Chapter 265: A Grade 0 Sealed Artifact in Action

Chapter 265: A Grade 0 Sealed Artifact in Action

The instant Lady Despair saw the stranger appear opposite her, a sharp, crystalline ice spear condensed in her palm, and she hurled it at the target.

Using the recoil, she attempted to smash backward through the carriage and enter the street.

As for this sudden turn of events, as for this enemy who had appeared in such a bizarre fashion, it was not as though she had no doubts. Quite the contrary—she was extremely bewildered, unable to understand how someone could have found her, hidden as her whereabouts were, so quickly. The difficulty of that was no less than destroying a metropolis, or teleporting directly from Backlund to East Balam on the Southern Continent.

But as a Sequence 4 “Despair Witch,” one who had climbed step by step from “Assassin,” she understood that at critical moments, one could not be distracted or waste words. All questions could wait until afterward.

Thus, she chose to attack directly, seizing the chance to break free.

She could already imagine the scene: wherever the ice spear passed, white frost would gather, cold would seal the world, and the strange black-haired, black-eyed woman would be frozen within layer upon layer of crystal, forced to break through the obstacle with difficulty before having strength left to pursue.

By then, she would certainly have escaped this street and blended into the crowd.

However, the image she anticipated did not appear. The crystalline, dreamlike spear had only just left her hand when it silently vanished in midair, with no one knowing where it had gone.

An angel! Lady Despair’s gaze hardened. Black flames abruptly rose around her, spreading disease outward, while she prepared to ignite everything nearby and create a large-scale fire.

In that instant, her body strangely trembled once, then froze in place.

She saw her left hand disappearing centimeter by centimeter, rapidly spreading upward, impossible to stop.

Reflected in her eyes, the beautiful, vacant-eyed woman across from her had pupils so deep and black they seemed to hide a pure darkness without light.

“You are not! You are…”

Lady Despair’s words came to an abrupt stop. Her entire person was like a sketch quietly erased by a rubber, leaving not the slightest trace behind.

Her final gaze was filled with fear and despair. The place where she had been was empty, as though no one had ever sat there at all.

The beautiful woman with the blank expression tugged at the hood of her classical robe. The corner of her mouth shifted almost imperceptibly, and then her figure vanished instantly.

…

In the outskirts of Queen Borough, aboard a trackless public carriage.

Trissy wore a veiled hat and sat quietly in the corner.

She had not, as others would have expected, headed straight for the Tasok River to flee with the current, nor had she gone to the nearest railway to climb aboard a steam train.

She had chosen to return to Backlund.

Only this metropolis of more than five million people, where countless hidden factions and many Beyonders mingled, could help her escape the Demoness Sect’s subsequent pursuit!

At this very moment, her mind was stretched taut, constantly on guard against the terrifying old butler, Finkel.

Suddenly, her head spun.

When her vision returned to normal, she realized with astonishment that she had somehow left the public carriage and was standing beside a muddy road in the suburbs.

Trissy’s pupils contracted rapidly. Vigilantly, she looked around.

Then she saw a figure draped in a classical robe and wearing a black hood. She noticed the pair of black eyes hidden within the shadows.

For reasons she could not explain, Trissy felt as though she had returned to infancy, so weak that she had no power to resist at all.

Cold sweat seeped from her forehead. Her legs trembled violently, yet her entire body was unable to move.

This is the most terrifying enemy I have ever faced… Even the high-ranking Demoness I met before did not give me a similar feeling… Am I going to die here? Are my repeated escapes, refusing to give up even after failure after failure, finally going to end completely here… Thick despair and uncontrollable sorrow filled Trissy’s heart, making her feel as if she had fallen into the deepest, heaviest nightmare.

Suddenly, a flash of deep-blue light passed before her eyes, removing the “curse” that prevented her from moving.

When Trissy looked ahead again, that terrifying figure was no longer there. Everything just now seemed like the most realistic illusion.

But when Trissy lowered her head, she discovered in shock that the sapphire ring on the little finger of her left hand had, at some unknown point, shattered into pieces and lost all its brilliance.

Crack. Crack. Crack. The remnants of the ring and the gemstone fell one after another.

…

Rolling and scrambling, Klein circled past the collapsed stone pillars and the severely wounded Mr. A, who was in the middle of treating himself, and ran to the entrance on the opposite side.

As for the slowly condensing specks of characteristics left behind by the Master Key, he did not even glance at them, lest Mr. A block him there.

He knew very well that even if he had all his mystical items with him and had made full preparations, he still might not necessarily be a match for a Shepherd. And that was even more true now, when he possessed only Azik’s copper whistle, three types of Beyonder bullets, and not even a single match left.

Even though Mr. A was severely injured, Klein did not dare take risks. He had heard that the Rose Bishop, the previous Sequence of the Shepherd, was extremely skilled at flesh magic. In terms of healing bodily injuries, it was no worse than his own ability to transfer wounds!

Creak!

He pulled open the heavy door.

Natural light outside shone over him. The clouds in the sky were stained a faint pale yellow, while the sun was white and dim.

Klein rushed out and discovered that he was in the mountains. Tall peaks stood all around, making the place exceptionally secluded.

