show of its intelligence, the tail that had been curling around the wood of a tree was hurled forward being thrown to Klaus instantly like a bullet.

The monster hadn’t been blindly thrashing in pain from his initial strike at the pond. It had been playing possum.

The beast had deceptively used the massive trunk of a nearby tree as a biological fulcrum, violently slingshotting its multi-ton tail directly up at his airborne form while its main body rapidly recovered from the previous blow.

Klaus’s instincts flared as his mind registered the incoming threat in a fraction of a econd as soon as he saw it.

Klaus lifted his sword with his eyes glowing in green as he slashed at the air creating a Wind Cutter of his own and slashing through the air cutting the tree into two parts however....

The vacuum blade tore through the sky with a high-frequency shriek, cleanly slicing through the ambient moisture and colliding directly with the thick timber the snake was using as leverage.

The massive tree was bisected perfectly with the top half sliding off in a shower of splinters.

"My King!" Valeria cried out however it was too late, the heavy tail of the snake came whooshing at his side and Klaus lifted his blade defending it.

The Wind Cutter had successfully destroyed the anchor, but the multi-ton tail had already been launched as the massive blue-scaled appendage, thick as a battering ram and moving fast enough to create a shockwave of wind, completely blotted out the sunlight as it closed the final few feet.

With absolutely no leverage to dodge in mid-air, Klaus violently twisted his torso.

He brought the flat of his steel blade flush against his side, aggressively reinforcing the metal with a rapid pulse of pure aura to absorb the impending impact.

BOOM!

He was sent flying through the air.

The overwhelming force of the multi-ton appendage slamming directly into his guard was like being violently broadsided by a speeding locomotive.

The metallic ear-splitting sound of the impact echoed across the entire dungeon like a thunderclap sending a visible shockwave of distorted air rippling through the canopy.

Klaus became an absolute blur of helpless motion, skipping violently off the atmospheric pressure before plummeting aggressively toward the dense unbroken section of the Yerefall Grove.

Klaus crashed through a few trees from the force of the blow however even from all of that wreckage, it barely left a scratch on his body....

CRACK! SNAP! KRA-KOOM!

Magically fortified timber shattered like fragile glass against his back.

He tore through the thick branches and heavy wooden trunks of three separate, massive trees in rapid succession.

The air was instantly filled with thousands of sharp, flying splinters and a chaotic storm of raining green leaves.

His body hit the forest floor with devastating momentum, completely destroying the complex root systems beneath the dirt as he carved a massive, ten-foot-long trench directly into the damp earth, throwing up geysers of mud and stone before gravity finally brought him to a grinding violent halt.

A heavy cloud of crushed dirt and pulverized wood slowly rained down around his localized crater and Klaus lay there for a fraction of a second, his dark eyes staring blankly up at the shattered canopy above.

By all normal metrics, that single, devastating blow should have completely pulverized his ribcage, ruptured his internal organs, and turned his spine into literal dust.

His Strong Body passive trait had flared with unnatural heat with the vastly enhanced muscular density of his physical form acting as a hyper-efficient shock absorber.

’That’s what I’m talking about!’

He pushed himself up off the ruined soil with his joints popping slightly. It had miraculously protected his bones from snapping, but the concussive shockwave had still aggressively rattled his insides.

He coughed, turning his head to the side, and violently spit a thick glob of dark blood directly onto the crushed grass.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his leather gauntlet with a sharp grin stretching across his features.

The earth beneath his boots began to violently tremble.

The massive snake monster wasn’t going to give him the luxury of recovering.

It rushed at him with terrifying speed, entirely discarding any semblance of stealth. It slithered forward like a colossal blue-scaled battering ram.

The heavy timber snapped and fell around it as it tore a completely direct, highly destructive path straight toward his crater.

Recognizing the unnatural durability of its tiny prey, the snake didn’t bother attempting to bite him.

Instead, it violently swung its massive, bus-sized head directly at Klaus.

The sheer pressure generated by the swing physically uprooted the grass around them, creating a vacuum that sucked the falling leaves toward the point of impact.

Klaus firmly planted his boots into the dirt, entirely refusing to give up a single inch of ground.

