Chapter 897: Blood and Curse
As the battle between the five Hero Candidates and the dragon continued, Elaine quietly slipped into one of the half-destroyed buildings, taking a deep breath as she drank a magic potion to restore her reserves while keeping her presence hidden as much as possible.
She peered through a shattered window at the ongoing fight, observing the remnants of the town crumble under the force of their clashes.
"That dragon has to be at least Level 870. Considering its confidence in coming for them alone, it probably has skills and techniques that make it stronger than the average Level 870."
Elaine silently analysed the dragon while waiting for the potion’s effects to kick in, then turned her attention to the Hero Candidates.
"Still, it’s outmatched against them. They’d take it down if they coordinate properly, and it probably knows that, which is likely why it tried to use a Bounded Field."
Her decision to disrupt the Bounded Field had been impulsive, and honestly, that wasn’t even her main intention.
All she wanted was to stop whatever ability the dragon was activating, which would have affected her as well since she was within its range.
That action had put her on the dragon’s kill list, and she noticed that even while fighting the five Hero Candidates, it still occasionally glanced in her general direction, as if searching for her.
’It must be expecting me to attack. But my priority is getting out of here.’
She turned her gaze from the dragon, stepping out of the building to look at the black wall of energy just outside the broken brick wall of the town.
’Should I try breaking the barrier...?’
The thought crossed her mind momentarily, but she froze right after and snapped her gaze back to the dragon.
’Wait a sec, isn’t this the perfect chance to get some extra EXP?’
Elaine pursed her lips, returning to her previous position to watch the battle wreak havoc across the other half of the town, the building she was in trembling violently from the shockwaves.
’If I want to maximise the EXP I’d get, especially since I won’t be dealing the final blow, I’ll need to contribute more than I already have. Disrupting the Bounded Field alone won’t be enough.’
With that in mind, Elaine took a deep breath, rousing her anti-divinity and drawing the last bit of energy from her Life Well.
"This is a dangerous gamble," she muttered as she leapt from the building’s window and dashed toward the main battlefield.
Flashes of light lit the sky as the dragon and the Hero Candidates clashed, powerful slashes from Knight’s sword cutting through the land, some tearing into the ground uncomfortably close to Elaine.
Maintaining her composure, she continued moving toward the battlefield, stopping only when she sensed a faint ring of demonic energy matching the dragon’s signature.
’Oh? A detection field.’
She’d likely be detected the moment she stepped inside, so Elaine backtracked slightly, hiding behind a collapsed building while closely watching the battle.
She observed the dragon rise into the sky and unleash a powerful breath, which Tank blocked with his shield, the fortification law energy barrier cracking under the force.
The dragon then dove, slamming its right claw coated in death energy into the shield and forcing Tank to his knees, while its left claw lifted high, magic circles forming around it.
Archer fired several arrows, but they collided with the spherical magic barrier around the dragon, cracking and weakening it without fully breaking through.
Knight lifted his sword overhead, preparing to bring it down, while Mage analysed the dragon’s magic circles and cast spells to counter them.
At that moment, Elaine kicked off the ground and dashed toward them, pulling her spear back, infusing a fifth of her life force into it to triple her attack potency, veins bulging out across her arm.
"Lifeburst Strike!"
She threw her spear without hesitation, the weapon sailing through the air and piercing through the dragon’s already weakened barrier, embedding itself directly into the dragon’s right eye.
The life energy within it erupted in a powerful burst, sending the dragon’s head reeling as its massive body crashed toward the ground, blood splattering across the land.
Mage and Knight were momentarily caught off guard by her sudden interference, but they recovered a moment later and seized the opportunity.
Knight’s sword split the land and the dragon’s wing, while Mage bombarded the other wing and Lancer attacked from behind, his spear piercing the base of the dragon’s tail and creating a hole that Archer’s explosive arrows followed through to blast the appendage off.
The dragon thrashed in pain, unleashing wild bursts of demonic energy in all directions, explosions erupting consecutively as the corruptive energy shattered everything nearby.
Elaine staggered under the weakness brought on by her life force consumption, but she gritted her teeth and used her spatial ring to recall her spear, the weapon dislodging itself from the dragon’s eye and causing another roar of pain.
It opened its maw and unleashed flames in her direction, the blaze flying faster than her weapon could return.
’Shit!’
Elaine immediately abandoned the spear and tried to raise a shield to block the flames, but Tank appeared in front of her, grabbed her by the waist, and vanished, reappearing in front of his tower shield positioned before Knight.
"Huh?"
She blinked in surprise at the sudden movement, and seeing her expression, the man laughed and set her down.
"Haha! You react the same way everyone does when they see my shield teleportation for the first time."
