Chapter 0096: A Crushing Victory and a Clean Escape

In the dark, empty stillness of the mountain forest, two giants locked in brutal combat. Such a surreal and fantastical scene had never once appeared in Grim’s memories.

And yet today, in this enigmatic otherworld, it had become reality.

The immense, berserk giant ape was like a tireless bulldozer that had forcibly flattened the forest around the high ridge. Even the ground itself was covered in deep footprints and fine, spiderweb cracks.

Meanwhile, the lightning giant with its azure body and golden armor moved like a nimble spirit. It continually circled the ape’s outer perimeter, luring it into repeated lunges while hurling lightning javelins and blades of wind at it without pause.

As the battle dragged on, the data Grim had collected on the lightning giant became ever clearer and more vivid in his mind. The lightning giant had indeed been forged by his own hands, but throughout the process he had merely used it as a humanoid conduit for spiritual power, knowing almost nothing of the principles or knowledge behind it. Thus, even the chip could only make a vague estimate of its combat ability and physical parameters. Those figures were nowhere near as direct or detailed as what could be gathered from the battlefield itself.

Lightning Giant: peak quasi-wizard rank. Affinities: lightning and wind. Physical stats: Strength 12, Constitution 11, Agility 18, Spirit 20. Skills: Wind Vortex, Thunder Armor, Lightning Shield, Lightning Javelin, Lightning Whip, Wind Blade, Thundercloud Storm, Chain Lightning, Lightning Leap.

This was a long-range magical construct built around agility. Its Strength and Constitution were somewhat lacking, but its dense array of attack skills more than made up for the shortcoming, instantly elevating it into the most formidable elemental golem under Grim’s command.

And its displayed power did not disappoint him.

In the battles that followed, the lightning giant relied on its agile mobility to remain constantly in motion around the giant ape, attacking from front, rear, left, and right with lightning javelins and wind blades. No matter how furiously the berserk ape lunged, it could never catch even a glimpse of the lightning giant’s true form.

After its close-range attacks proved fruitless, the berserk ape quickly revealed the terrifying combat talents hidden in its bloodline: Soul-Rending Roar and Rock Throw. The first could unleash a savage bellow that would instantly stun enemies within its vicinity, leaving them in a three- to five-second state of soul separation. Of course, it could also kill any ordinary person lacking magical protection on the spot. Its effective range was fifty meters.

The second skill allowed the ape to condense an irregular boulder two meters in diameter between its palms, then hurl it at an opponent in a split second. The berserk force imbued in that throw was more than enough to smash the lightning giant’s proud and towering body into pieces.

Though the berserk ape possessed few bloodline talents, each one complemented its fearsome strength and physique perfectly. Any enemy caught in the blast of its Soul-Rending Roar would, with the slightest lapse, likely be unable to escape its wild and savage close-range assault.

Unfortunately, such mental attacks were utterly ineffective against an elemental construct.

So the berserk ape could only trail futilely after the lightning giant, lunging again and again like a mad thing, smashing and toppling countless trees and tearing apart the mountainside, yet still unable to touch a single strand of its foe’s body.

Just when Grim thought the battle might be won in this manner, the berserk ape, transformed from the green-armored man Toriel, suddenly abandoned the elusive lightning giant and came roaring straight at Grim.

Tsk.

Grim let out a silent sigh.

Anyone capable of becoming a wizard apprentice was no fool. Earlier, Toriel had merely been driven into a rage by the lightning giant, his bloodline power muddying his own judgment. Now that repeated attacks had yielded nothing, his mind had regained control of the ape’s body. Naturally, he would not continue stupidly chasing after the lightning giant and swallowing wind for his trouble. Instead, he had set his sights directly on Grim, the true instigator.

So long as Grim was taken down, that bastard constantly drifting about by his side would naturally vanish. Even if he could not strike Grim directly, he could at least lure that bastard to his flank, where his own overwhelming savage strength might finally be brought into play.

With that simple thought in mind, the berserk ape’s eyes burned red. It beat the ground with both fists and came bounding and leaping straight at Grim.

How could Grim fail to see through such a childish scheme?

The lightning giant’s combat power was indeed excellent, but it also had a fatal flaw: the one controlling it was far too weak. And Grim himself was the easiest weak point to break through.

Using the lightning giant as a shield was unquestionably the worst choice. Given the berserk ape’s close-combat prowess, it might take only a dozen heartbeats to smash and ruin its body, and with it the elemental crystal core within.

Grim glanced at his own reserves. Summoning the lightning giant had cost him seven points of mental power, leaving him with less than six. Watching the giant ape charge at him with monstrous momentum and feeling the earth tremble violently beneath his feet, Grim once again threw out a crystalline elemental core.

“Come forth, my Rock Serpent Cavern!”

With Grim’s thunderous cry, the ground before him suddenly split open into a vast chasm with no visible bottom, and a terrifying giant serpent wrought entirely from stone slithered up from beneath the earth.

The rock serpent that emerged from the ground was directly in the path of the berserk ape’s charge. Its thick body coiled once, and its stone-like form agilely wrapped itself around the ape’s massive frame.

