Chapter 277: Claudia Part V

Translator: HunterW

Editor: RED

Claudia grunted in pain as my spear left a shallow slice on her side. To be honest, I was pretty surprised at how well Claudia was defending against my attacks. It was clear that her Stats were almost as high as mine, but only almost. Her defense wasn’t perfect, and I managed to slip past it and occasionally wound her.

“Fuck! How did a deva like you ever get this strong?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m not a deva.”

“What?” Claudia eyes widened when I said that. “Don’t…don’t screw with me! There’s no way you’re a deity!”

“You’re right. I’m not a deity either.”

“What?”

“There’s another class called prophet.” I was obviously lying. I came up with it just now to confuse Claudia a bit more… and it looked like it actually worked!

“So… that’s your secret to your strength?”

I really hoped Claudia would believe that lie. Honestly, if she thought about what I said a little bit more, she could figure out I was lying. It was so obvious that prophets weren’t a thing in the Otadolon stage, so when Claudia believed my lie without any suspicions, I couldn’t help but grin. It showed just how panicked she was.

I gripped my spear tightly and charged at her again. I still needed to kill her here. As expected of the highest ranking Crootian deity, she reacted almost instantly.

“Shackle my foe! Time Embedded Chains!” Silver chains suddenly appeared in thin air and shot out to wrap around me. These chains were no doubt reinforced by Claudia’s time and were visibly stronger than the other chain skills I’d had used on me before. But like those other chain skills, when I flexed my arms, the silver chains started to crack from the pressure. It didn’t take long for them to break altogether.

“Fuck!”

“Titan Stomp!” I cried, pointing at the grimacing Claudia. I could have used the skill on her soldiers that were off to side to inflict maximum damage instead, but I pointed at Claudia specifically. As long as she died here, I could afford to even spare the enemy soldiers. Besides, plenty of them were in range anyway.

“Gah!”

“Shit! What is with these debuffs? He’s got stronger debuffs than a supporter main, and they’re AoE at that! This doesn’t make sense!”

The enemy soldiers were clamoring, but so were my soldiers.

“Shit! I can’t move properly because of Claudia’s Time Curse!”

“She’s definitely stronger than the Terran Monarch deities. It’d be weird if she didn’t have an AoE debuff like this.”

Claudia had ordered her soldiers to focus their attacks on me. In return, the Empire’s soldiers attacked the Crootian soldiers to give me more breathing room, allowing me to stay focused on Claudia. At first, both armies were an arm’s distance from my fight with Claudia, but as time went on, the soldiers of both sides inched away from us more and more to get away from our debuffs.

That definitely wasn’t a bad thing. I might not be able to absorb more HP from the enemy soldiers, but I could at least stay focused on Claudia now.

“Explode: Time Bomb!” Claudia set off an explosion right beside me. The attack definitely dealt more damage than all of Claudia’s other attacks, but it wasn’t enough to slow me down. As the flames from the explosion streaked across my face, I continued my charge and lunged at Claudia.

“Gah!”

Both Blinks were off cooldown now, but I was saving them for whenever Claudia retreated from me.

“Argh! I don’t care if you’re a prophet or whatever! I’m going to kill you where you stand! Unleashing Time!”

That was yet another one of Claudia’s skills that I did not know about. There was nothing I could do about it since she wasn’t a Terran, and there wasn’t much information about her. But either way, this was better than her running off. I was confident I could win, no matter what she did.

“Not if I kill you first!” I shouted as I charged at Claudia, who had suddenly grown to twice her original size.

—

The Empire’s base of operations at Section 3…

“They’ve begun to move.”

“Both guilds?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s time we make our move, as well. We must not let our comrades who are fighting for their lives and ours on the front lines down.”

“Understood.”

“Oh, and stay wary of the red-eyed stranger. We don’t know when he will reveal himself,” Song Daechul said.

“Understood,” Lagus Aman replied. Lagus had taken upon himself to volunteer his and his guild’s soldiers to repel the traitors’ attacks. The Empire’s strongest soldiers were sent to the front lines, and fighting other Terran soldiers wouldn’t yield any golden rings or EXP. Still, Lagus made his choice as he knew someone had to do it. Soon, Lagus took his soldiers and entered a secret tunnel. They already knew where the traitors were headed.

—

Just outside of the Empire’s base of operations…

“There they are,” Okamoto said to Glavis, who nodded in response.

“All in one place.”

Behind them, a red-eyed man suddenly materialized out of thin air. It was Dunia. “It’s obviously a trap waiting for us, but that doesn’t matter, right? Our true prize lies just beyond it.”

“Bwahaha! If we take the Empire’s soldier’s families hostage, isn’t that automatically our win?”

