They carefully entered the cavern, only to feel two terrifying wind pressures gushing down toward their heads right away. Fortunately, Fu Hua was prepared and immediately used her vast experience of martial arts, allowing her to retreat a meter back right away whilst dragging him along.
That didn't feel good at all. Grumbling inwardly, he vowed to get stronger.
Once he regained his footing, he immediately took a look at their assailants. They were two ax-wielding zombie soldiers.
The two zombie soldiers were stunned by their missed attacks. They were certain that their strikes were going to land squarely, so it was unimaginable to them how their targets were able to vanish right before their ‘eyes’.
However, after a brief moment of astonishment, they instinctively raised their axes and began chasing after Juviel. It seemed they instinctively figured out who was weaker of the two.
Juviel's eyes twitched, even these ants go after me now? These two zombie soldiers looked like geeks that had only donned armor, so there was no way they could have been a match for him. It was just that he was reluctant to get into a fight without knowing whether his weapons could tear through their defenses, so he chose to leave it to Fu Hua. In any case, Fu Hua should be able to wipe the floor with them, her speed was faster than the two of them anyway, so there was nothing to worry about.
This time she didn't do anything flashy and simply used some sort of footwork which left behind a trail of red flames on her way to them. She punched twice extremely fast, he hadn't seen her punches land before the heads of the two zombies popped open like watermelons.
However, before he could celebrate and ask Fu Hua about her footwork, her footwork seemed to have alarmed some of the other soldiers, leading to more and more zombies coming after them, as if it were a bad game of russian roulette. Soon, there were more than twenty soldiers rushing to them.
Seeing this, Juviel frowned. He was starting to get a little pressured now, knowing that he couldn’t defeat them whatsoever, of course he was still calm. Afterall, Fu Hua was overpowered. She hadn't used Spirit Of Cinder previously to reduce mental fatigue and also to not tax Juviel, afterall only he could help her mental fatigue recover so fast.
But at this rate, it wouldn’t take long for the zombies to fully encircle and corner them.
So, while blocking their attacks to protect Juviel, she used Spirit Of Cinder once again. To her dismay, even though the area was far wide than the passageway, her phoenix seemed to have been suppressed a bit by the life leeching aura in the surroundings.
Of course, despite that, it still wiped out the small legion of zombies with ease. But this may certainly be a huge problem later on, afterall, logically, the deeper they go, the thicker this aura would be and the more dangerous the enemies would become.
She frowned, I may have to resort to ‘that’...
“Your attack is really incredible,” remarked Juviel, unaware of Fu Hua's thoughts. He could check up on her thoughts, but he knew better than to intrude on a beauty's privacy.
He saw how Fu Hua was able to completely annihilate the zombies without getting stuck at all despite the suppression from the surroundings, reminiscent of a butterfly weaving around a field of flowers. This was not his first time seeing Fu Hua's attack skill, so he knew something was up when the bird was forcefully reduced in size, but for some reason, it seemed much more formidable than before, especially when knowing that even though it got suppressed, it held such prowess.
As a man that aspired to be stronger, he was naturally interested in her attack skill too. It was a bit unfortunate that he couldn't use Abscond on her, otherwise it would have been usable..
Of course, he could still use her abilities as she was his Valkyrie and her Trust Percentage had reached a high enough level rate for him to use even the MANTIS thingy ability.
“It was created by me through trial and error.” Fu Hua said with a rare hint of pride in her tone. She didn't know why but she wanted to show off infront of him, so when she saw his expression of admiration, she felt happy.
“You made that skill? Teach me, since a human can create and use it, I refuse to believe I can't do it.” said Juviel. .
He is weaker than Fu Hua, and normally people would be discouraged to learn such a ridiculous skill, but his eyes showed a burning desire to learn. He had been paying attention to Fu Hua's movement skill all this while, but to his astonishment, he was still unable to make sense of it. He only managed to figure out that she was able to make use of some form of energy.
“Hehe, ahem. Very well.” Seeing this side of him for the first time, she chuckled before coughing to hide it, she was a bit embarrassed to appear carefree infront of him after showing him the impression that she was a stern character. So Fu Hua nodded in agreement.
Juviel was satisfied with that answer, especially her cute chuckle. However, having known one another for quite some time, he had gotten used to her introverted behaviour that it couldn’t make him as awkward as before. Surprisingly, Fu Hua spoke up again.
“Earlier, you used some sort of energy to make me recover back to peak health. What was that?”
“A unique form of energy that is the bane of all evil.” Juviel thought about how he had been hiding amidst the Nagazora City, as a dangerous power called the Honkai was after his life. This made him realize that the skills he was learning could potentially bring about danger, so he couldn't tell Hua to avoid implicating her in danger, but he could tell Fu Hua as they were presumably bound for life.
He still had some reservations though, he didn't want her to fall into danger for his sake again.
