Chapter 224: Isolated and Helpless, Giving It All

"Thump..." The rhythm of his heart began to quicken, ripples of energy drawing in the sound of Wang Yu’s own breathing as he pressed his frame against the courtyard wall of a three-story cottage.

Battle aura surged through his limbs, circulating with every fiber of his being, sharpening his focus and priming his body—a lethal sort of warm-up.

"Drip." Blood fell from his fingertips, spreading outward like a spiderweb. It snaked through the cracks in the masonry, guided by the secret arts of the Bloody Wrath Knight, the ripples clinging to the liquid filaments to relay every vibration back to Wang Yu’s senses.

"The concentrations of mana and void energy are both rising. This isn't a natural occurrence. Someone is here, though I cannot say if they are hunting me..."

Closing his eyes, he funneled his perception into his hearing, and at once, Wang Yu sensed the dissonance in his surroundings.

It was too quiet. In a place already devoid of people, silence was expected, but the subtle rustle of air currents and the faint grit of falling stone dust had vanished. That was wrong.

"A silence barrier. Nine times out of ten, they are here for me. Which faction would do this?"

Coupled with the rising mana, the spell confirmed his suspicions; no one wasted a silence barrier on a whim. The visitors were hostile.

"The Abyss Gate? Unlikely. Could it be... the Royal Family?"

The possibility took root in his mind, and the more he pondered, the more plausible it seemed. The descent of the God of Fear was riddled with anomalies. Setting aside the unforeseen chaos caused by the Perfected One’s breakdown, who stood to benefit most from this catastrophe?

The Kingdom of Sewenthan was essentially finished; that was impossible.

A noble? No house possessed such influence, and the nobles who attended the festival were wiped out to the last man.

In the end, the only remaining candidate was the Alastair Royal Family. By purging the upstart nobles with their own agendas, they could legitimately reclaim the seats of the Elder Council. Without the Council, the kingdom would become their private fiefdom.

Furthermore, the old noble houses that had long collaborated with the crown had deep foundations; they would never turn against the throne over a minor grievance. Excluding the massive destruction wrought by the God of Fear, the Royal Family stood to gain everything.

"Considering those ruined nobles only lost their lives, the crown likely seized their assets as well. Add the territory and wealth of Sewenthan to the equation, and the losses in the capital are negligible."

With his mind made up, Wang Yu was nearly certain of his pursuers. Had he been able to sync his intelligence with Zieg and Shael, he would have been sure.

But with his magitech communication device shattered and the prayer network deaf to him, Wang Yu suffered from a critical information gap.

"Thud..." A metal boot crushed one of his blood-filaments. The ripples clinging to the thread pierced the silence barrier, conducting the sound directly to Wang Yu.

The next instant, a heavy impact shook the ground. The blood-filaments were pulverized, their internal aura extinguished, severing his connection to them.

"A high-ranking formal knight. He sensed my aura."

The aura woven into the blood had collided with the intruder’s own, triggering a reaction. Wang Yu had detected him, but he had been unmasked in return. A single earth-shaking stomp had obliterated his surveillance.

"Attempt an exit. Fighting a premeditated ambush alone is a losing game."

Glancing at the rising dust, Wang Yu crouched and hugged the wall, moving in the opposite direction. He intended to retreat; once he linked up with the Night’s Edge, the situation would become manageable.

"Swoosh!"

A silent ripple tore through the air above his head. Space itself fractured under the void’s distortion, and the stone wall beside him sheared off in a smooth, clean cut, collapsing toward him.

Having sensed the anomaly in the void through his ripples, Wang Yu slid beneath the strike, narrowly avoiding the fate of being decapitated along with the wall.

"Night’s Edge special operations member, Wang Yu, you have no choice. Cease your resistance and let us take you."

A low, masculine voice drifted from behind the collapsed wall. As he spoke, walls of earth and stone erupted from the ground around the courtyard, sealing off Wang Yu’s path of escape with thick, towering barriers.

"..."

Wang Yu remained silent, fixing his gaze on the source of the voice. A knight in medium armor stood there, unremarkable, bearing no insignia of his station.

With his longsword drawn, the man advanced in a measured stance. His aura confirmed he was the same high-ranking knight who had cleared the surveillance.

Trailing him was a mage, slightly younger, clad in light armor rather than robes. He held a short dagger in one hand and a staff in the other, while three glowing orbs orbited his body—an unknown school of magic.

"A high-ranking formal knight, a high-ranking formal mage, likely a low-ranking formal knight, and a sorcerer hidden somewhere, waiting for the right moment? You think quite highly of me, bringing a squad of this caliber to deal with a mid-ranking formal knight?"

