Talent Awakening! Every Legendary Summon Grants Me Assassin Attributes-Chapter 40: The Hunt Offer 4 The anomaly

Oliver’s eyes narrowed, Racell weaving itself into his hands as he prepared for battle.

He was sure of it. This Disaster had once been human. As to how she had been turned into a Realm Monster, especially one as powerful as a Disaster-ranked entity—

Oliver was unsure.

But right now, the battle mattered far more than uncovering that mystery.

The Disaster was out of its shell, making the only advantage they had against it invalid. Now that it was no longer pinned to one position, it no longer stayed within a fixed range of attack. It could strike from anywhere, any angle, without warning.

"Fuck the plan!" Oliver summoned the Dark Crow, and then he charged forward at the Disaster.

[Activating Short Burst]

His speed doubled, allowing him to reach the Disaster in a few seconds. The world blurred past him as wind screamed against his ears. He lunged forward to attack—

However... 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Something strange had happened.

A tendril of the Disaster snapped forward, shooting toward Oliver’s precise location despite him being in Stealth. The horrid beast could sense him.

"Shit!"

Oliver crossed his two daggers, blocking the tendril and getting chucked backward several feet. The impact rattled his arms as he skidded across the grass, tearing up soil for several meters before finally coming to a halt.

"It can see through my stealth," Oliver snarled, his figure resurfacing back into reality. He straightened his stance, muscles coiling, and formed a battle stance.

Then he lunged forward once again at the Disaster.

The wretched fiend did not shift an inch from where it stood. Its main body—the woman,looked completely unbothered, or maybe even too dead to pay its attackers any attention.

However, its nail-like tendrils did.

Every single hit thrown by Oliver, Bai Mina, and even the Crow was blocked, parried, or deflected by the eight tendrils that moved with terrifying precision and lightning speed. Each clash rang out sharply, metal screeching against hardened flesh.

Bai Mina used her fists, coating them in surreal pink energy as she blocked the tendrils that came her way. When she attacked, she shifted the coating to a thick green energy, her strikes gaining a crushing force that allowed her to punch the incoming tendrils aside like they were nothing more than brittle branches.

Oliver, on the other hand, had changed his fighting style.

At first, he tried his best to get close and strike at the vulnerable woman held up in the air by the tendrils. But with the speed at which the Disaster’s blade-like limbs moved, there was no closing in...

At least, not for now.

With that realization, Oliver took a different approach—hurling his daggers toward the main body of the Disaster. Each throw was precise, deadly... and each one was immediately blocked by two of the dagger-like legs of the fiend.

Then he summoned the blood-sucking daggers and repeated the process. Again. And again. And again.

And thanks to this, he was able to keep at least three of its legs occupied, forcing them into constant defense, while Bai Mina handled two with relentless aggression.

That left three more.

Two were holding the body of the woman high up in the air...

And the final one was directed at the Dark Crow.

Oliver winced, sidestepping and barely evading one of the horrid legs of the Disaster as it slammed into the ground, cracking the earth apart.

"It’s all up to you, Crow!"

The Dark Crow screeched, not taking its master’s words lightly.

It dove down from the sky, tearing through the air at a blistering pace. The wind howled around it as its wings cut through the darkness.

At once, a tendril shot upward to intercept it.

SWOOSH!

The Crow veered away from the massive torrent of force the tendril carried, narrowly escaping being skewered mid-flight.

But it wasn’t out of danger yet.

The tendril twisted unnaturally mid-air and surged forward again, trailing the Dark Crow from behind as it continued its descent toward the main body of the hideous fiend.

There was no doubt, the grotesque limb would reach the Dark Crow before it could even lay as much as a claw on its target.

This was a battle of speed.

One the Dark Crow had failed three times now.

However...

This time, it was different.

After its master’s command, there was no retreat. No hesitation. To hell with failure—it would not back out without disrupting the atrocious fiend.

Just a few more seconds...

The Dark Crow pushed itself harder, diving faster than it ever had before. Its wings strained, feathers trembling under the sheer pressure of acceleration.

All it needed was to be faster than the tendril.

Just one second faster...

Just one—

SPLOOOSH!

The Dark Crow screeched in agony as the grotesque limb pierced through its wing just before it could reach the main body.

Its claws barely scraped against the hair of the suspended woman.

At that moment, the woman, who had maintained a blank, lifeless expression—slowly formed a smile.

A twisted smile.

As though she... No ’it’, was enjoying every moment of their struggle... their failure... their wasted effort.

As if, no matter what they did—

It was going to win.

It couldn’t have been more wrong.

[Ding!]

The head of the main body jerked around violently, its expression shifting into something else entirely—

Despair.

[You have used Shadow Travel]

BOOM!

From within the thick shadow of the Dark Crow’s feathers, Oliver suddenly emerged.

His eyes burned with bloodlust so intense it seemed to distort the air around him. His figure bore down on her, hands stretched forward and in both of them, his demonic blades...

Racell.

"Fuck you!"

Oliver struck.

His blades plunged into the eye sockets of the Disaster, sinking so deep that their tips burst out from the back of the creature’s skull with a sickening crunch.

It screamed.

A horrifying, guttural sound.

The monster jerked backward violently, thrashing in the air while Oliver clung to it. His legs wrapped tightly around its neck for leverage, while his hands held firm to his daggers.

It shook wildly, trying to throw him off. Each motion violent enough to tear a normal man apart.

But Oliver endured.

His body screamed in protest, his insides churning as if they would spill out, yet his grip never loosened.

He didn’t even look like he felt it.

If anything...

He looked worse.

More feral.

More monstrous.

With a sharp motion, he ripped both daggers free, even as he was being flung through the air. And without hesitation, he drove them deep into the throat of the horrid monster.

Racell’s poison took effect almost instantly.

The pale, grotesque body of the Disaster began to darken, veins turning black as its flesh shriveled, as though life itself was being drained from it.

Nonetheless...

It was a Disaster.

It wasn’t going down without a proper fight.

Bai Mina, seeing this, smiled.

"I guess if he’s using his best... it would only be fair if I use mine too."

She raised her hand, pointing her fingers like a gun.

Red streaks of energy began to gather at her fingertips, condensing rapidly into a fist-sized sphere. It glowed brighter and brighter, emitting a sharp, whistling sound that pierced through the battlefield.

"Get off the old bitch, Crow!" she yelled, firing the concentrated blast.

It shot forward like a bullet—

No.

Faster...

Stronger.

The air itself exploded around it as it tore through space, leaving behind a distorted trail as it surged toward the Disaster’s main body.

Seeing this, Oliver released his leg lock around the monster’s neck. He pushed himself off with his boots—

Just in time.

BOOM!

The blast struck.

A violent explosion of wind and crimson light engulfed the battlefield as the searing beam tore through the upper half of the wretched fiend like paper. It continued into the sky for several seconds before detonating high above.

The night sky lit up in a brilliant, burning red.

For a few seconds, it looked like dawn had come early.

Then—

Darkness returned.

Oliver exhaled slowly. ’Such a powerful attack... let’s not get on her bad side for now.’

He groaned as he fell back-first onto the torn earth, grass and soil cushioning his impact.

They had won.

[You have duo hunted an S-Rank Disaster Anomaly]

[Disaster: Thorny Princess]

[You have leveled up]

[You have leveled up]

Oliver furrowed his brows in curiosity at the flood of notifications that filled his status screen.

Then, anxiously, he spoke—

"S-Rank anomaly?"