Autophagy

Aston took out what looked like a serum out of his pocket and injected it onto his neck. In an instant, the wounds in his body closed up. His body started emanating a gray fog that covered his surroundings. Having no intention of leaving him alone, Song Lei brandished the bastard sword in his hands and launched himself forward to join the fight.

The hazy figures didn't expect to be ambushed from behind. However, they were very vigilant. Even with the cloaking techniques he had learned in the orphanage Song Lei wasn't able to avoid being noticed.

The hazy figure with daggers in its hands turned around and launched towards Song Lei. They collided mid-air and got into a deadlock where both parties tried to push the other side's weapons aside. No one came out of this as a winner as their strengths were almost completely equal.

Noticing that prolonging this had no benefit for either side, they broke their standstill and created some distance between each other.

"State your purpose, delicious meal!" The hazy figure said as it pointed its dagger towards Song Lei.

"Purpose? I have a great one!" Song Lei said. He smiled widely and grasped his sword even harder. "Here! Hold this!" He shouted as he took out three small knives from his backpack and threw it towards the hazy figures. This attack caused the figure holding a broadsword to also face Song Lei to block the incoming knives.

Of course, Song Lei didn't expect to be able to hurt these beings with just daggers. He just wanted to distract them a little bit as he followed right behind one of the daggers to deal a consecutive attack.

"Hah! Trivial trickery!" The hazy figure with daggers said as its arm turned into a blur to block all the incoming daggers in one swoop. It then raised its dagger to meet Song Lei face on.

However, much to its surprise, Song Lei's body suddenly stopped mid-air before changing its directions. Crouching on the ground, Song Lei spun on one of his legs and kicked the hazy figure's wrist with the other. While doing so, he took out another knife and threw it towards its abdomen.

'These things I learned in the dream space work with this body so well!' Song Lei shouted in his head with excitement.

"Fuck!" The hazy figure with daggers shouted as one of its daggers flew out of its hand. When it tried to grasp it back in the air, it realized that its wrist had been thoroughly broken. The figure noticed the grave danger it was in and blocked the knife that had been thrown by Song Lei before stepping back. "This whole meal is very strong! Deal with that maggot quickly so we can eat this one afterward!"

"Mm," the hazy figure with a broadsword in hand answered. It didn't waste any more time and dashed towards Aston in an instant. Brandishing the sword in its hand, it sent a quick kick towards Aston's knee.

Of course, being relatively trained at fighting, Aston wasn't one to get caught in such an attack. He lifted his leg and perfectly timed a counter-attack to step on the figure's approaching kick with all of his might.

The figure wasn't expecting this. Although it tried avoiding Aston's counter-attack, it instead stumbled and lost its balance in an instant. This made it even easier for Aston to land his attack.

*Crack!

"Ahh!" The hazy figure with a broadsword shouted in agony as its knee bent backward. Using the energy remaining in its other leg, it pushed itself away from Aston.

Noticing this, the one with the daggers realized the dangerous situation they were in. It had initially thought that they would be able to handle this on their own. After all, they would be fighting against a weak spirit guardian. According to them, these lowly spirits were only as good as guard dogs. They leeched off of their gracious landlord and lived like parasites. There was no way that they could be beaten by the likes of Aston.

Unfortunately for them, this was completely wrong. The fact that a certain type of ghost had low levels of innate combat abilities didn't mean that they were necessarily weak. To someone like Aston that could freely utilize a wide range of close combat skills and science to his advantage, these hazy figures were something that he could somewhat match up with in a one-on-one fight.

And there was also Song Lei that had to be taken note of. Although he was just a human that was the equivalent of livestock to them, he could easily overcome the hazy figure with daggers in the context of speed, which was actually its forte.

"Food should know how to act like food, you bastard! Did you think that we would go down so easily huh?!" The hazy figure with daggers shouted at Song Lei. Suddenly, dark and ominous soul energy started pouring out of its hazy body.

At the exact same time, the hazy figure with a broadsword also started emitting the same energy. Its body swelled up and its broken leg healed back to its normal state in an instant.

'Shit! It's recovering!' Song Lei panicked in his mind as he launched forward. The distance between him and the hazy figure with daggers was longer than what he could traverse in a single step. So instead, to not give it any time, Song Lei reverse-gripped his sword, arched his body backward, and stepped on the ground with all of his might, scattering a cloud of dust into his surroundings.

He then gathered all of the energy he could muster up from his muscles and loaded it into his sword before throwing it forward like a javelin. He also didn't forget to load The Excommunicator with a little bit of his soul energy before doing so.

As the sword left his hand, it caused an explosion noise to echo all throughout the floor. The throw of Song Lei had exceeded the speed of sound! With the incredible amount of momentum behind it, the sword stabbed right through the hazy figure's abdomen, dispersing all of the ominous soul energy it had gathered in an instant.

[Congratulations! You've managed to banish a haze! You've gained EXP!]

As this happened, Song Lei realized that the apartment had filled up with wailings that would be caused by a horde.

'Shit! We have to finish this quickly! If Aston's soul fortress fails and we get caught up in a horde, we won't be able to get away unscathed!' Song Lei shouted in his mind.

Aston must've also realized this fact as he raised the gun in his hands towards the hazy figure with a broadsword in its hands. He gathered about twenty percent of his energy before pulling the trigger.

*BANG!

Aston's gun fired with a loud bang. A red bullet coated in gray energy was launched forwards from its barrel. In the blink of an eye, the bullet split the air and penetrated right through the Hazy figure's head, dispersing the energy around it just like Song Lei had done.

"Good job!" Song Lei praised Aston. However, before Aston could answer, the soul fortress finally crumbled and lost all of its energy. Song Lei turned his head backward and looked at the approaching amalgamation of faces and grief. 'Shit! It's the horde!' Song Lei shouted inwardly in horror.

"Run into the room," he said to Aston.

Looking at the horde, Song Lei had less than three seconds left to do something. Running into the room with Aston wasn't really a choice as there was no protection even there. The horde would come after them and devour them both in an instant.

'Fuck... I have about half... Will it be enough?' Song Lei questioned in his mind. Unfortunately, he didn't have any other choice than to try the first thing that came to his mind. He activated two charges of his bullet-time and extended the remaining time he had to 10 seconds. With his sped-up senses, he started pulling out soul energy from every part of his soul until his soul darkened to the point that there was just a tinge of whiteness left there.

He then took out the sword from the hazy figure's corpse and poured all of the energy he had gathered onto its blade. As the energy left him, he felt his brain become murky.

'I hope this is enough...'

He had a bit more than half of his reserves in hand. Using all of that, he was hoping to repel the horde and wound the apartment enough to deactivate it.

'Please be enough!' He shouted in his mind as he lifted his sword into the air. With so much energy put into it, the sword made whizzing noises even as it stood still. That noise of whizzing started becoming louder and louder as Song Lei brought it down. As there was less than half of a second before he was enveloped by the horde, Song Lei swung the sword with all of his strength, unleashing all of the soul energy he had gathered inside it.

*BOOM...!