The pain was no longer just a neural signal. It was absolute whiteness.
However, in the midst of that liquid hell, Vaelen's mouth opened.
[GLUTTONY MODE: ACTIVE]
A black vortex formed inside his throat. Instead of dissolving, Vaelen became a Singularity. He sucked.
[Absorbing Source: Rank 8 Pure Corrosion]
[Catalyst Effect Triggered!]
The pure green acid was drawn in, burning Vaelen's dirty meridian pathways. The trash souls of thugs and ghouls—the black residue clogging his Abyssal Root—screamed as they were forcibly dissolved by the acid.
HISSS.
There was no mercy. The spiritual trash was charred, becoming empty fuel.
The body mass of the Sludge Monarch shrank at a visible speed. The mindless monster panicked. Its core essence was being pulled out. It tried to vomit Vaelen out, but the suction power of The Formless Hunger locked it from the inside.
Three minutes. That was all the time Vaelen needed to reverse the food chain.
The five-meter-tall green slime collapsed, sucked completely into the small human body.
Splash.
Vaelen fell to his knees on the now-dry pool floor. His body smoked violently. His skin had just regenerated again; it looked smooth, pale, but with a faint green hue beneath the surface.
[PURIFICATION COMPLETE]
[System Meridian: Cleansed.]
[Attribute Gained: Minor Acid Resistance (+15%)]
[Current Qi: 180/180 (Overflowing)]
[Rank Progress: Rank 9 Peak -> BREAKTHROUGH IMMINENT]
Vaelen opened his eyes. No more hallucinations. His mind was razor-sharp. He felt lighter, faster, and... clean.
"Thanks for the bath," Vaelen whispered, flexing his fingers.
Suddenly, he felt a strange vibration. Not from the system, but from above. Small explosions traveling through the pipes.
His nose—now enhanced—caught another familiar scent sneaking in through the air ducts.
The smell of burning wood. And the sweet smell of fresh blood.
Isolde's blood? No. The smell wasn't specific yet. But the scent of death was clearly up there.
"Silas..." Vaelen remembered the cloaked man on the roof he had glimpsed this morning but ignored due to pain. "Turns out you're impatient."
Vaelen didn't look for a ladder. He stared upward, at the vertical pipe leading to the surface. He bent his knees, channeling his newly purified Qi.
Time to go up.
Meanwhile, at The Iron Barrel Inn.
Night had just fallen, but The Iron Barrel was strangely silent.
The fat innkeeper sat behind his desk, his eyes bulging stiffly, his throat slit with surgical precision. On the lobby floor, a barmaid lay with a dagger buried in her back.
No screams. Silent assassination.
Four shadows moved up the wooden stairs without making a single creak. They wore tight black suits with cloth masks covering half their faces—the standard uniform of the Eclipse "Cleaner" team.
On the second floor, Isolde Valstyx sat upright in her chair. She wasn't sleeping.
Her instincts—or perhaps the paranoia Vaelen had taught her—were screaming.
Silence. Too silent. Where was the sound of crickets outside? Where was the drunken noise from downstairs?
Isolde stood, gripping her short crystal wand in her left hand and the dagger given by Vaelen in her right.
Click.
Her doorknob turned slowly. Very slowly.
Isolde held her breath. She remembered Vaelen's words: "A false sense of security kills you."
She didn't wait for the door to open. She aimed her wand at the wooden door.
"Ice Lance."
CRASH!
An arm-sized ice spear stabbed through the wooden door, right at adult chest height.
A stifled choking sound was heard from behind the door, followed by the thud of a heavy object falling.
"Compromised!" A voice hissed from the corridor. "Breach!"
BLAM!
The door was battered into pieces. Three assassins rushed in. Their movements were fast and fluid.
One lunged low, one jumped from the side wall, another threw a knife.
The knife grazed Isolde's shoulder, tearing her dress; fresh blood flowed.
"Ah!"
Isolde stepped back, but she didn't scream hysterically like before. The pain actually focused her.
"Frozen Floor!"
She stomped her foot. A layer of slick ice spread across the room floor.
The assassin lunging low slipped, his balance wavering for a second. That was enough. Isolde, with a clumsy yet lethal movement, thrust her dagger downward, targeting the fallen assassin's neck.
Shluck.
