Return of the Mythic Bloodline-Chapter 402: Taranis vs Astrid II

Murderous Intent

Murderous intent was the invisible pressure formed by a cultivator who had taken many lives. Each death left behind a trace of hostility and wrath within the soul, which attached itself to the cultivator who had killed them. Over time, these traces merged with the cultivator’s Soulforce, forming a terrifying aura capable of suppressing any being in a lower realm than themselves.

Cultivators often used murderous intent either to deal with lower realm beings without bothering to use their actual Soulforce, or amidst battle with opponents of a similar realm to disrupt their minds.

Murderous intent, although powerful, came with its own drawbacks. The wrath and hostility of the souls that the cultivators had taken would never leave them alone. They would hear constant, unsettling noises, suffer from anemia and nightmares, and in the worst cases lose all sense of reason, becoming senseless killing monsters. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Murderous intent could only be utilized by cultivators who had reached at least the Eternal Sage Realm.

Taranis, although he had killed thousands, could not form murderous intent yet, as he also needed to reach the Celestial Realm to be able to use it.

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While unleashing a furious barrage of attacks on Taranis with his arm blades laced in Sword Aura, Astrid continuously released murderous intent to disrupt Taranis’s mind.

"The Skill: Unshakable Mind resisted the Murderous Intent!"

"The Skill: Unshakable Mind resisted the Murderous Intent!"

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"What’s happening?" Astrid muttered inwardly. "I clearly have the advantage, so why do I feel so restless? Tsk, I need to finish this battle as quickly as possible."

Astrid increased the intensity of his blades, spinning his body and swinging the dual blades with terrifying precision and velocity.

Taranis, of course burning with fury, appeared completely calm under the barrage of attacks, thanks to his helm that concealed his emotions. Being a whole major realm below Astrid, Taranis knew he would not be able to block his attacks, and neither did he try to.

The spars with Aruma, whose depth of strength Taranis could not even gauge, had taught him how to perfectly dodge the attacks of someone stronger than himself.

His eyes read every movement of Astrid’s muscles, the trajectory of his blade, and the angle at which it had been swung, allowing him to cleverly evade them by barely a nail’s length.

Each time Astrid thought he had him, Taranis would narrowly escape.

Becoming desperate, Astrid decided to change his tactics.

In a sudden motion, he swung both of his blades toward Taranis from one direction. Taranis raised his sword to block the attack. However, just as the twin blades were about to clash with Taranis’s sword, they instantly shrank, slipped past the blade, and extended again, reaching for Taranis’s neck.

The sudden move caught Taranis off guard. Knowing he would not be able to block it, Taranis used Blink to retreat. But just as he began to move back, Astrid’s blades extended once again and pierced through Taranis’s armor, plunging into his stomach.

The grey blades of Astrid turned crimson as Taranis’s blood began leaking out.

With a loud roar, Astrid jolted his arms outward, ripping Taranis’s guts open. A waterfall of blood spilled outward, turning the ground below crimson. Before more blood could be lost, a bolt of golden lightning materialized in Taranis’s hand, which he wiped across the wound. The skin melted from the heat of the lightning and sealed the injury, stopping the flow of blood.

The stench of burning flesh filled the air, and smoke vaporized from Taranis’s stomach.

Forget about a scream, not even a groan escaped Taranis’s mouth as he used this terrifyingly painful method to stop the bleeding.

The method sent an unsettling, revolting feeling through everyone who witnessed it. Even Aurelion could not help but frown upon seeing what Taranis was becoming.

"He is a fucking monster," Astrid muttered. "I need to end this quickly."

One of his hands returned to normal while the other transformed into a massive warhammer, with an aura twice the size of the weapon wrapped around it.

It had taken everything Astrid had just to pierce the armor Taranis was wearing. The armor was strangely resilient, capable of defending against attacks even from Eternal Sages, which was the reason he chose to use a hammer instead of blades.

As he rushed forward, a flow of Soulforce entered Taranis’s blade, turning it from silver to gold. No energy emitted outward, and no lightning flickered on the blade. It was as if the blade had always been golden.

"Pay for what you did to my brother!" Astrid roared as the massive hammer came crashing down upon Taranis like a meteor.

"Sword Aura: Lightning Slash!"

A sharp arc of golden lightning emerged from the swing of the blade, striking the outer energy barrier of aura surrounding Astrid’s weapon.

"Hah! Is that laughable golden blade your sword aura?" Astrid retorted, increasing the strength behind his hammer.

Slash!

A dull thud echoed, followed by a loud scream as the shaft of the warhammer was sliced into two by the lightning slash.

Astrid’s arm returned to normal, but the portion beyond his wrist was missing, which he clutched tightly in pain.

"H-how is it even possible?" Astrid demanded. "What trickery did you use to overpower my Aura?"

Unlike him, the Sect Masters of each sect who were witnessing the battle knew better. Their mouths hung open and their eyes widened in disbelief.

"He always manages to surprise me," Barbatos chuckled, shaking his head.

"Hm, this is what I call truly elegant," Tartaglia said, his face hidden behind an intricate hand fan, with only his ocean blue eyes visible.

"Th-this is Perfect Sword Aura," Titan murmured, shock clear on his face. "This must be why you were so confident in the Prince, Master Robert."

"The surprise is mutual, Lord Titan," Robert replied, equally astonished. "I only knew he could use Sword Aura, not that he could wield it in its perfect form."

Their reactions were not exaggerated in the slightest. All the Sect Masters were more than a hundred years old and at the late stage of the Eternal Sage Realm. They were well aware of the conditions required to attain the state of Perfect Sword Aura. Even with their immense talent and decades of cultivation, none of them had managed to achieve the perfect form of Sword Aura.

Not just them. No one in the entire Western Continent had been able to wield Perfect Sword Aura, with the sole exception of Voltrex El Thunderbane.

And now, just like his father, Taranis, barely twenty five years old, was breaking the common logic of cultivation.