Chapter 79: Didn’t See This Coming, Did You?

A flicker of confusion passed through Aden’s face. “What do you mean?”

Lorelei merely chuckled in return. Her incredibly durable body already shifting into a battle ready stance. “You’re not supposed to use the Sync to your advantage, at least not in this battle.”

Aden’s eyebrows furrowed, but his stance remained firm just incase it was one of the tricks she’d employed to make him lower his guard.

“I didn’t use the Sync. I merely pulled the connection we shared and manipulated the Void energy within…” Aden’s voice trailed off for some reason.

Lorelei’s lips curved in amusement. “I’m guessing the other times you used the connection to your advantage were all instinctual?”

No shame could be made out of Aden’s expression as he recalled the not so often times he’d shared massive amounts of pain he experienced during life threatening battles.

But if the connection he felt with them previously were like tiny wires barely making a spark, now it felt like larger, thicker wires conducting larger amounts of electricity with lesser resistance.

“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.” He shrugged.”But what you’re saying now is that I’ll have to beat you all without using the connection to my advantage?”

Lorelei nodded.

“But you all can keep drawing my Void energy for as long as you want?”

Lorelei nodded, her expression stoned with shamelessness.

Aden smiled wryly. “Now who’s cheating?”

Lorelei sighed helplessly. “It’s obviously Master because he’s still so strong~”

His left eye twitched at her words. ’I wonder where she got her shamelessness from,’ he thought.

The Vassals had used this time to regain their strength and by the time Aden had come out of his thoughts, they had already spread out behind Lorelei in a different formation. Their shadowy forms grew darker and the chains they wielded had become even more thicker and ethereal.

Aden licked his lips. “Zero. Why don’t you join us?”

Multiple dark hexagonal circles rotated above him, each one moving along a different path while anchored to separate points in the cave ceiling.

A bead of sweat rolled down Zero’s forehead as he stared upward, his fingers moving nonstop to keep the circles steady.

“My apologies, Master. I don’t want the cave collapsing from the shockwaves of your battle.”

Aden merely shrugged. He didn’t actually expect Zero to join them, he extended the offer in form of a pleasantry, the same way one would invite a friend to join him in his meal but not expect you to accept the invitation.

“You’re doing a great job. I can barely feel my Void drain despite the magnitude of the spell,” Aden complimented, but his eyes were fixed solely on his true opponents.

Zero bowed his head subtly before he refocused on task at hand.

The playful atmosphere vanished without warning, replaced by a stillness so absolute it felt like the air itself was holding its breath. The only sound was the low, rhythmic hum of Zero’s hexagonal seals and the distant, metallic rattle of the shadows’ chains.

“I think I’ve given you enough breathing space,” Aden muttered, his voice dropping into a register that made the air vibrate.

He didn’t wait for them to make the first move this time, instead he shifted his center of gravity while infusing his muscles with Resonance.

Like a colossal beast, he blasted forward, his heel leaving deep craters in the ground as he rapidly closed the distance with his opponents.

Lorelei didn’t let the shock of his new speed affect her mind. She crossed her energy blades, her violet hue flaring to its limit to meet the charge.

BOOM.

The collision sent a shockwave that rattled the hexagonal seals above, but Aden didn’t stop to admire the destruction, he slammed his shoulder into the left blade with barbaric force, causing her feet to bury themselves deeper into the ground.

Lorelei clenched her teeth and took to her knees in an effort to divert the force to the ground. Her side made contact with the bottom of the crater before she rolled to the side just in time to avoid a punch aimed for her stomach.

Another explosion resounded in the cave, sending large rocks dangerously close to her head, not enough to kill or even injure her, but large enough to make it hurt.

The Vassals weren’t idle all this time, over their course of failures in their attempts to bind their Master, they had modified their technique to leave no room for escape.

With Aden’s hand still stuck in the bedrock of the cave, the shadows flanked him from all sides and slammed their chains on the ground. Unexpectedly, the chains didn’t cause any destruction, instead they simply passed through the ground like ghosts through a wall.

From the darkness beneath him, four chains erupted like striking cobras. They didn’t aim for his limbs this time, they targeted the hollow of his throat, his armpits, and his groin, the softest points of his skin where the Adaptive Resonance was presumably thinnest.

’What the—!’

Aden twisted mid-air, a feat that felt like trying to bend a solid steel girder. The weight of his obsidian spine fought against the maneuver, his muscles groaning under the torque.

He manually forced his skin to harden, but because he couldn’t cheat by sensing the Vassals’ intent through the bond, he had to rely purely on his own reflexes and his Void perception.

They proved sufficient to predict their trajectories, but the weight still needed a bit of adjustment.

The first chain sparked off his ribs, but the remaining three moved at nearly the same time, preventing the 0.8 cooldown to set in.

The ethereal iron tore through his shirt and leaving white, angry welts on his side. He wasn’t fast enough to harden completely before contact, and for the first time in the fight, the cold bite of genuine pain flared across his torso.

But that wasn’t enough to cause his landing to falter. His feet planted themselves three inches deep into the cavern floor, landing a distance away from Lorelei and the Vassals.

His eyes narrowed as his Resonance flared across his fingers, the air twisted around him before he shot out, sending a massive shockwave of transparent Resonance that slammed all of them into the wall behind.

A low breath left his lips as the groans of the Vassals reached his ears. His hands were still in its outstretched state, then something even he didn’t foresee happened.

Four ethereal chains shot out of the ground and bound his arms, the sudden weight pulling them a few centimetres downward.

Lorelei’s voice sounded as she blurred towards him with her blades outstretched. “Didn’t see this coming, did you?”

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