His eyes narrowed as he watched the two figures closing in. He pushed his ripples to their maximum range, monitoring the fluctuations of void energy and mana while calculating his odds.

"Premeditated. Timed perfectly to the end of the event, ambushing me when no one can reach me. I misjudged the Royal Family’s ruthlessness. They’d strike at the Night’s Edge without a shred of pretext, just because I have no backing? Isolated and without aid."

"Click."

A faint sound of glass shattering—hidden by the ripples—echoed as Wang Yu crushed a vial wrapped in blood behind his back. The "Old Armor-Breaker" potion surged into his veins, carried by his blood, and began to take hold.

He could hold nothing back. Retreat was futile. With three formal-tier experts, he could not afford to turn his back on them. He would play every card he had; a desperate gamble was his only path.

"Do not offer useless resistance. We will not kill you; we only need to investigate certain things. Your life is not what we require."

"If you persist in fighting, I cannot guarantee your body will remain intact. Based on our dossier, you are a rational man. You should understand that your strength is no match for us."

The knight and the mage stopped ten meters away, watching Wang Yu with cold eyes. He stood in a defensive stance, offering no response to their words, as they attempted to coerce him into surrender.

"Hhh..."

Wang Yu did not reply; only his ragged breathing sounded, though the ripples swallowed the noise before it could travel. To them, he simply hung his head, gasping for air as if caught in a psychological struggle.

"Our time is limited. We have no patience for hesitation. Either surrender and drive this spike into your abdomen, or we fight, and we bring you back with your life, but missing a few limbs."

The knight’s voice was hard, leaving no room for negotiation. His tone dripped with absolute confidence.

He tossed a silver spike, etched with complex patterns and forged from strange material, which rolled to a stop at Wang Yu’s feet.

They had every right to be confident. A high-ranking knight, a high-ranking mage, and a hidden sorcerer.

Such a team could make even a Grand Knight think twice. Using them to hunt a mere mid-ranking formal knight was overkill.

"Don't waste time. Take him. If he resists, cripple his ability to fight back first."

The mage released a phantom eye into the air, piercing the barrier to scan the surroundings before whispering to the knight.

The Night’s Edge and the city guard were converging on the city center for search and rescue. They would be here in ten minutes, perhaps sooner if they sensed the disturbance.

"Tell the Imperial Guard to alter their route. Delay them if you can. It wouldn't be a disaster if the Night’s Edge knew, but the son of the Duke who saved the city is acquainted with this one. Let's avoid unnecessary trouble."

The knight nodded and raised his sword, aiming at the still-bowed Wang Yu. No more waiting. He would break him—he was just a mid-ranking knight.

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Faster than they could act, Wang Yu moved. His hand blurred to his waist, drawing the Furnace Fury. He pulled the trigger, the alchemical fuel igniting in a flash, and unleashed six rounds at the mage behind the knight.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!" The flaw of the Furnace Fury alchemical revolver was exposed. At the formal tier, if one could track the movement of the draw, a linear projectile was easy to block or deflect.

The three orbs orbiting the mage spun and shifted, manifesting three translucent light shields that intercepted all six bullets. The mana shields flickered, but the bullets fell harmlessly to the ground.

"Swish..."

With a light step, the high-ranking knight’s body dissolved into an amorphous, shadowy blur, skimming the ground at high speed. He reappeared behind Wang Yu—the secret technique: Shadow Hunter’s Step.

The knight had moved the moment Wang Yu fired, ignoring the mage’s defense, knowing the attack would never land.

Because of his momentum, the knight was still facing away from Wang Yu, but his longsword thrust backward. The strength of a high-ranking knight gave the strike enough power to cleave gold and shatter stone.

"Clang!"

A mirror-image reaction. Wang Yu’s hands, encased in Void-Blade gauntlets, clamped onto the knight’s sword. Metal shrieked against metal, the pressure forcing a piercing wail.

"!" Shock flickered in the knight’s eyes. Wang Yu’s strength was beyond anything he had anticipated.

By all rights, a high-ranking knight’s power should have crushed him, yet his blade was not only blocked but locked tight, impossible to withdraw.

Wang Yu spun, yanking the sword, his aura erupting as he delivered a full-force sweep kick at the knight’s arm, which had been pulled off-balance by the tug on the blade.

Visible white steam vented from Wang Yu’s nose and mouth—reminiscent of his Blood-Burn Drive, though this time, the power surging through him was not the void, but the Old Armor-Breaker potion.

"Boom!"

The kick collided with the knight’s raised arm with a dull thud. A clash of raw power, head-on, with nothing held back.

"Ugh!"

The knight grunted, abandoning the contest of strength without hesitation. He released his grip on the sword and retreated.

