Chapter 202: An Encounter Battle

Chapter 202: An Encounter Battle

Crash!

Gilchies merely turned slightly, and the cup of beer landed on the round table beside him, smashing into a mess.

At the same time as the gunshot, he made no attempt to dodge. It was as though he had intuitively seen through it as an illusion. In the chaotic environment where drunkards and gamblers either crouched while holding their heads or scattered in flight, his body sprang up like it had springs installed, and his gaze locked onto the cold adventurer in the top hat and formal suit at the entrance.

Gehrman Sparrow… Gilchies’s pupils shrank. His mouth opened, about to pronounce a Blasphemous Word originating from the Abyss.

Just then, Klein truly pulled the trigger. A pale-golden bullet, as though it had just been pulled from hot water, shot out and accurately flew toward Slaughterer, whose bounty was as high as 9,500 pounds.

However, Gilchies merely lifted his right hand, spread his five fingers, and ignited pale-blue flames in his palm. In an unimaginable manner, he caught the bullet.

The bullet fell into that “cage” at once, freezing within the pale-blue flames. The sunlight it subsequently erupted with could only barely offset all of that.

Beside Gilchies, two figures stood up one after another. One was a short-haired woman lifting two pistols. The other was a rough man wearing boxing gloves.

Clearly, he had not come to Toscarter Harbor to seek supplies alone—or rather, he definitely had acquaintances or partners here!

Three Beyonders… Gilchies might even be Sequence 5… At that moment, Klein nearly blurted out something like, “Sorry, pardon the interruption.”

To ambush a Devil, one could not make preparations ahead of time. One had to rely on a chance encounter, and there could not be the slightest hesitation, or else the other party would immediately detect the malice and the danger.

However, in such a situation, it was truly difficult to say which side had the advantage!

Without hesitation, Klein turned around. Holding his revolver, he agilely and rapidly wove through the bar crowd, past the heads of crouching drunkards and gamblers, and rushed to the staircase leading to the bar’s second floor.

He had just darted inside when a pale-blue fireball slammed against the edge of the stairs and instantly expanded, exploding.

Boom!

A small portion of the bottom of the stairs collapsed. The entire bar shook, and a strong sulfurous smell spread outward.

Gilchies and his two companions wasted no time. They jumped over the damaged lower section of the stairs and madly chased after Gehrman Sparrow.

Thud, thud, thud!

Klein sprinted to the second floor. Along the way, he quickly activated his vision of Spirit Body Threads.

That allowed him to easily find a spacious room without any humans inside. Turning his waist and stepping hard, he was about to change direction, enter, leap out the window, and escape the bar.

At that moment, Gilchies and his two companions had also reached the second floor. The moment they saw this scene, they immediately and tacitly split up. Gilchies continued the pursuit, while the other two entered other rooms on the same side, intending to intercept Klein below.

And that was precisely the opportunity Klein had been waiting for!

He suddenly half-turned. His left palm, wearing the entirely black glove, grasped at the air and twisted.

The short-haired woman holding two pistols and the rough man wearing boxing gloves continued their actions without sensing anything abnormal. They rushed into other rooms, leaped down from the windows, and ran away without looking back.

Klein had used the Corrupt Baron’s Distortion to tamper with the purpose and action of “split up to intercept” into “split up to act”!

That would not last for long, but it gave Klein a brief one-on-one chance!

Thud. After completing the Distortion, he dropped to the ground and rolled into the room, avoiding the pale-blue fireballs Gilchies shot at him in rapid succession.

Boom after boom sounded. The building housing the bar shook as if it had encountered an earthquake.

Immediately afterward, Gilchies lunged forward swiftly and chased into the rather spacious room.

Seeing Gehrman Sparrow roll and leap skillfully, refusing to directly confront him, while also controlling his emotions extremely well, Slaughterer immediately opened his mouth and uttered a word in the unique language of Devils, filled with a filthy meaning:

“Slow!”

Everything inside the room seemed to freeze for an instant. Klein’s rolling motion visibly slowed, no longer as smooth as before.

Gilchies locked onto him without hesitation and followed with another Devil word:

“Die!”

Klein’s figure froze in place at once, then quickly faded and thinned into a paper figurine covered in mottled red rust.

At the same time, he appeared by the door in his half top hat and black double-breasted frock coat. Extending his left hand, which wore the sinister black glove, he grasped the handle and pulled the already shaky door inward, steadily closing it.

Clang!

The noise outside disappeared. The room seemed to have separated itself, becoming a firm prison.

Seeing this, Gilchies’s body suddenly swelled, stretching his clothes apart inch by inch.

In an instant, he became an enormous creature close to three meters tall. His skin looked dull, yet was in truth dark black and evil. Curved goat horns protruded from his head, covered with countless mysterious patterns. A pair of gigantic bat-like wings unfolded behind his back, twined with pale-blue flames and emitting an intense sulfurous smell.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

One pale-blue fireball after another shot out like a thousand cannons firing at once, blanketing the area near the door. At the same time, crimson flared in Gilchies’s eyes, and an utterly filthy Devil word came from his mouth again:

“Corrupt!”

