"Uff… Ufff… Uff…"
Resting her body weight on her sword while resting both hands on the hilt to steady herself while the tip of the blade was firmly buried in the earth, Shangguan Bing Xue gasped for air.
Her light silver, almost white hair was a mess. Her ever-clean appearance was almost completely gone, her face flushed and sweaty as the breastplate of her armor accompanied the steady movement of her chest in a seemingly eternal rise and fall.
Even so, there was no doubt that rather than looking bad, she looked great. It was just that the cold and indifferent type of beauty was nowhere to be seen anymore and had instead been replaced by a seductive type of beauty that was extremely rare to find.
All around her were countless corpses and if one were to look down from the sky one would see a single clear standing dot surrounded by countless small lines and jagged dots belonging to severed limbs and body parts.
"Are you okay?"
Shangguan Bing Xue slowly raised her head and her sky blue eyes filled with exhaustion met a pair of night-black eyes filled with vigor.
"…You… How… Don't you ever get tired?" She asked amidst her gasping breaths.
"…" Bai Zemin did not reply and instead surveyed the surroundings serenely.
Unlike the battlefield Shangguan Bing Xue had fought on, the place where Bai Zemin was standing was a real mess. She had fought on the right and he on the left, both of them protecting each other's back and not allowing any enemy to manage to hurt the other even at the risk of suffering some injuries in the process.
The battlefield where Shangguan Bing Xue had fought her battle was practically covered in a light layer of frost, unlike the battlefield where Bai Zemin had fought which was even now covered in blood as the earth seemed to have difficulty absorbing so much in such a short time.
"… How long will it take for us to finish them all off?" he asked in a low and calm voice.
Although Shangguan Bing Xue was right now several meters away as she had to go in search of the last enemy, the natural silence of the place made it easy for his voice to reach her.
Shangguan Bing Xue took several deep breaths, and after feeling better, she finally straightened her posture and pulled her sword out of the ground before she started walking towards Bai Zemin.
"I'd say it was 20 minutes at most." She replied as she stood next to him and surveyed the surroundings with a glint of awe, "I still find it hard to believe that we wiped out such a large army of soul evolvers in such a short period of time."
In about 20 minutes, the army of asuras that had arrived with the intention of crossing the spatial rift to reach Earth had been completely annihilated with the efforts of Bai Zemin and Shangguan Bing Xue.
100,000 enemies: 60,000 of them Unclassified existences, 40,000 of them First Order existences, and finally 20 Generals leading the army in total with the power of Second Order existences.
"We really can't allow this race to reach Earth or it will be the doom of our human race." Bai Zemin said calmly but brimming with murderous intent. "The lineup of the army we just defeated could easily have crushed all of China and with enough time, the entire world."
"Oh?" Shangguan Bing Xue looked at him with a playful little smile and asked, "Are you suggesting that you are the most powerful existence of all mankind?"
"Of all mankind?" Bai Zemin scoffed and said sarcastically, "I doubt there is any living being standing on Earth capable of standing up against me!"
The playful little smile on Shangguan Bing Xue's face slowly receded when she heard those words. She frowned slightly and said in a slightly worried voice, "Bai Zemin, hasn't your behavior been a little strange lately?"
"Strange behavior?" Bai Zemin muttered and frowned.
In fact, he suddenly felt that his current behavior was out of place. Just like it happened when he was facing the army of asuras on Earth, for some strange reason he felt unbeatable and invincible and even though he instinctively knew that thinking like this was not right, there was something inside him that told him that it was natural to think like this when in reality he knew that such an attitude was anything but normal.
"… Let me check something." He said as if he had thought of something. Then he pointed out, "Protect me in the meantime, it might take me a couple of minutes."
"Okay. Leave it to me." Shangguan Bing Xue nodded and took a step forward, protecting him behind her.
Bai Zemin closed his eyes and began to surf through his records. From the beginning to the end, it took some time as he needed to see what things had changed the problem before moving on to the core problem.
Sure enough, within 5 minutes, Bai Zemin noticed how his records had been altered; especially the records around his personality. But what surprised him most was that these changes were becoming weaker and weaker and his original records were slowly returning to normal; a speed that increased tremendously once he became aware of the change influencing him.
'Where the hell is the problem…. Is it?' Bai Zemin suddenly remembered that there were still a few things he needed to check and quickly slipped into his recently obtained records.
This also took some time as he had to search through the records of hundreds of thousands of enemies until he finally found what he was looking for since he didn't know exactly what his target was.
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[Savior of the World (Title): Increases your battle power by 20% when facing enemies that invade the world you were born in or a world under your rule.]
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Bai Zemin finally became enlightened and understood the reason why he had felt his overall strength increase tremendously out of nowhere back then. However, it was still far from being the reason why his personality was altered so he continued searching and finally found the problem.
