233 Battlefield Chaos
“The worst case scenario for me would be that Meta rankers from both sides die and I manage to get away with some injuries. Can you and your guild afford to pay such a prize?”
Booby said matter-of-factly in a calm tone. Since both the Awakened rankers had imbued mana into their voices, they could be heard by members of both sides.
Eren had to say that Bobby was the most chilled-out Spider he had encountered since he had started knowing about the guild. No wonder he managed to ambush Kiara and kill some of her team members. The guy knew how to get the job done when push came to shove.
Bobby looked at an angry-looking Kiara and smiled subtly before continuing.
“If you are counting on the fact that I’ll make my first move, then I can only disappoint you. I have no interest in getting my hands dirty in the Meta rankers’ fight. But any act of provocation from your side, and I’ll just mess things up for both of us. Besides, I have less to lose than you.
Do you want to try me?”
Booby’s calm and collected response made Kiara angrier than before. But for some reason, she decided to keep quiet. She looked at the Meta rankers from her side before commenting.
“Time for any leniency is over. Make sure you kill your opponents in the most brutal way possible before moving on. Everything is allowed so long as you kill as many Spiders as you can. Smash them. Chop them. Stab them. Burn them and drown them. Or strangle them. I don’t want any Meta-ranking Spider left when the battle concludes.”
Kiara basically ordered the Meta rankers from Stardust guild members to fight all out against the Spiders from the get-go. When she couldn’t say anything vicious to Bobby, she decided to channel that anger this way.
Bobby didn’t want to motivate Meta rankers from his perspective. The guy looked as uninterested in the battle as birds passing by the battlefield overhead. However, he knew he had to say something to motivate his team. Instead of channeling Spiders’ hate across all the Meta rankers from the enemy’s side, he decided to focus it on a single person.
Eren got slight goosebumps on his skin as he felt Booby’s gaze land on him. The latter narrowed his eyes on Eren before speaking in a grim tone.
“That guy… Eren Elijah Idril. Listen to me, Spiders. He first party-wiped Geer’s team. There are rumors that he had a hand in Behlam Dorian’s death. And his most recent kill was Gian.
The guy had damaged the guild the most by making Yeti betray us. That betrayal caused a chain of events that saw so many Spiders leaving us. We are short of people because of this guy. We lack key members in the House of Spiders because of this guy.
Therefore, the bastard must die at all costs. Attack him all at once if you have to. I guarantee that no Awakened ranker will interfere with your charge against Eren. They had to pass through me to pull off something like that.
Also, kill anyone who tries to get between you and Eren. Attack them in groups and focus all your attention on this one guy. I’ll reward anyone who manages to kill this pale-ass bastard. How does a reward of 5000 mana quartz sound?”
Bobby’s speech was totally anti-Kiara. He had told his Meta rankers to focus all their firepower on a single guy. Anybody could see that Bobby’s words were not as vicious as Kiara’s. But they held the potential to cause even more mayhem on the battlefield.
‘The fuck! I was thinking of recruiting another Spider. But no. I can’t handle this guy’s cunning ass. I’ll kill him one way or the other right here.’
Eren looked at Booby grimly and stared back at him. He had come to see Bobby as a greater threat to him than Gian. This is not due to his unseen battle potential. But the way he thought.
Booby thought exactly like Eren. And that made him dangerous to employ. Eren wouldn’t want to work with anyone like him who he couldn’t really count on.
Kiara looked at Eren when Bobby finished his speech. She liked the junior she had interacted with during the Bulal Blood mission. However, she said nothing in response to Bobby or other rankers. It was clear that she had decided to adopt a wait-and-watch approach.
The Meta-ranked Spiders followed Bobby’s gaze and stared at Eren with unsuppressed hunger in their eyes. Doing something for the guild was one thing. But there was hardly anybody among them who could resist the temptation of gaining 5000 mana quartz at the end of the ordeal. Survival in the battle was not assured. But it was always better to fight for a cause– especially when the cause was a direct monetary benefit.
The tension in the air peaked when every Meta ranker started preparing for their set of spells all at once. A distinct haze could be seen in the surroundings as so many mana signatures collided with one another.
“Begin!”
Kiara and Bobby said so at the appointed time before disappearing from their positions. The other Awakened rankers that had come with them also retracted, watching the battle that was about to begin.
Swoosh. Zoom. Chop.
Lightning struck and Eren was seen appearing behind a Spider nearest to him. A moment later, he changed his position, leaving the Spider’s freshly headless body to fall to the ground. However, her head was nowhere to be found for some reason.
“Attack him!”
“Kill this bastard.”
“Stay the fuck away. That 5000 mana quartz ass belongs to me. Hahaha.”
Nobody cared when Eren killed a Spider in his first strike. The battle had broken out between the two Meta rankers’ groups. And everyone was trying to kill everyone. There were only temporary alliances before the rankers moved on to slaughter other rankers or get slaughtered by them.
“I told you this Eren fellow was in trouble.”
“Fuck… you think Stardust is all about Eren? He is just a rookie who got into the limelight.”
“Protect Eren and kill all the Spiders.”
The Stardust crew also made their voices heard. For some reason, most of them weren’t happy that Eren had hogged all the limelight for himself. They felt like it was an insult to the deeds they had done and feats they had achieved over the long period of being a Stardust guild member.
Then suddenly, someone from Spiders’ camp saw a torsoless head flying at him at breakneck speeds. It belonged to the same girl whose head Eren had severed first.
The female ranker had long brown hair that came to her waist. Eren used it as a harness to hurl his head at his next target. He then changed his position using his movement spell. He did that to save himself from multiple attacks thrown at him all at once.
However, Eren didn’t need to follow up on his attack anyway. The reason was about to become apparent on the battlefield.
The male ranker who saw the female ranker’s chopped head flying at him was shocked at first. But he got over it quickly and took out his sword. He held it with both his hands and swung it in front of him, splitting the incoming head into two vertical parts.
The guy should have dodged the chopped head instead of chopping it with his sword to make a statement. That’s because Eren had inserted a volatile potion bomb inside the head. Another from the batches of potions he had received from the Hexers’ testing grounds.
BOOM!
The potion used in the potion bomb belongs to Rank-1. Despite this, it had the quality of being quasi-Awakened. It killed the guy right away and injured the rankers that were near him.
Since both sides had gotten mixed up on the battlefield as soon as the battle started, the detonation also injured a few Stardust guild members from Eren’s side. The injured rankers wanted to curse Eren for being so heartless against his own team. However, they realized that they had no time to complain. The Spiders they were fighting with got angry at Eren’s usage of a potion bomb in the battle.
The Spiders had started attacking the Stardust guild members in anger after they saw one of their members drop a potion bomb on them. It was a silent agreement between the two parties that potion bombs were something that could only be used as deterrents. Even during missions, the potion bombs were only used when it came to dealing with beasts or monsters.
Eren’s use of the potion bomb broke that unwritten rule and prompted members from both sides to attack each other like maniacs. They also started to take out potion bombs from their storage. However, the enemy rankers started interception anyone who took out a potion bomb, preventing each other from committing the same felony as Eren.