Chapter 691: The Southern Commander Beast Soul

The team nodded, grim expression on every face. They knew exactly what this fight was. Seven Evolvers against a Surpasser. Survival, was the realistic goal, not victory, and even that was going to take everything they had.

The Surpasser stopped a dozen meters away, still grinning, and raised its bow.

Moon dashed forward.

The elf loosed the string, and the arrow came so fast it shocked Moon.

It’s too fast...

In a hurry, Moon activated Air Step and launched himself upward, vaulting clean over the incoming shot. The arrow tore through the space he’d occupied and kept flying, screaming across the wasteland in a dead straight line, and it didn’t stop until it vanished into the distance nearly a kilometer away, where it detonated in a massive eruption of ice that threw a plume of white high into the ash-gray sky.

The team stared at the explosion and swallowed.

The penetration on that single arrow was insane. It had crossed a kilometer without slowing and blown a crater into the frozen ground. Any one of them caught by it wouldn’t have just been injured. They would have been punched clean through, a hole where the attack landed.

Moon landed and closed the rest of the distance, both blades ready, ice and lightning.

Then, as he crossed the final meters, he summoned his Beast Soul.

The Lesser Elf blademaster materialized beside him in a burst of pale light, both its blades already drawn, the dead swordsman commander as a Beast Soul under Moon’s command, its power and skill still intact.

Seeing a second elf suddenly appear beside Moon, everybody present was shocked.

"He summoned the southern commander?!" Vela’s voice cracked with disbelief. "That’s the one that just died—"

"He got the Lesser Elf as a Beast Soul—" Kayn replied in shock.

Even the Surpasser’s grin faltered.

Its face changed as it recognized the spirit standing at Moon’s side. The blademaster it had killed, humiliated and dismissed moments ago, now summoned back to fight against it, blades raised, loyal to the human who had claimed its soul.

The archer’s eyes narrowed, understanding why the human before it decided to attack its dying rival rather than itself earlier.

In an instant, the fight had changed shape.

It was two against one now.

Two warriors, Moon with his ice and lightning imbued swords, and the Lesser Elf spirit with its own duel wielding technique, both of them closing on the archer at once, forcing the fight into the close range where a bow was at its greatest disadvantage.

Moon and the spirit hit the Surpasser from two angles at the same time.

Moon’s team joined the attack with him.

Elsa drew her bow and loosed an ice arrow, forcing the Surpasser to break its stance and dodge, and Theo used the opening to dart in from its blind side whilst its concealment was still active, dagger flashing toward the elf’s back as it tried to handle Moon and his Beast Soul from the front.

The archer caught the strike on its bow without even turning fully, deflected it, and drove a kick into Theo’s chest that sent him tumbling across the snow.

Theo flew for several meters before hitting the ground hard, a pained grunt tearing out of him as he skidded and rolled.

The kick alone, from a Surpasser, had done more damage than most beasts could manage with a full strike.

But it had cost the archer a beat of its attention which was his goal.

Moon and the Beast Soul capitalized instantly.

He used the summoned blademaster as a second distraction, the spirit lunging in high with both blades to pull the archer’s focus upward, and while the elf tried to meet it, Moon slipped in low and drove his ice sword into the Surpasser’s stomach.

The elf tried to leap back, but Moon used his Air Step as a launching pad to drive forward, catching the elf.

The assimilated blade bit deep, and the cold poured into the wound.

The Freezing Cold debuff took effect immediately, the ice element’s special ability.

The elf’s movements slowed down but only slightly due to the difference in power.

Against an ordinary beast, that debuff would have slowed it considerably. Against a Surpasser Lesser Elf, it was another story all together.

Still, it was enough to matter, if Moon and the others could stack enough of them that is.

The archer screamed in fury, and it retaliated immediately.

It spun with the ice sword still lodged in its gut and lashed out with its bow like a club, and the swing caught the Beast Soul across the body. The spirit blademaster took the hit full-force, a wound opening across its torso.

Moon immediately retrieved his sword immediately, leaping back to create distance.

The soul was loyal, and it was skilled, but it was subject to injury and death. Moon immediately cast Minor Mend, and Cleanse on his Battle Soul. The Southern Commander’s wound began to close immediately, and it was much better.

Vela charged in to cover Moon’s retreat, her hammer swinging for the archer’s leg, and she connected, but the elf twisted with the impact and drove an elbow into her guard that cracked her raised forearm and hurled her back two meters, her plate ringing.

Kayn came in behind, both blades carving at the archer’s exposed flank, and he scored a shallow line across its back before it wheeled on him. He barely got clear, throwing himself into a desperate backpedal, and the tip of the archer’s returning strike with the bow still opened a gash across his shoulder that dropped him to one knee with a hiss of pain.

Everyone who touched the Surpasser paid for it. What made the situation worse, was the fact that it was a close range battle rather than a long range battle. The archer was weakest in close range, and it was still dangerous.

Every strike landed came at the cost of a wound taken, the gulf in power turning even their successes into injuries.