Chapter 211: Finger of Annihilation

"The muscles in my legs have been destroyed," Vlad muttered inwardly, fighting the incoming monsters. "If I use Lightning Step one more time, my legs will stop functioning. But I don’t have enough time to keep fighting these monsters."

Daemoth had been staying on guard at the back of the undead army, clearly aware of Vlad’s explosive speed.

"I need to catch him off guard for the decisive strike," Vlad declared, taking a deep breath. He had been fighting wildly, completely ignoring his injuries. He needed to calm his mind and execute a proper strategy before the corruption of the mana he had absorbed reached his brain.

"Path... path... I need a path leading to Daemoth with minimal injuries."

His crimson eyes flickered with lightning as he enhanced his vision. A piercing pain surged through them, trickling down as tears of blood.

He ignored the pain and kept them forcefully open. The world around him slowed. He could see all the weapons being swung at him, the monsters behind them coming for him, and a path through them.

There were multiple paths.

"I need more accuracy."

He poured even more mana into his eyes, the pain increasing severalfold. It was as if multiple needles were being stabbed into his eyes.

He clenched his jaw through the pain. He had suffered worse than this.

He could predict things more clearly now. The path that would cause him minimal injury to reach Daemoth at his full speed.

He channeled his Electro Mana into one leg only and bolted forward, following the path he had predicted. His speed was nowhere close to his Lightning Step, and his movement was wobbly due to using only one leg.

But it was all within his predictions. As he moved, he only blocked the attacks of the undeads that he predicted could cause him fatal injury, taking the minor hits from the others.

In just a couple of seconds, he moved past the horde of monsters and reached Daemoth.

The leg in which he had channeled his Electro Mana went limp, forcing him to shift all his weight onto his other leg.

He didn’t dawdle for even a second despite the pain. His blade swung in a wide arc, straight for Daemoth’s throat.

"How can you still move?" Daemoth demanded, bending backward. The sword made a slight cut on his throat as it passed him.

Vlad didn’t answer. He was in no condition to do so. There was only one thing on his mind.

Take down the opponent in front of him.

He swung his sword again, this time in a diagonal slash.

It pierced through the bone armor, leaving a shallow cut across Daemoth’s torso.

The impact sent him flying backward.

Vlad moved forward on one leg, the other skidding along like dead weight.

"You already have one foot in the grave!" Daemoth shouted, waving his hand. "Just die already!"

From his hand’s movement, the zombies behind Vlad rushed at him. With one leg limp, the monsters reached him before he could reach Daemoth.

They barged into him from every direction. Some bit his legs, some began eating his arms, while others tried to tear open his armor with their sharp claws. His figure slowly disappeared beneath the monsters, buried under their mass.

"Finally." Daemoth released a sigh of relief. He was supposed to be dealing with just Academy Students who had only awakened a year or two ago. Yet he had suffered many shallow wounds, not to mention that four out of five of them had managed to escape.

"I’m going to become a laughingstock." He pressed his forehead, glaring at the mound of zombies.

He looked at them closely. In between the finger gaps of one zombie, Vlad’s bloody face slowly became visible, or more accurately, his eye.

Its sclera resembled a miniature night sky, with countless star-like particles scattered across the darkness. At the center, the iris was in the form of a diagonal river of starlight, like a galaxy.

"Th-that is the Genesis Arti—"

"Eternal Eye: Soul Shock!"

A laser-like beam of light shot from the eye. It was so fast that Daemoth couldn’t even react.

It struck straight at his forehead, pushing back his aestral form from his upper body.

His translucent figure looked at Vlad in bewilderment, his eyes widened and lips parted.

His soul moved back into his body within the very second it was being pulled out. He coughed out blood, suffering damage to his very soul.

His connection with the undeads had been severed, their figures falling lifeless around Vlad.

What was revealed beneath them was Vlad, holding his sword parallel to his body, its tip pointing toward the sky. Dark, violent flames burned around the blade, reaching several feet into the air.

Before Daemoth could form the connection with the undeads again, Vlad extended his sword forward and declared,

"Sword of Abyss: Chapter One:

Finger of Annihilation!"

From his sword, his Aura shot forward, taking the form of a dark finger.

The finger didn’t look humanoid at all. It had obsidian-like scales and a sharp nail that sent ripples through the air as it moved forward.

Terror surged through Daemoth’s very soul from this ominous finger. The pressure it carried was nowhere near human. It was as if a being beyond his understanding had been unleashed upon him.

In desperation, he channeled all of his mana and produced a layer of five shields before him, each one formed from the bones of Rank Six Monsters.

The finger struck the first shield, sending shockwaves outward from the impact. The shield didn’t even hold for a second before breaking apart.

The finger pierced through all of them with ease and reached Daemoth. He moved all the bones of his armor to his chest, where the sharp nail of the finger was pointing.

"I’m a Five Ring Mage," he shouted, wrapping the bone armor with the last of his purple mana as the finger struck it. "I will never be taken down by a D-Ranked—"

His words stopped mid-sentence, his eyes shifting downward.

There was a gaping hole in his chest. The finger had already pierced through his body and even destroyed the stones in the closed tunnel behind him, opening it again.

"H-how could this..."

Thud!

He fell to the ground before finishing his words.

As for Vlad, the dark veins had already reached up to his eyes, only half an inch away from reaching his forehead.

He could neither see nor hear anything clearly. Most of his body had already gone numb. What he had left was one functional leg and one arm.

It was enough.

To complete one last step.

He channeled most of his remaining mana into his leg. Bolts of lightning erupted across it.

He rushed straight into the tunnel at the maximum speed his body could muster.

After moving out from the other end, he hurled himself into the air, entering the next tunnel before bolting again like lightning, reaching the second cave where the monsters were being cultivated.

His body rolled across the bloody floor, reaching the center of the array where thousands of corpses lay.

The array pulsated with a crimson glow at regular intervals, revealing his broken body.

He pushed himself onto his knees, grabbed the sword, and laced it with the last of his remaining Sword Aura.

He stabbed it straight into the center of the array. Spiderweb-like cracks spread in every direction, splitting the ground open.

Vlad fell forward onto the floor. Through his barely opened eyes, he saw a blurry screen before him.

He didn’t know whether it was the array that pulsated one last time or his heartbeat.