Chapter 456: 152. Soul Stealer·Noland_2
Chapter 456: 152. Soul Stealer·Noland_2
With his left hand, Gardner drags his fire elemental sphere, and with his right, he grabs some lava and throws it onto the ground.
The moment the lava hits the ground, it explodes into sparks and magma, morphing into three flame serpents with three heads each.
“Kill them,” orders Gardner.
Upon receiving their master’s command, the three flame serpents seamlessly slide into the ground, moving underground towards their enemies. They then spring up from beside them, exhaling scorching flames and magma.
Meanwhile, Gardner himself hurls fireballs and fire rays from his fire elemental sphere, thwarting any enemies attempting to escape. This forces them to stay put, awaiting their doom from the flame serpents.
The alchemists and wandering wizards of the Black City do consider retaliating.
In fact, once Gardner was left alone on the scene, the folks of Black City immediately counterattacked with alchemical firearms or magic wands.
However, all attacks targeting Gardner sink like stones into the sea.
The fireball in Gardner’s hand unfolds into a fiery whirlpool shield around him. All alchemical bullets or magic lightning that fall into the shield are swallowed, following the fire whirlpool in the shield to somewhere else.
“This is too easy, way too easy. You all can’t even penetrate my ‘Fire Elemental Plane Shift Shield.’ Interacting with you is a complete waste of my time.”
With a look of impatience on his face, Gardner’s attacks become even more fierce. He hovers in the air, raining down fire spells on his enemies below without any reservations.
The outlaws of the Black City start to die or escape, quickly dwindling in numbers.
Gardner glances at the chaotic ground beneath him, drops a statement, and flies towards the spire.
“These guys barely have any soul fragments on them. Not even enough to clean my teeth with. I’ll collect the soul fragments later.”
The events within the Black City are observed by the White Skull hiding at the entrance of the vertical shaft.
“The combat wizards of Elemental Judgement are indeed skilled. They have grasped the essence of elemental reactions, knowing how to utilize them to kill enemies with high elemental resistance. In comparison, the Alchemy Cathedral, which can only fire energy rays, falls short.”
Noland Lee quickly analyzes the fight.
It is not surprising that the two combat wizards have wiped out the majority of the Black City outlaws.
Any combat wizard should be capable of this, otherwise, they wouldn’t be called combat wizards.
When used properly, elemental reactions could indeed produce effects greater than the sum of its parts, even more than three times.
There is even a scientific explanation for this sort of magical phenomenon.
For instance, ‘Electrosensitivity.’ Everyone knows that impure fluids can conduct electricity.
And then there’s ‘Explosive Melting.’ Before crossing over, Lee had read an explanation for this magical phenomenon.
The ‘Explosive Melting’ phenomenon caused by the reaction between ice and fire elements is similar to the ‘cavitation’ phenomenon in science.
When ice is heated, a portion of it vaporizes into steam, while another portion melts into water. This creates a low-pressure area around the burning fire. The low pressure causes the liquid to evaporate and form bubbles, and any residual gas within the liquid also forms bubbles. When the pressure normalizes, the bubbles burst and disappear, causing a high-temperature, high-velocity impact in an extremely short period of time.
Noland Lee isn’t sure if this is the true nature of ‘Explosive Melting’, but it seems plausible since the explanation is longer and it sounds more impressive.
If Noland Lee did not intend to act secretly, he would also employ such thunderous tactics to clear out the Black City’s outlaws. His ‘Death Two Finger’ can easily take down Shubick’s tentacles, let alone the outlaws of Black City.
The real challenge is not in killing the enemy, but in preventing any one of them from escaping.
Just look at Gardner and Kevin, as mighty as they are in face-to-face confrontations, they have no answer for the enemies who are determined to escape.
The ‘Split Demons’ simply split into five entities, each running off in a different direction, effortlessly leaving the flames snakes and fireballs behind.
The ‘Anthropomorphic Steam’ directly enters the pipe exit, leaving the Black City through the pipeline within the wall structure.
The Blackbone Hermits do the same. They break their bodies down, enter the bone chip form, and leave through the narrow pipelines within the walls.
Gold Bone Alchemists are slightly more problematic, but their escape speed is still commendable. They scoop out the alchemy stone from their foreheads, throw it up into the air, pull out an alchemical bird from the floating stone to use as a ride, and swiftly fly into the vertical shaft entrance on the ceiling.
The illegal wandering wizards on the scene don’t even need mentioning. After casting ‘Death Flight,’ they simply plunge into the pipeline. Gardner is helpless against them.
Rough estimate, at least 30 enemies manage to escape from Gardner and Kevin.
Noland’s gaze shifts from the corpses on the ground to the direction of the black spire.
He tosses out a ‘Mind Beacon’ and casts ‘Mind View,’ viewing the scenes inside the spire from a considerable distance away.
The bottommost floor of the spire is a hall exceeding 20 meters in height.
The hall is made of black stones, giving it an overall dark, repressive atmosphere. The alchemy lamps barely illuminate the hall.
A flesh sphere over five meters high stands in the center of the hall, with elaborate alchemical array patterns spread across the surrounding floor.
This is the Heart of the Aberration Nest within the Great Rift.
It secures itself to the center of the floor using flesh strips and blood vessels connected all around the hall.
Just a simple glimpse through ‘Mind View’ is enough for Lee to sense its eeriness.
“I recall in games and films like ‘Contempt’ and ‘Aberrant’ which involve flesh mutation, they often feature these grotesque flesh creations. But it seems like those depictions were rather tame, compared to the Heart of the Nest I’m looking at now…”