Chapter 937: Armament Synchrony [Bonus 5]
The gigantic demon asura collapsed to its knees, almost completely dismembered, its six arms still clutching different weapons scattered across the floor of the ruined castle.
A thick arrow with four fletches pierced straight through its eye and into its brain, while a spear glowing with silver divinity pierced through its back and into its heart.
Stretched out on the ground, nearly half dead themselves, were Arthur and Rishia, the two who’d finally brought this asura down after exactly 20 hours of continuous combat.
Arthur didn’t even have the strength to lift his hand for a high five with Rishia, and even if he had, he couldn’t have done it since one arm was being used to support the other, which was completely dislocated at the elbow.
Special Advice from Arthur: Never let a demon asura grab your arm with two of its own arms, because that’s a recipe for disaster.
Arthur and Rishia had fought many knights wielding weapons throughout this floor of the tower, from lone warriors to entire armies, from short dwarven knights to towering giants that moved far faster than their size should’ve allowed.
They fought dragon knights—literal dragons clad in full plate armour, wielding swords. They fought wolf knights—literal werewolves gripping swords in their mouths, and the list just kept going on and on.
"How the hell did Berlal even get his hands on three-headed Hell Dogs that carry a sword in each mouth?" Arthur asked as he forced himself upright from the floor.
Hearing him, Rishia turned an incredulous look toward him and replied, "That’s your problem? What about the giant lion holding a spear with its tail? And crystal scorpions using bows and arrows?"
From that insane lineup, it was obvious that to Berlal, anything that existed could be made into a vessel for a weapon.
The sheer absurdity kept Arthur and Rishia off balance, making it hard for them to rely on standard humanoid anatomy.
Even so, they won, and victory brought its rewards.
The two received a large amount of soul power drawn from the souls of every enemy they’d defeated across the entire floor.
Even though they’d fought more enemies on Floor 2, the soul power they gained was far lower than on Floor 1, which made sense since a significant portion of what they’d obtained on Floor 1 had come from the Cosmic Horrors at the end of that floor.
It wasn’t that the Cosmic Horrors possessed soul power to begin with, but they did contain cosmic energy, and energy could be converted from one type to another, and at its core, soul power was simply another type of energy.
In short, Arthur and Rishia gained soul power, and on top of that, they each acquired a new ability that could be classified as a Skill inscribed directly into their existences.
The name that surfaced in their minds was ’Armament Synchrony’, and it came with three effects: Zero-Point Transition, Weapon Conduction Enhancement, and Anti-Disarm Stability.
Zero-Point Transition removed the recovery frames between weapon techniques, letting them switch from one technique to another without delay. Weapon Conduction Enhancement improved the efficiency of energy flowing through their weapons, and the one Arthur considered the most important of them all was Anti-Disarm Stability, which greatly boosted resistance against ’weapon disarm’ attempts.
The two took a break in the rest area before advancing to Floor 3, where they didn’t encounter a single opponent in battle from beginning to end.
What they did encounter, however, were traps.
Traps everywhere.
There wasn’t a single 10 metre stretch in the maze they were navigating that didn’t contain at least one trap.
When they first stepped inside, they quickly realised they couldn’t properly use their energies there. Whether it was Magic, Cosmic Energy, or Divinity, none of them functioned as they should.
Any energy they tried to gather was forcibly dispersed by a Cosmic Authority far greater than theirs, leaving them barely able to power certain techniques.
Arthur couldn’t create weapon constructs because the energy dispersed before he could fully create them, and Rishia’s magic couldn’t travel more than 5 metres from her before it faded as well.
The corridor ahead was about two metres wide, its walls glowing a faint grey to provide light, and as they proceeded carefully with their senses stretched out to detect threats, a faint clicking sound echoed in their ears.
Both Arthur and Rishia would have dismissed it as the sound of their own footsteps if it hadn’t been for the fact that Arthur’s left leg sank slightly into the ground at the sound, his body tilting toward Rishia, who looked down and noticed that one of the tiles had sunk a little.
For a moment, silence hung between them.
Then, the sudden sound of something slicing through the air filled the corridor as two circular saws shot out from either side of the wall.
The one on the right was about neck height, while the one on the left was at waist level, and the two blades sped toward them, forcing them to leap backwards to avoid being hit.
After the blades passed, they disappeared into the walls as if they had never existed.
For a while, Arthur and Rishia remained there, cautiously watching for a second wave, but none came.
"So we’ve got cliché traps n—!"
Arthur’s words cut off as chills ran down his spine.
