As more than a hundred icicles poured down on Michael, he reacted quickly.
He used Enhancement on the Typhern Leather Armor Set twice and triggered the protection enchantments to protect himself from the worst before the hail of icicles impacted.
The layer of protection was quickly destroyed – frozen due to the icicles that impacted though luckily not as heavily as expected.
However, the freezing cold affected Michael quite a lot. His arms and upper body were struck by the remaining icicles, slowing down his movements quite a lot.
His upper body was half-frozen.
Under ordinary circumstances, Michael wouldn’t be able to do anything. His entire being felt as if it was covered in ice, which was only obvious. He was on the verge of freezing to death, after all!
But Michael was not ordinary. He unleashed Extraction, enhanced by four layers of Enhancement, choosing himself as the target of extraction. He then extracted the cold from his body, by focusing on the areas that had been frozen.
In less than five seconds, Michael’s skin regained its usual color and his body temperature returned to the norm. Afterward, Michael was ready to jump back into the battlefield.
Not even a second after he was ready to fight again, Michael was greeted by a small batch of enemies. One of them was already slashing at him, his longsword less than a meter away from cutting deep into his body.
Michael reacted instinctively. He pulled Zark back, condensed an energy arrow, and shot. The arrow collided with the longsword, forcefully terminating his enemies’ attack. In the next instant, Michael retrieved Zark and manifested the Wyverntooth Spear.
He applied four layers of Enhancement on the Wyverntooth Spear and shrouded it with another layer of Extraction’s golden streams. Afterward, two Spirit Whips appeared, lashing out at the closest enemy.
The Awakened didn’t expect two mental attacks to strike him suddenly, causing him to falter as the Wyverntooth Spear’s black blade shot forward. The blade was thirsty for blood, which was exactly what it obtained. Piercing deep into the enemy’s neck, the black blade was instantly drenched in warm blood.
The Awakened’s body writhed in pain and he stared into Michael’s dark eyes with nothing but pure hatred. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to end everything right here.
There was still so much he had to do. Allowing everything to end right now was not something he could accept.
However, the Awakened could clearly feel the lifeforce and origin energy inside him being drained rapidly. Even if he wanted to get up, he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. The Awakened slumped to the ground, slowly bleeding to death while the remnants of Michael’s golden streams drained his origin energy and lifeforce rapidly.
Michael then used Enhancement on the Spirit Whips to lash out at the next opponent, breaking his mental defense before he appeared in front of his opponent.
Michael moved rapidly, inflicting deep gashes in the opponent’s arms and legs to allow more golden streams to infiltrate the enemy’s body and end him from the inside.
But before Michael could deal any actual damage, he noticed that a Lord appeared next to him. He was wielding a spear as well and seemed to be moving extremely fast.
Suddenly, the spearhead seemed to split up into several more that shot toward Michael simultaneously.
‘Is that an illusion, or are all of them real? I cannot differentiate between them!’ Michael cursed in his heart, jumping back to evade the incoming spear thrusts. He avoided getting struck and continued to retreat. A batch of icicles hailed down as he retreated, forcing Michael to step aside and use Enhancement on the Eagle Eye Soultrait.
He had to get a better understanding of the situation all around him more clearly to decide where to move and what to do at any moment in the battle.
Slowly, Michael was being restricted in movements and put into a tricky situation. Whenever he attacked one of the Lords or their subordinates, the others initiated attacks. They attacked from the side, or created a hail of icicles that poured down on him.
Yet, the smile on Michael’s face was never wiped off, but that was only obvious. Everything was going according to his plan, after all.
Except Michael and Tac Lec, nobody knew about the existence of Tiara and Masked Saber. They made a big detour around the battlefield to avoid getting seen, and they hadn’t revealed themselves until now.
That was not because they had suddenly gotten cold feet and didn’t dare to join the battle. On the contrary, Tiara and Masked Saber desired to join the battlefield as soon as possible.
However, sometimes it was better to avoid a battle and prepare everything necessary to finish more enemies in a single wave.
With that motive, Masked Saber drank several energy potions to fill his body with origin energy. He then spent several minutes to convert the origin energy flooding his body into silver energy. Masked Saber compressed the silver energy shrouding his saber, preparing for a big attack. 𝗇𝒪𝑣𝑒𝓵𝗇𝔢xt.𝐂𝒪𝓂
After a few minutes of hard effort and the usage of every last bit of origin energy spreading through his body, Masked Saber’s silver energy blade was ready to be unleashed.
Tiara acted as Masked Saber’s bodyguard. She protected him from potential danger and led Masked Saber silently to the outskirts of the battlefield.
Once they went into position, Michael began to move. He retreated further, which was seen as a sign of defeat and a countermeasure for being unable to face the pressure of more than a dozen people attacking him at once.
Unfortunately, his opponents misunderstood Michael’s actions. They couldn’t be more wrong with their thoughts.
After Michael retreated far enough, Masked Saber’s muscles in his right arm bulged. His veins popped and he groaned loudly, slashing horizontally through the air.
Masked Saber unleashed a highly compressed silver energy blade, which nearly caused all bones in his right arm to break the moment he released it.
The highly compressed silver energy blade accelerated rapidly. It cut through the air, creating a whistling noise that rattled the very ground beneath it – pulling everyone’s attention to it.
At first, the compressed silver energy blade didn’t seem all that dangerous. It didn’t exude any pressure and seemed like a big-sized crescent-shaped wind blade with unique coloring.
But the silver energy blade was too fast. It was not possible for such a fast attack to exude no pressure. At the very least, the silver energy blade should release some excessive origin energy, which could be used to indicate the strength of the incoming attack.
However, there was none. The attack had been sealed perfectly, allowing not a single trace of energy to be wasted.
What did that mean?
Being able to create a an attack that didn’t exude the slightest bit of pressure nor a trace of origin energy meant that the creator of the attack had an extremely high mastery of the attack he used, and that the attack was crafted by striking a perfect balance between stealth, and exceptional destructive force.
It was not a weak attack one could afford neglecting.
The perfectly compressed silver energy blade was an attack one had to pay attention to – if one wanted to survive that is.
To the misfortune of most Awakened, and Summons obstructing the path of the silver energy blade, not many realized the danger of the attack before it was way too late.
Hard evidence for that were the blood-curdling screams of agony reverberating through the mountain range as blood, intestines and body parts splattered all over the battlefield, painting it red.
Death and chaos lay waste to the battlefield while the Grim Reaper reaped the poor souls, who didn’t realize how unpredictable life was until the very end.