Fortunately, Fu Hua didn’t probe deeper into it. One’s techniques and skills were considered a secret in the world as revealing them were no different from exposing one’s openings to another. Her questions earlier were a little overboard, but she simply couldn’t resist her curiosity, especially since they were connected so intimately, ahem, spiritually.
She didn’t think that Juviel would answer her question earnestly. Is he not guarded against me at all? Her life may end once he dies, but she had Fenghuan Down so there was a slight chance of revival, of course, she wasn't willing to risk it.
Fu Hua looked at Juviel and fell into deep thought once more, she tried searching for any similar energies as to what he had mentioned, but the warning bells in her mind suddenly blared then. She immediately darted aside instinctively.
Pu!
A sharp spear landed on the spot where they were standing earlier.
Fu Hua noticed that there were nine zombie soldiers armed with spears standing not too far away. In terms of physique and equipment, these zombie spearmen were clearly of a higher position than those zombie axemen.
Those zombie spearmen orderly placed their shields and spears in front of them before marching a step by a step toward Fu Hua, closing the distance between them. Their orderly footsteps and imposing vibes made Juviel feel as if they were faced with an entire army.
This wasn’t good for Juviel. The formation of the zombie spearmen was much more organized, leaving no room for him to weave around with his Assassination skills. As a result, he could only continuously back down whilst allowing Fu Hua to handle the situation.
Soon, he could already see the wall of the cavern behind him. He knew that if he backed any further, it would really be the end of him. So, he waited for an opportunity to dash forward to leap above their heads. This was the only way out that he could see here.
But while he was in the midst of jumping past them, three of the zombie spearmen leaped up into the air and thrust their spears from multiple angles toward Juviel.
“*&%*“ Juviel.
What the hell! These zombies are actually able to jump so nimbly too?!
The earlier clumsy zombie axemen had left him with a mistaken impression of the zombie soldiers as a whole, which led to him underestimating what the zombie spearmen were capable of.
Stuck in midair, there was no way for him to dodge. However, he didn’t give up just like that either. He quickly raised his arm and took out the Poisonous Prick, hopefully it worked against the dead too. He nimby blocked two of the spears with it, making sure that he had used the blunt side of the dagger.
Under the impact, the spearmen were knocked down to the ground, but they very quickly got uo.
At the same time, Juviel used the Poisonous Prick to deflect one of the spears heading in his direction, pushing it a few centimeters away to his side, where another zombie spearman was standing. Then, making use of this opening, he quickly nicked Poisonous Prick toward one of the zombie spearmen, causing a loud screeching sound from the dagger scraping against the bones.
Juviel thought that he could end the life of the spearman with that, but unexpectedly, the latter remained perfectly fine. It was then that he concluded that these zombies were undead creatures, so the effectiveness of Poisonous Prick was limited on them.
“Hmph!” He heard Fu Hua's angry snort before the entire place flashed red, then the zombies disappeared.
He was about to praise her, but turned his head around as he felt alarmed, only to see that more zombies had appeared in the vicinity.
It seemed their actions caught the attention of the zombies. They immediately turned around, directed their spears toward Juviel, who appeared to be weaker to them, and began marching over. These spearmen were much more difficult for Juviel to deal with; especially due to multiple fighting him at the same time.
Watching as the formation of zombie spearmen approached him, Juviel's complexion darkened. He gathered his strength and swept his dagger outward, releasing a ten meters long blade of light that turned all of the zombie spearmen into particles of light. Maybe he was seeing things but the zombies were smiling before they disappeared.
It was his first time using the Blade Of Salvation and it already cost a whopping 5k points to deal with those zombies, the effect was as ridiculous as Fu Hua's ultimate so it was worth it.
“Shit, they are calling their companions!” exclaimed Juviel.
While they were plagued with chaos, Fu Hua had enough of this bullsht and used Fenghuan Down to stun these zombies.
She was thinking of getting out of here first and foremost, however the door that she managed to open with ease previously couldn't be opened again, so she had no choice but to head in even deeper.
The zombies ain't noticing sht. Their escape was flawless. He, too, didn’t want to stay in this cavern for too long anymore, so he wanted to quickly secure whatever treasure was in this place and get out. Oh wait.. He still had to save this world before he could leave this place.
All of a sudden, he noticed that Fu Hua had stopped running. The latter’s footsteps halted for a brief moment before her eyes glowed red once again. Seeing this, Juviel was a bit concerned, he deduced that this was the skill that strained her, “... More of these bastards, innit?”
Fu Hua nodded and grabbed his arm as she was done with stunning them. She was actually suffering a ridiculous headache at the moment. He felt it through their connection and was confused. Then, he heard a weapon falling. He took a closer look and saw rows of zombie spearmen that were stuck in place, not moving one bit. It seemed that they had come out from a stone door at the other end of the cavern.
Juviel recoiled as a stinging pain entered his mind, he recalled what happened with the bats. These zombies were stronger than those bats and were more numerous in quantity too, so how much pain would she have to go through if even the fraction that he felt was this much? Feeling pained at that thought, he bellowed, “Shit! Fu Hua!”