Chapter 190: The Man Without a Name
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 190: The Man Without a Name
The Cult Leaders Xie Bai had encountered before usually had at least a brief introduction identifying them as a "Cult Leader of Chaos."
But the one standing before her didn't even have a description.
Furthermore, while previous leaders only possessed the "Chaos Affinity" talent, this one also had "Atheist."
This was a direct signal to Xie Bai that the man in front of her was anything but ordinary.
He seems much more unique than the other Cult Leaders of Chaos I've run into.
With that thought, Xie Bai raised Funeral Rites.
Even without the empowerment of the Authority of the Void, her base attributes—already in the hundreds of billions, bordering on the trillions—were more than enough to grind this Cult Leader into the dirt.
Clang—!
In an instant, the blade of Funeral Rites slammed into the longsword in the Cult Leader’s hand.
Just as he thought he had successfully parried the blow, the force surging through the blade suddenly exploded.
[Strength: 845.428 Billion]
Xie Bai’s base strength had reached a terrifying level of over eight hundred billion.
Factoring in the additions from Wrath's Blessing and Funeral Rites, Xie Bai could steamroll the Cult Leader of Chaos without even using a single skill.
Crack...
Fractures began to spiderweb across the Cult Leader’s body.
Faced with Xie Bai’s onslaught, he could do nothing but desperately hold his ground. He knew with absolute certainty that if this attack landed squarely, he would be killed instantly.
As he was forced backward, he finally managed to choke out a few words.
"Young lady, I believe there may be a misunderstanding between us. I actually have no intention of harming your friends..."
Before he could finish, Xie Bai’s voice cut him off.
"I was thinking the same thing—that you might have misunderstood something. I’m not actually worried that you could harm them..."
She paused for a beat.
"I simply want to kill you."
In a sudden burst, Xie Bai ramped up her strength.
Crack, crack...
More fissures erupted across the Cult Leader’s form.
Slowly, he began to buckle under Xie Bai’s sheer, raw power.
Bang—!
With a final swing of Funeral Rites, the Cult Leader was sent flying over a hundred meters, slamming violently into the far wall.
The massive, reinforced wall of the Dome Tower only showed a faint, hairline fracture.
Standing to the side, Ivy’s eyes widened in shock.
"That... I thought the Dome Tower was indestructible? It withstood the erosion of the Insect Plague for decades without a single scratch..."
And yet, the white-haired girl before her had used the Cult Leader like a piece of ordnance to crack the very foundation of the tower.
Thud!
The Cult Leader slid off the wall and crumpled to the ground.
To his credit, his HP pool was remarkably deep. Even after taking such a hit, he still had a breath of life left in him.
Just as Xie Bai stepped forward to finish him off, the shadows around them suddenly began to writhe.
Seeing this, Ivy quickly shouted a warning.
"That’s the shadow power he stole from Vesparo! Watch out, don't let him use the shadows to escape!"
Ivy was right.
The Cult Leader of Chaos still clung to a shred of consciousness, attempting to command the shadow power to carry him away from this death trap.
Xie Bai, however, simply watched his performance with unbothered calm.
Just as the shadows were about to fully envelop the Cult Leader, something strange happened.
After churning around him for a moment, the shadows seemed to recoil in disgust, spitting him back out and dumping him onto the floor.
[Respected Lord of Myriad Darknesses, I have reclaimed all shadow power. My apologies for the intrusion.]
As the shadows receded, they left this message in Xie Bai’s mind.
Looking at the Cult Leader lying prone on the ground, Xie Bai walked over and gave him a experimental poke.
Hmm... she couldn't see a health bar.
This either meant that this Cult Leader was like Gliese—someone whose existence couldn't be bound by a mere health bar—or it meant that the Cult Leader lying before her...
Was a fake.
Clang—!
A silver longsword suddenly whistled through the air toward Ivy, colliding with the Fate Cards protecting her.
Xie Bai’s eyes snapped toward the sound. The Cult Leader’s figure had abruptly appeared right next to Ivy.
Under the suppression of the "Atheist" talent, the power of the Fate Cards had been severely diminished.
After tanking the blow, a large number of the hovering Fate Cards were shredded in two.
Xie Bai immediately hurled Funeral Rites at the Cult Leader.
Whoosh—!
The moment it left her hand, Funeral Rites sensed her intent. It carved a wide arc through the air and smashed directly into the Cult Leader.
Boom—!
The Cult Leader’s body was blasted away by the impact, slamming into yet another wall.
Seeing that Ivy was unharmed, Xie Bai breathed a brief sigh of relief.
But in the next second, a shadow suddenly manifested beneath Ivy’s feet.
[Harmed by the envious, dragged into the shadows to die.]
A prophecy from the Fate Cards flashed into Xie Bai’s mind.
A split second later, a hand lunged out from the darkness, death-gripping Ivy’s ankle.
"What is this!?"
Before Ivy could react, a raspy, aged voice rang out.
"Ivy... you didn't expect this, did you? I didn't die after all!"
It was Vesparo’s voice.
After the Cult Leader had finished absorbing his power, he hadn't executed him. Instead, he had secretly cast him into the Shadow World.
The Chaos Core the Cult Leader intended to give him couldn't have been limited to the one in Little Gamie’s possession.
With a backup Chaos Core, Vesparo now wielded Chaos power several times stronger than before.
In that short span of time, he had even used the assimilation effect of Chaos to stain the entire Shadow World with its corruption.
After everything, the power of shadows had returned to his hands, stronger than ever.
But the current Shadow World had fallen into madness under the pollution of Chaos, transforming into a pitch-black, chaotic dimension akin to hell itself.
[It... it hurts... Master... save me...]
The consciousness of the Shadow World suddenly reached out to Xie Bai, pleading piteously.
Xie Bai instinctively tried to use the power of the Void to wash away the Chaos influence.
However, she suddenly realized that her Authority of the Void was still being suppressed by "Atheist" and couldn't be activated.
Wait... no, my attention was diverted?!
Xie Bai suddenly remembered that Ivy was still in danger.
She whipped her head toward Ivy and saw Vesparo’s silhouette stepping out of the shadows to stand directly before her.
He looked down at Ivy, his face a mask of mockery.
"Ivy, I’ve finally waited for this day. It’s strange—I’ve lived for five hundred years, yet these few years with you were the most humiliating. But it doesn't matter now. You’re coming with me to that shadow hell."
As he spoke, he prepared to work with the shadows beneath to drag Ivy down.
Seeing this, Funeral Rites acted on Xie Bai’s desperation before she could even move, lunging toward Vesparo.
Clang—!
Funeral Rites was caught.
However, it wasn't Vesparo who caught it.
Nor was it the Cult Leader of Chaos.
And it certainly wasn't Ivy.
It was a stranger who had appeared out of nowhere.
"Cult Leader of Chaos, you’ve truly surprised me. To think you actually managed to force me out in the end."
A cold, detached voice echoed through the space.
Xie Bai looked over to see a tall man with waist-length blonde hair.
He lowered Funeral Rites and casually reached out, grabbing the nearby Vesparo.
Then.
Snap!
Vesparo was strangled to death with a single hand.
Xie Bai stared at the man, momentarily speechless.
In the UI panel she could see, this man didn't just lack a description like the Cult Leader.
He didn't even have...
A name.