Chapter 71. I'm Drowning
"Starfall Sword Art, Opening Form: Ascension!"
The words fell, and the sword's montum blazed like a rainbow!
The "Chosen Hero" Anya Sivans dropped into a low crouch, her blade sweeping upward from below, tracing a crescent arc of starlight.
The girl's sword technique arrived in an instant — before it could even react, the crescent sword-scar split open its desecrated body.
"*@&#..!??"
It shrieked in pain, its six arms thrashing through the air as if to pound Anya into pulp.
"Heh." The girl let out a cold laugh, her gaze sharpening as the next move flowed naturally from her intent.
"Second Form: Star Flash!"
Anya planted her feet in seven steps, her figure splitting into three afterimages as she surged forward.
And at the tip of the sword held in her true body's hand, a single point of cold light burst into being — driving straight into the six massive arms flailing wildly at her.
The sword-light pierced effortlessly through the joints of those huge arms, forcing it to pause its wild swings, inky black fluid welling up to nd the damage.
"Not done yet! You ugly wretch!"
The blade drew back, Anya's figure ca to a montary halt, breath settling as the fire in her eyes blazed bright.
"Third Form: Splitting Light!"
Phantom and sound moved as one — the blade in the girl's hand vibrated at a high frequency, seven sword-beams splitting through space simultaneously, their slashing trajectories twisting into chaotic, bewildering patterns, scattering its perception in a single breath.
"Confused now, are you, idiot!"
So then... try this one next.
As Splitting Light faded and a vortex began to gather, Anya seized the gap while it was still disoriented and its wounds unhealed — she rose, closed the distance, twisted at the waist, and her sword beca a vortex as she spun and slashed out a spiraling sword-aura.
"Fourth Form: Vortex!"
"&..#@!!"
It howled in anguish. The six arms on its body were gradually shaved away and stripped off beneath the vortex wrought by the sword technique, until they dissolved into pools of black sludge across the ground.
By now, it had been utterly stunned by Anya's chain of consecutive moves — all six arms severed clean, its entire body collapsing to the ground with nothing left to support it.
And at the stumps where those six arms had broken, black fluid continued to writhe.
It was regenerating.
Naturally, Anya recognized its intent. She understood clearly that she had to press on in one unbroken surge and finish it off completely — otherwise everything she'd done would be for nothing.
With that thought, the girl gave her sword a light flick, condensing her Battle Aura into her calves and toes as she bent her knees into a crouch.
"Fifth Form: Falling Star!"
With the words spoken, Anya's body launched upward — she planted her foot on the crown of its head and kicked off in an instant.
When she reached the highest point, the girl twisted her form in midair, sword-tip aid downward, the blade igniting in a crimson stellar fla.
"Battle Aura — Overlay!"
Seeming to feel the height wasn't quite enough, Anya condensed every last bit of her Battle Aura into her right arm and extended it along the blade — like a star cleaving through the heavens.
The blade pierced precisely through its skull. Anya felt sothing inside shatter.
'Sothing like a core, probably?'
Crack, crack—
The teorite-crater shockwave that erupted tore the ground into a web of fractures, and black fluid splattered outward in the rush of air.
Anya adjusted her stance and cleanly withdrew her sword. She let out a long breath and examined the wretch she'd chained to death with her full sequence of moves.
"Surely it's dead now, right?"
"That's actually the first ti I've used five out of the seven forms back to back."
The girl flexed her right arm slightly. "Hss... Using five forms in a row — the burden's still too heavy. Feels like my right arm might be broken..."
Anya gritted her teeth against the pain and turned, walking to where Luo Nan lay — still uncertain whether he was alive or dead. She crouched down beside him.
She didn't open her mouth to say anything. Instead, she reached into the Spatial Storage Magic Device she'd happened to obtain and pulled out a pile of potions.
They were Recovery Potions of varying quality — including the one of the highest grade that Luo Nan had given her before she'd entered this underground space; she hadn't finished it back then, and there was still a fair amount left.
