Chapter 74: An invisible shield
"I'm sorry, but I suppose you can't escape from here!" Kevin said in an emotionless voice while looking off into the distance.
Tyrone glared at Kevin with a furious expression as each of his muscles began to bulge and his maw widened wildly.
"So, you die!"
Without hesitation, his claw lunged at Kevin, who was sitting comfortably on the stone bench.
"I will tear your pompous self to pieces!" he roared madly.
BANG!
It was the sound of something brittle —like an egg smashed against a rock
Then, following the sound of the first impact, came Tyrone's agonized scream.
"Roarrrr!"
"MY CLAW!" Tyrone yelled in rage, staring at his right claw.
By now, the bone in his arm had snapped and was jutting out through layers of his hardened muscle.
His blood gushed out from everywhere, like a broken water pipe.
However, his claw quickly began to regenerate, adjusting itself as his crimson mana devoured it entirely.
Then, Tyrone turned his painful eyes toward Kevin, who still held his stance.
Kevin sighed, glancing vaguely around as he spoke in a warning tone.
"Don't be reckless. I didn't even do anything to you. You did it all yourself."
…
A silence lingered for a moment.
"Are you using an Artifact!?" Tyrone stepped back a few paces, keeping his distance from Hector while keeping his wounds
He no longer dared to rush in.
His red eyes locked on Hector and scanned the area around him, sensing that everything felt... different.
And instantly, there was something else he sensed with his Wolfe instinct—but he couldn't quite see it.
"There's an invisible shield around you!" Tyrone declared, after piecing together everything he saw and felt.
"Tsk." Hector merely lifted the corner of his lips from a distance, sipping the cup of tea a couple of times.
"You got it," he said.
Tyrone grimaced in his wolfish way while staring at Hector, thinking of all the things he had once seen in his life.
"What the fuck kind of technique is that?"
"Or is it a skill coin?... I know it! A big Clan always has something like that behind them."
Then, an angry voice suddenly echoed loudly.
That voice was old.
"Mind your manners, you insolent fool!"
From a shadowed corner of the balcony, an elderly butler stepped forward toward the scene of battle.
"You have no idea about anything concerning my master!"
He added, voice laced with anger and a hint of pride.
"That technique is Condensation Mana—one only possessed by a true genius."
"No skill coin, not even a Mythic-tier person if they're not a genius, can ever use it."
"And a lowly one like you could never achieve it!"
The butler spoke in a tone full of flattery, puffing out his chest with endless pride.
However, upon witnessing all that, Tyrone simply scoffed for a moment.
…
"Well, now I know it. Thanks for the information!" Tyrone smiled faintly, quickly noticing that all of his wounds had fully healed by now.
After all, he had bought himself enough time to regenerate—and now, he would decide his next move.
He slowly took something out of his pocket.
That was a tangled string-covered ball that pulsed with each heartbeat. Then he instantly threw it at Kevin.
The tangled string-covered ball expanded in the air, and finally.
BOOM!
An explosion suddenly erupted, sending a storm of smoke and fire across the balcony.
All the trees, fancy benches, pointed plants, and the garden were completely burned and shattered.
However, there was a problem.
The explosion had blasted him a considerable distance away.
Tyrone, who now lay on the ground like a corpse, had been caught in his own bomb's blast.
Half of his wolf skull was exposed after all his flesh and fur had been burned away.
Some parts were still smoldering under the large flames.
And many others too.
That was understandable—he had been at the center of the explosion.
And he had to do it, if he wanted to survive... Kevin was truly strong. He wouldn't have allowed Tyrone any chance to trigger the bomb if it had been planted somewhere else.
This was everything Tyrone had prepared.
He had been really lucky to buy a few mana bombs just in time, right before being captured by Kevin's underlings.
However, the bomb required a long activation time, so all he could do was buy himself as much time as possible.
"Fuck! That's the worst plan I've ever pulled off," Tyrone muttered, struggling to sit up while parts of his wolf body regenerated at a ridiculous speed.
"I need to hurry!"
Then, he managed to steady himself and quickly moved toward the exit of the place.
Even as he did, he kept glancing back at the balcony, where flames towered nearly 30 meters high.
"I win! You insolent fool!" he smiled to himself a couple of times, proud of what he had done.
But that smile didn't last long—something uncomfortable suddenly crawled through him.
His first skill coin had triggered, but what had it activated for?
He didn't see anything, just the fire burning all around him.
So, he kept running and running with all his strength until...
An invisible gap sliced through the flames, heading straight for Tyrone.
It was so incredibly fast that even Tyrone's wolf-enhanced steps couldn't escape it.
He quickly turned his back, trying to shield himself from whatever it was.
"That's like an invisible sword!"
He tried to push it away, but it was too strong, far too hard to resist.
The consequence came immediately after his unsuccessful attempts.
He lost his balance and fell, and the invisible sword pierced through him, dragging his body across the ground at terrifying speed—it didn't even slow down until he crashed violently into the wall of a nearby house.
"How could it reach from that distance?"
At that moment, Tyrone's expression twisted in sheer agony.
His wolf body was pinned against the surface of the wall, the invisible blade still impaled through his chest, stretching endlessly from the balcony to here.
He poured all his mana into fighting back, but it was completely pointless.
His body began reverting to its human form.
His face pale, his senses fading, he looked weakly toward the blurry shadow approaching.
"H-How pathetic…"
His head dropped, blood pouring from his wounds and mouth, as he cursed himself—damning the cruel fate that had finally caught him.