85 The Determination of a Devil

Darkscale didn't speak during his attack. He didn't try to tease the fake AI or boast of his success.

The serpent had a pretty neutral expression on his triangular face while he coiled on himself like a spring. His body kept folding on itself until he began to feel pain and only then he bounced in the air.

The snake's body was like a black cannonball surrounded by white and violet flames, shot towards the white flame in the sky.

Inside the latter, the woman wearing the green haired girl's body did see him coming, but she seemed unable to do anything. It looked like she was struggling in pain only to maintain herself hovering in the air and keeping her energy from completely dissolving into a silver mist around her.

This was not that good for her, but incredibly positive for Darkscale. With nothing to try to block him or attack him during his assault, he managed to get near to Carelia.

At the moment before he was about to crash into her flame, his mouth opened and he spat out the little vortex he had previously prepared.

With a whooshing sound that echoed for miles, followed by the crackling noise of dozens of thunders, the whirlpool suddenly increased sizes several times becoming a large dark singularity with wide silver thunders running all around its body.

The vortex connected itself with Star Leaf's body and using that link Darkscale maintained himself in the sky. He wasn't flying, he was simply binding himself to someone that could fly.

If the vortex lost his connection with Star Leaf, he would fall back to the ground and the same would happen if he lost his connection with the vortex, even if for a single moment. He was well aware of that and he knew of the consequences of losing his connection with the vortex or with Star Leaf: death.

The fall itself wouldn't kill him, nor even harm in any way considered the extraordinary resistance of his Devil body. No, that wasn't the problem.

The problem was that if he fell to the ground, he would have surely lost his last chance to make a move against Carelia. He couldn't believe for a single second that she would ever give him another opportunity to rise up and try to separate her from the Forest Will Tree's girl.

Nor he did believe that the state she was in now was something that would continue for much longer.

The snake's eyes were calm, but he recognized the danger he was in at the moment. He had one chance. One single chance. That was all.

The armor of Energy that he was wearing scattered gloomy silver thunders all around him. Each one was made by pure Ghost Energy that didn't dissipate in the air but started to move around him, like a protective barrier.

With that protection in place, he poured all himself into the vortex, operating his Heavenly Battleground Technique and his Pretorian's Breath like he never did before.

The whirlpool was so full of power that it started to deform things around it. It looked like everything near it began to bend, things started to be forcefully transformed into a mush of shapeless colors.

'You're done.'

After a moment of resistance, the white flame started to lose parts of itself to the vortex. The whirlpool roared with a loud explosion when the first chunk of white flame started to be absorbed.

Darkscale eyes lit up. It was a single instant, but it happened. The serpent felt a profound sense of uneasiness overwhelm him. His body tensed up, and while he maintained a superficial look of placid and serene calm, internally he was between incredulous and terrified.

'This is… too much…'

Darkscale had truly bitten more than he could chew this time. His rage had put him in probably the most precarious situation of his life. Only now he started to truly realize the gravity of the situation.

Those white flames. Those damned white flames! There was a single way to describe them: ridiculous! The sheer amount of energy hidden inside those things was indescribable.

'It's way too much!'

If before he had a general sense that the energy inside those flame was very high, now that he had absorbed a portion of them, he felt that it wasn't simply high: it was insane!

If he compared it with his own, it was at least six times the entire power that ran in his veins and core. At least! Maybe it was even more!

'Dammit!'

The serpent didn't know how she could mask the power of her energy so greatly. Maybe a technique? Not that did matter now.

'How am I going to absorb all this energy?'

Darkscale continued to operate the technique, but his will started to falter: how he was going to reach the soul of Carelia if he couldn't even manage to absorb all the energy of her defensive flame?

His eyes, now deep in silver with a faint hue of purple, pointed themselves beyond the vortex and the distorted space around. There he found the red-eyed Star Leaf, still unmoving.

Dark liquid continued to pour out from the green haired girl's mouth while the Ghost Energy that surrounded her was absorbed inside Darkscale's vortex.

Not that she seemed to care much: Carelia did nothing to help her own Supreme Energy from being taken away.

If she wanted, she would be able to hinder his progress of absorbing it: If she decided to use even a fraction of her concentration to operate the flame of Ghost Energy, Darkscale would have needed way more power and time to take it away from her. Plus, if she used her entire consciousness, the serpent probably wouldn't be able to even put a dent on her defenses. The flame would simply swing under the power of the whirlpool, nothing more. His entire assault would be a complete fiasco.

Yet, she did nothing of that kind. Probably she was still overwhelmed by the Corrupted Bloodline.

A flash of understanding made the serpent eyes to glow with a lucent light. Now he did know why she didn't feel pressured to respond to his attack: the traitor knew that he wouldn't be able to pull his plan off!

Yes, Carelia must have already understood what was his plan. She was the one that changed his Heavenly Battleground Technique to work for his Devil Path.

Although he didn't know how much hard that was to do, he could tell that she understood very specifically how his technique operated. Even if she hadn't read it and examined it in detail, she saw him plenty of time cultivating. She knew that he could absorb Ghost Energy very easily.

Yet she didn't seem to care much about leaving him to come near to her while she was dealing with the Corruption that he had attacked her with.

The reason now seemed so evident: she knew that her energy was too much for him to absorb!

Darkscale understood that his probability to remain alive if she managed to recover were very slim. Not after all what he had done to her. Their feud wouldn't be solved by a simple beating. She would try to kill him.

Only his cold blood allowed him to continue the assault.

Yet, even with that, the reptile couldn't help but feel amazed by the fact that he had the foolishness to directly fight the owner of that insane amount of power with his meager cultivation base. Plus he wasn't just fighting against her, he even chose to fight her in close quarter combat.

Absolute madness! That was so stupid that the snake couldn't believe that only a couple of minutes before he actually thought it was a good idea.

'Now it's too late to change idea'