The dagger stuck in the shoulder, not the neck. Isolde still hesitated.
"You bitch!" The assassin backhanded Isolde across the face.
Isolde was thrown back, crashing into the dressing table. Glass shattered everywhere.
The other two assassins approached, their short swords raised. Their eyes were cold, devoid of mercy.
"Target secured. Finish her," ordered one assassin.
Isolde gasped for air, blood flowing from her nose and shoulder. Her Mana was almost out. Vaelen wasn't here.
"Uncle Hendor sent you, didn't he?!" Isolde shouted desperately.
"Don't take it personally, Miss. Just business," the assassin replied.
As the sword descended to sever Isolde's neck, the wall to the left of the room—the wall bordering the outside alley—EXPLODED.
KABOOOM!
Bricks and wood splinters sprayed into the room, hitting the assassins.
A body burst in with the explosion dust. He didn't enter through the door. He climbed the outer wall and smashed through it.
Vaelen Rour landed in the center of the room in a three-point stance (hero landing), one hand gripping the neck of an assassin who happened to be standing near that wall.
But this Vaelen was different from the one who left this morning.
No hood. Shirtless. His skin was smooth and slightly smoking green. The black meridian tattoos on his left chest glowed dimly. His eyes stared at the assassins with the intensity of a beast starving after a long diet.
"Sorry I'm late," Vaelen said casually, then squeezed the assassin's neck in his hand.
CRACK.
Neck broken instantly.
He threw the corpse at the second assassin like throwing a sack of rice.
"What?! How can he..." The assassin was shocked. Intelligence reports said the target was sick and dying!
"Vaelen!" Isolde cried out, her voice a mix of tears and immense relief.
"Stand up, Isolde!" Vaelen didn't look at her. His eyes were locked on the two remaining assassins. "And prepare ice to close your wounds. Tonight isn't over yet."
One of the assassins lit the fuse of a Molotov cocktail at his waist. "Die with her!"
He threw the fire bottle.
Vaelen didn't dodge. He raised his right hand—the same hand that had caught the Sludge Monarch's acid an hour ago.
He swatted the glass bottle in mid-air.
Crash!
Fire and oil sprayed onto Vaelen's body and the room's furniture. Flames licked Vaelen's skin. But strangely, the fire didn't burn his skin quickly. The slime residue of the Sludge Monarch in his pores acted as a strange insulator.
Vaelen stepped out of the fire like a demon.
"Ordinary fire?" Vaelen grinned horrifically. "You insult my digestive system."
[SKILL: ABYSSAL STEP - DOUBLE CAST]
Vaelen flickered. Gone.
Appeared in front of the fire thrower, his fist slamming into the solar plexus. THUD.
Then flickered again. Gone.
Appeared behind the last assassin, his elbow smashing the nape of the neck. WHACK.
Three seconds. Two men down.
The room was now burning. Fire began to spread to the curtains and mattress. Black smoke filled the room.
Vaelen snatched a thick cloak from the unburnt wardrobe, threw it at Isolde to cover her torn dress, then lifted the girl with one arm (bridal carry).
"Hold on tight. We're not taking the stairs."
"What?! Which way?!" Isolde panicked.
"Through the door I just made."
Vaelen ran to the gaping hole in the wall, and jumped out onto the street two stories below.
Isolde screamed as the night wind slapped her face, followed by the sound of Vaelen landing heavily on a hay cart in the alley below.
Vaelen immediately jumped down from the cart, setting Isolde down.
"Run. Toward the East gate," Vaelen ordered.
"Wait, what about you? Their Captain... Silas... he must be nearby!"
As if answering her call, a black arrow whizzed from the roof of the opposite building, embedding itself in the ground, right between Vaelen's feet.
Vaelen looked up. On the opposite roof, under the moonlight just emerging from behind the clouds, Silas stood with a large composite bow. Rank 8 Mana aura radiated strongly from him.
This wasn't a grunt. This was a professional.
"You go first," Vaelen said to Isolde, shoving the girl's back roughly. "I'll catch up after taking a 'souvenir' from Mr. Mask up there."
Isolde hesitated for a second, then nodded, and ran limping into the darkness of the alley, leaving Vaelen standing alone in the middle of the street, shirtless, under the spotlight of the Assassin Captain's killing intent.
The real fight had just begun.