Chapter 203: From Lag to Disconnection

Chapter 203: From Lag to Disconnection

Inside the battered, broken room, with his hat fallen to one side and his clothing damaged, Klein faced the enormous demon Gilchies, whose back bore bat-like wings, from a distance of roughly four meters. The scene was so quiet it seemed as if they were performing a puppet show.

In truth, Klein still had some spare capacity to do other things.

Back when the Marionettist Rosago had forcefully controlled both him and Sharron, he had been able to resist the projection possession of a Wraith while manipulating flames, summoning a stream of fire, and annihilating the shadows Sharron had drawn over. If Rosago had not made the mistake of focusing mainly on Miss Sharron, a Sequence 5 Wraith, he would long since have found a chance to kill Klein and would never have given him the opportunity to use the Foulness Charm. Now, although Klein certainly could not compare to Rosago, his enemy was only one person!

Of course, the things he could do were not especially many. Under the premise of not abandoning control over Gilchies, he could move, but not too hastily or too quickly. He could use the Beyonder abilities that belonged to himself and did not place too much burden on his spirituality, but he could not split his attention to drive the mystical items he carried, nor could he make a large movement such as drawing his gun and firing.

Before the target was controlled to a sufficient degree, many attacks might push or stimulate the opponent, increasing the force of their resistance against the manipulation of their Spirit Body Threads, or even allowing signs of breaking free to appear.

Therefore, Klein had to wait.

Just then, his heartbeat suddenly quickened by two beats. An uncontrollable sense of fear and tension immediately surged into his mind.

He could not help suspecting that Gilchies’s companions, whose intentions had been “distorted,” were about to return!

Not good! My emotions fluctuated! Klein first froze, then immediately relied on his meditation techniques to forcibly calm the waves inside his heart.

Haha… He has… emotional fluctuations… A chance… A slow thought flashed through Gilchies’s mind with a burst of joy.

Then, relying on his own Beyonder ability, he attempted to magnify Gehrman Sparrow’s fear and tension, planting emotional seeds.

If he succeeded, he would only need to thoroughly “detonate” them to half-cripple his opponent, making him unable to affect him again!

No… How could this be… no effect… His… emotional fluctuation… disappeared… The crimson eyes of Gilchies sluggishly contracted. Gradually, they filled with astonishment, shock, rage, and other emotions.

Klein, who had thought he would suffer a counterattack from the Apostle of Desire the moment he revealed an opening, only realized after he had completely calmed himself that nothing had happened. The curved goat horns on Gilchies’s head had clearly burned down completely, yet the demon had not attempted to use that emotional fluctuation!

A thought turned in Klein’s mind, and he roughly understood what had happened:

It was not that Gilchies did not want to manipulate his fear and tension—he had failed!

Starting from the moment he sensed an emotional fluctuation, he first had to spend several seconds digesting that situation, then two or three seconds making a decision, and finally even more time organizing his thoughts and mobilizing the corresponding Beyonder ability. From start to finish, he needed at least a little over ten seconds to complete his response.

And from detecting the problem to calming his emotions, Klein had only taken three or four seconds in total.

Therefore, Gilchies’s Beyonder ability had faced an enemy in a normal state, and naturally failed to take effect.

Simply put, the lag was too high! In a situation like this, don’t try precision operations… Klein lampooned twice, then quickly smoothed away his schadenfreude and continued deepening his control.

After roughly another ten seconds, Gilchies seemed to have understood where the problem lay. He no longer considered methods targeting desires and emotions. Instead, relying on the demon’s formidable body and spirit body, he resisted the manipulation originating from the Spirit Body Threads while slowly and laboriously flapping the bat wings on his back, causing the pale-blue flames wrapped around them to condense little by little into fireballs.

Klein could almost foresee the next scene: fireballs launching one after another in a saturation bombardment. Therefore, without the slightest hesitation, he split off a little spirituality and snapped the thumb and middle finger of his right hand.

Pa!

Those pale-blue flames suddenly surged before fully taking shape, then utterly disintegrated. It was as if a grand fireworks display had been set off behind Gilchies.

Magician: Fire Manipulation!

Gilchies still tried to keep struggling, but his movements had already become slower and slower, increasingly like a rusted wooden puppet. Klein merely moved his feet with ease and avoided the Devil words he spat with all his strength.

Three seconds. Two seconds. One second… Klein suddenly stopped, his gaze locking onto Gilchies’s head, now bereft of its curved goat horns.

At that moment, he was still at least two and a half minutes away from fully controlling this Apostle of Desire and turning him into a marionette. But Klein had no such intention. From the very beginning, he had never had that intention!

It would take far too much time, and Gilchies’s companions would certainly be able to return before then!

From start to finish, Klein had only one goal: to control Gilchies to a certain degree, so that attacks within certain limits would not help him break free!

Crimson eyes, a hideous face, and saliva-dripping fangs entered Klein’s eyes. He opened his mouth and uttered a single word:

“Bang!”

Air Bullet, the Air Bullet of a Sequence 5!

