Chapter 681 The Essence Of Both Body And Soul (I)

"SH*T...That f*cker is serious about making us face off our companions?!" Tsuru panicked.

"There's nothing we can do. We have to knock them down before they go fully crazy. The worst thing we could do is kill them but let's avoid that route since we can just easily stop them."

The five had their eyes filled with black color, meaning the corruption has taken over too much now and we are too late. Harmless Sparrow had her eyes almost go to that route but since we defeated her fast enough, she didn't gain the black-colored eyes the four had.

"Lucia, protect Sparrow's body. Everyone, we will fight them off. Just be careful you don't accidentally kill them. We can't afford to do so in this situation," I am a bit afraid of this as the situation really calls for more investigation on my part. Since Alternate World seems to influence the real world if the players who went crazy in the game were killed before they are even cured of it, will it affect them in the real world as well?

"Let's see how you all fare against your comrades by fighting against them with no intention to kill.

The five screamed and started attacking. Kylan immediately deployed the bubble to us though I immediately stopped it.

"[Magic Jammer]!"

POP!

The bubble popped but Kylan is not yet done and released a domain skill, [Clockwork Domain], a skill that slows down the movements of the enemies in the vicinity of a holographic Clocktower that appears on the battlefield.

Because we are viewed by them as enemies, we are technically affected despite being part of our team so we are forced to endure it.

"Calm down you all!" Tsuru fired one cannonball at Kylan to knock him out but before it can reach Kylan, Tatsumaki appeared and efficiently cut the cannonball in half, rendering the attack useless.

"Sh*t... I have not seen them so skillful like this..." Tsuru gritted his teeth seeing the odd movements of the five.

"They are totally enhanced to their fullest potential. Be careful, they are not the same people you know!" Atlas swings his sword to defeat Tatsumaki who keeps on dodging and trying to go and attack Tsuru.

Sigma stood at the back and with her arms crossed, used the golden chains and control them to strike. Viola is her opponent and despite the [Clockwork Domain], the speed of the gold chains that Sigma controls are not affected, allowing Sigma to take advantage of it and fight Viola. Before Viola could barely avoid Sigma's gold chain if they fought one-on-one but Sigma struggled to deal damage to Viola.

Not only does Viola use her Assassin class as an advantage, her speed and her usage of various weapons caused Sigma to have a bit of a bad time. Using her dagger and sometimes her pistol, she easily deflects the gold chains as she gets close to Sigma.

Sigma still does not move from her spot and Viola gets a few meters away from her, the latter bolted straight to her, and Sigma immediately smiled as multiple crosses fell from the sky and captured Viola in between.

"Banish the curse, [Cleansing Cross]!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Her ear-curdling scream was like her soul has been ripped apart forcefully from her body before her whole body emits smoke and collapsed as a result. It caught all of us off guard as that was so sudden for any of us who was there. Sigma, on the other hand, remained calm and catches the unconscious body of Viola and passes it to Lucia who put the two on the ground next to her with Cotton providing the effects of the [Aromatherapy].

With Viola gone, only four left. to fight against. Leoran has been passive and just let the other 3 do the work. Although it will be a good idea to take him out immediately, he is not the main problem here but Kylan. Due to his skill that inflicts slow movement on us, Popo and Tatsumaki are able to easily fight against us due to how we can't immediately dish out attacks due to our slow movements earlier. But thanks to Sigma taking down Viola much earlier, we can now focus on dealing with Tatsumaki and Popo while we go straight and disable Kylan as soon as possible.

Just as we are about to go and disable Kylan, Popo transformed into a bear using the spell, [Transform: Berserk Bear], and starts going on a rampage. Seeing that Atlas is busy dealing with Tatsumaki, I took the chance and changed my Versatile Weapon into a gauntlet and catches the hands of  Popo in the form of the bear who was about to strike me down using his enhanced arms.

Popo's strength was amplified wrestling against him is like wrestling against a real bear. Popo keeps on snarling at my face and tries to bite my face off my head while I keep on pushing Popo with the help of the gauntlet. It took a little bit of effort but I managed to overpower Popo and take him down.

I was about to deal a  blow that would cancel the transformation and return him to his human form when he dodges and I was caught in a [Slow Time] ability of Kylan that decreases my attack speed and movement speed for a short amount of time. Due to this Popo managed to return to fight and recover from being taken down. It's frustrating but it's not much of a problem. It's just that we are forced to do the bare minimum of our attacks and not deal with fatal attacks to avoid killing them while the main boss is currently laughing at us, amused by our struggle.

Forget Popo, for now, Kylan is needed to be eliminated in this to allow us to finish the task as fast as we can.

If Kylan was forcing me to slow down, then I will increase my speed a lot this time around. F*ck those slowing skills, if I am fast enough, once I get slowed down, I will return to my base speed, allowing me to do the task much easier.

Activating all the speed buff, my movement is much faster now. If they think I won't hesitate to fight now, that's not a big problem. With my gauntlet equipped, I run into the frontlines, catching all the slowing debuffs Kylan is throwing at me. However, since I buffed myself in speed, instead of slowing me down, my normal speed returned and the buffs I received before have been slowly converted into how I should have moved without both buffs and debuffs.

"You can't slow me!"

BANG!

One single punch and Kylan was knocked out. I made sure that I controlled my punch which will only deal half the amount of damage done and knock him out. It's hard but I pulled my punches before, so I will do it again.

But as I was about to pick up Kylan who got knocked out, Leoran who was remaining passive took action and shot me with a bolt of the Crossbow that I made. The damage isn't the biggest since I have armor and it missed the fatal spot that could deal an instant kill or critical hit against me. He shot another bolt which this time, I deflected using the gauntlet and continue to the area where Kylan landed after sending him in a distance and punching his face that knocked him out cold.

Leoran continues to shoot me but I am more aware of his arrows that he didn't pose a threat to me. Popo was held back by Sigma and Tsuru and Atlas are all dealing with Tatsumaki now. I could get straight to Leoran but I decided against it and prioritized Kylan first to be added to the people Lucia is protecting.

"I apologize for letting you do the boring job, Lucia," I put Kylan's unconscious body next to Viola.

"No worries master, this is a decent task, and it's not easy to keep your eyes peeled up to the enemies when they will target you or the others who are defenseless here. Don't worry too much and deal with it as soon as possible."'

Once Kylan is now secured, I head straight to Leoran who is now dealing against Sigma who just shrugged his attacks. To Sigma, everything Leoran was doing to her was just minor scratches he was doing. Her attention isn't even directed to her but to Popo who is much more dangerous than Leoran to her.

While I was about to go to Leoran, Tatsumaki screamed as Atlas absorbed the dark energy on him and feed it to his sword that feeds on dark powers. Just like Viola, Tatsumaki's body emits smoke before he collapsed. Now that Tatsumaki is out as well, only two left. Time to finish this up and show the boss that we are not just some pushovers.