Chapter 161

Boom!

Between one blink and the next, an explosion went off against his face.

Azel spun backward through the air, blood and spit went up in a long bright arc.

The impact came in like a hammer and gave him no time to put anything in front of it.

His head swam, it took him a second to assemble the fact, he had been hit.

Punched in the face, by Soren.

Azel was furious and frightened in the same breath, because it had never crossed his mind that after sending Kain flying, Soren would turn and go for him first.

This brat is begging for it.

Kain alone, fighting seriously, was enough to put Soren in a corner.

And he still had the spare attention to provoke a second Ancestor.

Has he lived so long he's bored of it?

If the two of them worked together, his end would make Liana's look merciful.

Wait, Liana.

The fire in Azel's chest went out and something colder replaced it.

The woman was gone, his expression cycled through seven or eight things a second. None were good to look at.

There was no ambiguity about who had taken her.

If he had known Soren had that kind of nerve, he'd have shoved Liana into his pocket dimension earlier and locked it.

Still, he didn't let it depress him too much.

Soren hadn't had time to open a dimension and move them out before engaging Kain, he could leave the boy to Kain and keep his own eyes on that pair.

The idea that they could slip out from under his nose was a fantasy.

Hm?

Bang!

While Azel was busy sneering at what he took for wasted effort, a black shape flickered.

Soren appeared like a ghost and hammered a second punch into the other side of his face.

Azel spat blood and went spinning backward over a thousand meters before he got his spiritual energy under him and stopped the fall.

He clamped both hands over a cheek slick with his own blood.

The corner of his eye jumped.

Is this going to keep happening?

Soren kept appearing out of nowhere to put a fist in him, and it left his mind in pieces, waiting for the next one.

He no longer dared put his full attention on Liana and Orathis.

Azel's rage climbed until it had nowhere left to go.

He clenched his fists hard enough to crack the space around his knuckles, he was done spectating. He would join Kain, butcher this demon, and go home to report.

"His aim is obvious enough."

"He wants both of us tied up so brother and sister can tear out through the void."

"I'm not walking into that."

Azel bared his teeth and moved.

He expanded a spatial barrier and sealed the entire battlefield inside it.

Short of an opponent far stronger than himself, nobody was tearing through the void in here.

With Azel in the fight, Soren no longer looked quite as relaxed.

His expression stayed exactly where it was.

Pinned between the two of them, pushed onto the defensive, besieged from both sides, and he still wore the face of a man with nothing pressing on his afternoon.

That face, specifically, filled Azel and Kain with an irritation neither could put into words.

He holds no advantage here, so why does he act like the whole thing is sitting in his palm?

"Little brat, you really do know how to make a man angry."

Kain's hands ran through a sequence of seals aimed at Soren.

In front of him a sphere of flame formed, like a meteor pulled down out of the sky.

Ten meters across, burning a faint withered gray.

The heat kept detonating the air around it, chewing through space and shrieking as it went.

One look told you what it was worth.

The Strategy Encyclopedia told Soren the rest.

A Beast Technique, made by compressing spiritual energy into a volatile sphere and fusing it with the Kunpeng Beast Fire native to their tribe.

The destructive power was ugly. Slightly under most Innate Ancestor Techniques, several times worse than an ordinary Beast Technique of its tier.

A direct hit would do serious damage even to a body like Soren's, odds of critical injury sat around fifty percent.

This was the technique that had opened Orathis up the first time.

It was also what struck Liana's left ribs and started her losing the fight in the clouds.

Soren knew exactly what he was looking at, he went on standing there with his face still as a pond.

Watching that dismissive look, the one that had no room in it for him, Kain's expression went darker by the second.

He ground his teeth hard enough to crack a molar.

What is this attitude?

He had expected the boy to start shaking the moment the technique took shape, if not begging outright, then at least visibly afraid.

"Good, good, good."

"You really are asking for it."

"Let's see how long the act holds."

Kain locked onto him and released it, the fireball left his hands.

One became two, two became four, by the end there were over a hundred, each better than a dozen meters across, withered gray and screaming.

They came down on Soren all together like a meteor shower with a grudge.

Watching them come, something finally moved on Soren's face, his brows drew together for a moment, then it was gone and he was expressionless again.

Remembering exactly what it felt like under that swarm, Orathis and Liana broke out in a sweat on his behalf.

"Oh, shit."

"Don't tell me."

"Don't tell me it's that technique."

Realization hit Orathis and knocked him out of his daze.

"Sis, we need to move. Now."

"We have to get to the edge of this barrier at least, with the Spirit energy I've got left there's no way we survive what's coming."

Liana's brows knit, she grabbed him by the collar.

"That master of yours is still in there fighting both of them."

"We may not be able to help, but we don't run and leave him to it."

"You know me, I have no patience for people who abandon their own."

Orathis wailed at the injustice of it.

"No, Sis!"

"My Master can handle this on his own!"