The strength Wang Yu displayed at this moment was truly staggering; the crushing force exerted upon his arms made him feel as though he were grappling with a beast of his own rank.

Crack! With a squeeze of his fingers, Wang Yu watched the high-ranking knight’s face contort in dismay as he bent the enchanted longsword until it deformed, rendering the weapon a useless scrap of iron.

It was never meant for such brutal, direct confrontation; the piercing and swiftness enchantments etched into the blade for a singular, lethal strike were, in the face of Wang Yu, utterly cursed.

Power surged through his veins in an endless torrent, and Wang Yu’s pupils were stained with a golden hue reminiscent of a dragon’s gaze; the effects of the Ancient Armor-Breaker Potion were proving to be astonishingly potent.

The concentrated essence of dragon blood, once fused with a physique that was already freakishly strong for a mid-ranker and possessed of even more absurd properties, had birthed a miraculous reaction.

The golden vial was dissolving within him, and while it provided a massive influx of energy, its unique components were simultaneously stimulating every one of Wang Yu’s organs, forcing them to perform feats far beyond their ordinary limits.

It was not a berserk frenzy; Wang Yu could feel a strange, unfamiliar power filling the spaces between his organs, as if an embedded, shock-absorbing exoskeleton had been installed, not only bolstering his strength but providing substantial protection.

His power would reach a terrifying zenith for the duration of the potion’s effect, capable of suppressing even a high-ranking knight who had not yet fully unleashed his own potential.

Wang Yu turned his head, exposing his back to the mage, but no one would squander such an opportunity; ice lances whistled through the air, mingled with invisible, imperceptible wind blades, striking toward the nape of his neck.

Touching the Weaver’s Grimoire at his waist, he channeled his mental energy into its internal arrays, and a thick wall of earth erupted behind him, blunting the ice and wind just enough to grant Wang Yu a moment to react.

Yet, the assault of a high-ranking mage was not something this alchemical tool, capable only of simple spells, could hope to withstand.

The wind blades sliced through the earthen barrier, merely slowing for an instant, while the ice lances detonated upon impact, blasting a massive crater into the wall and sending a spray of lethal, jagged ice shards scattering toward Wang Yu.

Turning with lightning speed, Wang Yu crossed his arms to shield his face, meeting the sorcery with his own flesh; the wind blades tore through his leather armor and raked across his arms, while the ice shards embedded themselves deep into his forearms in a dense, bristling array.

These spells, capable of piercing the body of a formal knight, did little more than graze him, and the gruesome wounds were, to Wang Yu, of no consequence.

His muscles rippled, ejecting the shards of ice, while the gashes from the wind blades pulsed and knit together, the self-healing ability, vastly amplified by the potion, closing the wounds within a few short breaths.

A layer of hard, scale-like substance began to manifest upon his skin; Wang Yu could not tell if his body had learned a new trick or if it was merely a transient effect of the potion.

Regardless, it significantly bolstered his defense, as if he were clad in invisible iron; the scales were both remarkably supple and possessed of a formidable hardness.

No sooner had he turned than the enemy seized the opening; caught between two fronts, he knew he was not fighting a single man.

The knight moved with inner-subtlety, closing the distance in the fraction of a second Wang Yu had spent blocking the magic, and swept a black dagger toward Wang Yu’s heart.

The lethality of such close-quarters combat made it impossible for Wang Yu to turn and parry, and a full-force strike from a high-ranking knight was not something his body could withstand; to be struck was to face death or ruin.

Snap! A limb erupted abruptly from behind Wang Yu’s back, catching the knight’s wrist in a grip that drew a solemn look from his assailant; a sharp tug, though not overly forceful, bought Wang Yu the time to dodge the fatal blow.

He shifted his body, allowing the dagger meant for his heart to pierce the flesh beneath his shoulder; with a sickening tear, a massive, bloodless, and hideous gash was ripped across his back.

He countered with an elbow strike, the immense force slamming into the chest of the knight who stood pressed against him; the knight’s breastbone groaned, his face paled, and he retreated several paces, staring with grim intensity at Wang Yu—or rather, at Wang Yu’s back.

A figure emerged from the gruesome wound on Wang Yu’s back, a humanoid form composed entirely of blood, devoid of features, its amorphous shape radiating a sense of profound menace.

The Blood-Twin, summoned once more with the aid of the potion; Wang Yu needed an ally, and isolated as he was, the only one who could help him was another version of himself.

The situation seemed to improve, yet Wang Yu knew his crisis had only just begun; the sorcerer, hidden somewhere in the shadows, had yet to strike, and the high-ranking knight and mage had merely been caught off guard by his sudden, explosive surge of power.