“Of course it is. That’s how important your roles are today,” Dunia said, praising Okamoto, but he was secretly scoffing at the old man. Claudia was fighting on the front lines. It was obvious she was going to win, not Earth. The only reason Dunia was going through with his part of the plan was because he had promised he would lower the Empire’s morale. A true hunter never underestimated his prey.

“Here they come,” Dunia said, as he pointed to the field in front of them. And just as he said, a large army revealed itself in front of the Windsor Guard and the Nayuta Guild, with Lagus Aman at its front.

Dunia had already made the decision to give this battle his full attention, and used his red eyes on Lagus Aman. However, he noticed right away that he couldn’t hypnotize him. This wasn’t like how he couldn’t hypnotize Wai Chung. Wai Chung was a man full of suspicion, the only person he trusted was himself.

Lagus was different. Lagus was a man of conviction and faith, which meant he was even harder to turn.

Dunia closed his eyes. “This won’t be easy.”

—

Claudia’s Unleashing Time boosted her combat abilities even more. She was now even closer to me in terms of strength and power. But I still outclassed her in CRIT rate and CRIT damage. When my attacks found their mark, I made my decision to forgo defending and just focused on attacking.

Every time Claudia’s greatsword struck my side, I stuck my spear into her side. We continued to trade blows like that for a while, but as time went on, Claudia was panting heavily with a deep frown on her face, while I hadn’t broken a sweat yet.

“Argh! Fuck! Why? Why!? Why are so many of your attacks critical hits? And what is with your damage?…”

Claudia’s attacks were all normal attacks, but mine were just about all critical hits. It only made sense that she received more damage than me. Not to mention I still had a couple more tricks up my sleeve.

==[Your opponent has been struck by Powerful Shock. 100,000 points of damage has been inflicted. For three seconds, your opponent’s movement speed, attack speed, DEF, and MDEF are lowered by 80%.]==

==[Your attack has ignored your enemy’s defense to inflict maximum damage.]==

I still had my Lightning Boots’ Powerful Shock, which was like my trademark effect by now. My Rank 10 Harrier also had a 20% chance to ignore Claudia’s DEF to inflict maximum damage and as long as I had more HP than her, my combat abilities grew by 10% while hers decreased by 10%.

“I told you, I’m a prophet. Prophets have high base CRIT stats.” A child wouldn’t believe that bold-faced lie, but it worked on Claudia.

“Argh! You son of a bitch!” Claudia roared in rage as she charged at me again and swung her massive greatsword.

I didn’t even bother blocking or avoiding the attack. I raised my left shoulder to take the blow and thrust my spear into her chest.

“Gah!” Claudia cried out in pain and staggered back, barely holding onto her sword. Again, my attack flashed yellow.

With my three AoE skills and Judge’s Gavel off their cooldown, I almost wanted to use them all on Claudia at once. I felt that all of that damage would be enough to kill Claudia right now, but I suppressed the urge. I wanted to use them in tandem with both Blinks once Claudia turned tail. And I knew for a fact that even without those skills, I was still stronger than Claudia.

—

Coby and Claudia’s other subordinate deities watched Claudia’s fight against Lee Jiwon in shock.

“This… was over from the beginning.”

“I think you’re right. The battle was over once Severed Time didn’t work on that Lee Jiwon bastard.”

“Mistress Claudia definitely synched with Earth’s time. You saw how the Terran soldiers were trapped in time. But only Lee Jiwon was unaffected.”

“Yeah… Claudia lost the battle at that point. She’s had to resort to using her skills that don’t rely on synchronization. She basically wasted all that time synchronizing with the time on the Continent.”

“Fuck! How did he get that strong? It just doesn’t make sense. Claudia’s attacks don’t even faze him!”

“That’s enough. Listen to me carefully,” Coby interjected. “The fight between Lee Jiwon and Claudia is already over. Lee Jiwon is clearly the victor. What we need to focus on now is getting Mistress Claudia out of there alive, even if it means abandoning everyone here.”

“…” The other deities didn’t say anything. ‘Everyone’ included them, as well.

“In other words, we need to hold Lee Jiwon long enough to buy Claudia time to get away. That is a task impossible for the deva soldiers alone. I doubt they will be that willing to meet their own maker. Five of us will take deva soldiers and attack Lee Jiwon long enough to distract him.”

The other deities quietly turned to look at Lee Jiwon after hearing Coby’s suggestion. None of them were quite willing to volunteer themselves yet.

“We’ll decide who goes using straws. Don’t worry, I’ll participate as well. We’re running out of time, so let’s hurry this up.”

The twenty-nine deities gathered around to pull the straws Coby had prepared. Soon, the five unfortunate deities were chosen. Coby wasn’t among them.

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