Chapter 237: Sylph’s Ability

Chapter 237

Alex sharpened his eyes with newfound resolve as he drove his fist forward once more, with the powerful blow connecting with bone-crushing force against the nearest abomination’s chest.

The creature’s body folded inward with a sickening crack, and it collapsed at his feet, with its twisted limbs twitching weakly for a moment before finally falling still as its black eyes began to dim into a lifeless gaze.

Without a moment’s worth of hesitation, he quickly reached his hand down toward the corpse. This was it. If this worked, everything about this fight changed. If it didn’t, he’d lost nothing but a second or two he could barely afford to spare.

He focused his will inward, toward that familiar hollow space tucked somewhere deep in his mind, silently praying that this crazy idea of his would actually pan out.

The corpse folded inward exactly like it always did when he stored objects, space distorting briefly around it before it vanished from the cavern floor entirely, leaving nothing behind but a smear of dark blood on the stone.

Alex’s heart hammered in his chest in both anticipation and fear as he mentally reached into his storage space to check whether it had actually worked. And there it was. The mangled, lifeless body of the abomination floating motionless within the white void of his spatial storage, exactly as he’d left it. There was no twitching or some stupid purple glow crawling over the broken body. Just a corpse, dead and staying dead.

It actually worked. A slow grin couldn’t help spreading across his face. Finally, some good news in this godforsaken cave. He didn’t waste another second standing around basking in his victory. Instead, he turned back to face the remaining abominations still lurching toward him with their claws raised, and this time there was no hesitation in his movements.

He unleashed a merciless killing streak, weaving between their attacks with insane speed and brutal efficiency, snapping necks, caving in skulls, and tearing through ribcages one after another.

Each time a body dropped, he’d reach down and store it away into his spatial space before that dreaded purple light could even think about reaching it.

Within seconds, the cavern floor that had been a chaotic battlefield of clawing horrors a few moments ago was now eerily quiet, littered only with pools of dark blood and torn scraps of scale where the monsters had once stood. Every single corpse was gone, tucked safely away in a dimension that that damned purple light could never even dream of touching.

Alex finally allowed himself a moment to catch his breath, and wiped a smear of blood off his knuckles with the back of his hand. That had been one exhausting fight, not because of the physical toll of course, though that certainly wasn’t nothing, but because of how mentally draining it had been fighting an enemy that refused to stay dead no matter what he threw at it.

As he stood there catching his breath, the familiar voice of the little gremlin he called his system chimed cheerfully inside his mind.

[Wow, Alex! Look at you actually using that big brain of yours for once! You really are getting smarter and smarter by the day, no longer like the dumb you of before who got cheated right under his nose! You’ve even learned how to perfectly utilize the spatial storage space for combat beyond its conventional ability, I’m actually impressed!]

Alex snorted despite himself, shaking his head as he scanned the now-empty shore for any more threats.

’I don’t know if that was supposed to be an insult wrapped in a compliment or what, but thanks, I guess.’

[You’re welcome!]

The chibi’s cheerful voice faded back into silence, apparently satisfied with itself for the moment, and Alex turned his attention toward the far side of the lake, where the real fight was still raging on.

Sylph was locked in a fierce battle against the tentacled queen, with her expertly flashing her saber while weaving and ducking through a barrage of incoming strikes.

She moved like a nimble cat, narrowly slipping past one tentacle after another, with her saber occasionally finding and slicing shallow gashes across the creature’s writhing limbs. But no matter how many hits she landed, dark purple ichor barely had time to spill before the wounds began knitting themselves shut again.

The monster’s regenerative ability truly rivaled, maybe even surpassed, what her five now-deceased guardians had displayed.

Alex’s jaw tightened as he watched the exchange. Sylph was very fast, but speed alone wasn’t going to be enough against something that healed as fast as it was being cut. The battle was slowly but surely tilting out of her favor, and he could see the exhaustion beginning to creep into the edges of her otherwise flawless movements.

Then it finally happened. One of the queen’s remaining tentacles lashed out from an unexpected angle, faster than the others, aimed directly at Sylph’s exposed side while she was mid-dodge from another strike. There was no way she’d be able to react in time.

