Monarch of Evernight Volume 7 - In life and In Eternal Rest (Chapter 684-816) - Chapter 779: Melee

The giant rhinoceros unleashed an earth-shattering roar! A defensive field emerged all around its body which shook Qianye away. While he was flying through the air, the monster swung its head about and placed its long horn beneath his falling body! The horn was pulsing with a faint, eerie glow that sent a chill down Qianye’s spine—he knew that he had to avoid it at all costs.
With an explosive roar, Qianye swung East Peak in a full circle and slashed at the horn!
A sweeping shockwave appeared once more, and the worms that had just started to recover from the previous trauma were grounded again
The giant rhinoceros’ front limbs gave way and almost fell kneeling onto the ground. Qianye, on the other hand, flew backward like an artillery shell and punched into a cave wall. The laceration at the base of the rhino’s horn grew deeper and blood gushed out like a fountain. Growling in pain, it rubbed the wound on its back against the cave wall. Apparently, the blood energy Qianye had injected was extremely uncomfortable. The latter wasn’t in good shape, either, coughing up several mouthfuls of blood and his aura diminishing rapidly. Both man and rhino had clashed head-on, each suffering injuries in the blink of an eye. Nonetheless, the massive, thick-skinned rhinoceros could easily withstand this much damage, while Qianye's was close to a grave injury that affected his combat strength.
The creature stared at Qianye and roared once. This cry actually contained a tone of mockery, almost as though it was making fun of Qianye for not knowing his place. Compared to it, Qianye was no more than a small insect with no power to resist its powerful frontal assault.
Qianye finally extricated himself from the cave wall and landed on the ground. There, he shook East Peak out and pointed it at the creature once more.
This rhinoceros possessed charging and defensive force-fields in addition to long-range attacks. During its charge, an area dozens of meters around it would form a domain-like field, flinging away all obstacles in its wake. The taste of being struck by the assault force field wasn’t comfortable at all and felt like being rammed at half the creature’s full impact—Qianye had already experienced this first hand.
An ordinary expert would be flung away by the assault force-field if he were to evade the frontal charge and attempt an attack from the side. However, Qianye’s constitution was powerful and East Peak was extremely heavy, so the field didn’t have that great of an impact on him.
Seeing Qianye actually provoking it, the giant rhinoceros’ eyes turned red and lowered its head for a charge. It was just that Qianye remained rooted in place while waiting for the incoming attack.
It would seem that Qianye had nowhere left to dodge. Even if he could evade the sharp horn, he would be slapped into the wall by the impact. The giant rhinoceros thus increased its speed and fully expanded its assault field, its hooves beating like thunder along the way, poised to crush this little insect into meat paste!
“Rumble!” The entire tomb trembled—shattered rocks fell from the ceiling and a huge depression appeared on the ground. The giant rhinoceros’ body was deeply embedded into the cave wall, forcibly producing a huge hole in it and leaving only its buttocks outside.
Even a divine champion wouldn’t dare to take such a violent crash head-on. Such giant creatures were inherently powerful, and the limited underground space only served to magnify its power.
The creature flailed about, but its body seemed completely stuck in the wall. The entire underground cavern would shake with its struggling movements, producing a shower of rock and gravel from above. Qianye should’ve been crushed into meat paste, but it couldn’t sense the smell of blood, almost as though Qianye had vanished into thin air. The giant rhino made repeated attempts to cram its body outward, hoping to see where that provocative insect had gone.
At this moment, Qianye had appeared silently on the other end of the cave. He had activated Spatial Flash at the last moment and dodged behind the giant rhinoceros.
There was still a horde of worms in the vicinity, in whose eyes Qianye was a wonderful delicacy. The fresh blood he had spat out was even more attractive to them than the giant rhinoceros’! Hundreds of them arrived the moment he appeared, with countless more drilling out of the ground to ambush him!
In addition, there were a dozen or so worms tangled up into a bunch, fighting in extreme desperation for the few drops of blood he had sprayed onto the ground. Witnessing this scene, a vague idea came to Qianye’s mind.
Countless worm-like creatures arrived near Qianye in the blink of an eye. But just as they were opening their mouths, a mountainous weight bore down and sent them pattering to the ground. Soon afterward, a red glow flickered around Qianye’s body and countless sanguineous threads shot through the worms. In the blink of an eye, the area around him turned empty as hundreds of worms turned into corpses.
Oceanic power combined with Life Plunder was the perfect weapon against large numbers of weak enemies.
These worms possessed exuberant blood energy and their bloodline power was oddly powerful, almost comparable to a count. Even Qianye couldn’t digest such a large amount of high-ranking blood in a short period, and soon, his entire body was wrapped up in a translucent sphere of blood.
At this moment, Qianye’s blood core was beating with great power as it devoured large amounts of essence blood every second and pumped out auric flame blood. His core temperature rose sharply and every crystalline granule seemed to be burning. At the same time, the Song Clan Ancient Scroll was also working at full force, refining vast amounts of essence blood into darkness origin power for the blood core to absorb.
