In the furious melee pitting six Red Shoulders against two human warriors, it was nearly impossible to even catch sight of Wu Xu and Weize.
Until—*boom!* A dull roar echoed from a full-force collision.
The cluster of Red Shoulders shuddered and froze in unison.
Meanwhile, the silhouettes of Wu Xu and Weize flew backward through the air. Mid-flight, they relied on Wu Xu's source energy gravity field in a desperate attempt to touch down as quickly as possible and dig in their heels.
They had failed. Because the six Red Shoulders were clustered in an ironclad knot, they had not managed to secure a single kill in this exchange.
Yet they had already poured everything into it. Wu Xu in particular had fought like a cornered, ravening beast, yet he still could not alter the trajectory of what was to come.
*Pfft!* His body's self-regeneration was steadily falling behind the rate of damage. Unable to hold it back any longer, Wu Xu bowed his head and spat out a mouthful of fresh blood.
When he lifted his head and turned, he saw Weize looking at him. He had known Weize would look at him at this moment—an unspoken understanding shared between two men of few words.
"Let's do that," Weize said in a hoarse voice, devoid of expression or tone.
In truth, they had discussed a tactic earlier—one that genuinely had a chance of wiping out this pack of Red Shoulders in an instant.
It was only because Wu Xu had been so reluctant to execute it that he had fought this clash first.
Wu Xu had failed.
They were out of time.
Their eyes met briefly. "Mm." Wu Xu gave a faint nod.
Next, Weize would die. Yet even so, Wu Xu's simple "mm" carried no inflection or emotion whatsoever.
Because men like them were largely devoid of illusions, nor were they accustomed to fretting or agonizing. Once they had tried their hardest and it truly was not enough, they accepted the worst possible outcome with composure. Death, after all, was merely death.
Weize's trait was death qi.
This was something Han Qingyu had known and witnessed back when he was at the top-tier. When they fought back then, Weize's death qi invasion had inflicted nothing more upon him than a slight loss of life source energy and a brief impairment to his mobility.
No one had anticipated that once Weize ascended to super, his death qi trait would evolve into something so monstrous and horrifying.
This was also why Stream Vanguard had concealed Weize's breakthrough until now—the threat he posed to any powerhouse in the world was simply far too great.
An instant kill across at least half a tier.
By this logic, the vast majority of combatants below the top ten of the Dome Leaderboard would die if they crossed paths with Weize. Even the top ten were not safe; even a half-step Beyond Dome powerhouse could fall into severe, temporary exhaustion under the assault of his trait. At such a moment, coordinated with another super-level combatant, a kill was highly probable.
As for facing the few Beyond Dome figures... Wen Jifei had once put forth a chilling deduction: Weize might well be the person best suited in the entire world to assassinate Chen Buer.
Because Chen Buer was currently in a state where his life source energy was depleted, while Weize's death qi trait specifically amplified damage against life source energy by multiples.
Weize was a lethal weapon.
Yet the limitation inherent to this weapon was equally immense.
A normal super's trait continuously strengthened alongside the growth of their own power, the refinement of technique through repeated use, and personal trait development.
Weize's trait also grew stronger, but through a brutally simple mechanism: every single time he used it, it grew stronger, escalating without end.
A normal super's trait came with aftereffects—mild ones like effeminacy or baldness, severe ones like amnesia or madness.
Weize's trait also had an aftereffect: death. Guaranteed death within ten uses.
Put simply, fighting with his trait was a process of self-destruction.
Each time Weize deployed it, the death qi inside him would proliferate, and with that growth, the trait grew more potent... But that substance was called death qi. Its flourishing simultaneously signaled the continuous withering of Weize's own body, until he was completely consumed by that swelling tide of death qi, marching toward death.
Before coming to Antarctica, Weize had used his evolved trait only once. Fresh off his breakthrough to super, driven by excitement and curiosity, he had used it to kill a wild boar.
Afterward, during their early days in Antarctica, he had been sternly warned never to use his death qi trait.
Until Stream Vanguard arrived beneath the tractor field.
In this fight to the death, Weize had already deployed his trait four times.
A total of five.
