Chapter 181: Fastest Kill [400PS Bonus Chapter]

All three beasts screamed at the same time.

The sound layered over itself, the shrill sound somehow amplifying as it moved through the air.

Without wasting another second, the beasts dashed towards them.

Lukas had expected them to be fast, but he hadn’t expected them to be this fast.

The Chilopodas crossed the sand in a low, skimming rush, their twenty legs cycling in rapid sequence, their bodies staying almost flat to the ground as they came.

The distance between them closed faster than it had any right to.

Akira was already moving. She stepped forward, [Temptation] in her hand as she walked directly toward the beast on the left.

She didn’t run. She simply walked with her eyes fixed on it, a wide grin on her face.

"Finally!" She brandished her sword, and without looking back, said to Lukas. "Don’t you dare interfere."

Melody moved at the same moment, angling towards the beast at the center. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

As she walked, she raised her arm and activated the [Chameleon Bracer] on it.

Her body flickered once, then shifted, the color draining from her clothes and skin and replacing itself with the deep red of the sand around her.

Her outline buzzed, making it a bit harder to see her. She was still there if you looked directly at her, but only just.

Karrakas took a step forward to face the last beast, but Lukas put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

He looked back to see a smile on Lukas face.

"I take care of the third one," Lukas said, and walked past him before the man could argue.

The third Chilopoda was coming in fast, its leg-tips cutting small lines in the sand with each stride. Lukas watched it close the distance and thought about [Smite].

Everytime he used it, he risked drawing more beasts towards them. And if he kept slamming energy into the sand, the number of beasts that would come would keep climbing.

So what he needed to do was take this fight off the ground.

With an exhale, he dashed forward.

Sand exploded behind his boots as he accelerated, closing the gap between himself and the beast in a straight line.

The Chilopoda almost stumbled as the person he’d been dashing towards seemed to disappear.

By the time it realized what was happening, Lukas was already behind it.

He grabbed the last leg on its right side with both hands, planted his feet, and pulled upwards with his strength.

The beast was jerked off the ground, all twenty legs cycling at nothing, its body twisting as it sailed upwards into the open air above the desert.

Lukas activated [Smite] three times.

The bolts hit the beast in sequence as it hung in the air, each one cracking through the shell. By the third impact, the shell had split apart across its full length, its innards exposed and spraying through the air

[You have killed an E-rank Razor Chilopoda]

Lukas’ eyes were on the beast, watching it as it fell, carrying the momentum of the attack that had slammed into its body.

If it managed to land on the ground, it would send a giant spray of sand into the air, and the impact would create a wide vibration.

Lukas timed it carefully, stepping forward and pressing his hand to the beast before it could hit the sand.

The corpse vanished, appearing in his spatial ring.

He straightened and turned around, a smile on his face.

As for Akira, she kept walking towards her own beast, eyes narrowed as she studied its movements.

When it was close enough, it dug its front legs into the sand, throwing up a spray of red as it killed its momentum.

However, the rest of its body snapped towards her from the side, curving forward like a whip, intending to use its razor legs to gore her, and the momentum to take her off guard.

It would have worked if they’d used it on someone whose name wasn’t Akira.

The razor legs swung at her, aimed at opening her up from shoulder to hip.

Akira crouched as the bottom half of the beast’s body lifted off the ground.

With a grunt, putting her weight behind the attack, she drove [Temptation] forward in a stab.

The blade punched through the underbelly of the beast as its own momentum pulled it onto the sword. Blood sprayed through the air as the sword sank deeply through the thin shell.

The beast screamed. Its legs went into a frenzy, scraping hard across her armor, the razor tips dragging lines across the dark metal without finding a gap.

She felt the pressure of each strike but nothing more than that.

She straightened her arm, then jerked the blade to the side, dragging it along the full length of the beast’s underbelly in one long tearing motion.

The beast split into two halves, both halves separating and dropping into the sand on either side of her.

[You have killed an E-rank Razor Chilopoda]

She crouched and pressed her hand to the nearest half, storing the corpse in her spatial ring. She stood, rolled her shoulder once, and checked her armor.

The third beast had broken away from the group during the fighting and was dashing towards Karrakas, its legs churning up the sand.

Then, out of nowhere, a sword speared through its eye.

The blade punched through the socket and into the brain in a single strike. The beast dropped without a sound, its legs folding all at once beneath it.

Melody crouched beside it, stored the corpse, and stood up.

She turned around with her chin raised. "Fastest kill on the Second Floor among the three of us," she announced. "That record is mine."

Akira opened her mouth to argue, before shrugging.

Karrakas stood where he had been the entire time, his mouth open, staring at each of the three of them in shock.

"What the fuck?" He said aloud. "Are they actually new Adepts?"

He shook his head slowly. "Whose geniuses are these?"