Chapter 134: A Feast Among Wolves

Dagong’s protection in its physical form in the Material World was, by Lannor’s reckoning, utterly wrong.

He had expected trouble before the fight began. The thing was the flesh of an evil god; if nothing strange happened, that would have been stranger. But this was beyond strange. A full-strength strike, gathered and released cleanly, had failed to break the surface. Not only that, even the force carried by the slash seemed to pour into empty air, never touching Dagong’s body at all.

“It feels like I can’t touch Him at all.”

Lannor sprang lightly backward, slipping past a Deep Diver’s clawed lunge by exactly the width needed. His boots kicked up water and crushed lotus leaves underfoot. The creature had rushed too close, too deep inside the proper reach of his blade, so with a twist of his wrist, the weighted pommel at the end of the silver sword’s hilt smashed sideways into its temple.

There was a dull crack. The charging monster dropped cleanly onto its side in the shallow water. One bulging eye had been squeezed from its socket, and a long dent ran from temple to brow where the pommel had caved in bone.

But it was not dead.

Its warped vitality kept it twitching long past the point where anything sane should have stopped.

“Hard to kill, but not hard to handle. About the same as an experienced warrior.”

In other words, one exchange was enough.

Lannor glanced at the fallen Deep Diver and did not waste time finishing it. Dagong had already launched into another blatantly supernatural leap, pursuing him with the weight of a falling tower.

One collision had been enough. With Mentos’ analysis in place, Lannor had already judged what kind of enemy these things were.

The muscles of both legs worked together. His plackart-reinforced boots blasted spray from the water as he withdrew from Dagong’s stomp, a blow that had to carry at least a dozen tons behind it.