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IBHJ Chapter 548
🕑 Added 2023-10-31 02:06:23 +0000 UTCThe Red Caster looked on in disbelief at the surreal spectacle before him.
Initially, the largest creatures in the city had been his own nine monsters.
But now, the Black Assassin had transformed into a colossal mud giant, towering at around sixty meters in height!
And considering the giant's form...
Could it be that Assassin had also learned some forbidden knowledge from the evil gods?
But which evil god would manifest in the form of black mud?
Red Caster pondered.
Meanwhile, Shirou seized his opportunity.
Under his command, the mud giant sprouted eight massive, black arms, lashing out at one of the octopuses converging from all directions.
One arm snatched a tentacle of an octopus, yanking it in. The remaining seven arms each grabbed a different section of the creature.
Then, all eight arms flexed with immense force.
"Rrrriiip!"
A sickening rip could be heard, and the octopus emitted a horrifying sound as its body was torn apart.
"Wooooo!!!"
The giant octopus let out a guttural wail!—demonic in nature, indescribably chilling. However, it had no impact on the mud giant, the very embodiment of evil, nor did it affect Shirou and Mash, securely nestled within the giant's cranium.
The octopus lashed out instinctively with its tentacles, but to no avail; it barely scratched the surface of the giant.
Seeing this. the rest of the octopuses began to close in as well.
Unfazed, Shirou continued to apply pressure through the mud giant.
"Riiiiip—!"
The air reverberated with the gruesome sound. The octopus, ensnared in the mud giant's grasp, was torn into eight separate pieces!
Flesh hit the ground with wet "splats," and a mist of blue blood sprayed into the air.
Watching from a first-person perspective, Mash felt her stomach churn.
However, Shirou's face remained calm.
Caster taunted, "It's pointless! My Apostle is immortal!"
True to his words, the dismembered octopus wasn't dead. Its torn flesh twitched on the ground, as if dancing, ready to reassemble itself.
These self-sufficient octopuses had long surpassed mere Noble Phantasms, able to sustain themselves even without Caster's mana. Even if torn to pieces, they could still regenerate by consuming nutrients and using their stored mana.
Facing this, Shirou only chuckled. "You're getting ahead of yourself, Caster."
At his mental command, numerous black arms erupted from the mud giant, seizing the writhing pieces of flesh and pulling them into its gaping maw.
As the flesh entered the giant's mouth, it was met with a barrage of malice and curses, beginning to break down much like food in stomach acid.
Initially, the dismembered pieces struggled to escape, but they were soon enveloped in mud and broken down into mana.
It was as mundane as a human taking supplements.
This method was similar to how Shirou had used the [All the World's Evil] to consume a fragment of the Crimson Moon not long ago.
Seeing this, Mash, connected through their connection, felt her stomach turn again.
Yes, it was repulsive...
However, the magical energy harvested from the octopus didn't just rejuvenate Shirou. A fraction of it also flowed back into Mash through their connection, slightly improving her complexion that had been drained earlier by him.
Shirou chuckled, "These things make for excellent supplements."
"You... you actually devoured my apostle?" Caster stammered in disbelief.
"What's so hard to believe?" Shirou shook his head before locking eyes with the remaining eight octopuses. "You and your little monstrosities are nothing more than mana potions for me."
The look he gave them wasn't one of facing monstrous beings, but rather as if he was sizing up a row of free potions!
—This is bad!
Caster's thoughts screamed in panic.
As a master of these monsters, it was now he who watched his creatures become prey!
The one he served was an ancient evil god, predating humanity itself. Using the forbidden knowledge bestowed by this ancient god, he had summoned these Apostles—monsters that were unparalleled, even in an age where mythical and demonic beasts roamed the land.
They were apex predators, the kings of the monstrous food chain.
And now, these predators were nothing but fodder for another servant!
—This has to stop! This Assassin is too much for me to handle right now!
Caster came to this grim realization immediately.
He had been watching the earlier battle through his familiars and had a good read on Shirou's abilities. But seeing his octopus devoured gave him an even more precise understanding. With that, he made a snap decision.
"Woo woo woo—"
The octopuses let out a haunting wail.
The largest of them, towering at over forty meters, lunged at Shirou's mud giant, flailing its tentacles wildly. The other seven scattered, each heading in a different direction.
Shirou raised an eyebrow, clearly surprised. "A tactical retreat, huh?"
He'd expected Caster to fight to the bitter end, but just as he'd chugged down his 'mana potion,' Caster decided it was time to bail.
And he was using his largest octopus as a decoy.
Caster was pulling a classic bait-and-switch!
He was a tactical thinker, that was for sure.
If Caster had been up against anyone other than Shirou, his plan might've worked.
Unfortunately for him, he was dealing with Shirou.
While Caster was calculated and decisive, Shirou was a master of adapting to unexpected situation, and he was just as decisive. Most importantly, he was leagues above Caster in terms of raw power.
Recognizing Caster's bait-and-switch strategy, Shirou didn't hesitate. He disassembled his mud giant and transformed it into seven smaller, twenty-meter tall mud giants, each going after one of the remaining octopuses.
"How can this be..." Caster's face twisted in disbelief.
He'd assumed that the sixty-meter-tall mud giant was Shirou's trump card.
But what he hadn't expected was that the giant could actually split into smaller copies!
And each of these copies wielded massive Ig-Alima—each one stretching over sixty meters!
"You've got to be kidding me. Are you sure you're not a Caster? How can you possibly have that much mana?" Caster's face twisted in sheer terror.
He had painstakingly raised his nine massive octopuses by covertly feeding them the flesh and blood of the city's believers.
And yet, here was this Assassin casually splitting into a group of giants!
How much mana would that even require?
Even with his own mana attribute at rank A, enhanced by Command Spells from his Master, he knew he couldn't pull off anything like this.
Is this what an Assassin's mana looks like nowadays?
Is he even an Assassin at this point?
Since when did Assassins abandon stealth and subtlety for brute force?
Caster's mouth twitched.
But Shirou wasn't interested in giving him time to think.
With a flick of his will, the mud giants swung their gargantuan Ig-Alima and smashed the octopuses to pieces, reducing them to a pile of lifeless flesh. Their bodies then morphed into a viscous mud that enveloped the dismembered remains of the octopuses.
The octopuses thrashed wildly, making the mud that encased them churn like ocean waves. They wriggled as if they were squids dumped into a stomach, being broken down by digestive acids, frantic to escape their fate.
Unfortunately for them, they could not tear through the black mud, and they began to dissolve within it.
"Sssss!"
The sound of corrosive materials meeting flesh filled the air.
The once-lively octopuses were now nothing more than withered, corroded husks, slowly shrinking away to nothing.
The Giant, in which Shirou and Mash were located, liquefied into a muddy substance and flowed into Shirou's body, and they landed on the ground.
Mash leaned against a wall, her face ashen, a hand clamped over her mouth.
She felt sick to her stomach.
One by one, the other Giants also consumed the octopuses, morphing into muddy pools that flowed toward Shirou, merging into him.
As he absorbed them, a significant surge in mana flooded through his body, even channeling some benefits to Mash through their connection.
However, her complexion grew even paler.
Comments
Melegant
She just got some mad ptsd
JeanMartin Freites
That's concerning.
