Chapter 42 Turning the tides
"Chan!"
Vandal and Yazmeen both lifted Chan up. They found a black line had appeared on his body, which froze him in place.
At the same time, both Vandal and Yazmeen started to see double. Their vision was shaky.
"Are you beginning to feel it yet? Hahahahaha," Lamishtu smiled cunningly.
"What… what did you do?" Vandal managed to ask.
"Everyone I touched has been infected with my blood dust poison. Even if I do nothing now, you will all still die."
Lamishtu laughed and stopped attacking.
"Ah!"
Yazmeen’s body immediately froze, and she fell to the ground. Chan started to shake. He managed to look at Vandal once before his movements froze too.
Vandal’s heart suddenly felt a fear like cold, dim energy spreading toward his organs. "My heart… it is slowing down." He clutched his chest as he went down on one knee.
"My poison is stopped by blood flow. When your blood slows down, it will spread through your body. In three days or less, you will become like her: a pet, my pet." Lamishtu pointed at Ophelia, who was still dodging attacks from Mael and Hutrar. Suddenly, Mael started to shake and dropped to his knees.
Hutrar turned to look at Mael, who was struggling to breathe. Then Mael collapsed, leaving Hutrar to fight Ophelia alone.
Vandal could no longer hear what they were saying. It felt like all he could hear was Lamishtu’s voice and his own heartbeat.
She tilted her head, studying Vandal like a specimen.
“I wonder how long you’ll last…”
Vandal gave a cold hiccup. Pet? He knew what that meant. They would lose their minds and turn into her slaves.
At this moment, Yazmeen and Chan closed their eyes and fainted.
"Hm? How can you, someone who is still at third stage resonance, have more resistance against my blood poison than them?"
Lamishtu was extremely surprised. Vandal was still on one knee, struggling to move, while everyone else had fainted. The only exception was Hutrar, who was already being overpowered by Ophelia. She had him pinned to the ground and was strangling him.
"I need to calm down. Calm down, Vandal. Just breathe." Vandal listened to his inner voice as he steadied his breathing.
One breath…
His chest tightened.
Two breaths…
The panic clawed higher, then stalled.
Three breaths…
He slowly stood back up. His heart rate gradually began to pick up. His eyes were closed, and his expression was suddenly calm.
In his soul, the Fragment skill book turned another page.
Nephilim Fists of Destruction: Dead Calm.
Heat bled from his skin. Thin streams of vapor curled off him, distorting the air. His skin turned a shade redder and his hair fell slickly over his face. He stood still, looking like a man-made statue.
"Your heart should have stopped already." Shock appeared on Lamishtu’s face. Even though she had slept for a few hundred years and her strength was weakened, she could easily defeat echo warriors still in the resonance stage.
But Vandal was standing in front of her, unharmed, emitting a dangerous aura she had never felt before.
"It looks like your blood poisoning is as weak as you are."
Strength surged through him, clean, controlled, absolute. The strong blood poisoning was like frost thrown into a furnace, the poison shriveled the moment it touched his blood.
“What kind of freak is this brat!?.”
Lamishtu’s pupils contracted, and different emotions flashed across her face. She was a monster who had been trapped in this place for hundreds of years. Soon she calmed down and began to laugh wickedly. "Brat, even though you can counter my poison, how long do you think you can last against me alone?"
The battle just then had proved everything. Even the three of them attacking together could not win.
"I have no choice but to do this…" Vandal murmured as he closed his right eye expressionlessly.
Closing one eye? What was that going to do?
After Vandal closed his right eye, his left eye, which was originally icy blue, held a gaze that seemed fractured by a tiny vein of crimson.
"That eye…"
Lamishtu’s heart shook. She stared at Vandal’s eye as if attracted by an abyss.
Mid-air, a pair of pitch-black eyes clashed against a crimson ring that glowed faintly in Vandal’s eye.
The power of mental energy swept through the air. Lamishtu felt as if her eyes had been sliced by a knife. It instantly crushed the mental will she had tried to project into Vandal’s mind.
"So strong! What a weird but familiar feeling…"
At that moment, Vandal’s vision became so focused that he could see Lamishtu’s organs and the flow of her resonance energy. He saw her vital spots, The world split open.
Flesh became layers. Motion became lines. He could trace the uneven flow of energy along her spine.
The sharpness of the left eye could even see through objects. With just a scan, it allowed Vandal to find many valuable treasures. He saw the ring on her thumb and the invisible necklace around her neck which controlled the one on Ophelia. He saw the corpses of those who had died in this place, along with the treasures on their bodies or in their bags. He saw some storage rings too.
Lamishtu had been naked throughout the battle, but for the first time, she felt exposed, stripped bare, and seen through.
Vandal’s figure flash-stepped over. He aimed a vicious punch at the right side of Lamishtu’s shoulder with a force echo so potent it blurred the space around his fist.
"How… how does he know where I was severely injured?"
Lamishtu’s heart trembled in shock.
Vandal felt like he had entered a new level where every move was enhanced and he had no wasted movement. He could see the places where Lamishtu had been injured before.
Boom!
His fist landed first. This time, his fist followed a certain path, the impact folded her shoulder inward with a dull crack, sending her staggering backward in pain. He jumped back quickly because his blood had begun to boil, perhaps due to the difference in levels between them. Lamishtu’s expression changed dramatically. For the first time, she felt fear.
Another page turned in his mind.
Nephilim Fists of Destruction: Vacuum Hammer.
The mist circulating around Vandal became as hot as a volcanic eruption. In a minute, the temperature rose and the air seemed to be compressed to its limit. Cocking back his arm, he began punching the air in her direction.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
A chaotic sound rang through the air. An air wave swept up everything in a five-yard radius and shook the cave.
Lamishtu was hit by invisible attacks that sent her flying into a wall.
"Brat, you can fvck off, but leave the people here to me. I won’t kill you if you just leave," Lamishtu said as she climbed out of the wall. She swallowed down the rising blood in her mouth.
Lamishtu was not even at one-twentieth of her peak strength. She was already injured, and the internal injuries Vandal inflicted made it worse.
"You can get out of the cave and this place. Leave your bow and your space ring behind, and I will let you live."