Chapter 174 Different

The tower elder who was fighting the dark child stopped his attacks and looked at his opponent. His opponent was clearly a specimen from one of their laboratories but at the same time it was different. He could faintly feel that there was something different about the dark child.

He had participated in the initial stages of that experiment and no matter what they did, the experiment failed until this one remained. He withstood his mana core being filled with overflowing mana but as the experiment progressed, his body started to deteriorate. It showed signs of decay and the lines on his body were proof of it.

Now, he could tell that those cracks on his skin had disappeared and that the specimen was more stable. Even his mana core has stabilized and had a strange red glow surrounding it. Someone who could alleviate the symptoms of decay and strengthen a mana core, he had not encountered anyone like that before.

No matter how he thought about it, he couldn't think of anyone who was capable of doing it aside from the Magus Maximus. While his mind was still busy mulling over these things, the dark tendrils of mana that formed like the dark child's tail moved towards him. Those tail-like tendrils had their ends shaped like sharp arrows that can create holes to anything it hits.

Only one tail was after him but after a while the tails multiplied and did not stop from attacking him. He dodged and blocked those attacks but he knew that he couldn't do that forever. He then decided to use his eyes to look for a chance to attack.

The elder's eyes glowed a luminous blue as he analyzed the movements to the tails that was attacking him. Once in a while, he would send out an attack to disrupt one of the tails and use that diversion to hit his enemy's main body. It was proven to be effective because he had his eyes.

He hesitated at first to use this ability and he was pushed back by the dark child's ability. He did not expect that the child would change drastically. The elder used his eyes and managed to land a critical hit towards the dark child. While his enemy was focused on attacking him, he was also focused on summoning a sharp tipped stone from the underground towards the dark child.

The child was hit square on his chest then he spat out blood that dyed the sharp stone red. The attacks of the tails temporarily stopped and he immediately seized that opportunity to attack again. From behind him, tree roots started to emerge and resembling the tail, the roots were sent to pierce everything on the places where it landed.

The attack shook the ground and created a lot of dust that almost covered the whole area. The elder waited for any result then he felt the ominous feeling from the tails coming from behind. He jumped to the side and dodged but there were more tails that were aiming at him.

A dome of black tails was surrounding the dark child when the dust slowly dissipated. That dome blocked the attack but the impact still had an effect on the enemy. He continued to cough out blood but his attacks did not stop. There were more tails and the ones that were attacking the elder were thinner and faster to move.

Several of them might as well kill everything in its path. Now that he failed to kill the dark child with that one attack, he was now getting occupied by dodging. The endless thin tails did not stop their assault until he felt a pain in his shoulder.

One of the tails pierced through his right shoulder and he could feel that it also passed through his bone. He grunted in pain and stumbled a bit before he was brought down to his knees because of the pain and because of something else. With his mana, he cut the tail and backed away from the dark child.

The throbbing pain in his shoulder slowly flared up and when he took a second to look at his injury, he was shocked at what he saw. His shoulder had started to turn black like it was rotting. There was no blood from the small wound but it was oozing with black goo.

He could also see some black fine lines that started to form around the wound. The elder knew then that the tails were poisoned. He opened one of the small strapped bags around his waist and took a small vial that he did not hesitate to drink. The pain was alleviated and the lines on his skin receded.

He started to mumble words and light surrounded him. After that light dimmed, his body was covered with a thin layer of stone reinforced with magic. This was his way of protecting himself from the poisonous attacks of the dark child.

He watched as his enemy slowly recovered from his attack. The scratches on his body and the wound he had inflicted earlier healed at a speed visible to the naked eye. The tails did not disperse and became even more deadly. He could already feel the mana infused in each tail which he did not notice at first.

Even the vibration in the air, he could already feel them all. When his attention returned to the dark child who was supposed to be standing a few feet away from him, his heartbeat became faster because his enemy was nowhere to be seen. He made a 360 degree turn but he did not see the enemy and when he was about to look up, he felt a dangerous presence behind him.

In a split second, the ground beneath him was smashed and destroyed, luckily he was able to dodge the punch from the dark child. He was still airborne when he saw that the tails were already aiming at him. He crossed both of his hands in front of his face to block the attack but he was still thrown a few feet away because of the force of those tails.

The dark child straightened his body and looked at the direction where the elder landed. His body was not covered with black mana and that punch was infused with a huge amount of it. He had just used that much mana but it was only a drop in his overall mana capacity.

This was the image that met the elder when the dust finally settled down. He involuntarily gulped at the evolution he was seeing. The dark child was now completely different from their failed experiment. The feeling of danger rose in his heart and this was the first time that he felt a crisis.

And he was right to think about it because for the next minute, he was thrashed and his armor of rock got scraped centimeter by centimeter. Every blow that hit his armor would also send his body in shock because he could feel the force behind those attacks.

Despite that, he fought back. He did not waste his eyes power and retaliated. Whenever he could see an opportunity, he would send an attack towards the dark child and because his enemy doesn't really care about being wounded, he continued. It was exhausting but he still made progress and managed to give the enemy a deep wound.

The brutal attacks slowed down and it gave more opportunities for the elder to attack. He even managed to trap the dark child's body inside a rock prison with now holes nor bars. He did not waste time and enclosed the rock prison by creating layers and layers of it.

The elder wanted to use that rock prison to squash the enemy as he squeezed both of his tightly which reacted with the rock prison and it grew smaller in size. Another squeeze and the prison would become even more smaller but the smaller it got the higher the resistance from the inside was. His hands tried to squeeze a little bit more but at that critical moment, the rock prison burst open.

He was sent flying because of the force accumulated from the explosion. There were rocks flying everywhere which he avoided. Following those rocks, were the tails that seemed to be more irritated than ever because of how eager they were to attack towards the direction where the elder was standing.

Those tails still caught him even though he tried to dodge. He was already so exhausted from the fight that he lost strength while running away with his foot getting caught. The tail lifted him into the air with the other tails wrapping themselves around the elder's body. He was dangling in the air and was very open for an attack.

A swishing tail rose to the air and moved like a snake. The elder already knew that he was going to die. He couldn't believe that the magic he practiced for a long time and the reason why he became an elder would be defeated. The moment that the tail moved towards him, he already accepted his fate but that deadly black mana tail suddenly stopped mid-air.