Reacting on instinct, he grabbed Rishia’s arm and hurled himself forward, barely a split second before guillotine blades crashed into the floor where they had been standing.
The blades vibrated as they descended, slicing through the floor like it was butter.
They hadn’t even finished being surprised by this trap when the floor beneath them suddenly tilted forward, and from the gaps between the tiles, grease poured out, sending their bodies sliding toward a gap that opened barely 5 metres ahead.
As they fell into the gap, both immediately tried to unfurl their wings to fly, but the moment they did, powerful bolts of light hit their bodies, completely ignoring their durabilities and shocking their muscles into stiffening.
They grunted in pain, with Arthur reflexively folding his wings.
The instant he did, the bolts of light stopped hitting him, and noticing this, Rishia folded her wings as well, causing the same effect on her body.
It took a few seconds for them to regain mobility, and Rishia transformed her hand into her dragon arm, digging it into the wall to anchor herself while her other hand reached out and grabbed Arthur’s to support him, too.
Her arm scraped across the wall, carving grooves into the material, and to help, Arthur reduced their effective weight with his Gravity Authority and used Anti-Gravity to try to lift their bodies upward.
However, because of the constant energy dispersal they were facing, his Origin Core wasn’t receiving enough power to function fully.
Even so, it was enough to prevent them from falling, and by the time they came to a stop, they could hear slithering, clicking, and hissing sounds coming from below.
Arthur risked a glance at what lay beneath them and instantly regretted it.
The opening they had fallen through led to a vast sea of snakes and scorpions, possibly millions, all writhing and crawling with hissing tongues and clicking claws.
Goosebumps rose along Arthur’s arms as he realised that the only thing keeping him from plunging into this scorpion hell was Rishia’s grip on his hand.
For a moment, Arthur considered unfurling his wings to try and fly, but as if reading his thoughts, Rishia immediately spoke.
"Don’t use your wings!"
"Huh?"
"That light that hit us earlier stopped when we folded our wings," Rishia explained. "There’s probably some kind of restriction on flight here."
Arthur hadn’t noticed what had caused the light to disappear in the heat of the moment, since he’d been focused on countering the paralysis it had induced, but thinking back, the light had indeed stopped the moment his wings folded into his back.
"If we can’t fly out, then how are we supposed to get out of here without falling into that poison hell below?"
Rishia fell silent at his question, her eyes scanning the faintly glowing chamber for any kind of exit.
It didn’t take long for her to spot one, as the glow of the walls looked slightly different in that area.
"There’s a tunnel..."
Arthur looked around and quickly located the tunnel, roughly 500 metres from where they were.
’And what are the odds that the tunnel isn’t rigged with traps too?’
He wasn’t willing to take that risk, so instead he turned his gaze upward.
"Rishia, throw me up a bit."
"What are you planning to do?" she asked, eyebrow raised in confusion.
"A little wall-running, that’s all."
Hearing Arthur’s response, Rishia looked at the wall her claws were dug into, then said,
"What if the walls are coated in that greasy substance that made us slip?"
"Then I’ll be counting on you to catch me before I fall into poison hell," Arthur replied immediately.
Rishia gave him a deadpan look, but Arthur simply told her to hurry, his tone completely serious.
With a soft sigh, she pulled Arthur up, then grabbed his upper arm and threw him upward with as much strength as she could muster.
Arthur shot upward, using his Gravity Authority to nudge himself toward the wall, and as soon as his feet landed on it, he crouched and sprang off, leaping across the four corners of the channel down into the pit of scorpions and snakes.
He only ran a few steps on each side before leaping to another side, moving around like that until he made his way back to the top.
Once there, he didn’t jump out of the hole immediately, but first punched the wall beside him, cracking part of it, then grabbed some of the rocks and tossed them into the air.
The rocks hit the ground with a small noise, but beyond that, he heard nothing else. Only after that did he peek out to check for any dangers nearby before finally coming out himself.
The floor was still a bit greasy, but not enough to prevent him from maintaining his balance.
But the moment he pulled his entire body out of the hole in the ground, the floor immediately began sliding over to block the opening. However, Arthur’s hand was faster than the moving floor as he reached out, caught it, and pushed it back with pure physical strength, muttering, "I knew this was going to happen."
Looking down, he then shouted, "Coast is clear, but, uh, hurry up, Rishia."
His words hadn’t even finished travelling downward when the dragoness shot up from the hole and landed on the floor opposite him. Immediately, Arthur released the sliding floor, and it slammed shut, sealing the hole in the ground.
