Lucas stopped him.
“You can’t. Neo ordered me to make sure no one, especially you and Mars, try to rescue him.”
“But—”
“I don’t know how but the Shadow revived too quickly.
“Maybe there is another Shadow at their base and it fused your Shadow’s elemental seed with another elemental seed to speed up the revival.”
Lucas added,
“It means the Shadow is weaker than the last time you faced it.
“Still, are you sure we can win against your Shadow?
“Harrison used his skill to defeat his Shadow.
“I used mine to help Neo fight your Shadow, but we lost, and I had to escape while Neo shielded for me.
“Leonora is dead.
“You are tired.
“Mars is strong, but he is a poor matchup with your Shadow.”
“There is no way we can win. If we don’t use the time Neo brought us to close the Window and escape…”
Lucas clenched his fist.
He bit his lips until they bled.
“His sacrifice will be useless.”
“I…”
Arthur gritted his teeth.
“I’ll recuse Neo.”
He was about to leave when suddenly Lucas spoke,
“Tell Arthur I’m sorry for what I said about everyone’s death,” Lucas said. “Those were his last words.”
Arthur froze.
His face contorted.
Tears simmered in his eyes.
He knew he could not rescue Neo and he would be himself killed by his Shadow.
Trying to rescue Neo was a suicide mission.
Arthur was prepared to throw his life away.
However.
Arthur’s Shadow would kill not just him but everyone if they did not escape as soon as possible.
“Dammit…”
No one deserved to die even if they were weak.
Those were Arthur’s ideals and it was why he argued with Neo.
“Is this your way of saying I shouldn’t throw my life away?”
Arthur struggled to compose himself.
He clenched his fists so tightly that his nails dug into his palms and drew blood.
“We’ll close the Corners and escape,” he said.
Arthur felt disgusted with himself for saying those words.
His heart was filled with regret.
The last thing he talked about with Neo was not a friendly banter, a heartfelt talk, or even a casual conversation.
It was him blaming Neo.
He had been angry with Neo.
Because Neo claimed Leonora’s weakness was the cause of her death.
Because he seemed to disregard the value of life.
But now?
Neo, despite disregarding the value of life, was sacrificing himself to given them a chance to live.
And Arthur, the one who acted like a justice incarnate, was running away and leaving Neo to fend for himself.
In the end, he was just a hypocrite.
…
Depth Level 5
“Fuck, I feel like shit.”
Neo pulled out the sword from the corpse of the Shadow monster.
He had no way to avoid the battles without Lucas’ help, and he ended up fighting every Shadow monster on his way to Depth Level 5.
His clothes were torn, he was bleeding all over, and he was exhausted.
He fixed his gas mask.
At Depth Level 5, the mask was not enough to stop the contamination from shadow elementals.
He had to use Ocean’s Embrace with the mask to block the shadow elementals from contaminating him.
“This whole place is shit, right?” Neo asked.
He looked up at Arthur’s Shadow who was sitting on the edge of rooftop a short distance away.
The Shadow nodded.
“It is.”
“That aside, I didn’t expect you to appear like this. I thought you would start with a sneak attack.”
“It’s useless against you. You’ll probably sense the attack before it can even reaches you.”
“You could’ve used Invincible to deliver an attack fast enough that I couldn’t react to it.”
Neo pointed out.
“A quick attack like that wouldn’t have made it past your defense Spell. It blocked my attack last time too.”
While they talked, Neo uncapped the Divine Energy Elixir given to him by Elizabeth and drank it.
“Since you are kind enough to wait for me, let me drink these.”
He popped open the academy’s Divine Energy Elixirs and poured them into his mouth.
His stomach felt like it was burning.
Immense pain surged through his body.
Feeling the overdose, he wondered if Leonora had felt the same.
Neo’s eyes turned bloodshot and blood trickled down his nose.
Since the air barely had non-elemental Divine Energy at Depth Level 5, he could not use Essence Breath Spell to recover his Divine Energy.
This was the only way.
He had to use everything if he wanted to have a chance against Arthur’s Shadow.
The Shadow opened his mouth.
“Wait a second, I don’t want to fight.
“I know you must be angry because I killed your friends.
“But that was because it’s our, the Shadows, instinct to consume the original and take over them.
“I wasn’t in my right state of mind back then. I was driven by my instincts.”
Arthur’s Shadow clenched its fists.
“I don’t want to do that anymore.
“I understand my actions were wrong, and I want to apologize for them.
“I’ll do anything to repent.”
“You want to repent?” Neo questioned.
He asked Obitus to remove his debuff and unseal his blessing.
In a split second, he disappeared and reappeared before Arthur’s Shadow.
He slashed.
The Shadow, expecting the attack, dodged and used Invincible to create a gap between them.
He jumped far back.
“So we have to fight in the end,” Arthur’s Shadow said.
“Stop being melodramatic.
“I can sense your hidden bloodlust.
“It’s clear as day you are just waiting for me to let my guard down.”
Neo covered his blade in Aura of Death and Darkness.
Arthur Shadow’s stopped the act when it realized Neo was not going to let down his guard.
Both them stood still.
They eyed each other, careful to not miss a single movement.
The Shadow moved first.
It dashed towards Neo, leaving behind trails of black lightning.
Neo leapt to the side.
He dodged the attack just in time and landed on a drifting chunk of metal.
The Shadow followed up with a strike that sent another wave of sound magic towards him.
It distorted the air and shook the wreckage around them.