The next second, the horrifying spectacle of a clash between a giant ape and a serpent unfolded before Grim’s eyes. But the ferocity and wildness of the battle made him completely unable to watch the cool spectacle at close range; instead, he had to flee the scene as though fighting for his life.

Sand and stones flew, ancient trees snapped, grass clippings scattered, and thick clouds of dust rapidly spread outward. Countless gravel fragments shot through the air like bullets, battering the surrounding forest into shivering submission.

When the dust finally thinned a little, Grim stopped. The cyan glow on his Swiftstep Boots gradually faded, and by then he had already retreated more than two hundred meters away.

Looking back at the battlefield shaking the mountains and disturbing the earth, he saw the lightning giant suspended in midair with both hands raised. Above its majestic body, a raging thundercloud, slowly rotating like a funnel, was rapidly taking shape, while the funnel’s mouth pointed directly at the ape locked in savage combat below.

Even in the midst of battle, the berserk ape quickly noticed the disturbance overhead. It strained desperately to escape the area locked by the Thundercloud Storm, but the rock serpent it had battered into flying debris and shattered fragments clung tightly to its lower limbs, refusing to let go no matter how violently it hammered and tore at it.

Very soon, the thundercloud storm, which had been guided for more than twenty seconds, was finally complete.

The dark night sky was suddenly cleaved in two by a colossal bolt of lightning that seemed to pierce heaven and earth, bathing the whole world in stark white brilliance.

Violent, searing currents raged over the bodies of the ape and the serpent. The terrifying lightning energy shattered the blood-red barrier of life around the ape’s exterior and plunged straight into its immense body.

The next second, the uncontrollable energy burst open a huge bloody hole in the ape’s broad back. A fountain of blood sprayed outward like a waterfall, and before it could even hit the ground, it was evaporated by the savage lightning in the air.

Even with the ape’s formidable physique, it could not fully withstand such a ferocious strike.

With an enraged roar to the heavens, and under the relentless assault of the Thundercloud Storm, the berserk ape finally toppled over and, little by little, reverted into the form of the green-armored man.

“Quick, quick... have your construct collect some of his blood for me!” Mary had somehow appeared beside Grim. Looking at the scene where the dust had finally settled in the distance, she seemed even more delighted than he was.

Er...

Turning to glance at Mary’s face, flushed a lovely crimson, Grim immediately understood that he had been used. Still, such an outcome was not bad. She got her blood, and he obtained the most ideal combat data. Everyone benefited. The only one who suffered, perhaps, was that inexplicable and powerful bloodline quasi-wizard Toriel.

Grim had no intention of killing Toriel at all.

This was territory within the radiance of the Wizard Tower’s power. For Toriel to be living in seclusion and training here meant he must have deep and tangled ties with the wizards of the tower. Beating him half to death for no reason was already excessive. If Grim then seized the chance to take his life, he was afraid that before he could even return to the Wizard Tower, someone would be waiting to ambush him on the road for revenge.

Quietly issuing orders to the lightning giant, Grim turned and pulled Mary with him as they began to run.

His senses were keen. From the moment the two monsters began their battle, seven or eight hidden yet powerful spiritual fluctuations had been lurking around the battlefield. Among them was even one Grim found somewhat familiar: the spiritual resonance of Wizard Angus.

Thus, the lightning giant suspended in midair waved away the gathered thundercloud storm, then turned into a blinding rainbow of lightning to catch up with Grim and Mary. As for the rock serpent left behind in the field, after struggling to release the unconscious green-armored man, it dragged its shattered remains across the grass and followed after Grim, leaving the battlefield as well.

No one noticed that before departing, the rock serpent had quietly swallowed the soil beneath the green-armored man, soil mixed with a great deal of blood.

Only after they had gone did the forest truly fall silent, leaving behind nothing but the wreckage of the battlefield to bitterly tell its own tale.

At last, two shadows abruptly appeared beside the green-armored man.

One of them bent down to inspect him, then shook his head and sighed.

“Toriel is a junior of your own clan. So you’re just going to let that boy leave like this?”

The other shadow was hidden within thick black smoke, with only two eerie glimmers of light shining where its brows and eyes should have been. It said coldly, “Hmph. If Angus hadn’t interfered, do you think anyone could have walked away alive after bullying a member of the Wotton family?”

“Angus? Ah, that’s right. He is the one on duty at the Wizard Tower these days. Could that boy be a junior newly arrived from his family?” the first shadow asked in puzzlement. “Letting his juniors go out stirring up trouble like this, isn’t he afraid of sparking a war between wizard families?”

“Hmph. That person isn’t even from his family. He seems to be a little newcomer sent here by the Wizard Association for training.”

“Oh? There are such promising seedlings among the new arrivals today? Once my own magical experiment is finished, I’ll have to examine him carefully!”

The two exchanged only a few brief words before nodding and parting ways.

The first shadow quickly vanished into the mountains and forests, while the other bent down, lifted Toriel into its arms, and disappeared in a billowing swirl of black smoke.

Only then did the mountain forest truly grow still, with nothing left but the battered battlefield, silently bearing witness to all its misery.