Chapter 581: One Down

He heard the screams down from below as the brief fight had already caused chaos on the streets. He took slow, shaky breaths as he desperately tried to heal his soul as quickly as he could.

The rest of his body was fine; on that front, he was uninjured. However, his soul was a mess. He only needed a brief moment to see just how much damage it had sustained from Casey’s attack on top of his own forced cancellation of the crown’s technique.

[Phoenix Renewal] had already shown that it was capable of healing his soul to some extent, but it was normally a slow process that took several days to heal a little damage. Only Freya had been able to heal his soul with any kind of swiftness, and she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

As blood trickled down his face, he couldn’t help but admit that he was in a bad place. There were five other people who had arrived after Casey attacked him. They were all Tier 4s and powerful ones at that. Their authorities were already working together to pressure him from all sides.

He could barely breathe due to their power. It was only because he created a protective bubble of his own aura that he was able to keep them at bay. However, his usage of his aura further strained his already damaged soul.

The only thing he had going for him was that they were under a time constraint. There was no way you could attack someone like this in the capital without someone noticing. If they wanted to finish him off, they would need to do it fast. Before someone stronger showed up and stopped them.

Although, to be honest, he was also under a time constraint himself. His soul was barely stabilized, and it was only due to his skill that it hadn’t collapsed already. He needed to get to Freya as soon as possible. She should be able to heal him.

The problem was the five people hovering in the air, using their authorities and various skills to stay aloft.

“How is she?” One of the attackers asked the guy who had stabbed Julius and retrieved Casey. Julius felt the man’s aura and recognized him as the one who tried to bind him with magic earlier. The man was wearing a simple set of dark blue robes and had two shimmering silver bracelets on his wrists.

The dagger wielder was pouring a healing potion that was radiating pure life mana down her throat urgently.

“Bad. She needs to get to a healer immediately.”

The girl was indeed in pretty bad condition. Julius had been semi-confident that he had killed her; her face was almost completely caved in. It was actually a bit surprising that her head hadn’t exploded like a watermelon from his strikes in the first place. He hadn’t been taking it easy, and he had killed plenty of other powerful Tier 3s and even a small number of Tier 4s with that much force.

If he had the chance, he was going to make sure that he would finish her off.

He was a petty person. She had almost killed him and, even worse, interrupted his pastry time. That was unforgivable.

The binding mage waved at his comrade. “Then go, we will handle him. Make sure she stays alive. We can’t afford to lose her.”

The dagger wielder didn’t look happy about that command, but he nodded anyway and made a move to leave.

However, Julius wasn’t going to allow him to get away with Casey so easily. The fact that they outright said how important Casey was only made his decision that much easier. He channeled some mana into his [Void Step] and prepared to attack the dagger wielder.

His actions didn’t go unnoticed by the other four enemies, and he felt their authorities come crashing down on him, trying to delay his skill. Unfortunately for them, just because Julius’s soul was injured didn’t mean his willpower was suddenly weak.

It was still powerful enough to ignore their attack, and [Void Step] wasn’t a simple skill to stop in the first place. He vanished and reappeared right in front of Casey and the dagger wielder. He already constructed a blade of blue flames in his right hand, aiming straight for her skull.

His sudden appearance shocked the dagger wielder, and he desperately threw up several barriers of his own, pulling Casey out of the way. Julius’s blade barely missed, nicking the side of her face with his blade, before coming to a stop when the man blocked the weapon with his bare skin.

The knife stabbed into his forearm, and the Tier 4 used a shit ton of mana to blast Julius away. Julius used his kinetic energy to absorb and deflect most of the force, saving him from being ripped apart by the Tier 4’s powerful mana. But it still sent him flying backwards.

He spotted the other Tier 4s converging on him again, but this time around, he felt some kind of field erupt from the binding mage. It felt like an isolation barrier that would prevent him from escaping with his spatial skill.

Julius’s mind raced as he thought of the best way to handle this. He didn’t sense any guards or people coming to save him yet. It was possible that these people did something to delay the guards or lock down the area briefly.

If that was the case, then Julius was going to be on his own for longer than he had been planning. He needed to play this differently.

Hence, he decided to be a little cunning. He semi-activated his [Void Step], but allowed the isolation barrier to rip apart his skill before it could activate. He could practically feel their satisfaction when he wasn’t able to teleport away.

He cranked [Sage of Savagery] to its maximum output. The agony in his soul vanished as everything in the world turned monochrome except for the colors of mana and aura. A savage grin appeared on his face as he created small thruster-like constructs over his body. He then used these thrusters, powered by his kinetic energy, to adjust his position in mid-air.

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Unlike his usual flying, this technique allowed him to control his body’s position in the sky. He used [Absolute Spatial Perception] to calculate the trajectories of the four various attacks, all collapsing on his person.

A black mass of mana barely scraped his chest. An invisible blast of sharpened mana tore the flesh of his shoulder. He narrowly managed to create a plate of mana to block the arrow of ice that almost pierced his eye. The arrow shattered the barrier, but he was able to move his head to the side so that the arrow only sliced open his cheek.