38 Aspirin

On the right side of Naraka, precisely at the angle where his sight was obscured by the greatsword that he shouldered, was an unknown creature with spectral extension of big sharp needles on the ends of it. Naraka immediately swung his blade, followed up with three giant blades that he drew from his pocket dimension that fell from above.

He couldn't see the attacker as the monster instantly shifted from his sight. Just as when he began to get a glimpse of his opponent, a purple flare was thrown into his face.

With his face burnt from the flare, he tried to examine his surroundings. The only thing he found right after was a big crescent splatter of blood that was sprayed from the wound cut on his wrist.

Delamuion couldn't see what was attacking him either. It was moving too fast. If not for the fact that his brain was already preoccupied on controlling the flocks of shooting cylinders, he might be able to put enough focus to break through the stealth that was casted by the Yang Ink that Kivas secreted.

Kivas instantly backed out before short-sprinting on a circle before lunging and extended his front spectral-linked limbs to the sky, to drag it to the ground, creating another more crescent spray of blood.

Delamuion once again used the same wrist that guarded the dodecahedron device from the first attack. He then hurriedly resummoned all of the shooter drones and made all them cover the sky in his close vicinity. With a drop of an index gesture, all of the discharged cylinders rained down a flurry of rays onto the ground.

Kivas foresaw the focus of counterattack at a short range after two consecutive assaults, so he had already positioned himself 30 meters away from them.

'I only have 21 seconds left.'

Wanting to end it all within the uptime of the Pledge of Survival, he rushed into the heavily guarded defensive maneuver. But instantly, a downward slash came out of nowhere, forcing Kivas to break his pursuit and re-maneuver.

Naraka still couldn't see what kind of beast that he was facing, but his sharp hearing could finally pick up the rustling of the flowers made by the invisible beast after he was made further aware of its existence.

The effect of the Yang Ink was slowly dropping by seconds, and Kivas only have 19 seconds left before it's all over. Delamuion stopped the shooting rain to get his head back into flow. It was also the best chance for Kivas to end it all.

For this act alone, Kivas had dealt quite a damage to his soul and mind by overstraining and overclocking his action to the moment of absolute precision. Adrenaline was courting danger for his own safety, and he gladly accepted the proposal by turbocharging the emission of Impurity from all of his scale exhausts.

A sword was dropped upon his track once again. It seemed like it was not only him who overexerted his own body.

Naraka could be seen with popping red veins on the skin surrounding his eyes and ears. He not only cared for the device that could lead them to the Untethered One, but also for the safety of his leader, Delamuion, for it could end up in a disaster if he didn't act fast.

In response to the dangerous blockade, Kivas force-twisted his body into airborne, then used one of the front limbs to shift the direction of his body into the left, before releasing a huge burst of Impurities that consisted of both the Yin Ink and Yang Ink. The eternal violet flame of the torch created a spiral trail in its wake. At the same time, the torch flung another purple flare to behind, notified Kivas of Naraka's position even further.

After touching the ground, he immediately guided himself to his target like a heat-seeking missile.

'15 seconds left!'

In a world lacking firearms, Kivas turned himself into a bullet of his size as he brandished his front limb that was heavily chipped because of the parrying done by Naraka on the earliest encounter. The huge burst of trail from the illustrious ink created the illusion of a giant scythe as he got close to his enemy.

Just as he swung his charged limb scythe forward, Naraka was already chasing onto him right behind like a mad dog. In instant panic, he used the other three limbs to redirect his momentum slightly to the right before the lunging greatsword was about to split Kivas into Ki and Vas.

Naraka also unleashed all of the greatswords in his pocket dimension for this act.

"Hmmph??"

But because of it, Kivas unconsciously dragged back the velocity of the limb he sent to finish the dodecahedron device, redirecting the path of the slash and scraped the majority of Delamuion's waist in the process.

