“Astes…” Seeing the scene in front of her, the golden beauty was also somehow saddened as her eyes turned redder.
“Eh, why are you crying apprentice-sister…? No need for that, we’ll probably see each other again anyways! There, there… stop crying now…” At first, Virus was a bit surprised by this unexpected turn of events, however, he stopped thinking about it and raised his hand as he patted her head while she was still hugging and wailing inside his embrace.
.
.
.
Around thirty seconds passed when Astes was finally calm as she separated herself from that position and muttered, “I… I’m sorry junior brother… it just makes me really sad thinking that I might never see you again, so…”
“It’s okay, apprentice-sister, no need to explain… I understand because I’m feeling the same.” Displaying a somewhat bitter smile, Virus voiced.
Afterward, she and the golden beauty also said their farewells when it was finally the time to part.
“You can return now, apprentice-sister, we can go by ourselves from here onwards…” Virus stated with a smile since they just needed her to leave so they would be able to board on their spaceship and fly away.
“No, I want to watch you two leave first and then I’ll return.” Shaking her head, Astes denied.
‘Sigh…’ As this sight went through Virus’ head, he uttered, “Okay then, but return as soon as we disappear from your line of sight… this place is dangerous for a girl to roam around alone at this time of the night.”
“Alright…”
After looking into her eyes for what seemed like an eternity, he finally showed him one last gentle smile before turning around and leaving without uttering a single word like ‘Goodbye’ or ‘See you again’.
Astes remained there watching the two slowly leave her line of sight as she slowly mumbled in a sad tone, “So he… really left.” However, no tears appeared in her eyes anymore as she turned around and left after muttering something under her lips, “I have a lot to do.”
.
.
.
After making sure Astes was no longer visible to them and that she was definitely not following them, Virus uttered, “This place should suffice…”
Then, he was just about to make the invisible spaceship above them land in front of them when the sound of laughter began reverberating inside the woods in their current location, “Hahahahahaha…”
“Who is that!” As his eye-brows turned extremely sharper, Virus shouted.
Simultaneously, connecting to his ring, he sent a direct command to it, ‘Trigger Median Configuration – Fragmentary Integument!’
Instantly, his arms and legs were covered in pitch-black scales, however, this was not the end as he sent another two commands to it, ‘Divide Initial Configuration – Machine Gun!’ ‘Explosion mode!’
And the next moment, a long triggerless futuristic-looking machine gun which had blood-red lights in some parts of it began to take shape on his hand.
By now, a type of unknown energy was also long released from his body as it had already covered a specific area all around him.
The golden beauty too was also in front of Virus as she was cautiously watching all around them in extreme alarm, waiting for the person to come out and so she would defend her master in case that enemy tried to sneak attack on them.
‘Hmm, there is no one in my range of sight…’ Virus thought next as he waited for that person to come out by himself.
“I’m up here, hahaha…” Once again, hearing the voice which obviously belonged to that previous person, Virus and the golden beauty both raised their heads as they looked toward the sky above them.
At first, they could find no one in their line of sight… no matter how hard they searched the area around them.
However, that changed soon enough as they were able to perceive a dot getting bigger and bigger in their eyesight and finally, it was close enough for them to discern clearly that it was actually a person flying in the sky above then and it was slowly coming their way.
“Haha… junior Vee, this adept has been looking forward to personally meeting you.” Stated the other person who was still floating right above Virus as he continued looking down on him.
Seeing the features of the other person clearly, Virus began to search through every database belonging to everyone from the moment he had arrived at the cultivation Earth.
And not even a second later, he found the result he was looking for as he remembered this man was previously sitting among the elders in the elders’ area.
“I see… so you must be an elder of my sect, but what business does a powerful elder like you have with me, a weak junior? And why not just directly come to me in the sect?” With an intense light of vigilance coursing through his eyes, Virus questioned.
“Sigh, I’m no elder of your sect actually… I’m just a temporary guest elder sent by…” At this point in his sentence, he stopped talking before continuing about another topic, “Haha… anyway, this adept was passing by your pagoda earlier and was lucky enough to hear an interesting conversation between you and your senior sister and that should reply to your last question…”
‘Tch, so you were spying on us…’ A frown sat on Virus’ face as he opened his mouth once again, “I see… what interesting conversation might you have heard, guest elder?”
At this point, his expression turned a lot more serious as he uttered, “Hm, that you’re leaving for good.”
Then without waiting for Virus to talk, he continued, “And that’s why I had to meet you here…”
“I see… well, I have some urgent matters to attend to at home… but no worries… I’ll be back soon. It’s just temporary. We’ll talk then if it’s okay with you…” Staring into the other person’s eyes intensely, he stated in a tone that no one would sense any falsehood in it.
“Hahaha… I understand… however, it doesn’t matter anymore, since…” At this point, putting a pause to his sentence a weird grin displayed itself on his face, which instantly greatly alarmed Virus as he understood clearly what the guest elder was going to say next and what was going to happen next, so not even waiting for him to finish, raising his Machine gun with the fastest speed he could, he directly gave it the command of shooting continuously!
Bratatat~
The next moment, lines of red lights began to shoot toward the guest elder, however, how could the guest elder who had previously seen clearly what kind of weapon Virus wielded just wait there in order to be shot down?
‘Although I’m not sure if it would be able to injure me… it’s better if I dodge… just to make sure.’ As this notion had passed through the guest elder’s mind, he began to move out of the place Virus was going to aim at before the barrel of his gun was even close to it. This was a simple prediction skill for him as he only needed to avoid the place Virus was targeting with just the right amount of speed.
In the meantime, even though he was busy dodging the machine gun, that weird grin on his face still continued to display itself as he voiced in a rather loud voice, “Hahaha, junior Vee… it’s so rude of you to stop an elderly from talking… sigh, let me finish my words… haha… I wanted to say ‘it doesn’t matter anymore… since none of you will go back or return anymore!’ Haha…”
“Reverse Soaring Claw!”
At the same time, as he mumbled the name of his attack, without moving from his current floating location in the least, he made his hand take the shape of a claw as he only waved that claw very gently.
And shockingly, as a result of that, as he began to wave that hand of his, an immense amount of Qi began to gather right in front of his palm which soon took the shape of a gigantic claw and started to shoot down toward Virus and the golden beauty in an speed so quick that almost neither of them could show any kind of big reaction to it.
Well, actually, with their monstrous thinking process, both of them could clearly see the incoming massive claw toward the two of them, however, unfortunately, none of their bodies could show enough reaction that would make any difference.
All Virus could do now was to bring his scaled arms in front of his body so as to try his best in order to avoid any kind of mortal injury on himself.
Still, even with this, after he made a quick calculation, he realized his arms couldn’t cover the whole radius of the attack and it was still going to gravely injure him.
‘Sigh… it seems I’m going to be wounded very badly this time… it’s almost upon us now… it is…’ At the same time, just as these sentences were passing through his head, something extraordinary happened which made Virus’ contemplation stop entirely as his eyes open widely.
Because… he witnessed the golden beauty use the little amount of movement she could make… not in order to lessen the amount of injury she would receive… but to move in front of the open spot of Virus where according to his calculation he was going to be mortally wounded from.
‘Lil Belle…’ How could Virus not understand that doing this would greatly increase the amount of injury she was going to receive and he was certain that she was clear about this too.
Boom!