He angled his steel sword slightly downward, aggressively shifting his stance to lower his center of gravity.

’Iron Skin!’

In a single second, the flesh, muscle and bone of his entire left arm violently transmutated into hyper-dense solid steel but he didn’t stop there.

Drawing aggressively upon his rapidly refilling reserves, Klaus violently poured his raw Soul Mana directly into the metallic limb.

The physical metallurgical properties of his arm underwent a terrifying reaction as the white Soul Mana bonded flawlessly with the steel, turning his hardened arm into an even harder glowing white alloy that defied all conventional physics.

He raised his glowing, metallic palm outward just as the massive head collided with him.

BAAAAMMMMM!!!!

The impact was cataclysmic as the metallic ear-splitting sound of the collision instantly vaporized the dirt in a twenty-foot radius, blowing the surrounding trees completely off their roots.

Klaus’s boots violently dug into the earth, carving two massive, parallel trenches into the ground as the multi-ton force of the snake tried to bulldoze him.

He was pushed backward, tearing through the soil, but his arm didn’t bend and his spine didn’t break.

With a final roar of sheer physical exertion, Klaus forced his hydraulic leg strength to its absolute maximum limit.

He held the massive, thrashing beast completely at bay with a single glowing hand.

The snake’s golden, slitted eyes widened to highly comical proportions, sheer reptilian shock completely short-circuiting its predatory instincts.

It had expected to crush an insect; instead, it had collided with an immovable mountain.

"My turn," Klaus said smoothly.

Before the monster could recoil, Klaus’s already glowing, metallic left hand shifted. He tucked his thumb and extended his index finger directly against the beast’s hard blue scales.

The swirling highly pressurized tornado of Wind Mana instantly coalesced around his fingertip, aggressively bolstered by the bright white fire of his Soul Mana.

BOOM!

The invisible hyper-compressed air bullet carried the terrifying concussive force of a point-blank artillery shell.

The blast hit the snake squarely between its widened golden eyes as the concussive wave completely bypassed its tough exterior, sending a horrifying ripple of destruction directly through its thick skull.

The massive monster was sent entirely airborne, completely at the mercy of the explosive force and it landed on the ground like a massive, blue spinning top, wildly thrashing through the ruined timber and crushing anything in its path.

However, its survival instincts kicked in mid-air. It aggressively contorted its long, muscular body, violently digging the heavy tip of its tail directly into the earth like a colossal anchor. The ground ruptured and tore, but the massive amount of friction successfully stabilized the beast, snapping it out of its chaotic spin.

It raised its bruised head, its golden eyes locking directly onto Klaus through the dust cloud.

Taking advantage of the massive knockback from his initial strike, Klaus had aggressively utilized the swirling currents of his Wind Affinity to launch himself high into the air, hovering effortlessly above the shattered canopy.

The massive beast’s golden eyes darted around the ruined landscape until it immediately noticed Klaus in the air, it brought out its tail and plucked a felled tree hurling it directly at him.

The massive timber created a shockwave, shooting upward like an artillery shell designed to swat him out of the sky.

Klaus watched the massive wooden projectile hurdling toward his face and his expression didn’t change.

He calmly gripped his sword with both hands, letting the Wind Mana aggressively coat the steel blade until it vibrated with a high-frequency hum then Klaus cut through it.

The snake’s tail was an absolute blur of motion, violently plucking up every single fallen log, shattered stump and heavy boulder in the immediate vicinity and rapid-firing them into the sky.

It was a terrifying unrelenting barrage.

Klaus completely entered a state of absolute flow. He poured even more mana into his boots, allowing him to dance seamlessly on the atmospheric pressure.

He became a blur in the sky, his blade moving in highly precise arcs. He sliced the incoming trees into dozens of tiny, harmless splinters, the debris raining down over Yerefall Grove like a wooden hail storm then the ambient mana in the air had completely vanished.

Down below, the beast had used the barrage of trees entirely as a distraction to charge its ultimate attack.

With a deafening roar, the massive, hyper-dense beam of pure blue mana tore through the sky, completely incinerating the falling wooden debris in its path.

It was too fast and too wide.

