98 One Ring to Repel them All
Boom!
The first was made of lightning shards connected with the energy dome and all the shards it contained blew off upon contact. Rog watched with a slight expression of horror on his face as his energy shield showed signs of a crack.
“You…!”
Boom!
Another lightning shard connected at the same spot and the energy dome showed even more cracks. The dome finally gave in when the third punch landed at the same spot.
‘This… this is insane.’
With the energy shield destroyed, Rog was forced to run. His leg injury couldn’t be healed that quickly. But the assassin could now manage to run with his injured leg. His left arm was amputated right from his shoulder. To stop the bleeding, he focused his mana defense on the amputation injury.
Eren drew his Tachi once again before deciding to follow the assassin. The latter had an unfair artifact on him, which made the fight drag on. However, he knew he had even more unfair something on him that allowed him to look past Rog’s artifact-granted defenses.
The chase continued for a while before Rog was forced to use his defense artifact for the second time. Eren broke through the defense once again eventually. It took Rog his third and final energy dome to realize that Eren wasn’t using any artifact.
Eren bested Killer one more time when he was summoned once again by his master Rog. After the former dealt such severe blows to the beast, its soul was damaged, so it couldn’t be summoned to attack Eren like usual.
Rog watched in horror as Eren cast his Blitz Shards Spell again to conjure enough lightning shards. With time, Eren’s spell magnitude and his spell stacking only increased.
Eren had started to sweat heavily and he was a bit out of breath. His skin had also turned a bit red. But Rog could tell that Eren was fine overall. Plus, there was still no sign of any artifact usage or any external mana signature.
The realization finally dawned on the assassin as he asked with a voice laced in part astonishment and part horror.
“You… you are no human, are you? How can you have so much mana?”
Eren pursed his lips and shook his head in disappointment before responding.
“Have you ever thought that the person who robbed Jacob’s corpse might be the same one who had led you here?”
Eren spoke and his disappointment turned into a smirk seamlessly. Rog didn’t get what Eren was saying at first. But his brain soon connected the dots and he was taken aback by his revelation quite literally.
Eren used Rog’s shaken mental disposition to land another powerful punch on his almost transparent, dome-shaped energy shield. The punch impacted the top of the dome and it cracked the shield easily this time.
Boom.
Another shard hand was immediately sent Rogs’ way and Eren used it to lift him into the air– about a meter away from the ground. He tightened his grip around Rog’s body, not allowing him to run away or use any other spell.
Rog had spoken with a rare bout of honesty when he had said that his defense artifact only had three charges left. He couldn’t generate another defense shield around him. Also, he had run out of mana.
“Eren… we can talk about this…”
Rog was about to say something. But Eren wasn’t interested anymore. He maintained his distance before clenching the Shard Hand into a fist that was lifting Rog in the air. Various lightning shards detonated all around the assassin.
Rog’s lifeless body crashed onto the floor when the Shard Fist disappeared. Eren quickly approached the body and chopped the head of the assassin clean off with his Tachi. He wasn’t going to let the assassin make an unexpected comeback.
Rog’s head stayed at its position on the ground. However, his headless torso, lying on its back, began bathing his chopped head in blood as it gushed out of the fatal wound. A stench of blood filled the air.
Rog was officially dead.
Eren breathed a sigh of relief when he finally saw Rog’s headless corpse. After swinging his Tachi and removing the blood from its blade, he placed it in his storage.
Hiss!
Eren was about to reach Rog’s body when Killer appeared over his chest. The spirit beast now had a semi-transparent body. And Eren could feel that he was getting weaker by the moment.
‘This spirit beast spell is really something.’
Eren thought as he saw Killer protecting his master’s body even with his own drying form. Eren knew he didn’t have to do anything. He just needed to let Killer meet his eventual fate as his master’s body started getting colder.
“You… you are even more conniving than my master ever was. And that’s saying a lot.”
Killer said before his mana body disappeared into thin air. Eren was finally free to take the treasure off of Rog’s body.
Eren first took out the defense artifact that was Rog’s ring and erased his residual mana signature off of him. Unlike the Hexers’ artifact, he could start using it right away after binding it to himself.
Eren closed his eyes and wrapped his mana sense around the ring to understand its features. He opened his eyes in the next moment before mumbling to himself.
Eren had to admit that Rog’s ring was a magnificent Rank 1 artifact. It was made of a mana-conducting metal alloy. It featured a small blue sapphire that was exuding a faint light.
The ring needed to be exposed under the moonlight for the entire night to have three charges of energy shield stored in it. Upon activation, the ring would only use a small portion of the user’s mana to conjure the dome-shaped energy shield around them. It would stay active for about 10 minutes if and when there was no external interference on it.
It meant that, in the event of a pinch, the ring could protect for up to 30 minutes against other Meta rankers. The ring could also be charged via the ranker’s mana. However, it would consume a lot of mana for the ranker to charge it by themselves.
Therefore, Rog preferred to restore the ring’s functions to their fullest after every usage by letting it automatically charge itself over the night. Eren couldn’t help chuckling when he thought of how he could maximize the ring’s use with his infinite mana core.
‘One ring to repel them all.’