His bodily functions were spiraling steadily toward total collapse... Not even Weize himself knew whether he would perish on the eighth, ninth, or tenth time.
Stripped of his trait, Weize was merely an ordinary super who had only recently advanced. Facing a coordinated knot of Red Shoulders, he had not managed to carve out a single opening for a kill in the previous clash.
Through conventional combat, they had no way to shatter the Red Shoulders' battle line.
Now, Wu Xu would focus entirely on creating an opportunity for Weize—an opportunity that might wipe out six Red Shoulders all at once.
It would be the final strike of Weize's life.
***
Across the tumultuous battlefield, swarms of Great Spikes wheeled and shifted. The fighting on the front lines raged unabated; facing outward, the warriors braced themselves against the ceaseless onslaught of the horde.
Behind them—*whoosh!*
Once more, Wu Xu erupted. Blade in one hand, Binggu Spear in the other, he plunged toward the pack of Red Shoulders.
He allowed himself to be encircled.
The six Red Shoulders formed a wide arc, striking at him simultaneously.
*Buzz!* The source energy gravity field engaged at full strength.
This was not the first time Wu Xu had deployed his gravity field in this battle. It could not crush Red Shoulders outright the way it did ordinary Great Spikes; it could only hinder and slow their attacks.
Moreover, when exerting a gravity field of this magnitude, Wu Xu himself was unable to attack—he could not even move smoothly.
This meant that inside the field, Wu Xu himself was in the greatest danger of all.
Thus, the previous two times, he had activated the field only to stall the Red Shoulders for a split second, voluntarily dropping it as soon as the immediate crisis passed.
This time, Wu Xu did not drop it.
He stood dead in place, driving his source energy gravity field with every ounce of his power, blood bubbling continuously from his lips.
Six Red Shoulders, six column swords, converged all at once upon his nearly paralyzed frame.
Being slowed by gravitational drag did not mean they moved in slow motion. Their thrusts were merely sluggish compared to their normal speed; on a battlefield, they were still far too swift for an ordinary warrior to block.
Hence, there was only a split second—a single chance to strike.
If Weize hesitated for even a fraction of an instant, Wu Xu would die on the spot, utterly in vain.
*Whoosh!* The roar of an explosive burst and the shrill whistle of displaced air sounded from Wu Xu's flank at the same time.
He did not look. Weize's entire body went rigid and horizontal in midair, carving out a sharp trajectory.
Leveling his massive battleblade, he swept it toward the napes of the clustered Red Shoulders arrayed in a fan...
Weize could not hack them to death—slaying even one required a substantial amount of time, and Wu Xu could never endure that long.
He did not need to slay them. A shallow cut was enough.
*Schrrk!* The sound of a blade tearing through iron armor rang out.
The first Red Shoulder collapsed.
Then the second.
The third...
Weize's body shifted through the motion. He already resembled a living corpse; now, it was as if he were acting out the rapid desiccation and decay of a dead body before their very eyes.
The fourth.
Still alive.
Having lost all sensation, carried along solely by inertia, his body continued the strike.
*I will die very soon.*
Deep down, a fierce jolt of happiness seized Weize.
At that moment, the column swords of the fifth and sixth Red Shoulders were already bearing down on Wu Xu with irreversible momentum.
*Don't worry that there won't be time, or that you can't dodge the sixth one, Wu Xu. My trait is so strong right now... I'll take them both down with me,* Weize thought at the very end.
The blade in his hands continued its sweeping arc...
*Chilong!*
A sound thundered from far to near—perhaps it had already rung out moments ago, only now catching up to their ears.
The scene resembled a combine harvester running at breakneck speed through a vast field of wheat.
Except the harvester was a single man.
And the "field of Great Spikes" was pitch-black. Foul blue blood erupted into the air, presenting a sight that was anything but beautiful.
No, perhaps there was a touch of "beauty" to it after all.
A streak of soaring pink.
Stream Vanguard's moth-to-the-flame badge had originally been pink. Later, unable to bear it, Han Qingyu had taken the lead in dyeing his dark red, and most of the male soldiers followed suit. Only a small fraction, alongside the female soldiers, kept the pink to annoy everyone else.
