Chapter 117: Dominating Mentality, Curse
*BOOM!*
It was an Injection Punch, a technique he just created in the last round. The 100-mana force of his Imposing Fist was further empowered by 50-mana weaved to boost the attack and deliver the entirety of the force through the spike.
Within half a second after Erix\'s punch connected to the woman\'s stomach, her expression turned red, her eyes popped out, and death reaper enveloped her as a devasting force injected into her body after creating a hole in her armor and stomach.
Rin disappeared after passing the round while those two men saw the woman\'s body exploding into pure gore and blood from within by Erix\'s attack. Dead.
With shock written on their faces, they saw Erix speaking with a grin, "You two better run in the final round."
And then, he also disappeared a second later while those two only watched with unconverted expressions.
"What the fuck..." The middle-aged human man with black hair and a thick beard clenched his fists.
Turning to his only remaining teammate, he asked, "What\'s the plan now?"
"He already said our plan."
The green-haired elven man with a handsome countenance signed. "We run from them in the next round."
"Are you serious?" the black-haired man\'s expression darkened.
"Yes. We will seriously run from them…and then attack. You know what I mean, right?"
The black-haired man somberly nodded. "The troublesome thing is that despite having lower stats than us, their attacks are powerful enough to injure and kill us while still having enough expertise to dodge our attacks."
"They have fucking concepts while we don\'t. That woman\'s katana attack is deadly enough to incapacitate or kill us, while that man\'s punches are the same."
"Yeah, and they only stick to their signature attack styles. One attacks with a blade, and another sticks with punches."
"Indeed. They are melee, so we must maintain our distance and attack them from afar. That\'s why we\'ll run first and then attack."
"Alright. Also, that man has some weird artifact that allows him to pass through the damn attacks. He did that twice so far, so I am sure of it," the black-haired man shared the information.
The black-haired man was chasing Erix with the woman from the start and saw him using Babin Maw Hook.
"We\'ll look out for it."
…
On the other hand, Rin and Erix met up in the barren land.
Their mana and vitality recovered immediately, but Erix suddenly felt blank.
[You are inflicted with the Curse of Celestial Isolation for one minute due to using Babin Maw Hook and accumulating its cursed power.]
Erix suddenly felt blank as light entirely vanished from his vision.
His sense of smell and hearing also disappeared, but he felt touched, so he immediately grabbed Rin\'s hand tightly.
"Erix? What happened?"
Rin was surprised and asked upon seeing a frown on Erix\'s face and him tightening his grip on her arm.
But she didn\'t get any response from Erix until a few seconds later as Erix said, "Rin, can you hear me?"
"Wait, don\'t answer because I can\'t hear or see you. I am affected by some kind of curse that robbed me of my sense of vision, hearing, smell, and also taste."
"I feel like I am in an absolute blankness, but I can somehow touch it…? It\'s a strange sensation. Hmm, is that why I still have my sense of touch?"
"Oh yeah, this curse will last for a minute. We still have time, right?"
Rin looked at the time, and there were still two minutes later.
However, her heart was beating fast due to nervousness. \'Please don\'t let that happen.\'
If everyone passed/failed the round before the countdown, the next round would immediately start.
Rin wrote 2 on Erix\'s arm using her index finger, hoping those two people would take full time to kill five monsters.
\'They need to kill five monsters to pass the round, so it should take them at least a minute, right?\' Rin worriedly thought while looking at Erix and intertwined her fingers after holding his hand.
However, when thirty seconds were left until Erix\'s curse would be removed, Rin saw the countdown suddenly hitting zero before it was replaced.
[ 112 participants. Round 5 starts in three seconds. ]
"Damn it!" Rin cursed and quickly wrote five on Erix\'s hand.
"Five? What?"
But then Rin immediately wrote 4, and he understood as his expression turned somber.
"Four seconds…" Erix muttered. "Three, two…"
He grabbed Rin\'s head from behind and kissed her before saying, "I\'ll survive for twenty-five seconds no matter what."
With their hand grips tightened, both of them disappeared as round five started.
The bird\'s eye view of the battlefield everyone usually got in each round was not given in this round.
Erix appeared in a cave, but he didn\'t know that. With a sense of unknown nervousness mixed with the highest caution, Erix took a deep breath and then stopped breathing.
\'Since this is the last round, the final battlefield should be smaller. I have to hide my presence and body both.\'
Erix stomped on the ground lightly to check it. Thankfully, he still had his sense of touch, so he could judge and assess things by touching.
Immediately, he produced metal energy by consuming twenty mana points and weaved a metal drill.
Using the powerful metal drill with a high-speed steel structure, Erix created a hole in the ground and buried himself inside.
\'Roughly fifteen seconds left,\' Erix thought. \'Let\'s hope no one finds me.\'
*Boom!*
"Eh, this cave is also empty? Wait, I smell something," a beastkin woman with black fox ears arrived in the cave.
Meanwhile, Erix felt a slight tremble in the ground, causing his expression to turn somber. \'Nine seconds.\'
\'Eight...\'
\'Seven...\'
\'Six...\'