'Well, I can't let so many of you remain alive. You know too much about me…'
'Mind-Poisoning Domain – Frenzy Mode.'
Ken activated it in the single target version, focusing solely on the man standing amidst the flames.
Darma opened his eyes in surprise when his mind and soul were subjected to a new type of terror. It was a mix of fear and anger, but the slight fear only fueled his wrath further.
He looked at those around him, his mind heavily influenced by the combination of his rage for being wounded and constantly blocked along with the new mind corruption technique Ken just deployed.
"You dare wound me? You dare try to kill me?!" Darma screamed in rage as he looked at Tiffany. She led the assault and received the biggest portion of hatred from him.
He hallucinated as he gazed at his enemies, making him see them all as wearing the same white mask he despised. He could see illusions of them standing above the bodies of his parents, pulling their blades out of his dear ones' hearts.
Enraged, he instantly pulled out pills from his storage ring, prompting the group to rush toward him.
"Don't let him take any pills!" Tiffany shouted as she brought down her saber, and Earth Qi made the ground underneath her enemy's feet create a small pile and trap him in his place.
An arrow lunged at the man's shoulder, yet surprisingly, he didn't bother to dodge. He used his hand to execute an overwhelming shockwave made with fire to block the incoming attacks of the other three, delaying them by a second as instead of taking the pills, he just pushed them forward with a wave of Qi.
The pills exploded right when they thought he would try to consume them. The moment of ingesting the pills would be accompanied by a momentary pain like what they went through earlier, and they wanted to take advantage of it which prompted Tiffany and Octavia to step in.
The pills' explosion wasn't dangerous, but the substance it sent all over was. Transparent gas spread around it, and the four stepped backward hurriedly. Using this chance, Darma took out strengthening pills and uncorked the lid.
"You again!" He shouted furiously when Ken appeared in front of him, slashing the floating bottles still in the air and destroying the pills. Darma almost forgot about Ken's presence after the latter remained out of the fight for the past 3 minutes.
The man sent a leg forward and leaned, bending his knee and sending a frightening punch with his left hand. Darma's right hand was completely out of use now; two fingers were gone, and an arrow was lunged into the shoulder.
Ken tilted his body using Cloud Running, cushioning the strike by barely letting it connect, but it wasn't enough to completely remove the weight behind the attack, and he was sent flying away.
"Ken! Protect him!" Tiffany shouted and the team jumped to stand in Darma's way to Ken. But something went wrong; Octavia and Tiffany jumped the wrong way!
Instead of going to their right where Ken was, they ran to the left, making their enemy laugh in schadenfreude.
"Did you think the gas you breathed earlier was harmless?" He laughed and jumped to face the two girls who separated from Yuri and Maria.
"Be careful, the gas messed up your orientation!" Ken shouted. How regrettable, he was too late. He did his best; he would never let his comrades die on purpose.
Aiming at the one he hated the most, Darma attacked the leader of the group, whom he saw as another mask-wearing cultivator with shining red eyes. Tiffany tried to place her blade in front of her, but she could not adapt to the disorientation so fast. The saber missed and Darma's palm hit her directly in the chest.
'Earth Armor,' Tiffany coated her body with armor made of Earth Qi at that moment and stepped backward, but it was not enough. Instead of going backward, she advanced, and the palm broke through the armor and sent a pulse of fire, burning through her chest and creating a hole in the middle of her chest with a loud explosion.
"No! Tiffany!" Yuri shouted in despair. Maria and he dashed back to fend the alchemist off in an attempt to save their second teammate, Octavia. But their assault didn't make him flinch.
He rotated on his heel and sent a high kick to her chin. Octavia swung her heavy blade in retaliation, but just like her dead leader, she struck in the wrong direction.
An arrow shrieked as it connected with the kick in impressive precision, but the momentum was not enough to make the sixth-stage cultivator lose balance, and his kick connected with Octavia's head.
It faced a little resistance from Metal Qi, but the chin was a weak spot, and the defenses there were limited. A gorgeous trail of fire that came out of Darma's heel stood in sharp contrast with the gruesome scene of the woman's head spinning to an unnatural angle.
"Haha, I'm impressed you could discern the effect of my pills so quickly. You really are a genius alchemist. It's a shame you have chosen wrong and didn't come to be under me."
Darma laughed, crazed. His right arm was hung loosely on his side, and two new gaping wounds accumulated from Maria and Yuri's techniques. He chose to continue his attack on Octavia and kill her, but it came with a price. The hall was only that big, and the time they needed to cross the distance between them was not long.
"Fuck! Fuck! What should we do?!" Yuri swore in panic and shouted. He saw both Ken and Maria as outsiders, and the only one alive on his side was Odette.
"I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T KNOW!" Odette screamed, her voice filled with anxiety and dread.
"Fight now, think later! He isn't going to let any of us off now, cover me!" Ken said in a cold voice and charged forward.
During the quick exchange earlier, he took a sixth-grade healing pill and threw up the blood that came up his throat from the earlier punch. He was unaffected by the poison; his Alchemical Qi was purer than Darma's, and he easily decomposed the gas that entered his system.
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