Delamuion, however, wasn't flinched by the slightest. And just like Naraka, he began to slowly notice the weight of presence that Kivas have, reducing the effectiveness of Yang Ink's stealth attribute.

He dragged his eyes to what he thought of the position of this mysterious creature that was attacking him. Fiery bluish blaze trailed on his eyes. With his wounded hand moved forward to loom at his target, he began to excrete an energy of intensity level that was ten times more volatile than before.

Kivas sensed the radical and began to make his retreat almost instantly. His presence began to spill all over the fight and he had only 10 seconds left until the Pledge of Survival ended. What was about 20 seconds in real time felt like hours with all of the computation and brain overclock that were done by the three of them.

To ensure his safety, Kivas boosted himself with a huge amount of Impurities up to 72 meters away from the duo. Naraka seemed to stop stalking his tail excessively like before, but he felt dense goosebumps that were spreading all over his body back and forth like a racetrack.

7 meters away from Kivas, he saw a large pillar of bluish light. Kivas was still in his adrenaline-induced time dilation where he overcompute everything and anything that he perceived and commenced, but there was something familiar with the winding sound that was created by the pillar of energy in his vicinity.

He clearly remembered a video he saw somewhere on the internet. The bluish created by the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect due to the high speed movement of charged particles in the medium that is greater than the speed of light.

The very same sound that the pillar was making was none other than the sound of the nuclear reactor's rods being activated underwater.

In an instant, along with his fear-induced motivation to survive, Kivas exited the area as fast as he could.

The pillar began to collapse into a discharged energy that was then forming a singularity before expanding in size almost instantly up to 50 meters. Shockwaves were blasted in all directions.

While the scale of the destruction was less bigger when putting the amount of energy used into mind, it was compensated by the concentrated destruction that makes sure everything within the radius of the energy blast to be ultimately dissected into atoms or even nothing.

And all of that was happening in a mere two seconds.

Kivas had only 8 seconds until the uptime of the Pledge of Survival ended.

'I acknowledged this sheer amount of destructive power anywhere… It is the very same thing that killed me in my former life.'

Kivas had no time to feel nostalgic nor discomfort for the nuke that was dropped upon him before all of this even began. He needed to think of something before he was rendered into a utterly powerless sitting duck after the effect of his pledge runs out.

Afterall, while the incentive and capability of using the Impurity boost to speed himself up could be achieved even without using the effect of the Pledge of Survival, the only thing that was allowed him to go even further beyond the state where he would be screaming in pain was due to the surge of adrenaline that was induced by none other than the effect of his pledge.

But just as though it was only a second after the magical nuclear blast was unleashed, Kivas began to see another on forming right 7 meters from his position.

Kivas immediately escaped the blast like before, only to be met immediately with the same pillar that manifested 7 meters away from him.

"I didn't think that I would use this upon something other than the Untethered One…"

As Delamuion locked the direction of his palm onto the presence of the unknown creature, he began to shoot off everything he had onto those pillars after another.

'Gah! The pledge wore off!'

He instantly became sluggish and weary. Just like an athlete that had overexerted his muscle after a huge championship, he felt nothing but weight and weight after every strain of movement that he did.

The nuclear pillars were put again and again at the pace of a machine gun. Knowing the fact that it would still keep going if he were to drag himself farther and farther than the due, Kivas maneuvered to get closer to them.

He felt like his body wanted to give out, but he kept on running. He felt like his inner flesh was wrung dry with every boost of Impurity he used to advance forward, but he kept on blasting his ink of life to pain the flower wet with his blood.

He eventually managed to get close up to 17 meters away from Delamuion and Naraka.

To retaliate upon Kivas determination, the rather exhausted Naraka threw his one and only greatsword on his hands.

Kivas felt the intent. He didn't know the exact measurement and from which direction the attack would hit him. Not to mention, both of his opponents were out of his torch's illumination.

'...'

Without thinking twice, he hurled his torch forward.