The flowers flickered, about to burst at Lily’s thought, and spread debuffs to the nearest target.
At that moment, the Vampire quickly raised his arms, his eyes trembling as he looked at Almond and Lily as if he realized something. “Spare us!”
Almond and Lily were surprised.
‘Use the token, now!’ the Vampire shouted in the soul network.
However, a dire atmosphere soon descended as one of the early-stage Immortal Emperors cried out. ‘Token is not working!’
Almond’s eyes flickered, a faint smile on his face.
“Y-You…” the bull-headed Immortal Emperor stammered. He tried to use the token and it indeed didn’t work.
“How did you recognize us?” Lily frowned, displeased. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Why can’t we use the token?! This shouldn’t happen…” the vampire asked, panic visible in his eyes.
Almond tilted his head slightly and blinked, “It’s simple. Because I don’t want you to be able to leave. You are in my domain where I can cut connections I desire and perceive. In short, that token has lost its connection with the outside world.”
Hearing that, everyone’s heart turned cold.
‘We are fucked. Unless there’s a Supreme Emperor who can clash against his will to resist and restrict the domain, we can’t leave…’ the bull-headed Immortal Emperor relayed to the party, making everyone’s heart heavy.
“W-We don’t have any intentions to fight,” the Vampire spoke, and he even put away his artifact. “We will give up on fifty Immortal-King Monsters, and this Immortal-Emperor Monster, so please spare us.”
“Nope. That’s a bad deal,” Almond said with a smile. “We have a better one for you.”
“One minute,” Lily spoke. “Those who survive after one minute can leave.”
Everyone felt despair. That meant that it was certain some of them would die.
However, the next words that Almond spoke gave them a bit of hope.
“We have restricted ourselves to have stats as much as only mid-stage Immortal Emperors,” Almond grinned. “And we aren’t using our main ability trees.”
“So even though you can’t really kill us, you do have a chance to survive. Give us your best and more of you all might survive, you know?”
As Lily finished speaking, the frozen Immortal Emperor scattered as an abyss water stream swept past the group while she didn’t activate her attack as she didn’t have any intention to ambush them with debuffs.
“Make your move first and we’ll retaliate to whoever that made the move. Whether you survive or not, is up to your teamwork, but if you don’t make a move every three seconds, consider yourself dead,” Lily added, making everyone feel terrified.
“Help us in our training montage,” Almond chuckled as he pointed his guns at them. “Come on, we don’t really have patience when it comes to things like this.”
At those words, and realizing having no other choice, the enemy party stirred into action.
First came bull-headed Immortal as he unleashed an attack at Hyper Speed 3 from his halberd, going all out right off the bat.
Having higher speed in Hyper Speed 3 than the enemy, Almond and Lily had plenty of time to make their moves.
Almond shot two bullets. One expanded into a + shaped cross with a circle around it, streaming with dark gold flickering energy humming with vibrations.
The incoming projectile attack of the bull emperor shattered like glass, into several pieces before prematurely exploding.
The second bullet went for his head, which the Vampire quickly helped defend using an ability.
‘Shit! That attack power is crazy!’ the vampire cursed.
The four mid-stage Immortal Emperors made their moves, attacking Lily, but their maximum speed was Hyper Speed 2, so Lily came out with a counter and a new experimental move this time.
Freezing their attacks by shooting her chakrams through them, and bolstering the flowers by channeling them with a sequence through the chakram, they came under her control and transformed into flowers that released chaotic and volatile beams at the four mid-stage emperors.
‘Fuck!’
‘Dodge!’
Since Lily didn’t want to use her debuffs born out of her first ability trees, the beams injured four of them.
And at this time, even slower abilities of the early-stage Immortal Emperors arrived, three of them being control-type moves, and the last one buffing their party.
The vampire also activated his artifact, boosting the whole party right as Almond and Lily’s attacks reached the early-stage Immortal Emperors.
Surprisingly, a symbol resembling a dark-red sun with black spikes growing out of it appeared on everyone’s forehead due to the artifact’s buff.
The four early-stage Immortals who were about to get struck by two bullets and two chakrams while they were frozen due to sheer difference in speed somehow survived as the symbol created a barrier around them, blocking the attack.
‘Two! Each of us will be able to survive two attacks of theirs!’ the vampire informed.
“One,” Almond spoke, indicating the three-second buffering time.
“Two,” Lily blinked.
But before Almond could say three, all of them launched their attacks together, though each one was at a different speed in Hyper Realm.
From above, Raicanor watched everything in utter admiration.
Lily and Almond were practically playing with the enemy, and experimenting with their move sets while restricting themselves.
The nine enemies were trying their best to attack while also trying to save each other from the counterattacks.
Since Almond and Lily only attacked once the enemy targeted them, it gave some leeway to the enemies, and with three seconds of buffering time, they saw the hope of surviving for one minute.
They survived thirty seconds with all of them losing one protection stack from the artifact’s power and one more still remaining except for the early-stage Immortal who lost both.
Still, he survived as he was saved by the bull-headed Immortal.
However, Almond and Lily’s move-set became deadlier during the next twenty seconds.
All of them lost all protections!
‘Ten seconds!’
‘Fuck, fuck!’
‘We can do this!’
Swoosh!
A bullet squarely struck the Vampire and his pupils shrank, dread filling him up.
In the next instant, the bullet spun the opposite of its previous spin, and that too ten times faster, all at once as Almond used Spiral Edge in a new way with Lumeir’s flowing light aspect and Sand of Vibrant Ways.
The result? Instant black-hole condensation. The vampire shrank and squeezed into a tiny bead of meat in an instant and exploded.
Lily also finally developed the fourth ability of her second Ability Tree—Axiom of Doomed Glory. Her chakrams struck the bull-headed Immortal Emperor.
From the cuts right on the weak mark, patterns of dreadful violet flowers expanded.
‘NO!’ the Bull-headed Emperor activated and consumed his remaining Bloodline Essence, but it was suddenly absorbed instead. ‘What?!’
‘Sorry, I kinda used my main element, Blood, with my Gloom Reaper intent and boosted the ability’s power… You shouldn’t have let yourself get cut.’
In the next instant, he turned into a glorious flower with beautiful petals before exploding and spreading violet sparks that released frigid streams, slowing down the others.
The remaining Emperors went blank as their strongest two died.
Six seconds left.
“It seems you are not surviving today, after all. Well, that’s how life is. Better luck in your next life.”