Thud, thud, thud. He ran frantically, not even taking the mountain path. Relying on the agility of a Clown, he headed straight down the slope, sometimes rolling, sometimes swinging from trees.

Splash, splash!

He heard the sound of a great river flowing. It was ahead of him. It was below!

But at that moment, a fierce wind blew toward his back.

Klein made a split-second decision. His knees softened, and he rolled diagonally forward.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

At the place where he had just been standing and in the direction he had been moving, blade after blade of wind cut deep furrows into the ground.

Mr. A descended from within the wind, a blood-red cape that was still writhing draped over his body.

He pointed with one hand. Chunks of flesh immediately flew out from his body, swelling in midair before abruptly exploding.

Rumble!

Drops of blood and bits of flesh sprayed everywhere. Klein pushed off with one hand, flipped sideways, dodged most of them, and took cover behind a giant tree.

The giant tree was splattered with one bloody hole after another. Signs of rot spread swiftly from those points in every direction.

During his earlier sprint, Klein had already reloaded his revolver. He was just about to raise his hand and shoot at Mr. A’s eyes when he saw deep darkness emerge within the other party’s pupils.

All at once, Klein knew that although the scene around him had not changed in the slightest, he had been forcibly dragged into a dream.

He had once killed a Nightmare. At the very least, this was the level of a Nightmare… Klein maintained clarity and saw Mr. A flash to the side in violation of logic, transforming into a blood-colored carpet and enveloping him in a way that could not be avoided.

He wants to rely on a nightmare to directly frighten my heart into stopping? As that thought flashed through Klein’s mind, he responded.

This was his dream. As long as he remained lucid, he could simulate anything!

Thus, a pure, dazzling golden sun appeared where he stood. Clear, blazing flames instantly ignited everything around them.

What Klein imagined was the scene he had witnessed when he saw the Eternal Blazing Sun during his “dream divination”!

Almost simultaneously, he broke free of the dream and heard a muffled groan.

Mr. A, meanwhile, staggered back one step, two streams of blood flowing from his nose.

The blood-and-flesh robe on him slowly flowed across its surface, as though it were melting.

Snap!

Klein snapped his fingers, igniting a tree thirty or forty meters away.

At his feet, the dry yellow grass had already caught fire, surging upward into flames that wrapped around his body.

Mr. A’s face, which was already too beautiful to resemble a man’s, abruptly gained a feminine softness. A crystalline, cold, almost weightless ice spear condensed in his hand, and he threw it at the burning tree dozens of meters away.

Klein had only just leapt out from that cluster of flames when the dreamlike, transparent spear tip was reflected in his pupils.

That spear tip grew larger and clearer, filling his entire vision.

Klein threw himself to the side, while a thin layer of white frost covered the surface of his body.

The transparent spear immediately annihilated the flames, and a thick layer of ice spread rapidly in every direction, about to engulf Klein within it.

Still in midair, Klein abruptly curled into a ball and half rotated his body, turning his head downward.

He stretched out his left hand and lightly pressed against the ice. Then he sprang upward once more, escaping that frigid domain. But the outer layer of skin on his palm had been frozen to the place of contact and was torn away with a slick rip.

Rolling and landing on his feet, Klein reached into his pocket and drew out his self-made Slumber Charm.

Just as he opened his mouth, preparing to speak the activation word, his nose suddenly itched, and he was forced into a sneeze.

Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!

His head ached and his body burned. He sneezed again and again, leaving him utterly unable to counterattack.

Sick? I’ve been infected with disease? The moment Klein understood this, he felt countless threads invisible to the naked eye coil around him, wrapping him into a mummy in a certain sense.

He was not unfamiliar with a similar experience, and he knew this was a Pleasure Witch’s Beyonder ability.

Back then, he had relied on using a charm to put both himself and his enemy to sleep, then used his own special condition to escape control. But now, Mr. A maintained a distance of roughly twenty meters.

However, Klein was no longer merely a Clown. The fingers he could still move snapped crisply.

With a whoosh, all the “spider threads” around him ignited, as if they had transformed into a giant torch.

Klein had only just leapt out of the scarlet flames when he began sneezing again, accompanied by violent coughing. Many Beyonder abilities he wanted to use were interrupted on their own because of it.

At that moment, the feminine softness on Mr. A’s face disappeared and was replaced by several hints of lofty majesty.

He extended his right hand and lightly clenched it. Klein immediately had the premonition that, if he tried to flee, he would only spin in place.

Wearing a blood-colored robe, Mr. A revealed a cruel smile. Before him appeared a transparent, illusory, ancient book.

A distant, ethereal voice sounded:

“I came, I saw, I recorded.”

Achoo! Cough! Cough!

Klein wanted to dodge, but he was powerless to do so. At this moment, he felt more deeply than ever the strength of a Shepherd. It truly deserved its reputation as the most comprehensive Beyonder below the demigod level, one without obvious shortcomings, practically the strongest of its tier. Even though Klein had made no preparations and many of his mystical items had not been usable, the fact that he was suppressed to such an extent and had no power to fight back already explained much.