83 Assaulting The Flame

Darkscale's body began to expand. It was a very natural transformation, a rapid progression in size that brought the previously small serpent to the size of a big horse.

Cracking silver thunders began to emerge from his body, filling the air around him with creepy whispers and screams coming right from the bright power.

The snake's Devil Core seemed to explode with excitement, resonating with the anger that the serpent was feeling and pumping an obscene amount of power around him. In a few moments, he reversed in the air enough energy to completely fill his old Natural Hearth.

Normally the reptile would think it was a waste using that much energy: his Manipulation wasn't enough sophisticated to allow him to utilize correctly that amount of power. Plus, he truly didn't know any technique that required the use of that much energy. The only thing he could do with that Ghost Power was using it directly to enhance his body or try to roughly manipulate it in some forms of very primitive armor of attack.

No matter who, every rational being would have seen that as a great waste.

However, at that moment, the serpent's entire being was seething in anger. He didn't try to stop the flow of the silver energy that was pouring outside of his body. He even ignored the power that was now covering his entire body like some sort of flame, a very shaggy one compared to the one that was around the battered Star Leaf.

Two violet-silver eyes looked with hate at the white flame that was approaching. He could see a mocking expression on the ruined face of his Dao Companion, a dismissive smirk that he knew didn't belong to Star Leaf. That was Carelia.

The flame of fury inside of him exploded with even more violence. She dared to mock him!

"I will kill you."

Silver sparks shined for a second around his fangs, while he used his Fingers to weave words with Ghost Energy. His statement sounded like a simple comment on the weather. A statement of fact, a calm and clear commentary on what was bound to happen.

He sounded like if there were no other alternatives. There was no tension on his voice, it was serene, honest with no trace of the fury that shined in his now completely silver colored eyes.

He took a deep breath and then closed his eyes, ignoring the approaching danger of a Cultivator that was way stronger than him, even if badly injured. It took him a few seconds, but his ragged breath calmed down and his body stopped trembling. Even the thundering silver power around him looked like it had gone still. The filaments of power weren't fighting each other anymore, barely reacting while they bumped into one other.

Yet, the moment the dark-colored reptile and his power stopped to move, something else began to do it in their place: the ground. All the terrain around the serpent that started to tremble.

First, only slightly.

A light tremor, something that only the most sensible beings would notice. However, that slight shiver of the earth grew, and grew fast. In a few moments, it became so much serious that fissures began to form on the hard rocky terrain. Not much after that, there were deep wounds on the ground, forming a web of slash on the earth itself.

The giant serpent sat at the very center, his eyes closed, like a spider in the middle of his hunting ground.

"Mph!"

The energy that abounded around Darkscale - continuously expelled by his Devil Core that was still excitedly reading for a battle - seemed to suddenly start to converge towards the snake with a whooshing sound.

This sudden convergence of power formed a zone where Darkscale's aura was so thick and heavy that the ground itself started to cave under it. Rocks were slowly sinking into the earth, pushed by the pressure. Some even broke, unable to sustain the weight of the power that now filled every corner in the area. The cracks on the ground around the snake became wider, deeper.

A silver hue colored the air itself, forming something like a silver mist.

There were strange things on that weird fog. It acted like a canvas of some sort, were countless scenes of animals fighting, people in pain and creatures dying continuously alternated themselves. They didn't look right. They were colorless, silver silhouettes that mostly didn't have very many details on them.

Sounds that would make even the bravest Fire Earth marauder run away in complete terror, echoed around that mist. Whispers. Thousands of them. They all seemed to say different things, but they were so many that nothing specific could be actually heard. If one cared to listen to a singular voice he would perceive only senseless buzz.

Darkscale stood there, seemingly undisturbed by the creepy phenomena that were happening around him, a result of the presence of such massive quantity of Ghost Energy.

The white flame that was flying towards that zone seemed to be wary of that situation and slowed down. Carelia was maybe surprised by the incredible power the snake was emitting. After a moment of hesitation, the flying fire changed slightly direction. It kept moving at a slower velocity, making a wide turn almost if it wanted to circle around the serpent.

Darkscale's could still track her movements thanks to his smell sense and believed that Carelia was keeping some distance to wait and see what he was trying to do.

'I will show you.' though the snake, his fury growing each second he spent thinking about the traitorous MAID.

The eyes of the snake abruptly snapped open, and an irate smugness could be seen inside of those lucent silver iris. His gaze ran towards the white flame that was now only a couple hundred feets from him.

She was still there, in the very center of that moving inferno. The scents of pain and death and the horrendous swollen black veins were still there. Yet this time Darkscale seemed able to contain himself more. He didn't act, he didn't do what every cell in his body urged him to do: dart toward the incoming flame and tear Carelia outside of Star Leaf body with his Pretorian's Breath and the Heavenly Battleground Technique.

An entity without a body and with a cultivation base was a ghost. So Carelia was a ghost. Different from the savage and unintelligent creatures he had fought against and absorbed, but still a ghost of some kind. His vortex would definitely manage to separate the green haired human from a ghost, even one that still had intelligence.

But even if he had all these plans, all these ideas, Darkscale didn't act on them. He stood still. He seemed to wait for something.

'Almost There... here we go!'

Suddenly, a wave of energy exploded outward from the towering figure of the Devil, sending rocks and other debris flying everywhere and ruining even more profoundly the ground. As the cracks multiplied, even the runes directly under the snake were affected and became completely useless.

Not only he didn't stop the flow of Ghost Energy that came out of him, he summoned the new type of energy that he had acquired in this last adventure. The silver in his eyes started to be dirtied by a glowing purple light, while the silver energy around him was joined by a violet flame that ran all on his body without causing any harm to his lucent black scales.

Darkscale threw his head behind and opened his fangs. A loud roar shattered the space all around him as another pulse of energy pushed anything that was still around him away for hundreds of meters.

Yet when he ended the scream, the serpent didn't look at the clearing that he had created where he stood, but to the flame moving in the air. A strange light shining in his eyes.

Inside the white flame, Star Leaf suddenly coughed a large amount of black liquid. She didn't scream, nor did she insult or say anything at all, but Darkscale could see the surprise in her eyes.

Without waiting for anything else, he darted from his position with enough force to fracture the ground and cause a loud explosion of chunks of earth and rocks.

Darkscale had his eyes on the white flame in the skies and there was death in them.