Chapter 99 Indulgence <TOC> Chapter 101 Sensory Deprivation
Translator: SumTLMan
Aernir galloped swiftly, its massive body transformed into a gray-black streak of lightning, racing across the ground at incredible speed. The gusts of wind it generated were akin to a hurricane, sweeping up withered grass along its path.
Pilate, who was straddling Aernir’s back, had returned to his human form, with a gloomy expression that could almost drip with substance.
After ascending into the cloud layer, he discovered that it was only about three meters thick, too thin to hide anyone. In fact, the disturbed clouds would reveal his position instead.
However, when he dove back down from the cloud layer, the entire airspace remained eerily empty.
The two heretics had escaped right in front of him, which was equivalent to at least two sun-level holy relics slipping through his fingers.
The mother bloodworm was emitting frantic chirps, clinging tightly to the skin behind Pilate’s ear like a flat tick.
“A bunch of useless fools!”
If possible, Pilate really didn’t want to go for the rescue, but these titled cultists and armed believers had followed him, and if the losses were too great, he would be punished as well.
Before long, he determined that the distress call came from the Ten Pines Farm, which made his heart skip a beat.
Although it had been confirmed that the Soul Pine could not be saved, if anything went wrong, he would still be held accountable by the Holy Priest.
Even devout believers could go insane from merely hearing fragments of communication with the Lord of Souls. Only after consuming the pine nuts of the Soul Pine could they communicate with the Lord of Souls to a limited extent.
Fortunately, Aernir’s speed was incredibly fast, and soon, he saw the Ten Pines Farm on the horizon.
The once-beautiful glass greenhouse had vanished, leaving only a pile of rubble on the ground.
Pilate was almost suffocated, nearly grinding his teeth to pieces.
Aernir suddenly came to a halt, its four limbs plowing trenches into the ground, and its long fur rolled up, emitting a deep roar.
This psychic creature sensed a powerful threat.
Pilate gripped his curved blade, narrowing his eyes warily. The enemy must be formidable if Aernir sensed a threat.
He noticed that all the subordinates he had brought were already dead, their bodies strewn across the ground. One person stood amidst the corpses, their back facing him.
Pilate’s courage rose, and he drew his curved blade, activating his holy relic and unleashing a strike.
This strike combined the power of Hidden Bone energy and the Desolate Wind holy relic.
A third-level awakened enhancer, if they cultivated their energy techniques to a certain level, could project their destructive psychic energy in the form of an external strike.
The destructive power of such a strike far exceeded that of a shaping-energy attack, albeit slightly less flexible.
The fierce blade energy immediately transformed into a howling pale whirlwind after leaving the blade, rushing towards the figure’s back.
The ground was directly cleaved by the slash, leaving a gash thirty meters long and three to four meters deep.
Corpses littered the ground, and as the wind swept them away, they instantly shattered, their moisture drained, leaving them desiccated and reduced to ashes.
This was the effect of the holy relic Desolate Wind, capable of creating a destructive gale that stole the life force and moisture from its targets.
Those who were caught in the wind, even if they managed to withstand the gale that could easily cut through steel, would still suffer from dehydration and weakness, losing their ability to fight and ultimately facing death.
The unstoppable blade energy cleaved through the silhouette, but the figure remained unchanged, as if existing in another world.
“An illusion?!”
Pilate cried out in surprise, never having expected to be deceived by an illusion.
His heart nearly burst – his opponent was a third-level psychic awakened!
Aernir let out an ear-piercing wail, opening his mouth wide and spewing forth an incomparably scorching torrent of Great Extinction Flames, powerful enough to incinerate everything in its path.
The raging Great Extinction Flames formed a circle of fire, surrounding them.
The pale Great Extinction Flames not only possessed extreme heat, but they also consumed everything they touched. The soil on the ground wasn’t heated red-hot, but was instead annihilated and transformed into a multitude of colors within the flames.
Driven by third-level psychic energy, the destructive power of the Great Extinction Flames was evident, capable of reducing matter to its atomic state.
Aernir’s large yellow-brown eyes stared at everything around him, his ears twitching uneasily.
“It’s that escaped diver!”
Pilate gripped the handle of his curved blade anxiously, guessing who the enemy was.
As a member of the team hunting divers, he was deeply aware of the cunning and terror of this particular diver.
The Holy Priest opened the gate to the depths of the Source Ocean, luring the divers out to feed the World-Ending Dragon.
He controlled the opening time of the gate, luring only a dozen or so divers each time, controlling them before proceeding to the next round of deception.
This gate was like a bonfire lit in the darkness of the night, attracting the divers hidden in the depths of the Source Ocean like moths to a flame, all sent into the maw of the World-Ending Dragon by the Holy Priest.
Somehow, this diver sensed the danger beyond the gate and managed to gather a large group of divers and source essence aggregates, bursting out of the gate in an extremely short amount of time, causing great chaos.
By the time the Holy Priest had dealt with the emerging divers and the source essence aggregates, he had long since fled.
Just thinking about the horror and eeriness of this lurking creature made Pilate’s heart clench.
His current condition could hardly be considered good, as he had expended more than half of his psychic energy in pursuit of the two heretics.
Despite this, he had no choice but to activate his energy technique once more, enveloping himself in a blazing aura of psychic energy.
“Aernir, can you smell him?”
Aernir let out a low growl, his gaze somewhat puzzled, for he had not detected any strange or unfamiliar scents in the air.
Pilate reached out, and a fierce, desolate wind erupted from him and Aernir, blowing in all directions.
Desolate Wind swiftly drained the life from the wild grass within several hundred meters, leaving it dry and withered. The wind carried it away, exposing the parched ground.
With no cover to hide behind, Pilate’s eyes rapidly scanned the surroundings, attempting to locate the lurking creature.
“Are you looking for me?”
A voice echoed.
To his horror, Pilate saw the fur at the back of Aernir’s head writhing and suddenly splitting apart. Countless fleshy tendrils emerged, transforming into hideous tentacles that lunged at him.
Pilate swung his blade to cut them, but abruptly stopped.
“You’re trying to deceive me! These are all illusions!”
A smug smile appeared on his face. The next moment, sharp tentacles pierced through his body.
Before Pilate’s smile could freeze, he looked down at his critically wounded body, and a searing, tearing pain surged through him.
“Ah!!!”
He let out a shrill scream and, with a single slash, severed all the tentacles that had impaled his body.