Chapter 500 - Gander

Watching Luca already on the move to the door, Virus didn’t rise to his feet immediately. Instead, releasing his awareness, he checked how much of the damage within his body was healed up.

‘Hmm, I’m almost back at my peak state again. That’s great.’ Grinning in satisfaction, Virus jumped to his feet before chasing after the anxious Luca who was rushing outside.

The mere imagination of what kind of fate awaited his little brother if he was late a bit and thus, Gander concluded he was not going to return was like a pricking needle at his heart. He had to guide Virus to him before it was too late.

Subsequently, after they exited the inn, despite Virus’ continuous progress earlier, he didn’t seem to be that pleased even now, therefore, retreating into his mindscape, he initiated the process of developing the fourth form of his movement technique as a backup. Because who knew what kind of unexpected circumstances he was going to encounter at his destination?

‘Let’s see. Since Impulse is updated to the third form and now has the weaker first form and the stronger version that is the third form… I better get to doing the same to Friction as well and add one more to my trump card count.’ Raising one brow, Virus made a decision, ‘Unfortunately, there isn’t much time left. Even if I trigger my time-freeze perception and dedicate all the processing speed to developing the fourth form while maintaining the fastest speed possible, I doubt I could put it together in time.’

‘Well, it never hurts to try though, so let’s just do it and see how it goes.’ 

Now that the decryption routine of the movement techniques was over, Virus already had access to all the necessary information and knowledge required in order to design a Peak-Human class technique that uses up to nine liberated pathways.

Of course, most of the information came from only decoding and interpreting Low- to High-Human class movement techniques since, in his database, there were no peak ones available. 

That implied while from the low- to high-human class techniques, aka from the first liberated pathway to the seventh or eighth one, all the knowledge and data were already ‘applied and practical’, for the absolute peak or the ninth pathway per se, that was not the case at all as there was only ‘theoretical’ information that had been interpreted from grasping the lower grades.

As a consequence of that absence of practicality, at the time his current technique goes through the operation of evolving to the absolute peak of Human-class, due to the lack of that applied knowledge, the development activity was doomed to inevitably slow down.

‘Hmm, initially I wanted to start the decoding phase of the attack techniques while gradually putting the fourth form together, but I suppose I’m coerced to make some temporary adjustments to that plan.’ With that notion flickering through his brain, he was resolved to maintain his top pace for the course of designing the fourth form which was configured to be the boosted version of the second form, Friction.

In regards to Friction, other than the increase in the number of pathways, naturally, Virus desired to strengthen the water turbines’ spinning power to the point of not only negating the air resistance but also increasing his overall speed further.

By increasing the revolving power of the water turbines, not only would he bypass the resistance swiftly, but in order to force him through the air particles even faster, the air particles themselves were bound to push him forward harder if the rotation was quick enough, denoting the eventual augmentation of his speed by another notch.

Meanwhile, outwardly, Virus continued following Luca’s directions without any pauses until they reached a vacant alley where two people seemed to be patiently waiting for them.

The moment Virus arrived at this quiet alley where the two brothers were dragged to earlier, ignoring the two cultivators entirely, with a simple release of his awareness, he checked the current tragic state of Luna in depth.

“L-Luna!!!” Beside Virus, ashen-faced with tears flowing down his eyes, Luca shrieked before running over to his brother.

Currently, in the two newcomers’ line of sight, they could see a legless Luna whose both legs were completely chopped off.

However, although there was a puddle of blood on the floor, Luna’s legless physique was not bleeding anymore as the wound had strangely scabbed already.

“L-Luna! Wake up! Lil bro! Wake up! Please…” With his eyes bloodshot, Luca shook his brother’s unconscious physique violently, trying to discover any signs of life on his motionless body.

Discerning up to this point, Virus easily determined everything that had occurred in the alley prior to their arrival.

Clearly, the two cultivators in front of him had cruelly tortured Luna and had even gone so far as to cut off both of his legs.

However, knowing they cannot truly kill a common citizen without facing heavy punishment from the clan, after chopping off both his legs, they had probably given him some kind of healing pill that could at least scab the bleeding and prevent the injured from dying.

Regardless, after confirming Luna’s life was not in mortal danger at least, Virus’ bone-chilling gaze was directed at the two cultivators before him.

Facing Virus’ cold glare, however, the cultivator in the lead, the person called Gander Toxison, started laughing uproariously.

“Hahaha, who would have thought you’d actually show up? Woah, what’s with your look though? Are you perhaps angry that I harmed your little friend here?”

Bam!

Suddenly turning toward Luna’s inert physique at the end of his little speech, Gander kicked him hard, sending both Luna and the nearby Luca flying away in return.

Alas, without any words, Virus still continued staring at the guy expressionlessly, which inevitably sent a shiver down Gander’s spine while cold sweat began pouring down his forehead with each passing second filled with a deadly silence.

‘What’s this? Am I scared of him? Impossible!’ Promptly, Gander was in utter disbelief at the mere idea of being scared of this nobody.. That, of course, immediately hurt his pride so bad that his countenance contorted into an angry one.