It was not until this Antarctic expedition that the entire army, women included, uniformly dyed them dark red.
They still harbored an affectionate familiarity toward the color pink.
Yet before this, the entire force had been united in their loathing of one particular man with fluttering pink hair.
That man had arrived.
The terrifying true strength whispered about in rumors from the Western Front—that Pegmunt had suddenly grown powerful enough to confront and even hunt down Daie—was displayed before the eyes of the Stream Vanguard warriors for the very first time...
He tore open a straight corridor along the flank of the Great Spike swarm.
His speed was so staggering it seemed instantaneous.
The last two Red Shoulders in front of Weize vanished.
To be precise, they had been cleaved into four pieces and sent hurtling through the air.
*Bang!* Weize crashed heavily to the ground. His body was shriveled almost like a thousand-year-old mummy, leaving him temporarily unable to move. Yet he was not dead; his death qi assault, that final and most powerful strike, had found no targets left to hit, and thus had never been released.
Wu Xu looked at him first, then turned his head, utterly stunned.
Drenched in the blue blood of Great Spikes, Pegmunt stood there with his blade held level in one hand, blue gore dripping from its steel.
"...Where's that bastard?!" After sweeping the area with his gaze, Pegmunt bellowed at Wen Jifei.
Wen Jifei stared at him, then at the plowed corridor behind him, hesitating for a second.
"I took a detour and passed your previous battlefield. The ground was littered with Great Spikes impaled by blades—was that his doing? How did he pull that off?!" Pegmunt demanded.
"Ten thousand dead iron weapons flew in together, blasting into the swarm," the Little Prince chimed in.
"...What kind of nonsense is that? I can't do that!" Pegmunt thought it over, then grunted, "Bah, whatever. In any case, for now, I suppose I'm still not quite as strong as him—just a little short."
*Even so, when it comes to butchering ordinary Great Spikes, I should be plenty fast too.*
"He's not here? Gone to chop Daie, right?!" Pegmunt seemed in a tremendous hurry, giving neither the Little Prince nor Wen Jifei a chance to speak before barking out another question.
"Yeah." This time, Wen Jifei finally managed to respond with a nod.
Then, with a sharp *whoosh*, Pegmunt moved.
Like a bolt of lightning, he burst outward, carving a horizontal line clean across the front of Stream Vanguard's outer perimeter. Then he pivoted, charged another stretch, and pivoted again...
At the nine o'clock position, the pressure crushing down on the warriors vanished in an instant, leaving a vast empty clearing before their eyes.
Although subsequent Great Spikes continued to wheel around to fill the void, with an attack interval of no more than two seconds, those two seconds were more than enough for every warrior in Stream Vanguard's battle array to gape in dumbfounded shock, sweeping counterclockwise along the line.
Wen Jifei was gaping.
The Little Prince was doing the exact same thing.
In their ears and before their eyes:
*Chilong! Chilong! Chilong...*
Circling the ring of Stream Vanguard's battle array, Pegmunt sprinted straight ahead like a supercharged harvester, making sharp, rapid turns to trace out a crisp, regular hexagon...
Along this hexagon, he charged!
Once, twice...
***
The clearing expanding continuously amid the black mire of Great Spikes was finally noticed by the Rejectors.
"What is that?" someone asked in the observation room.
"No idea," others replied.
"It's Pegmunt. Pink Peg," Ashleia murmured into her communicator, staring blankly. "He's darting back and forth through the horde... back and forth... weaving... like another God of War."
At the same time, the Little Prince glanced sideways at Wen Jifei.
"Is he stronger than Qingzi?"
Wen Jifei wore a contemplative expression. "Depends on how you measure it. Compared to that scene of ten thousand blades paying homage earlier, his current showing is probably still a notch below..."
Still, no matter how one looked at it, was Pink Hair now in the same weight class as Qingzi at his peak?
Come to think of it, on that Hope List, Azure had ranked the two of them side by side as humanity's two greatest hopes for the future.
Yet before this, the guy had clearly seemed like nothing special. Wen Jifei did not believe a man of Pegmunt's temperament would deliberately conceal his strength on a battlefield like this.
Just what had happened to him?
Chapter 829