Chapter 1061: Toxic Madness
Meanwhile, in the [Storm Tomb]…
‘Just a few more minutes…,’, Buzzs thought to himself as he continued to watch the Fallen Matriarch fight the current Kaijin Lord.
…
Now back to the [Storm Castle]…
“Alright you knock off lizard! Where the hell did you…oh, now that’s weird and annoying.”
When Zhen Xun Tian sent Hu Ken through a wall, she was hoping to find the man had been rendered unconscious or got embedded in a different wall. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
Instead, she ended up chasing the bastard because he hit the ground running, literally. The bastard proved surprising fast, until they made it to an entirely different room in the [Storm Castle].
One that was dark as hell and as empty as an unused vase. However, Zhen Xun Tian could make it a few details that made it clear to her that this was some sort of ball room, designed in the manner fitting Stampeding Bison or Umbral Spider sensibilities.
Making matters weird though was the fact that, despite this place having essentially no hiding spaces, she couldn’t sense Hu Ken’s presence anymore.
He had clearly ran into this room, but the moment she followed him inside, his presence disappeared completely.
Normally, such a parlor trick wouldn’t work on someone of Zhen Xun Tian’s caliber, due to a combination of battlefield honed instincts and her recently acquired ability to detect things with [Chaos].
Kind of hard to hide in static, when you’re the only point of stability after all.
Despite these advantages though, Zhen Xun Tian honestly couldn’t sense where Hu Ken had disappeared to. It was if he blanked out of reality.
Choosing to be cautious for the first time in awhile, Zhen Xun Tian activated her [Regalia] and proceeded to step further into the ballroom.
The only sound that could be heard as she did, were the sound of her own footsteps against the dance floor.
‘Should I be angry, amused it impressed at this man’s hiding ability despite being the one to pick the fight first?,’ Zhen Xun Tian mused as she kept walking deeper and dropped into the empty ballroom.
Once she hit the center point of the room, something finally happened.
*Sound of a hidden array being activated for the very first time.*
“What the-”
FWOOM!
“BAH!”
The moment Zhen Xun Tian’s foot made contact with the center of the ballroom, a dark purple aether array flared to life and began to release a dark purple miasma that filled the room, after initially blasting her in the face like an air gun.
Normally, poisons and toxic vapors wouldn’t be a big issue to someone like Zhen Xun Tian, especially when they have their [Regalia] active. However, this time was different.
For a reason that she could yet to comprehend, the poisonous miasma had managed to bypass the defensive abilities of her [Regalia] and had entered her nostrils.
“Bah! This stuff reeks and is setting off my internal alarms like crazy. I gotta destroy this array. A quick application of [Chaos] should do-”
Blorp
“-wait a minute, what the fuck?”
The moment Zhen Xun Tian tried to make use of her special ink tentacles, the liquid appendages began to break past almost immediately once they tried to extend out of her body.
This wasn’t the first time she had to deal with this sort of phenomenon before, but the only other time she could think of where this was an issue was when she fought against a dragon blooded…oh.
“This miasma is laced with Dragon Force.”
“Ding, ding! Got it in one!”
Shortly after Zhen Xun Tian made this realization, Hu Ken appeared like a two-bit magician in a cloud of purple smoke.
A look of contemptuous glee was plain on his dragon-like face as he sauntered over to Zhen Xun Tian’s position. The latter couldn’t help but to notice that this was a sharp turn from his earlier behavior of running and hiding like a cowardly bitch.
It annoyed her.
“What do you think of my [Toxic Emission Array]? I had it made in the event of ever having to deal with multiple enemies or one dangerous bitch like you,” Hu Ken gloated as he tossed away the scroll that once held the aforementioned array.
“Such a clever little thing. All I had to do was pump it full of my new miasma, and it goes ahead and reinforces and amplifies-”
POW!
Before Hu Ken could finish running his mouth, Zhen Xun Tian opted to run forward and attempt to slug him in his stupid face.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned bastards managed to block it in time with his own arm. More specifically, he managed to activate his [Regalia] in the split second it took Zhen Xun Tian’s fists to make contact.
