Chapter 212 Fish Bait
Hyde's tricks were utterly useless before a Second Grade knight.
Without even using his knight battle techniques, Meusel shattered the spinning blades with simple slashes before slashing horizontally at the awl flying towards his chest.
Oddly enough, the sharp awl shattered on contact. It instantly split into several dozen tiny spikes, shooting towards every part of Meusel's body.
If it had been any other day, such a simple attack would not have even grazed Meusel.
Today was not Meusel's day.
Meusel roared and charged through the barrage with his sword before him. He rushed at Hyde and slashed at his energy shield.
With just a single heavy slash, the energy shield shattered and blasted Hyde into the woods behind him.
Meusel let out a muffled grunt as four bright red spots of blood appeared on his body. Those accursed spikes kept spinning even after they had dug into his flesh. Moreover, they kept letting out some sort of strange poison, numbing the flesh near the wounds.
Meusel slapped his chest heavily. Under the pressure of that violent force, the four spikes shot out of his body. Sticky white pus came out of Meusel's wounds along with the spikes, leaving a trace of a bitter almond smell in the air.
Meusel performed a simple treatment for his wounds and prepared to charge over to kill that accursed adept. However, all of a sudden, something tugged at his legs, as a patch of thorny vines reached out from beneath the ground. There was a terrifying snake's head at the end of each vine, biting at the knee guards on his legs.
Meusel raised his head, his gaze instantly landing on the adept near the edge of the forest whose actions closely resembled those of a wooden puppet. The adept was standing slightly right beside a tree. Both of his feet were buried under the earth, while his hands were plunged into the trunk of the large tree. One could vaguely hear the gurgling sounds of something being sucked.
The surrounding adepts took advantage of the opportunity provided by Marionette restricting the radiant knight, letting out their fiercest attacks without hesitation.
Acteon, who was not far away, raised his right palm. A black hole suddenly appeared on the middle of his pitch-black palm as countless terrifying flying bugs buzzed and flew out from within, swarming towards the radiant knight. A dozen abnormal beetles with black shells, green wings, and odd spots on their backs silently hid within the swarm of bugs.
Mary did not charge forward recklessly when faced with a Second Grade radiant knight. Instead, she unfolded her wings and flew into the air, drawing her crimson longbow into a full moon, as the savage and ferocious blood energies instantly reached their peak.
Schwing! A crisp crack rang out.
The arrow left the bowstring!
Meanwhile, above the air, a bright white lightning pillar as thick as a bucket blasted down. Its target was also the radiant knight who was stuck to the ground.
Almost instantly, Marionette had restrained the enemy and three adepts had let out ruthless attacks, plunging Meusel into a dangerous situation.
Faced with simultaneous attacks from both the front and behind, Meusel raised high the runic sword in his hand. He waited for the energies in his body to gather to their limits before shouting and thrusting the sword deep into the ground.
The next second, the murderous and unstoppable runic energies seeped into the ground and exploded!
What kind of might did the all-out explosive attack of a Second Grade knight possess?
Greem, who was standing fifty meters behind Meusel, instantly saw a patch of red through his elementium sight. All sorts of energy calculations projected by the chip rose exponentially, as blaring warning alarms rang continuously.
However, these abstract calculations and data were insufficient to capture or describe even one ten-thousandth of what Greem was seeing before him.
The ground was shattering. The forest was shaking. The entire sky turned a slight shade of crimson…
Cracks as fine as spiderwebs quickly spread outwards through the ground, with the runic sword as the epicenter. The speed they spread at was obviously incomparable to the few thick, large, and wide cracks that struck fear into everyone's hearts. Numerous alarming fissures with no bottom in sight quickly extended outwards in a haphazard fashion. Wherever it spread, the large trees collapsed and the ground gave way, as gigantic dust pillars repeatedly blasted into the sky!
On the ground, a violent ring-shaped whirlwind had swept through the area, flattening everything on the ground like an invisible razor. Countless grass roots, dirt, and withered leaves were swept away by the whirlwind, blasted into the woods nearby.
There were no longer any trees, grass, or plants in a hundred meter radius around Meusel, just a bare patch of land. Even a layer of dirt had been blown off from the surface of the earth. A hundred meters away, countless towering ancient trees fell outwards in a ring, perfectly showing the world the terrifying energy contained within a Radiant Knight’s fearful blow.
No one's attack could break through that defensive layer under such a destructive shockwave. It was only when the violent energy slowly started to dissipate that things could be seen.
The tight formation they had formed around Meusel was now utterly scattered.
The slender Mary was obviously not known for her strength and she was blown far away by the first wave of energy. She was nowhere to be seen.
