Chapter 146: Seventh-Rank Great Soul Master (Part Two)

“This is naturally impossible!”

Looking at Barick’s solemn expression, the corners of Vael’s mouth suddenly curved upward. He smiled at Barick and said, “If I possessed such an ability, I wouldn’t have waited until now to step forward and show it to you, Captain Barick, would I?”

“Then what on earth do you want? Keeping me behind specifically just to tell me these irrelevant things?” Barick looked at Vael coldly, waiting for his answer.

“This might seem irrelevant to you, but it’s different for me!”

While speaking, Vael clenched his palms, cast a casual glance at Barick, and through gritted teeth, said earnestly, word by word, “I truly cannot kill you right now, because I still lack the strength. But there is one thing I must tell you—even if you think it’s meaningless, it is necessary to me. The strength I lack, I will attain! And then, I will return here to take your life with my own hands!”

Vael’s voice was very soft, yet his tone was filled with an iron-clad determination!

Hearing Vael’s words, the corners of Grizzly Barick’s eyes suddenly twitched. Most people who uttered such words were spineless cowards who lacked any real power yet loved to take advantage with empty boasts. However, this boy named Vael was definitely not that type. Recalling the series of astonishing abilities the youth possessed, his headachingly stubborn personality, and a maturity completely mismatched with his age, the alpha wolf known for his iron-fisted cruelty decisively thought to himself, “This brat absolutely cannot be allowed to live!”

A grayish-white battle qi blade instantly manifested in Barick’s hand. He took just a single step toward Vael, but in that very instant, Vael felt his body pressed down by an overwhelmingly formidable presence, making even moving a finger feel exceptionally strenuous.

This was neither an illusion nor a bodily instinct of fear, but an actual oppressive aura pinning his body down completely. Vael raised his head with some effort, glanced at Barick, and sneered, “Do you think you can kill me like this?”

“I’m not killing you with just this. But at the very least, it can lock onto your position and restrict your movements, can’t it?”

Barick spoke very casually, as if chatting with an old friend, yet who could have known that this fellow had launched an attack in that exact split second! His speed was terrifyingly fast. By the time Vael noticed, Barick had already closed the distance to within three meters of him. Furthermore, the battle qi blade in his hand was a full meter and a half long. Combined with the reach of his own arms and Barick’s immense strength, a simple horizontal slash was all it took to easily cut him in half at the waist!

A distance of over thirty meters! Yet to someone like Barick, it was as simple as taking a single stride. Although Vael had guessed that Barick’s speed might be fast, he had never imagined it could reach such a degree! This speed definitely surpassed any soul master he had ever witnessed; even Pepero, who excelled in speed, could not compare!

“Boom!”

The white blade struck the ground directly, smashing a terrifying fissure into the earth. Shrapnel flew wildly and sand and dust filled the air. Yet Vael’s figure suddenly appeared beneath a tree fifty meters away from Barick. He gasped for breath, swept a hand across his neck, and found his fingers stained with fresh blood.

The dust gradually settled, and visibility cleared once more. Barick swept his gaze around the surroundings, finally locating Vael’s figure beneath a distant tree.

Fifty meters?

Barick silently estimated the distance between himself and Vael, arriving at this conclusion: this brat’s movement range was not unrestricted! At the moment of greatest danger, the reaction he made was undoubtedly the most genuine one. In other words, the maximum distance he could travel in a single instant was merely fifty meters!

A distance of fifty meters, by ordinary standards, could be considered quite far. But for someone of Barick’s strength, such a distance could be easily covered in just two steps.

“This is getting a bit troublesome…” Vael muttered inwardly.

Spatial teleportation was the most common type of space-to-space traversal magic within spatial magic. Depending on the length of the jump, the magic power consumed per execution varied. For instance, for jumps within two meters, given Vael’s spatial magic reserves, he could use it about thirty times. However, if the distance expanded beyond two meters, the consumption of magic power would increase drastically. For a long-distance jump of fifty meters like this one, Vael had already exhausted two-fifths of his total stored spatial magic power. Added to his previous expenditures, the remaining spatial magic power at his disposal was now a pitiful less than twenty percent!

At most, he could manage one more long-distance jump, or thirty short-distance ones!

Vael’s mind raced rapidly while his hands remained busy. A thin layer of water mist rapidly condensed and diffused around his body. Within moments, the light mist transformed into a dense fog, blocking most of Barick’s line of sight.

“The mercenary guild in Como City should be about one hundred and fifty meters away. Even if I try to obstruct him with magic attacks, given Barick’s strength, breaking through would be extremely simple. Calculating the time, I can probably buy about four to five seconds. If I can make full use of those short four or five seconds to swiftly retreat using wind magic, I can shorten the distance by seventy to eighty meters. That still leaves seventy or eighty meters of the journey. Even if I use spatial teleportation for a long-distance jump, I can only shorten it by fifty meters at most, leaving a remaining distance of nearly twenty meters…”

Vael’s brain was pushed to its absolute limit, calculating the time required for every subsequent action down to the second. Yet even so, the final result Vael calculated still fell short by a full twenty meters!

“Forget it. The furthest distance from here to the illusion barrier is only a little over a hundred meters. Based on this distance, although I haven’t reached my intended destination, I will at least have left this barrier zone. This place is too close to Como’s mercenary guild; no matter how audacious Barick is, he has to consider his own situation!”

Vael hardened his heart. His line of thought was essentially a gamble. He was gambling on the dignity of Como, the City of Mercenaries, gambling on Barick’s daring, and at the same time, gambling on his own luck.

With that thought, Vael gritted his teeth and prepared to execute his plan immediately. Yet at that exact moment, a ball of crimson-red flames suddenly burst through the distant fog. The scorching high-temperature blaze, combined with its violent impact, instantly scattered the surrounding dense fog, and the previously obstructed, hazy vision instantly cleared up.

This sudden turn of events left Vael frozen in place, utterly disrupting his meticulously laid-out plans. In his rage, Vael’s face turned a purplish-red. However, as the crimson flames gradually dissipated to reveal a charming figure within, Vael’s purplish-red face instantly flushed bright red. In the end, he simply widened his eyes, rubbed his throbbing temples, and groaned weakly:

“As expected… it’s her…”