Under the efforts of the two simultaneous pathways, Qianye’s aura rose rapidly and soon reached its peak.
As though it had sensed great danger, the giant rhinoceros roared continuously and doubled down on his efforts to struggle free. Eventually, its body escaped the cave wall.
Beams of blood-colored light shot out as Qianye opened his eyes! In a flash, he flew behind the rhinoceros with his sword raised high. The blade erupted in raging flames of blood as he stabbed the monster beneath its tail!
No matter how strong a fierce beast was, as long as it was a body of flesh and blood, this place would always be the weakest. The giant rhinoceros roared in agony, and the force almost cracked the rocky walls apart. Its tail swung over and immediately whipped Qianye flying.
The maddened rhinoceros finally freed itself from the cave wall and turned back to glare at him, its rapid, thunderous breath echoing through the chamber.
Qianye noticed that the rhinoceros had suffered a fair bit of trauma from that all-out ram, and its horn was bleeding like crazy. The vast amounts of blood sent the worms into a frenzy, but most of them couldn’t even get close because of the defensive field. The single pegmatite crocodile that managed to get through was promptly stomped into meat paste.
The giant rhinoceros was gasping hard and the drain on its stamina was significant. With all the wounds on its body acting up at the same time, the monster’s aura finally started to decline. Although the deterioration wasn’t much, Qianye’s eyes lit up when he noticed it.
This time, when the rhinoceros charged over, Qianye merely dodged its most powerful frontal assault before launching a flurry of slashes at the creature’s horn. Qianye activated his auric flame blood after the two parties had exchanged ten or so moves. He ignited his blood energy to push his ancient vampire constitution to the extreme and actually managed to block a round of attacks from the giant monster.
All of these were direct parries! The giant rhinoceros could no longer suppress Qianye entirely without relying on its charging momentum.
After the round of crazy attacks, the injury on the creature’s horn became more serious, and it had no choice but to pause and rest. Qianye, on the other hand, was covered in countless minor wounds. The overdraft of power had ruptured his vessels and muscles in addition to draining all his origin power.
“Satisfying!” Qianye laughed. The depression he had been swimming in for many days had mostly disappeared.
Seeing Qianye’s aura on the decline, the giant rhinoceros roared toward the sky, declaring its victory in advance.
Qianye smiled coldly and, instead of retreating, charged into a horde of worms. Intimidated by the giant rhinoceros, these creatures no longer dared to approach its vicinity. Now that Qianye had actually charged into their midst, the entire group went into a frenzy and swarmed toward him in droves, hoping to enjoy a fleshy meal. To these worms, Qianye’s flesh and auric flame blood were great supplements that might help them evolve after repeated consumption.
Qianye activated his oceanic power with a snort, instantly pressing the horde of worms to the ground. He then swept through the animals with Life Plunder, creating a zone of death around him and shrouding himself in a sphere of blood.
Two consecutive Life Plunders had surpassed Qianye’s physical limits. Numerous tiny wounds appeared all over his body and his muscles began to collapse. The essence blood from the worms was high in quality and the vast amount was far beyond that which Qianye could handle—yet another sphere of blood was formed around him. It would likely raise him by one level if he could take his time to digest everything. At this point, Qianye was producing essence blood by igniting his blood core, a rather wasteful method but one that could quickly replenish his consumption.
In the span of a few breaths, Qianye’s aura began to climb and the floating sphere of blood also became transparent.
Only at this point did the giant rhinoceros notice what was happening. It naturally wouldn’t allow Qianye to recover—the creature lowered its head with light flickering on its horn and fired a dark beam.
Qianye’s body flickered repeatedly, closely evading all the destructive beams at the last moment.
The giant rhinoceros’ horn would pulse briefly to store energy before firing the destructive beam of light. With Qianye’s proficiency in the combat arts, it didn’t take much effort for him to evade the attacks. The rhino attacked repeatedly, but that did nothing but waste origin power. Its breathing intensified and the force-field around its body grew considerably weaker.
Seeing that the beams of destruction were useless, the creature lowered its head and charged once again. This time, however, Qianye no longer exchanged direct blows with it—he roamed about to evade the brunt of the rhinoceros' attacks while absorbing large amounts of worm essence blood to recover his blood energy.
Failing to hit Qianye, the giant rhino finally grew restless. It jumped up all of a sudden and stomped down with all four legs, sending a whistling shockwave out in all directions! Even the pegmatite crocodiles were sent flying into the walls, and then ravaged by the returning shockwaves until they were half dead. Those worms couldn’t even take a single blow and burst into mists of blood from the impact. In the blink of an eye, the entire cavern chamber became empty, leaving only a couple of half-dead pegmatite crocodiles.
The rhinoceros glanced about but failed to find traces of Qianye. At this moment, the creature suddenly noticed a chill from its back!