bigabreads Chapter 177 : Chapter 177
Chapter 177 : Chapter 177
Chapter 177. A Great Enemy
The entire scene fell deathly silent.
Sylvia’s hand trembled around her sword, while Aurora’s expression froze on her face.
How... was this possible?
“Too weak.”
Ifreles brushed at the back of his hand, dusting off grime that did not even exist, his tone full of disappointment and boredom.
“So this is the full extent of your power?”
He lifted his head, his gaze sweeping across the two women whose faces had turned pale, before finally settling on Logaris. A mocking curve tugged at the corner of his lips.
“So this is as far as the limits of humanity go. How could creatures who rely on the charity of gods and crude physical training ever hope to touch true power?”
Before his words had even finished—
a visible crimson shockwave exploded outward from him with a thunderous blast!
BOOM—!
The sword auras filling the air were shattered instantly, and Aurora’s divine halos broke apart like glass. A terrifying pressure, tangible as a tidal wave, swallowed everyone present in an instant.
His figure vanished from where he stood once more.
“First, I’ll deal with the gods’ lapdog.”
Ifreles’s voice sounded beside Aurora’s ear like a ghost. The Saintess’s pupils shrank violently. She instinctively tried to cast a defensive divine spell on the spot, but a fist wrapped in dark red keratin struck her first.
Crack—
The staff in Aurora’s hand was instantly covered in fractures before exploding into countless motes of light. She herself flew away like a marionette with its strings cut, crashing heavily into the distant ruins, her fate unknown.
“Damn it!”
Sylvia let out a furious shout and moved almost the very instant Aurora was sent flying. The stone slabs beneath her feet shattered inch by inch as her whole body turned into a streak of silver light. In her hands, 【Moonfall】 and 【Starfall】 intertwined into a dense web of blades that went straight for Ifreles’s back.
“Too slow.”
Ifreles did not even bother turning his head. He casually swung one arm behind him, the dark red limb sweeping out like a battering ram.
At that critical moment, Logaris suddenly threw up a hand from not far away, the runes in his palm flashing wildly.
“Gravity Amplification · Twentyfold!”
Bzzzt—!
Ifreles’s movement visibly stalled for a fraction of a second, and that unstoppable sweep shifted off course by half an inch.
And Sylvia seized precisely that half-inch opening.
“Moonphase Secret Sword · Crescent Moon Reversal!”
Her body dipped in a strange, fluid motion, narrowly brushing past the lethal strike. Then both swords slashed down with shrill, tearing force upon Ifreles’s flank.
CLANG—!!!
Sparks burst everywhere.
There was none of the expected sensation of blades cutting flesh. Sylvia felt as if she had struck a piece of obsidian that had never melted in ten thousand years. The recoil was so tremendous that her palms went numb.
“Oh? Not bad.”
Ifreles lowered his eyes to glance at the slash on his waist, which had barely managed to leave behind a faint white mark, and raised a brow. “Your coordination is decent. But that is all.”
Ignoring the gravity shackles imposed on him, he casually lifted one foot and stamped down hard.
BOOM!
A violent shockwave erupted outward with him at its center. Logaris let out a muffled groan, his spell abruptly interrupted as he staggered backward.
With the spell’s restraint gone, Sylvia was instantly plunged into a hopeless situation. Ifreles’s hand shifted into a claw, tearing through the air as it shot straight for her throat.
Grinding her teeth, Sylvia crossed her twin swords before her chest, her battle aura erupting without the slightest reservation.
“Moonphase Secret Sword · Moon Guard!”
BANG!!!
Ifreles’s palm slammed heavily into the crossed swords. This time, he had used a little actual strength.
The royal twin swords Sylvia had always been so proud of let out shrill cries of unbearable strain and bent instantly into grotesque angles. That utterly unstoppable force traveled straight through the blades and struck her squarely in the chest with brutal simplicity.
“Puh—”
Sylvia was blown away like a leaf caught in a gale, flying dozens of meters through the air. She smashed through two thick walls in succession before finally being buried beneath collapsed bricks and rubble, without another movement.
“Sylvia!”
Logaris’s face had turned grim to the extreme.
Fifth tier. In this world, that already counted as high-end combat power. With Sylvia and Aurora working in tandem with him, they should have been able to put up a fight even against a peak sixth-tier powerhouse.
Yet before this man, their teamwork looked like nothing more than a joke.
“Don’t look at me like that, little one.”
Ifreles walked toward Logaris step by step. With each footfall, the snow on the ground instantly sublimated into white mist.
“You should feel anger. Anger at your weakness. Anger at your ignorance. Anger at those little toys you’re so proud of...” He pointed at the Magitech Gun at Logaris’s waist, the corner of his mouth curling into a sneer. “In my eyes, they do not even qualify as trash.”
Bzzzt—!
A strange spiritual fluctuation drilled straight into Logaris’s mind along with the sound of his voice.
Pain.
Blinding pain.
It felt as though someone had poured a ladle of molten iron straight into his brain. Logaris’s cherished “absolute rationality,” that mind which operated like a precision instrument, was now rapidly melting and collapsing.
Irritability. Savagery. A desire for destruction.
He wanted to kill. Wanted to rip the face off that posturing bastard standing in front of him. Wanted to blow this whole world to pieces.
“So this is... the authority of Wrath...” Logaris’s eyes instantly turned bloodshot, and overlapping crimson afterimages flooded his vision.
“This is really... pissing me off!!!”
Logaris slammed his hands together, pouring out massive amounts of magic with no regard for the consequences.
【Spatial Disintegration】!
A black spatial rift opened before him like the maw of an abyss, devouring all matter in front of it.
Ifreles looked at that rift, and the red glow in his eyes flared brighter than ever.
“Yes. That’s it.”
Instead of retreating, he advanced. He actually thrust his hand directly into that spatial rift, which was more than capable of shredding steel to pieces!
Szzzt, szzzt, szzzt—
An ear-grating grinding noise rang out. A layer of dark red keratin covered the surface of Ifreles’s palm as he forcibly jammed the closing spatial rift in place and then... tore it open to both sides with sheer brute force!
Snap.
The spell was broken by violence alone.
The massive backlash made Logaris grunt in pain, two streams of blood running from the corners of his eyes.
Still, Ifreles had not emerged entirely unscathed, as Logaris had feared. He raised his hand and looked with mild surprise at the cut across his palm, deep enough to expose bone. Dark golden blood slowly seeped from the wound, dripping onto the snow with sizzling, corrosive sounds.
“So you can actually wound me... even forbidden spells have a hard time leaving marks like this.” Ifreles extended his tongue and licked the blood from the wound. The red glow in his eyes did not flare with anger but with delight, becoming even more feverish. “The cutting power of spatial magic truly lives up to its reputation. Even in the hands of a half-baked amateur like you, it’s still sharp enough.”
Logaris clutched at his violently pounding chest.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong with his body.
The right half of his body felt as though it had caught fire. Through the torn sleeve, he discovered in horror that the skin on his right arm was rapidly hardening.
It was turning into something like obsidian crystal. Black-red mist seeped out through his pores. That was not magic—it felt like something far older, far more violent.
“Now that’s more like it.” Ifreles nodded in satisfaction.
“But it still isn’t enough.”
Ifreles reached toward his waist, where a slender sword that had remained sheathed the whole time was hanging.
Shing—
The blade left its scabbard.
It was a sword of pure crimson, its surface engraved with countless twisted faces locked in agony, as if ten thousand dead souls had been sealed within it.
The moment the blade was drawn, a thick, nauseating stench of sulfur instantly filled the entire street.