Alex didn’t think of anything else he just moved.

In an instant, he activated Void Step, blinked right out of existence and then reappeared directly beside Sylph a heartbeat later. Without breaking stride, he wrapped an arm around her and immediately triggered the ability again, making both of them vanish together and reappear a safe distance away on the rocky ground.

The tentacle that had been aimed to skewer Sylph instead sliced harmlessly through empty air and slammed into the surface of the lake with so much tremendous force, that it straight up sent a massive column of water upward. It was so high enough to splash against the extremely high cave ceiling before raining back down in a heavy mist.

Sylph blinked, clearly startled by the sudden save, before her sharp eyes settled on Alex with a flicker of gratitude buried beneath her usual composed exterior.

Alex didn’t waste time on words. His mind was already racing through a particularly plan that was quietly forming in his head. The monster boss never left the water, not once throughout this entire fight. And didn’t water conduct electricity?

So... If he unleashed his Celestial Thunder directly into the lake, he could potentially electrify the entire body of water, stunning the monstrous bitch just long enough for him to close the distance and finish her off with a point-blank ball of Crimson Supernova.

It was risky, but it was a plan, and right now a risky plan was better than no plan at all.

He turned to move forward, fully intending to charge in and execute it, when Sylph’s hand suddenly pressed flat against his chest, stopping him cold.

He glanced down at her in confusion, but before he could ask what she was doing, she crouched and dragged her saber across the stone once more, carving out another hurried message.

"Use your teleportation ability to get both yourself and everyone out of here. Now."

Alex’s brows furrowed as he read the words, and he immediately shook his head, vehemently disagreeing. He pointed toward Sylph, then back toward the lake, silently demanding to know what about her. He wasn’t about to just abandon her here to face that thing alone, not after everything they’d already been through together tonight.

Sylph seemed to catch the meaning behind his gesture instantly. She met his gaze steadily and knelt down once more to carve out her response.

"I’ll be fine. Just get everyone out. I only have one way to stop this thing, and if I use it here, everyone here will die. You included."

Alex stared down at the words carved into the stone, his jaw clenching tightly as conflicting emotions warred inside him. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this one bit. Leaving Sylph behind to face that monstrosity alone felt really wrong on so many levels, especially after how hard the two of them had fought side by side just to make it this far.

But he also trusted her. He had seen firsthand just how capable she was, how calculated and precise she fought even under the worst circumstances. And if she said she had a way to end this, one that required everyone else to be far away first, then he had to believe her.

Besides, he had never once seen her use her ability, so maybe it was actually something strong enough to defeat the monster boss.

With a heavy sigh, Alex finally relented, giving her one last long look before nodding reluctantly. He turned away, moving quickly to gather the remaining unconscious survivors still scattered across the cavern, both human and beast alike, and used his Void Step in rapid succession to teleport groups of them away.

Each jump drained a bit more of his energy, but he pushed through it, refusing to let exhaustion slow him down when lives depended on speed. Person by person, he ferried them all away from the underground chamber, weaving through narrow tunnels and cramped passageways until he finally emerged into the cool night air far outside the cave entrance, gently setting down the last survivor onto the grassy earth.

The moment Alex vanished from the cavern with the final person in tow, Sylph allowed herself to let out a small quiet breath of relief, and her shoulders even relaxed ever so slightly now that she knew everyone was safely out of harm’s way.

Then her expression changed, because her honey-colored eyes that had once been calm and composed began to gleam with a faint, otherworldly glow that hadn’t been there moments before.

Then it was like the air around her seemed to literally grow heavier by the second, followed with a pressure that made the very water of the lake ripple uneasily despite the fact that there was no wind disturbing it.

The tentacled queen sensed the sudden shift in the atmosphere and let out a low hiss, while narrowing her eyes warily toward the woman standing alone on the rocky shore.

And then, without warning, space and time itself began to bend and warp directly above Sylph as a massive, swirling void, black as the deepest abyss and easily ten meters big, tore open in the air. It was literally a black hole itself....