This, too, was an area attack!

Pale blue filled his vision. Klein’s left palm, wearing that sinister yet noble glove, clenched abruptly and swiftly twisted halfway.

Those fireballs immediately lost their original trajectories, becoming as chaotic as tiny particles moving in irregular motion.

They struck the ceiling. They hit the door. They fell toward the floor. Some flew backward at Gilchies. For a time, booming sounds rose and fell without end inside the room. The sealing effect produced by the power of Distortion suffered intense destruction and shaking, but it still showed no obvious signs of breaking.

Amid rising pale-blue firelight and the spreading sulfurous smell, Klein’s body suddenly bent down. A layer of slightly viscous black liquid covered his surface.

Bang!

His figure exploded, turning into shattered scraps of paper and fallen black fog.

Immediately afterward, he appeared on the other side. His skin had noticeably darkened, while his clothing had been torn by the force of explosions and flames from the Abyss, leaving slash after slash behind.

The area-of-effect Corrupt power restrained his Paper Figurine Substitute to a certain extent, forcing him to suffer some of its influence. Meanwhile, the explosion’s aftermath was not something Klein could control and likewise injured him.

However, during their first encounter, he had already “given” Gilchies a cup of beer, completing a Bribe. That greatly weakened the attack and control effects directed at him!

Gilchies clearly had not expected Gehrman Sparrow to remain unaffected by Corruption to any serious degree. He had only just pulled out a magnificent long saber formed purely from flames and had yet to unleash a frenzied assault combining speed and strength, when he saw the glove on the other party’s left palm become as though forged from gold.

Two dazzling bolts of lightning instantly shot from Klein’s eyes!

Psychic Piercing!

“Ah!”

Gilchies immediately released a shrill scream. It was as though a hundred bottles of holy water had been poured into his head.

He possessed abundant combat experience. Knowing that after his mind was struck, he would definitely face a series of continuous, unrelenting blows, he instinctively transformed into dark liquid, spreading toward the floor and the surroundings.

That liquid seemed like a collection of the most sinister, ugliest desires buried in the human heart. With the posture of polluting everything, it swept across the room toward Gehrman Sparrow.

This posture is just too perfect… In an encounter battle, both sides inevitably suffer from insufficient preparation and incomplete understanding… Good thing I’ve always remembered that when facing a Beyonder suspected of being an Apostle of Desire, I must thoroughly rein in my desires and emotions… Klein did not dodge. The glove on his left palm swiftly took on pure, bright sunlight.

He spread both arms, letting a sacred beam of light wrapped in golden flames descend, illuminating every corner and every shadow of the room!

The beam of light struck the place where the dark liquid was thickest, then spread outward like ripples.

Within that bright, sacred radiance, the dark liquid rapidly evaporated, more than half of it vanishing.

Gilchies hurriedly gathered his body and reformed near the window.

He still maintained his nearly three-meter-tall Devil form. His mind remained as cold as ever, yet his intense desire for bloodshed and slaughter made him somewhat unable to restrain himself.

By then, he had become quite weak. He no longer dared continue circling and waiting for Gehrman Sparrow to develop emotional fluctuations so he could seize control of his desires. He directly ignited the two curved, mysterious goat horns on his head, intending to forcibly assault his enemy’s mind and inevitably make him produce certain emotions.

Once desires and emotions appeared, the situation would fall under the control of an Apostle of Desire!

At that very moment, Gilchies’s mind abruptly went numb, to the point that the thoughts he had just formed were nearly lost!

After the distance between the two sides entered a five-meter range, the reason Klein had remained on the defensive, barely parrying with Paper Figurine Substitutes and the Corrupt Baron’s Distortion ability to stall for time, was precisely because he had been splitting his attention to manipulate Gilchies’s Spirit Body Threads!

With Slaughterer’s Sequence 5 spirit-body strength, Klein should not have succeeded so quickly. But that cup of beer’s Bribe had lowered Gilchies’s defenses and ability to resist. After that, the Apostle of Desire had suffered Psychic Piercing and been deeply purified once by Holy Light, leaving him considerably weakened.

Therefore, even though Klein had split his attention to use other abilities, he still managed to initially control Gilchies in about fifteen seconds.

The intense battle inside the room abruptly grew quiet. Although Gilchies’s thoughts had become sluggish, he could still complete movements and could still forcefully resist the control originating from the depths of his spirit body.

The crimson in his eyes drew inward, reflecting Gehrman Sparrow’s figure. The curved goat horns on his head began burning violently, while hatred, greed, lust, rage, and other emotions and desires spread outward almost as tangible substances.

Klein entered a half-meditative state, calmly and intently deepening his control, striving to make Gilchies lose the ability to resist as quickly as possible.