"Tch... Lucky you, I haven't even gotten paid yet, and I have to use up nearly my entire stockpile on you."
The reason it was nearly her entire stockpile was because the rest of Anya's savings still existed in the form of Faras and Surs — which seed rather useless at the mont.
She pulled out the stopper, extended her left hand to support Luo Nan, and tilted his head to rest against her.
Temporarily suppressing the peculiar, ticklish sensation of the man's thick black hair prickling against her, she endured the searing pain from her right arm and fed the unfinished, highest-quality Recovery Potion to Luo Nan.
"You absolutely cannot die... If you die, who's going to pay
those 10 Faras."
After one vial went down, the girl found no sign of the darkness at Luo Nan's chest receding or closing over.
She pursed her lips, picked up another vial — one of her own purchased potions, of considerably lesser quality — and fed it to Luo Nan a second ti.
"You're getting a bargain here..."
"Wait, I almost forgot — I think this one's for external use."
Only after the potion had already reached Luo Nan's lips did the girl belatedly realize that the vial in her hand was a topical redy.
She imdiately withdrew it from the corner of Luo Nan's mouth and poured it instead over his chest, which had already been stained through with that pitch-black darkness.
"Dead horse, living doctor... External dicine — that's the only way I know how to use it."
"Still nothing... This one is..."
Vial after vial — the girl poured and tipped every last potion she'd carefully stockpiled into and over Luo Nan's body, internal and external alike. Her movents were chanical, without a mont's hesitation.
"That's it — all of it, every last drop used on you. Four Faras' worth of potions, all told."
She couldn't help but give Luo Nan a pat on the cheek, as if trying to rouse him.
"Stop sleeping. Get up and pay."
"Hey — Luo Nan von dillion. You're not trying to skip out on the bill, are you? I'm just saying, a rich young noble lord like you — do you really need to be this stingy? Playing dead just to save yourself 4 Faras?"
"That money of mine..." Anya's nose twitched, her lashes trembling faintly as those beautiful golden eyes drifted toward the distance. "Is it really not coming back?"
"Cough, cough..."
Splatter—
Luo Nan felt as though he were about to drown!
Just monts ago, after making contact with the Infinite Tree, he could sense his body being gradually nded beneath threads of that endlessly iridescent radiant light — his torn, shattered soul and body restored whole once more, and in certain respects, carried even further than before.
But what followed imdiately after was a sensation of having fallen into a river, of being subrged beneath a rush of water!
‘What's going on?!’
‘Am I seriously being thrown into a river right now?!’
Luo Nan struggled to reclaim control of his body, wrenched his eyes open abruptly, and without a mont to even register his surroundings, let his stomach convulse — opened his mouth — and heaved.
He had to get the filthy water he'd swallowed back out!
Splash!
Anya, who had been staring absently at the hazy black mist in the distance, suddenly felt a chill wash across her face — followed imdiately by the mixed scent of various potions flooding her nostrils.
The girl's head snapped downward in a series of stuttering jerks. She had no ti to wipe away the liquid dripping down her face. Her golden eyes locked, unblinking, onto Luo Nan — still lying in her arms.
When their gazes t — his peach-blossom black eyes staring back at her — and she realized that this man looked entirely rosy-cheeked and perfectly fine, the veins at the girl's temple throbbed, and her upper and lower teeth chattered without stopping.
She drew a deep breath, doing her best to keep her voice level. "Hey... Finally done pretending, are you? Luo Nan von dillion?"
With that, the girl's expression went blank as she wiped her face with one hand, then shook off the liquid — Luo Nan's body fluid — with undisguised disgust.
Not only that, she could feel the front of her shirt was soaked through as well — probably drenched by the spray he'd expelled along with everything else.
Luo Nan had only now fully taken in his surroundings. Finding himself cradled in the girl's arms, he instinctively turned his head, puzzled.
"Anya? What happened? Did I drown? Did you fish
out of the river?"
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