"...shield...teleportation...?" Elaine repeated absentmindedly, and immediately remembered that when he blocked the first breath aimed at her, he’d thrown a shield in her direction before doing so.
’He can teleport to wherever his shield is?’
A quick glance at his comrades revealed small, round, fist-sized shields hanging from Knight and Archer’s waists.
’Come to think of it, the woman also had something like that hanging from her neck...’
"Archer, do you have a clear shot?"
Knight’s voice pulled Elaine out of her thoughts, and she quickly looked up toward him before spotting the Archer standing atop a broken building nearby, his bow already drawn.
"Wait for it," Archer replied, his gaze fixed on the dragon.
It continued thrashing violently, spewing flames in every direction and turning half the city into a literal sea of fire. From above, magic circles formed repeatedly, raining bolts of demonic death energy across the land, each impact infusing more of that energy into the ground as the bolts hit.
Archer remained silent for several seconds, then suddenly released the arrow he had nocked.
The projectile shot through the air at supersonic speed, tearing straight through the sea of flames, slipping past every falling attack, and piercing directly into the wounded eye of the thrashing dragon.
The instant the arrow hit its mark, it detonated, the burst of infernal magic ripping through the dragon’s flesh and cracking part of its skull.
The dragon screamed, its agonised screech echoing across the ruined town, so shrill that Elaine had to clamp her hands over her ears from the sheer intensity of the sound.
Knight frowned at the noise, but he quickly infused energy into his sword and called out to his companions.
"Lancer, let’s go! Mage, cover us!"
Immediately, the two melee-fighters dashed toward the dragon, Lancer charging in from the left while Knight moved in from the right.
Mage began casting several spells, and Tank poured magic power into his shield, ready to teleport in front of any of them to block an attack that might prove dangerous.
Archer nocked another arrow and fired, sending it through the barrier the dragon had raised in a desperate attempt to protect itself, and as the barrier shattered, magic spells rained down, hammering the dragon’s scales and cracking them apart, blood spilling from the flesh beneath.
The dragon opened its mouth to spew flames, but Archer’s arrow hit the underside of its jaw, forcing its mouth shut.
Lancer lunged forward and thrust his spear, the weapon punching through the spell circles the dragon tried to create with its forelimbs and violently dispersing the magic that composed them.
The dragon was hit with the backlash from the broken spells, temporarily frying its energy circuits, and the pain hadn’t even fully registered when its body jolted upward, chunks of earth tearing free beneath it as Mage’s earth magic detonated from below, hurling its massive frame into the air.
Knight ran up a pile of crumbled rocks and leapt skyward, sword raised high.
Gravity quickly reclaimed both him and the dragon as he descended like a meteor, stabbing his sword straight into the dragon’s back, piercing its scales and the flesh underneath.
Blood splashed across his armour, and the force of the impact slammed the dragon into the ground with a thunderous crash, the shockwaves snuffing out all the flames around the point of impact.
[GUOOOORGHHH!!!]
The dragon let out an agonised roar, death law energy gathering around its forelimbs as it raised them and slammed them into the ground.
While all the Infernal Devils sensed the energy coalescing around its limbs, only Elaine detected the rising mass of death law energy from the ground beneath them.
Her eyes widened in shock, but before she could put into words what she’d sensed, the dragon screamed,
[CURSE GRAVEYARD!]
Instantly, the Bounded Field’s magic network, which had been slowly repairing itself during the fight and was further reinforced by the death energy infused from all the magic missiles the dragon had been firing seemingly at random while thrashing, activated.
Gravestones burst from the ground and skeletal hands erupted from the earth, reaching up to seize every one of the Hero Candidates. The clawed tips of the hands pierced through their armour and into the flesh beneath, infusing demonic energy into their bodies.
Their shadows pooled into darkness, swallowing their feet as their bodies sank up to the knees and became completely immobilised.
Elaine was naturally a target as well, but the instant she sensed something wrong, she instinctively acted to protect herself.
She reached out and grabbed the nearby Tank’s arm, activating Drain Touch to siphon his life force, which she then converted into death energy and detonated in a necrotic burst to free herself from the Bounded Field’s effects.
The one hit hardest was Knight, who was on the dragon’s back and had been splashed with its blood.
Jet streams of blood erupted from the wound he’d inflicted when he stabbed the dragon, mixing with death and curse law energy as it soaked his body. The blood became the conduit for a vicious curse, one that used the caster’s own blood as a medium and demanded life as its price.
[I’ll take you down with me...at the very least!!]
The dragon bellowed, ready to sacrifice its life to drag Knight down. Its blood coating Knight thickened into a glue-like substance, completely immobilising him, and more black blood poured from the dragon, wrapping him so tightly that his body could no longer be seen.
