Chapter 1040: Two Dragons?

Chapter 1040: Chapter 1040: Two Dragons?

Royal Capital, Nakor.

Five hundred meters beneath the Palace Entertainment City.

Aeridar’s Treasure Vault.

"Didn’t you say there would be someone here to back us up? Where are they?!"

"We need to make it out alive first for reinforcements to matter! We’re five hundred meters underground; no one has any idea what’s happening down here!"

"Damn it! I never should have trusted your twisted lies!"

In the narrow corridor, Catarina Devon and Daren were scrambling toward the exit, separated by seven or eight meters. Behind them, stone-statue knights and metallic creatures lunged at them with feral intensity.

The Manticore chased relentlessly, its tail lashing out with a thunderous boom behind them. The Holy Angel, Gabriel, blocked their path, using his small frame’s agility and flight to ensure Daren could never reach Devon to whisk her away.

Every time Daren tried to use his "intangibility" to get close to Devon, the Holy Angel would unleash a relentless assault on her. Together with Gorbo, who was closing in from behind, they forced her further away.

To make matters worse, Daren had been caught off guard by Gorbo earlier when the latter exploited a weakness in his intangibility. He had taken a direct, heavy hit and was now unable to maintain his form for long, forcing him to rely on "phasing" only the instant he was about to be struck.

WHOOSH—

Gabriel’s wings flared, transforming him into a blur of silver. He shot straight through Devon’s body, slamming into the ground and drilling a hole clean through the bedrock.

At that moment, Devon’s body flickered like a phantom image, distorting before vanishing into thin air like a popping bubble.

"Sea Drum!"

Seeing this, Gorbo let out a sharp, piercing roar. He drove a fist into the empty air before him, his immense power causing the very atmosphere to ripple.

THUD!

Devon was knocked out of the air a few meters away, coughing up blood as she tumbled across the floor.

"Damn it... this bastard’s Fish-Man Karate is probably on par with ’Knight of the Sea’ Jinbe!" Devon’s face was deathly pale, bloodless, yet her eyes remained fixed on Gorbo with cold, focused intensity.

His technique compressed the moisture in the air to deliver a shockwave strike across a several-meter radius; even with her guard up, she couldn’t dodge every time. Her speed wasn’t the issue, but Gorbo’s Observation Haki was razor-sharp. Whenever he sensed an attack pass through her illusory form or felt something off, he’d unleash that "Sea Drum," a devastatingly effective move that forced opponents to suffer heavy internal impact damage.

After all, her powers were based on illusion, not the high-speed or instantaneous teleportation needed to make a quick escape.

"Fuck! Fuck!"

Daren cursed in a fit of rage. Seeing the distance between him and Devon widening again, he let a Manticore’s attack pass through his body before deactivating his intangibility.

CLANG—

A flash of cold steel erupted from the void. With a clean, effortless stroke, Daren sliced through three stone-statue knights as if they were nothing more than tofu. His face was gaunt, his expression grim. Holding a slender longsword in his right hand, he executed a Gyaku-Kesa (reverse diagonal slash), cleaving a three-meter-tall silver demon in half, armor and all.

"So you can use swordsmanship, too..." Gorbo looked at Daren holding the rapier, his initial surprise quickly morphing into a sneer. "That makes sense. After all, your brothers were all pupils of the ’Sea Splitter’ swordsman, Elvis Saxon. Honestly, your brothers were complete wastes of space. If they hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have seized the Clifford Kingdom so easily!"

Faced with such insulting provocation, Daren’s face darkened with a deep, murderous malice. He suppressed the urge to charge in and hack Gorbo to pieces; he knew this was a trap. Charging in would be exactly what the man wanted.

"This guy..."

Gorbo watched Daren, who had resisted the urge to lash out, and felt his wariness toward him notch up significantly. Someone so patient, so calculating, and so capable of ignoring emotional bait, a threat like that was best eliminated as soon as possible.

Gorbo lunged, and the two clashed. His Armament-hardened fists collided with Daren’s sharp blade, erupting in a chorus of clang-clang-clang metallic strikes, showers of sparks, and fierce shockwaves.

Several times, Daren tried to phase through Gorbo’s defense, but the giant was too alert, staying right on top of him. Whenever Daren tried to solidify his form to grab Devon, Gorbo would strike at both of them simultaneously.

For Daren to carry Devon, he had to solidify his form first to grab her and then, while she was compliant, enter his intangible state together. The process required a moment of vulnerability. Gorbo was exploiting that window, hoping to take both of them out in one go.

Having seen Gorbo’s raw power, Daren and Devon were trapped in a stalemate, unable to rendezvous even as they neared the tunnel exit. In truth, if Daren simply abandoned Devon, he could have escaped alone, but he didn’t.

This entire operation against the Chris Pirates, from inciting the Blackbeard Pirates to bringing in the Celestial Dragons, had been spearheaded by him. If he abandoned Devon, it would mean the total failure of the mission. He wouldn’t just be purged by the CP0; he would face the wrath of the Blackbeard Pirates, who would hunt him to the ends of the earth.

More importantly, he didn’t know when such a perfect opportunity would arise again. Being exposed now would only decrease their chances for the next attempt.

BOOM—!

Suddenly, a massive tremor rocked the ceiling. Debris and pulverized rock rained down into the corridor.

"What’s happening?" Gorbo froze, looking up in shock. They were five hundred meters underground, was it an earthquake?

BOOM—!

Another violent shock followed, sending the bio-engineered creatures in the hallway stumbling. Even Daren and his party nearly lost their footing.

Gorbo crouched, bracing himself against the floor, his face twisted. Is Nakor City under attack? Are these two with an accomplice? Is it the Blackbeard Pirates?

"Captain Gorbo, this is bad!"

A cry of alarm echoed through the tunnel. Gorbo looked up to see several three-meter-tall brutes sprinting from the elevator entrance, their faces pale with unconcealable terror.

"Two dragons... No... Calamodus-sama is locked in a fierce battle with a giant dragon above Nakor City!"