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[God of War's Will (Third Order passive skill) level 5: This skill activates automatically when enemies that threaten the user's well-being are detected with a range limit of 300 meters. Reflexes and reaction speed increase dramatically. You get 0.1% extra attack power for each enemy detected and you get a 1% increase in your attack power for each enemy killed up to a maximum of 65%. The effect lasts 30 minutes and the timer is reset to 0 unless there is an enemy upgrade during the time limit. Secondary Effect: Stamina consumption is halved when facing enemies that outnumber you by a ratio of 1000 to 1 or when the effect of the title 'Destroyer Destroyer' is active.]
[Second activation: This second activation is called God of War's Partial Possession and is automatically activated when the user's bloodlust reaches a certain peak. Increases physical and magical attack power by +800 points. Secondary Effect: Increases the user's pride enormously to the point of disdaining enemies even if they are more powerful and increases the user's self-confidence exponentially.]
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Bai Zemin finally found what the high point was and could not help but sigh in his heart.
God of War's Will skill was truly worthy of being a powerful peak Third Order skill. This skill was the evolution of the skill Blood Will and apparently Bai Zemin obtained it when his synchronization with his First Order job reached the maximum possible.
The enemy detection range tripled compared to Blood Will. Not only that, the attack power increase limit went from 50% to 65%, which was a tremendous increase. But most impressive of all was that the side effect where Bai Zemin lost extra Stamina under Blood Will mode had not only disappeared but had improved immensely!
As long as his enemies outnumbered him by large amounts, the Stamina consumption on his part would be reduced by 50%! Such a thing was simply insane! Considering how monstrously high Bai Zemin's Stamina stat was currently, he could easily fight an army of a few million for days and nights without exhausting!
As for the second activation called God of War's Partial Possession, Bai Zemin felt mixed emotions about it.
An increase in magical and physical attack power of +800 points was basically equivalent to a Rank 1 weapon of the highest quality. If to this was added the physical attack power of a melee weapon or the magical attack power of a staff, then the results of each attack would be several times more powerful than normal!
Unfortunately, all good things came with bad things in most cases and this case was no exception.
By greatly increasing Bai Zemin's already high pride, the second passive activation of God of War's Will skill was practically closing off all his routes of retreat. After all, an overly proud person would never step back from a battle. Worse yet, this second activation also boosted his already elevated confidence to even higher levels, which could consequently cause him to end up underestimating his enemies; something that could bring about catastrophic results.
Of course, by increasing his pride and self-confidence, Bai Zemin would also have other problems… Like, for example, dealing with women. If it were the past, he definitely would not have given Shangguan Bing Xue the unusual looks he had been inadvertently giving her throughout the battle, but now, it seemed to be the most normal and natural thing to do.
And all this being that the Brilliant Mind title was weakening the negative parts of this second activation by 10% for the most part! Bai Zemin didn't even want to imagine how terrifying all this would be were it not for him miraculously obtaining that title while creating a new combat skill!
Bai Zemin sighed again and slowly opened his eyes. It had only been about 10 minutes since he had plunged his consciousness deep into his soul in search of every record so considering that the enemy seemed to need at least a few hours to organize each army it should be all right.
In fact, Bai Zemin was right. The enemy indeed needed at least an hour of time to organize the troops they would send on the next expedition since for obvious reasons they needed to make sure that those sent were more powerful than those who were defeated previously.
However, there was something that both he and Shangguan Bing Xue overlooked.
When Bai Zemin opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was that the corpses surrounding him were now nowhere to be seen. The next thing he noticed was that the ground was almost completely destroyed and the only safe area was the two meters around him.
Frost and ice shards were everywhere along with strange pieces of metal that were too large even to be part of a sword. In addition, there was black-colored blood that sizzled occasionally when it came in contact with the ground.
Screeee!
A cry of pain and anger shook his tympani and as he raised his head he saw a giant eagle in mid-air writhing uncontrollably.
"That's…" Bai Zemin's eyes widened and his pupils quivered slightly. "Second Order peak…" He muttered in shock.
The reason for his shock and unease did not stem from the giant eagle's strength; Bai Zemin could crush such a monster in no more than a few breaths. His uneasiness stemmed from the fact that only he possessed the power to deal with that beast!
Then, he saw a small, wound-covered body plummet from the sky.
Bai Zemin's body moved on its own, reacting much faster than his mind did. The ground beneath his feet broke out and his body soared dozens of meters in an instant to finally catch the falling delicate body.
"Finally… You opened your eyes…" Shangguan Bing Xue looked at him with exhausted eyes. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth and her face was so pale that she looked extremely pitiful.
For the first time since the apocalypse began, Bai Zemin felt his heart ache to see the condition she was in.
He couldn't see the pride that was so characteristic of her anywhere, all he could see was pain as her brows furrowed slightly and small grunts escaped from her mouth.
"Hehe… See?… It wasn't a bad idea to bring me with you…" She laughed ignoring the pain. She laughed like an innocent little girl instead of an arrogant and proud woman.
However, Bai Zemin couldn't care less about all this. His eyes were immediately drawn to the wound on Shangguan Bing Xue's chest and his face turned pale as a sheet as he saw how tremendously bad the condition was.
The armor of Rank 1 had been completely crushed in that area, exposing the body inside. But far from being met with a beautiful scene, what Bai Zemin saw made his blood run cold.
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