Chapter 569 Within the Barrier
"…Ain't this a bootleg 'Ghidor*h?!"
The boy shouted out as the creature roared once more before taking a swing at him with one of its heads, its sharp jaws gleaming in the sunlight as it attempted to take a bite out of him.
"It's weak as hell though."
**SWISH!!!
[GROAHHH!!!]
His hands blurred and the monster's neck was severed from its head, spraying blood everywhere while screaming in pain.
But even that was cut short when Evan charged forward and sliced the other two heads off with lightning speed, before tossing the whole corpse in his inventory.
He then dashed forward to catch up to the others who had gone ahead, leaving behind the half-collapsed building and the blood on the floor.
At first, they didn't encounter too many monsters, but the closer they got to the heart of the city, the more the monster encounters gradually began increasing in frequency.
They were still a long way from the centre though, Lacertilia was a big city, after all.
"Guys…we should split up soon so we can cover more ground."
"Fine by me."
"Don't rob any banks, Greed."
"Wha?! I'm offended!"
Evan burst into laughter upon hearing the two demon siblings' conversation after he suggested splitting up, but his laughter was cut short when a massive lizardman came into view.
The creature also noticed them and stopped for a moment to decide whether to chase the weak humans it was already after or the clearly stronger ones coming towards it.
Eventually, it decided to go after the stronger ones, as they'd yield more experience upon death, but the poor creature didn't know it was gonna be its last battle.
The instant it came into range, Evan's mystic eyes came active and his Harbinger of Ice skill was activated, sending a wave of frigid energy spreading outward from the point his feet touched the ground.
Noticing the danger in the ice, the Lizardman broke its run and quickly jumped backwards to gain distance.
Its red scales seemed to glow as it swung its fat arms, releasing a three-pronged aura projection slash of flames toward the ground while its horizontal pupils watched Pride and Greed who flanked it.
Without hesitation, the monster grabbed the nearest carriage that was on the road and flung it towards Pride to slow her down, before coating both its arms in aura and raising them to punch towards Greed.
**BAMM!!
The high demon caught the punch with the flat side of his blade, and in that moment, Pride who 'phased through' the carriage like it wasn't even there, reached its back and unleashed a slash of black flames.
You would think that she'd use another element given the fact that it could use fire and in turn, should have had higher resistance, but Pride's Demonic flames burned through the monster's resistance with ease, drawing a long flaming gash across its back.
[Graa!!!]
The monster roared aloud while simultaneously spinning its body around, throwing out its flaming arm towards Pride who blocked with her sword before taking distance.
Suddenly, the temperature of its legs dropped rapidly and within a second, the cold had spread to its entire lower body.
[?!]
It tried to ignite its flames to melt the ice and break itself free from the ice encasing its feet, but Greed's demonic energy-infused great sword had already cleaved its head off its neck by the time it could do that.
The monster's corpse dropped right into Evan's inventory and the group resumed their original movements, running towards the direction of the city centre.
They naturally had a few other reptilian monster encounters but those monsters were quickly punched to death by Evan and Greed, their corpses collected if they were stronger than 250, while anything less was left behind.
There was the option of incinerating the corpse but that consumed way too much energy and was unwise considering the current situation.
As for what Evan planned to do with the corpses he was collecting, naturally, it was to sell them so he could rake in more money.
"I mean, what other reason is there?"
That was the answer he gave Eliza when the girl bothered to ask about this and after hearing it, she felt like she should not have done so in the first place.
Evan's attention had long left the question and gone to the monster towering at nearly seven feet in height, with a coarse scaly hide that was an eerie blend of mottled greens and earthy browns.
It had thick muscles and a jagged crest of bony plates forming a nightmarish crown framing a face dominated by sharp, yellow predatory eyes.
"Finally! A Normal Lizardman!"
Evan boosted forward after attracting the monster's attention with his shout, running up the wall of a building and then jumping behind a billboard that was atop its roof.
The lizardman's gaze that was trained on him turned strange when it noticed that Evan's presence suddenly disappeared right after he vanished right behind the board.
Before it could even turn its attention to the boy's companions, an obsidian black blade materialized right above its head and nailed straight through its skull, down its throat and straight to its heart, killing it in one strike.
The lizardman dropped dead into Evan's inventory and the boy landed on the ground before muttering to himself.
"This is fun…let's do it again."
He clearly did not have the demeanour of someone who had come to save Lacertilia's citizens from being murdered by a mob of angry seven-foot-tall lizards who can each split a town in two.
Running off once more, he slaughtered all the strange reptilian monsters in his path, eventually encountering a scene of a group of soldiers trying to fight off a group of Lizardmen without damaging the city's infrastructure as much as possible, and people who were cheering for them.
A grin formed on his lips and he used his concealment skill once more, vanishing from his position and reappearing right beside one of the Lizardmen who was using vines to wrap around a horse carriage and toss it towards the soldiers.
"That's dangerous, you know?"
[?!]
The sudden voice coming from beside its ear startled the Lizardman, but Evan's sword was already piercing through its heart faster than it could react.
He then twisted the blade while it was still stabbed into the creature, worsening the injury, before pulling it out and letting the creature fall right into his inventory.
"Huh?!
"Just who is that person?"
"He killed the lizardman with a single strike. Just what kind of amazing skill did he use?"
"I didn't use a skill, though? Didn't even use a bit of energy."
Evan replied to their words as he flicked the blood off his blade. There was no lie in what he said as at his current level of strength, killing a creature with a B-rank health stat was something he could do without using a skill or magic.
A moment later, Pride and the others caught up to him, and when the soldiers saw them, one of them seemed to recognise them.
"Wait a sec…four spirits and four humans? With a grey-eyed boy as the leader…you guys are the Anomalies?!"
"Well, someone recognizes us."
The young hero spoke as he dropped his sword into his inventory and walked up to the soldier, apporting his adventurer card into his palm and introducing himself before asking a few questions.
The soldier was quite eager to answer after knowing it was a famous adventurer Hero who he was speaking to and that helped Evan get a good idea of how things were in the city.
Initially, things were going fine and the areas designated for evacuation weren't much, so it was pretty easy to deal with.
However, the emergency alarms suddenly began blaring, meaning the whole city was to be put under a state of emergency and all civilians were to be evacuated to shelters.
Apparently, the people with the authority to trigger said alarms were pretty high up in the hierarchy and were all Epic Levels with SS+ power levels.
This happened mere seconds after that 'strange dome' covered the entire city and then civilians began freaking out when S Rank adventurers, powerful officer-ranked soldiers and city defence force personnel began disappearing right before their very eyes.
A group of people spotted it, and some started running around saying it was the 'end of the world' while some spread the news as they saw it.
Even so, this still caused panic as the people they expected to protect the city suddenly started disappearing after a dungeon break.
This happened at multiple points across the city so the panic was quite widespread, giving the remaining military and defence forces a hard time in handling the situation.
A few had even begun considering using force to get the civilians causing trouble under control—especially the ones that were vandalizing stores and stealing stuff all over.
Evan thanked them for their information before he and his party continued their movement towards the city centre, killing monsters all the way.
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Hey, y'all.
Your very tired Author _michael here. ??
I really need to reduce the rate at which I edit already-posted chapters to add more story elements. ?????♂?
But anyway, I changed up a few things in chapters 432 and 549, so do well to skim through them a bit.
Over and out!
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