It was already comparable to a bullet fired from a steam rifle!

Bang!

The Air Bullet struck Gilchies accurately in the forehead, knocking his head backward and tugging at his Spirit Body Threads.

A not especially deep bloody hole appeared at the center of his brow, but his body as a whole did not suffer a fatal injury.

For a Demon, for an Apostle of Desire, their entire body seemed covered in a thick, hard suit of armor, while their flesh and blood possessed immense elasticity and resistance.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Klein kept making sounds, creating Air Bullets and sending them one after another into Gilchies’s forehead. Gradually, the holes joined together, while Klein calmly controlled the Spirit Body Threads, refusing to let the opponent use this to pull them and weaken the influence.

Gilchies released a stuttering roar of rage and desperately moved forward, attempting to counterattack. But Klein’s movements were far more nimble than his!

And his intention to liquefy, under the control of the Spirit Body Threads, also failed without question.

Bang!

Another Air Bullet struck, completely shattering Gilchies’s forehead and drilling into his brain.

Bang! Bang! Bang! The bullets that followed flew in one after another.

Bang!

Gilchies’s skull was finally blown open. The brain inside, covered in deep black grooves, had already turned into a blurred mess.

The aura of this “Slaughterer,” whose bounty was 9,500 pounds, rapidly dissipated. But he did not close his eyes, because he had already lost them.

He toppled to the ground in slow, halting motions. Klein approached step by step and extended his left palm.

At once, two scarlet eyes split open in the center of the glove’s palm.

A cold, sinister breeze appeared. “Slaughterer” Gilchies’s spirit body, together with a black-fog-like Beyonder characteristic, screamed as it burrowed into Creeping Hunger, settling upon the empty finger.

Very quickly, the glove turned black once again. This time, however, it was deep and pure, as though formed by countless tiny specks of the same color wriggling together layer upon layer.

Klein sensed it for two seconds, feeling both a little disappointed and a little pleased, before walking toward the window whose glass had shattered.

During the process of grazing Gilchies, he had actually considered which Beyonder abilities he hoped to obtain and which he did not. The ability he least wanted was the Demon’s danger premonition, because to use that, he would have to keep Creeping Hunger activated and remain on Gilchies’s soul at all times. That meant feeding the glove one person every day, which was extremely inconvenient. Besides, it overlapped somewhat with his own Seer abilities.

As for whether a Demon’s danger premonition would still be useful after being made into a marionette, Klein believed it would—but only toward the marionette itself, not toward the controller.

What Klein most hoped to “draw” was either the Apostle of Desire’s utilization of emotional fluctuations, or any one of the Blasphemous Words—preferably “Die” or “Corrupt.”

At this very moment, his luck was not bad. He had obtained three Beyonder abilities, one of which was indeed a Blasphemous Word. However, it was not “Die” or “Corrupt,” but “Slow.” It could cause all targets within a seven- or eight-meter range to instantly freeze in their movements, even to the point of briefly stopping, though the influence would only last about two seconds.

The second Beyonder ability was Magma Sword, which could create a flame greatsword shaped like a blade and possessing extremely high offensive power. A single strike could directly cleave through a thick stone pillar, leaving the cut as though melted. It had been Gilchies’s choice during frenzied assaults.

The third was Sulfur Fireball. Not only could it create powerful explosions, it also poisoned any person or object contaminated by the flames. If used together with demonization, it could fire a dozen or even twenty at once. Without demonization, the maximum was three.

Not bad overall. Magma Sword deals noticeably more damage to non-undead and non-filthy creatures than the Priest of Light’s Holy Light… Klein reached the window just in time to see the retreating backs of Gilchies’s companions.

They didn’t break free from the influence? No, calculating the time, they must already have broken free and returned nearby. Are they fleeing now? Can they sense Gilchies’s death? A bit strange… Klein turned back and saw that Gilchies’s corpse still maintained its demon state. It had not undone the transformation and shrunk back into human form after death.

After looking for two seconds, he vaguely formed a guess:

“An ability like demonization manifests a state close to losing control. While reason remains and the user can still control it, they can change back. Otherwise, it remains like this forever.”

Klein did not delay. He rummaged through the demon’s corpse and discovered that because Gilchies had enlarged, his clothes and trousers had all been torn apart, causing his wallet, banknotes, and other belongings to fall all over the floor. During the earlier blanket fireball assault and the burning sulfur flames, they had been tragically destroyed.

…Klein was just about to withdraw his gaze when he suddenly noticed something shining at the enormous demon’s chest.

It was a slender crystal formed purely from blood. A faint smell of sulfur spread around it.

“What is this?” Klein frowned slightly, unable to come up with an answer.

Gilchies’s Beyonder characteristic had clearly already entered Creeping Hunger. Why would a strange object still precipitate from his corpse? The thought flashed through Klein’s mind in puzzlement.

And as the second mate of the Undying King, Gilchies actually did not have a single mystical item or Sealed Artifact. That somewhat exceeded his expectations.