Martial Era: Starting With The Strongest Talent-Chapter 102: Elven Bloodline

As Adam approached the man, he didn’t hesitate.

He raised his hand and delivered a sharp slap across the Acolyte’s face.

SMACK!

The force sent the man staggering sideways. For a split second Adam thought he might have overdone it, until the Acolyte straightened, looked at him with clear eyes, and broke into a wide grin.

"Thank you!" the man said sincerely, before sprinting off toward another section of the battlement to rejoin the fight.

Adam watched him go.

The man wasn’t a masochist. The reason for that gratitude was simple: the slap had broken the illusion and disrupted the evil pixies’ hold on the man, snapping the false reality apart.

Adam stepped into the spot the man had been occupying and slowly looked around.

The battlefield... was empty.

Now where could those pesky insects be? His nose suddenly twitched.

"Hh’TSH!"

Adam sneezed.

"Hh’TSH! Hh’TSH!"

He sneezed again and again before realization dawned.

Fucking insects.

The evil pixies’ talent, Illusion G for mob units and Illusion F for elite units, worked through pixie dust. Once inhaled, it wrapped the target’s senses in fabricated reality, trapping them in illusions while the pixies hid in plain sight.

Adam had been caught in a partial illusion.

The battlefield looked normal, but the pixies themselves were hidden inside that illusion.

He kept sneezing, irritation building, but his senses stretched outward, probing, searching. It would only be a matter of time.

Then, mid-sneeze, Adam moved.

His scythe swung suddenly, as it met resistance at first before...

SCHLK!

The blade passed through completely.

An evil pixie materialized midair, its pale skin even paler than normal as its tiny body split apart and dropped lifelessly to the ground.

At that moment, Adam felt it.

Fear.

He smiled.

"So that’s where you all were."

The illusion thinned and the air shimmered. More pixies appeared. Faint, translucent outlines flickered in and out of visibility, a sign that Adam was already adapting to their tricks.

Adam didn’t hesitate.

He moved.

In a blur of black steel and precise swings, he cut them down one after another. Elite evil pixies fell without resistance, their tricks rendered useless as Adam carved through their hiding places with cold efficiency.

On another stretch of the battlement, Abigail, Dickson, and the rest of their group were locked in brutal combat.

Martial spirits manifested across the line, their imposing presences fighting in tandem with their wielders. Technique after technique was unleashed in seamless coordination, monsters falling in droves as essence flared and collided.

The anchors of the group were clear.

Abigail and Dickson.

Wooden vines suddenly erupted from the stone beneath Abigail’s feet, twisting upward to ensnare her. But her fan was already in motion, her five-star profound spirit mirroring every gesture. Wind blades tore outward, shredding the vines into splinters. The wood tiger responsible didn’t hesitate, as it lunged at her. Its reflection flashing briefly across Abigail’s sunglasses.

Her essence surged.

"Wind Impact."

Her martial spirit swung its fan.

Once.

A massive wind blast slammed into the lunging tiger, halting it midair and throwing it backward. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Twice.

The second strike crushed it into the ground, the impact cracking stone beneath its body.

Three times.

The third swing obliterated it completely, the monster exploding into fragments of shattered wood.

Abigail didn’t even look back.

She was already moving toward the next target.

Beside her, Dickson was a force of pure momentum.

His gauntleted fists blurred as Enhancement — F raged through his body. True to its name, it amplified everything, strength, speed and resilience, bringing him on par with most unranked level-2 monsters despite not yet being an official martial artist.

Adam might have reached the apprentice rank first, but that didn’t mean Dickson was weak.

His enhanced fists were weapons in their own right. Every punch sent monsters flying, each impact followed by another, then another, until the target finally collapsed under the relentless assault.

Unlike Adam, who fought alone, the group covered each other constantly, rotating positions, intercepting threats, ensuring no monster gained the upper hand.

But even teamwork had limits.

A single gap opened in their formation and a gargoyle slipped through, diving straight toward Dickson.

The moment he turned to intercept it, their eyes met and the gargoyle’s special talent activated.

Petrification F.

In an instant, Dickson’s body froze, as his skin turned to stone mid-motion, his expression locked in shock.

"DICKSON!"

Abigail screamed his name at the top of her lungs.

The entire group saw it. Their eyes widened, but they couldn’t look away for long. Monsters pressed them from all sides, forcing them to keep fighting.

The gargoyle didn’t slow.

It charged at the petrified Dickson, claws raised, aiming to shatter his stone body into countless pieces.

Abigail didn’t hesitate.

"Philip! Cover me!"

She was already moving before the elf could even answer.

Abigail disengaged from the giant rats she was fighting, turning her back on them completely. Under normal circumstances, it would have been suicidal.

But this wasn’t normal.

She trusted Philip.

And she had good reason to.

The moment the rats lunged at her exposed back, a pressure exploded outward from the elf. Philip’s elven bloodline awakened fully, essence surging as his three-star profound spirit, an elven warrior, manifested behind him. His black iron–grade sword drank in that essence greedily.

For an instant, time seemed to slow.

To everyone else, the giant rats were fast.

To Philip, they were crawling.

His bloodline flooded his senses with impossible clarity, every muscle twitch, every shift in weight, every trajectory processed at once. The world sharpened.

His lips parted.

"Sword Dance."

Philip vanished.

Afterimages filled the air as he moved, his blade flashing through the rats that had been moments away from tearing into Abigail. Heads fell, bodies split, blood sprayed across the stone and the threat was erased in a heartbeat.

Philip reappeared several steps away and dropped to one knee, breathing hard. "My mastery... is still not high enough," he muttered, frustration clear in his voice.

Unlike the small number of humans who possessed special talents, members of the Essential Race did not ’awaken’ them. Instead, they awakened their bloodlines, which were tied directly to their species.

Unlike a special talent, a bloodline’s power could be increased through mastery and because Philip had low mastery over his own, he rarely used it. Even so, the result was undeniable.

A large cluster of monsters lay dead around him, not just the rats, but several others caught in the sweep of his technique. Seeing the opening, some members of the group immediately shifted positions, moving in to guard Philip and give him room to recover.

As for Abigail...

She was already there.

The gargoyle loomed in front of her, claws raised, its petrified prey just behind it.

Her sunglasses reflected its stone face as her grip tightened on her fan.