“So you were holding back,” Zhen Xun Tian noted while keeping her fist pressed against Hu Ken’s arm. “No wonder your cowardly acting pissed me off.”
“You know it’s rude to try and attack someone in the middle of their speech, yes? Someone your age should’ve learned their manners by now!”
With a roar, Hu Ken knocked away Zhen Xun Tian’s fists before rapidly spinning in place.
Zhen Xun Tian expected to get smacked with a follow-up punch, but was shocked to find that it was actually a dragon’s tail smashing into her side. Apparently, that pill that Hu Ken popped earlier was a bit more potent than she anticipated.
“Grk!”
A stinging pain occurred in Zhen Xun Tian’s side as Hu Ken’s tail delivered a hearty dose of Dragon Force alongside the initial whiplash. Surprisingly, this attack caused cracks to appear across her [Regalia] and forced Zhen Xun Tian to slide across the ballroom floor as she did her best to keep her feet grounded.
Once she stopped though, she fell to one knee out of shock and exhaustion.
It had been quite sometime she had been injured like this. Hell, not even Gao Ao Long was able to do this.
Then again, Gao Ao Long didn’t make use of poison when fighting.
“To be completely honest, I am actually a full tier weaker than you, an Aether King as it were. But the pill I took allows me to hit about as hard as an Aether Emperor,” Hu Ken freely admitted. “Combined with the dragon force laced poison I freely emit…well, I don’t think I need to explain it to you, right?”
As of this moment, Hu Ken had turned into Zhen Xun Tian’s “natural enemy”.
Against most poisons, Zhen Xun Tian’s innate constitution and [Chaos] would’ve been enough to render these substances moot.
Against dragon force laced poison though, her innate [Chaos] became her downfall.
Externally, Zhen Xun Tian looked fine. A bit banged up and mildly exhausted, but still in relative fighting shape.
Internally though, she was a mess.
The dragon force poison was reacting violently against the [Chaos] flowing through her, causing her multiple minute internal injuries.
One such reaction wasn’t debilitating, but several dozen happening at the same time one after the other was different story.
If she wasn’t an Aether Emperor, this damage could’ve outright killed her.
And yet…
“Hehehe…”
“Huh?”
Despite feeling like her insides were being burnt and torn like paper doors during a wildfire, Zhen Xun Tian couldn’t help but laugh.
Needless to say, Hu Ken found this laughing positively disturbing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Hehehe…oh nothing much, just…finding it funny if this is how I’m supposed to go out,” Zhen Xun Tian laughed with a strangely joyous expression on her face.
“Ya know, I figured I’d go out covered in wounds. Burn marks, sword wounds, blood loss and blown off limbs. Injuries so bad and debilitating that I would have to buried in a closed casket or burned in a bonfire for the sake of maintaining my dignity beyond death.”
As Zhen Xun Tian made these increasingly disturbing comments, her aether began to circulate at a faster and faster rate, to the point that she was starting to manifest her [Avatar].
“Not gonna lie, dying via poison might be a punk ass way to die, but at least I’ll look pretty when they put me in the casket. Can’t say the same about you though.”
“W-what are you talking about?”
At this point, out of a mix of fear and anticipation for a fight, Hu Ken summoned forth his [Astra] and [Icon] at the same time.
Needless to say, both them and his [Regalia] were looking a bit wobbly in the moment.
It probably didn’t help that he was staring down a women with the most manical grin in her face at this time.
“Oh nothing much, just…to put it bluntly, my dear psuedo-dragon, I’m going to do things to you that will necessitate a closed casket or a bonfire. And that the sorry bastards who will need to clean you up after I’m done I’m going to need to pray to whatever deity they believe in for peace of mind.”
Once this declaration was made, Zhen Xun Tian’s expression finally turned a bit more…savage.
“Now then, try to make your death memorable!”