Trusting entirely in his Strong Body passive, Klaus leaned his head back and dodged... The searing beam of light shot past him, missing his completely exposed face by mere inches. The heat of the projectile singed the edges of his dark hair and violently whipped his clothes around.

Klaus snapped his body back upright, maintaining his mid-air suspension. Down below, the snake’s golden eyes burned with absolute hatred completely prepared to sweep the sky with a second, even wider beam.

Refusing to be put on the defensive, Klaus’s eyes flashed as he lifted his fingers forward and wind coalesced once more shooting another finger bullet through the air and slamming into the beam being powered by Soul Mana and making it dispel in an explosion.

The collision resulted in a detonation that temporarily blinded the surroundings.

The snake’s mana beam was violently shattered into harmless fragments by the overwhelming concentrated density of Klaus’s attack as a shockwave of displaced air aggressively ripped outward.

A thick suffocating cloud of dust, smoke, and magical residue completely covered the battlefield below.

The descent was terrifying.

Klaus plummeted from the sky like a divine meteor, the gravitational pull amplifying his terrifying velocity as he gripped his sword tightly with both hands, pointing the tip directly downward.

The steel blade was entirely coated in a raging highly pressurized torrent of Wind Mana, making the edges incredibly sharp but once again, he didn’t stop there.

He aggressively pushed the very last remaining drops of his Soul Mana directly into the steel as the blade ignited, burning with a brilliant, highly destructive white fire.

The blade struck the exact center of the snake’s massive skull.

CLANG!

It wasn’t a clean effortless cut as the density of the beast’s bone structure was incredibly thick, heavily resisting the sharp edge of the blade.

Klaus gritted his teeth with the muscles in his forearms bulging as he forced his Strong Body passive to its absolute breaking point.

Sparks violently flew into the air as the wind-coated blade aggressively grinded against the thick bone of the snake’s skull.

PSSSSSSSS!!

The beast thrashed wildly, trying to throw him off, but Klaus refused to yield.

"DIE!!!!"

With a final explosive shout, Klaus completely threw his entire body weight onto the hilt.

SQUELCH!

The blade finally broke through the bone.

The white fire of the Soul Mana aggressively burned through the internal resistance as gravity and kinetic force took over, and Klaus rode the blade directly down through the monster’s body.

He vertically cleaved the entire, multi-ton beast perfectly in half, from its skull all the way down to the base of its neck as a massive geyser of dark blue blood aggressively sprayed outward, coating the ruined grass.

Klaus landed on the ground and he was breathless, his chest heaving as the adrenaline slowly began to recede from his system.

Behind him, the cleanly severed halves of the giant snake collapsed to the mud with a wet thud.

"My King! You are absolutely magnificent! That was a flawless execution!" Valeria said immediately while pumping her fists into the air.

"Thank you..." Klaus said with a few deep breaths as his dark eyes were now intensely focused on the translucent blue system screen that had instantly materialized directly in front of his face.

「Would you like to banish the soul of the Monster you have just killed?」

「Y / N」

He didn’t hesitate for a microsecond.

He tapped on Y and instantly, the massive, severed corpse of the snake began to glow brightly.

An intensely bright white orb of pure soul energy violently ripped itself free from the physical remains.

It shot forward with blinding speed and hit him, however the soul didn’t carry any physical momentum so he wasn’t pushed backward, but the spiritual impact was anything but... The power made him lose his breath and stagger backward however as soon as it entered, it had vanished.

"Huh? What the hell? Why did it vanish?" Klaus muttered, he didn’t even feel it in his bones.

"Vanish, but My KIng, I can feel that your Soul Mana has increased vastly.." Valeria said from his shoulder and Klaus looked at his hand.

’Let me try and summon them the—’

BOOM!

The reaction was explosive.

Instead of the ghostly white light that had coated his skin previously, a massive, roaring torrent of highly concentrated white flames violently shot out of his palm.

The heat and density of the fire illuminated the entire ruined grove, casting long dancing shadows against the broken trees.

He finally felt the increase in Soul Mana as it was maybe double the amount he originally had!

Klaus stared at the roaring flames with a highly satisfied smirk painting his visible features as he could feel it now...

A final, highly rewarding blue tab popped up over the flames.

「Congratulations, you have gained Two Units Of Soul Mana!」