Chapter 416: Capture
Translator: AnubisTL
They offered no roars, no outward displays of pressure.
Yet their mere presence caused the light-cluster lord’s furious spiritual fluctuations to freeze, as if doused in ice water.
An instinctive dread, the primal fear of a higher-tier predator or natural enemy, surged through it, mingled with the Black Giants’ eerie “suction”—their insatiable hunger for energy.
The light-cluster lord understood instantly: the true, lethal threat had arrived!
With no room for negotiation, the battle erupted instantly!
The light-cluster lord abandoned its pursuit of Jieming, its radiance flaring violently as it unleashed a relentless barrage of ultra-condensed heat rays and shockwaves upon the two Black Giant Priests.
The Priests, however, displayed terrifying speed and tactical coordination that defied their massive frames.
One engaged head-on, the black liquid on its body churning like a bottomless abyss as it devoured the incoming energy attacks.
The other melded eerily into the shifting shadows cast by the clashing light and dark. It struck from the void, each flash-attack leaving behind a sinister, energy-draining mark that accelerated the light-cluster lord’s power loss.
In the blink of an eye, the shockwaves from the clash between these sixth-tier creatures cleared the core battlefield.
Jieming seized the moment, using Phase Shift to blink a short distance, escaping the danger zone and reappearing beside Anya.
“Good coordination,” Anya remarked, her hands never ceasing their movements.
She commanded her Nature Spirit Army to fight the light-cluster legion in a chaotic melee, yet she refrained from using her signature “Vitality Attraction” wizardry.
“Is that move not very effective in crowd combat?” Jieming asked, noticing the pattern.
“Yeah,” Anya nodded. She threw a punch, shattering a fourth-tier light-cluster that had tried to sneak attack her, sending it flying back with its light dissipating. “When too much life is concentrated, the resulting vitality fields interfere and overlap, forming a ‘torrent.’ My ‘attraction’ gets washed away or diluted, making it hard to target individuals precisely. It actually drains more energy.”
As she spoke, she unleashed two lightning-fast kicks, bursting several light-clusters that had lunged from her side.
Only then did Jieming have a chance to carefully observe Anya’s fighting style: melee combat.
The silver-haired girl, who appeared so slender and delicate, was now fighting like a ferocious beast in human form!
Her movements were concise, swift, and precise, each punch and kick packing explosive power.
Even more terrifying was that her attacks seemed to directly shake the targets’ energy cores and life structures.
The light-clusters she struck didn’t just dissipate energy; their life force plummeted, as if some force had “shattered” the bond between their spirituality and energy from within.
Her physical strength had clearly undergone some unimaginable tempering. Even taking a direct energy blast from a light-cluster only caused a faint Nature Spirit-Light shield to shimmer across her skin.
Jieming quickly pieced together the reason.
How could the bodies of wizards, who were born with extreme affinity for and control over vitality and natural spirit bodies, possibly be fragile?
Abundant vitality itself was the best quenching agent and energy source. Their bodies were often the deepest and most unpredictable part of their power system, the ultimate citadel that bore all their innate talents and wizardry.
“It seems I no longer need to hold back,” Jieming smiled, looking at the army of light-clusters that surged toward them like a tide, attempting to break through the Nature Spirit defense line.
He took a deep breath and traced an arc in the air with his hands. Spatial energy began to fluctuate violently.
“Perfect. This is a good chance to test this move in actual combat.”
He abruptly flung his hands apart!
[Space Distortion]—small-scale release!
Vroom!
With a radius of a hundred meters in front of Jieming, the space within the area seemed to be violently twisted by an invisible giant hand!
Light distorted, and the scenery warped. The light-cluster creatures within this area emitted shrill spiritual shrieks.
The light-clusters within the core region, a radius of dozens of meters, were instantly torn to shreds by the violent space power, as if they had been thrown into an invisible meat grinder.
Their light completely extinguished, their spirituality annihilated.
The light-clusters in the fringe areas sustained varying degrees of distortion damage. Some had half their bodies torn apart, while others had their energy circuits snapped.
Most lost their combat effectiveness, falling to the ground with their light dimmed, leaving only faint life fluctuations.
With a single strike, thousands of light-clusters were either killed or wounded. The clearing efficiency was astonishing.
“You’ve researched spatial knowledge well,” Anya remarked with a glance.
“I’m still adapting,” Jieming replied, refusing to grow complacent. He continued to lock onto other densely packed areas of light-clusters, repeatedly casting Space Distortion.
He deliberately controlled the range and intensity, not seeking maximum lethality but aiming primarily to render the enemies combat-incapable.
At the same time, he continuously fine-tuned his wizardry model in actual combat, enhancing his resistance to spatial disturbances in this complex energy environment to make Space Distortion more stable and controllable.
Anya was doing the same. Her Nature Spirit Army and her own melee attacks were also focused on routing, wounding, and stripping the enemies of their combat capabilities; those who were truly and completely annihilated were actually in the minority.
For a time, the cave was filled with flashing lights and surging energy, as the howls of the Nature Spirits intertwined with the spiritual shrieks of the light-clusters.
But the scales of battle swiftly tipped in the wizards’ favor as Jieming and Anya efficiently “disarmed” the light-cluster legion, while the two Black Giant Priests in the main fray completely suppressed the light-cluster lord.
Though the light-cluster lord fought desperately, even attempting to detonate its core to take its enemies down with it, the two Black Giant Priests possessed extraordinary combat intelligence.
The moment the light-cluster lord’s energy began to compress violently inward, on the verge of detonation, the two priests—as if they had planned it all along—instantly closed in on it. Four palms, coated in black liquid metal, slammed simultaneously onto its most brilliantly glowing core region!
Energy Siphon: Full Power!
A terrifying suction erupted!
The light-cluster lord’s energy, which had been about to go critical, surged uncontrollably toward the two Black Giant Priests like a bursting dam.
Its self-destruction process was brutally interrupted, transformed instead into a “feast” that recharged its enemies.
The radiance quickly dimmed, and its size shrank drastically, eventually leaving only a light core the size of an ordinary human’s fist.
Gazing at the weakened light core, which now flickered with a dying spiritual light, one of the Black Giant Priests carefully imprisoned it within a stable force field in his hand.
With the light-cluster lord unconscious and captured, the morale of the remaining light-cluster legion completely collapsed.
Some tried to flee, some stood frozen in place, and others emitted waves of radiation in despair.
Jieming and Anya accelerated their cleanup, quickly defeating or imprisoning all remaining light-clusters that were still capable of movement.
The once deafeningly chaotic underground cave gradually returned to silence.
All that remained was the hum of residual energy and a ground littered with “prisoners” as dim as fallen stars.
Mission accomplished.
(End of the Chapter)