Chapter 611: Pride

Magical beasts developing abilities was supposedly a rare occurrence. Compared to cultivators, they had a more instinctive grasp of what they could do, but the Qi demanded technique to achieve true superiority.

If developing martial arts were easy, lone cultivators wouldn’t exist. The Guilds and other established forces would simply have no way of monopolizing power.

Liam’s lived experience had confirmed that point. He had met few magical beasts with special abilities, and they had all been relatively simple.

The level two creature in the Mutated Battlefield had merely turned its cry into a debilitating sound attack. The level three bear had only been capable of speed bursts. Even the first level three toad could only reinforce its skin.

Those abilities were closer to enhancements that every cultivator could summon with Qi alone, just applied to the magical beasts’ far greater physical prowess. They were powerful yet simple skills that suited what remained animals in the end.

However, there was another side to that whole picture, one that had ruled since the dawn of time.

Natural selection determined whether a being died, survived, or thrived. Adaptability was the greatest marker for success, but that changed once Qi joined the picture. That magical energy provided unnatural strength, and strength could compensate for all.

So, it stood to reason that only the strongest magical beasts would thrive, or even exist, especially in a forbidden zone. Those wielding special abilities obviously had an edge, their density being inversely proportional to their scarcity.

Since only the strong survived, the few that existed had to be the best among their place in the food chain.

The reasoning created a grim picture. It implied that magical beasts with abilities would become more common at higher levels, and the current scene darkened it even further.

It turned out Liam not only had to watch out for special abilities appearing more often among magical beasts. He also had to be wary of technique becoming part of the equation as a result of greater intelligence.

After all, the pale-yellow rain in Liam’s view was no mere physical enhancement or poisonous spit. It was a proper spell that even he couldn’t cast at his current skill level.

Of course, that wasn’t the time to commend a magical beast’s intelligence. Liam now had to give it his all to survive.

The rain wasn’t as unbelievably fast as the taipan, but it couldn’t be called slow. It was expanding in conical fashion, so retreating to navigate wider gaps was an option, but one that couldn’t work for Liam.

The taipan could still decide to retreat. The rain could have been a way to buy time for its escape. The snake could very well be gone once Liam finished dodging.

Also, Liam didn’t really have a passive nature. He had matured from the simple hunter and the behavior he had absorbed from spending more time among animals than humans growing up, but not exactly for the better.

Ever since the jailer, Liam had won most of his impossible battles through sacrificial plays. He could take a lot without breaking. He could break and keep going far better than anyone else, so he had made it a core part of his fighting habits, into his own fighting style.

Besides, the situation created the chance for pride to arise. Liam was literally wielding his main weapon while in an advantageous position. If he didn’t stand his ground in such perfect conditions, he would never find reason to do so.

Facing a spell-level ability with just a bow was ludicrous. The Black Bow was exceptional, but it remained a rank 2 weapon.

Yet, Liam recalled something Rachel had told him while pulling the bowstring, making it as heavy as possible and pouring all the Qi the weapon could handle to create an ethereal arrow.

’Unless I win,’ Liam thought, releasing the bowstring.

The dark, ethereal arrow flew in the snake’s direction, but not at it. Its target was far smaller, and it was drawing closer to Liam.

One of the pale-yellow drops in the rising rain vanished, replaced by a wild explosion of black Qi. The arrow had pierced it before detonating, erasing that deadly substance from existence.

The explosion didn’t remain alone for long. A second happened right afterward, and more followed until that patch of sky had nothing but violent black Qi.

The rain was indeed a spell worthy of the branching stage, but the individual drops didn’t carry too much power. It was similar to the Church’s golden bullets without their incredible speed.

Of course, deadliness likely more than compensated for that flaw, but Liam had no intention of testing that substance. His arrows could deal with the drops, so he planned to shoot them down one by one.

The taipan didn’t stop spitting, and Liam didn’t stop firing, but a stalemate never arrived. The battlefield was changing rapidly, and its increasingly dominant shade indicated who was favored.

Liam wasn’t underground anymore. Even if the surface became a toxic wasteland, the mine’s deeper parts would remain safe, so he had stopped holding back his true presence.

Black Qi had long since blown out of Liam’s figure, tainting the air, expanding like rivers carving through land, leaving a permanent mark.

Moreover, each arrow added more of Liam’s Qi to the sky, spreading its poisonous properties. The transformation wasn’t as immediate as with the alchemical spell, and the air made for a poor channel, but the sunlight started to struggle to illuminate the area nonetheless.

Initially, Liam could barely keep up with the incoming drops. Yet, as the air grew increasingly toxic, part of the rain struggled to rise, its deadly substance wasting its power on the darkened air.

It was as if Liam’s barrage of arrows had created an ethereal membrane that hindered the enemy assault, reducing the number of drops heading for him, giving him more room to breathe.

Nevertheless, that was just a second-order effect. Liam didn’t care for defense. More room to breathe meant that he could advance, and he did so, diving toward the source of that rain.