Acteon was not much better. He having trouble standing up and was forced to transform into his bugman form in order to anchor himself to the ground with his numerous pairs of arthropods. Even the flying bug minions he summoned had all been sliced and diced by the wind. Only the dozen carcass beetles struggled and gathered together, forming a shield of bugs and protecting him from the impact of the following force shockwave.
One had to note that at that very moment, besides the violently flowing air waves, there were also countless force shards within the shockwave. Force shards that were comparable to sharp weapons hid within the tide-like energy waves and were sufficient to cut any being caught within them to pieces.
Marionette, who endured most of the force attacks head on was in an even worse condition. Not only had all the roots on his legs been severed, even his body that was exposed above ground had been riddled with cuts and holes. Just counting the visible wounds, there were three or four penetrating wounds that went right through his wooden body. The other, more minor wounds were even more numerous.
Marionette's life force instantly fell to its lowest after having received such severe injuries!
Yet at the moment, the domineering Meusel had just drawn his sword from the ground. He stood straight with his muscular body, looking at the adepts’ poor condition as a contemptuous smile appeared on his face.
"You rats that only know how to hide and run, now I'll… ” Meusel's voice thundered like lightning. However, he couldn't finish his sentence. His expression suddenly changed as he coughed out purple, black, and pungent blood from his mouth.
The next moment, even his body started to shake a little.
The adepts had good vision and instantly saw some things that resembled pieces of broken internal organs within the blood.
"Kehkehkeh… " A cold and sinister laugh rang out from a distance, with a little metallic ring to it, "You knew that this patch of woods had been covered with terrifying viruses, and yet you still dared to draw runic energies so violently into your own body? As expected, the ignorant are the most courageous! Now you feel the backlash from the energy, don't you? How about it? How many more attacks like the previous one can you launch? The more energy you draw upon here, the quicker you die. Kehkehkeh… in my opinion, you are better off lying down and waiting for your death!"
Metal clanged as a mechanical figure pushed aside the dust and branches on his body and rose from beneath the ground, striding towards Meusel, who was leaning on his sword.
The remaining adepts had appeared nearby, one after another, tightly surrounding Meusel.
"Do it!" With Hyde's loud shout everyone attacked, and another wave of relentless attacks devoured the knight's body.
…………
A kilometer away, Charles, who had just led everyone through the heavy siege and was currently resting in an area with few trees, suddenly stood up and gazed in the direction behind him.
He felt a powerful and ravaging energy signature exploding there!
Yet this signature was so familiar that it caused him put a name to it almost unconsciously.
"Meusel!"
With how powerful the Second Grade knights were, they would not usually use such a wasteful energy explosion. This type of energy blast might appear to cover a large area, but in truth it consumed tremendous power to generate and was highly inefficient. It was far inferior in terms of lethality when compared to the concentrated knight battle techniques!
Only the spellbreaker knights that had barely mastered the utilization of energy favored this sort of grand knight battle technique. The radiant knights, on the other hand, knew that a flame shockwave that covered an area of ten meters was far weaker than a simple yet concentrated slash.
Meusel was a veteran radiant knight. There was no way he didn't understand this. Yet he still committed such an amateur mistake. This either meant that he was up against enemies that outnumbered him, or that he was no longer able to control the energies within his body!
Regardless of which it was, it was obvious that he was in a dire situation!
"You lead the army and continue forward. I'll go and bring Meusel back!" Before his wild shout had even dissipated, Charles had already disappeared.
A strange pair of energy wings appeared behind Charles, giving him the ability to fly across short distances. Tall trees whistled past his body, the dense branches hitting his face and body as he flew by.
He had already directed most of his energy to the wings and no longer had any additional strength to protect himself. Thus, he kept his eyes opened with all his strength, clumsily adjusting his speeding body and trying his best to avoid the trees. He no longer had any strength to avoid the dense branches and vines, and could only endure them with his tough body.
A distance of a kilometer was quickly covered with the ability to fly.
A short moment later, the barren battlefield appeared in his vision.
Meusel crouched and shrunk his body on the half-collapsed hill, trying his best to defend against the spells flying at him like a thunderous storm from all around him.
Fire, lightning, blood arrows, wooden spikes, sharp awls…
Terrifying spells of all variety rained down on Meusel's body. They were on the verge of riddling him with holes and turning him into a human strainer.
Charles, who was watching all this happen before him, roared violently. His energy wings folded slightly, and instantly he landed besides Meusel. He waved his large sword, and a terrifying force blasted outwards, annihilating all the attacks around him in a brilliant scarlet sword radiance.
"Meusel, hang on, I'll… "
Charles waved his longsword with one hand, shattering one spell after another that shot towards him, and grabbed Meusel with his other hand, trying to charge out of the battlefield.
However, before he could finish his sentence, something sudden occurred.