Master of the Stars

Chapter 37: Close Combat (Part ½)

The elevator shook quite fiercely, and perhaps it was the intense vibrations that caused the malfunction in the electrical circuits. The entire elevator suddenly dropped before the door could completely close, falling a full half a story.

Zhang Yingying rushed up from behind, nearly getting sandwiched inside the crack of the closing door. Fortunately, she was able to pull the brakes in time and was able to escape from this disaster. But when she saw the tightly sealed entrance, she kicked out in agitation.

The elevator soon came to a halt. This type of maglev elevator was suspended within a magnetic passageway. If the elevator were to wobble and exceed its safety limits, the automatic locking mechanism would activate to fix the elevator in place.

This also meant that, within a short instant, the elevator had become a completely sealed space. There were four people inside. Luo Nan and Chen Xiaolin didn’t have physical combat strength, and Xue Lei and his opponent were wrestling against each other. What would determine their fates would be what was on Xue Lei’s and his opponent’s bodies.

Xue Lei’s face was flushed red. In front of him was a male wearing a black western suit. The male was smaller than Xue Lei by an entire factor, but the strength that the male displayed far exceeded what Xue Lei could produce.

His internal organs felt like they were rolling all over, having received a firm frontal assault; he found breathing to be hard for a few seconds.

What was even more damning was the distinctly lacerated flesh above his opponent’s shoulder. It was a serious wound that was to the bone, but Xue Lei’s opponent didn’t reveal anything particular in his expression. His expression was actually indifferent, causing one’s mind to shiver. And the injury did not seem to affect the strength output of this male at all.

The two people were pushing against each other with their pair of arms right now. Their legs were spread into the floor. The two were completely entangled with each other. Xue Lei was just about to use a wrestling throw, but right when he strove to start his movement, he saw his opponent open his mouth wide. A dense row of white teeth was exposed as the male directly bit towards Xue Lei’s throat.

Xue Lei snorted. He relied on his tall stature to send his head smashing down. His forehead collided with his opponent’s face, blocking the hissing beast-like bite.

It would be reasonable to say that Xue Lei’s decision was brave and correct; the strike landed on a dominant location. But although the opponent was clearly bleeding from the nose, it was as if the injury didn’t matter. On the other hand, Xue Lei went dizzy for a moment. And in the end, this affected his ability to exert strength.

His feet floated slightly and he knew something was going wrong. His opponent was using brute force to uproot Xue Lei’s entire body from the ground. Then Xue Lei saw the world spin as he fell heavily to the metal floor with a bang. He practically felt like he was going to vomit up his heart and lungs at this moment.

But Xue Lei’s many years of arduous training displayed its utility today. The moment Xue Lei lost his balance, he twisted his legs seemingly by instinct to ultimately cause his opponent to stumble. He borrowed the gap between them to pull back to an inconceivable degree with his imposing and buff body. He then shot out once more, throwing his body precisely onto his opponent. Xue Lei seized the chance to give another skull bash, but this time his head went from down to up, striking his opponent in the chest.

Two series of impacts later, Xue Lei and his opponent fell back at the same time to collide into the inner metal wall of the elevator.

Xue Lei’s grasp of direction was quite decent and was worthy of being rejoiced over. He had pushed his opponent to the opposite direction of Luo Nan and Chen Xiaolin. His body was slightly slanted to protect the two people who lacked combat ability.

Could he finally catch a breath yet?

Xue Lei’s chest undulated violently. For some unknown reason, the state of his body was pretty bad today. He had used up a severe amount of physical power and the dangerous hand-to-hand combat just now had nearly depleted all his strength.

Could it be that he was too anxious?

Xue Lei couldn’t understand his own situation and the opponent in front of him didn’t immediately launch an attack. Instead, this male cast a freely unfocused bizarre gaze in this direction. He simply looked like a lunatic.

“Have you all gone mad!?”

Chen Xiaolin, who was in the corner, had finally somewhat came to from the series of incidents until now. Everything that happened before her eyes had already exceeded her common sense. She knew that her boyfriend was quite good at fighting, but she had never encountered him not resolving things with words…... There was no absolutely no reason to be in this life or death fight!

This Luo Nan, who they had just got became acquainted with today, was mixed into this. It looked like he was on their side. Or in other words, maybe it was because of this fellow that this fearsome maniac was inexplicably drawn here!

But what she couldn’t stand the most was the “it’s only natural that things are this way” expression on their faces. What the hell was going on!

Chen Xiaolin struggled to get up. She broke away from the dimension of logic as the feelings of terror and absurdity mixed together. It made her instinctively wish to escape from this area, to escape from these people. But this was impossible to do within this completely sealed elevator. She could only shout herself hoarse:

“Can you guys stop and talk it out!? We’re all trapped here right now……”

“Shut up!”

The short shout came from two people’s mouths at the same time. Xue Lei and Luo Nan had spoken in unison. The shout stopped Chen Xiaolin, who had no idea about the current situation, from performing irrational actions.

After shouting, Xue Lei locked his complete attention onto the opponent in front of him once more. Luo Nan added a few words: “Senior. Please calm down for a moment…… Okay?”

He turned his head over upon speaking, meeting Chen Xiaolin in all directions. Chen Xiaolin was stunned for a bit, being locked fixed by Luo Nan’s mottled and otherworldly eyes. It was as if all the strength in her body was sapped instantaneously into the air. She leaned against the corner of the elevator, her brain a sheet of nothingness.

Luo Nan had used hypnosis to temporarily control Chen Xiaolin. He then raised his head to look towards the forward section of the elevator.

Xue Lei’s attention was on the formidable opponent ahead of himself, but Luo Nan’s attention was on a more bizarre plane.

There had been a burning wraith struggling inside Xue Lei’s body. But it had already burrowed its way out during the fight just now, seizing away a sizable amount of Xue Lei’s life force.

And at the same time, that ferocious Black-Suited Male also had a burning wraith leap out of his body. The two burning wraiths intertwined. And, before Luo Nan could react, they fused together to strengthen in a flash.

This sort of variation was really outside of Luo Nan’s scope of reactions. Luo Nan wanted to resolve this problem; the heavily chained crow had already been released and the Wraith Sign was flickering. But this time they didn’t embody the same dominance, like smashing rotten wood, that they had several times before. They were even conservative and cautious.

This was because the just-fused burning wraith in the elevator was the most powerful burning wraith Luo Nan had ever seen. Even the one Luo Nan had once controlled, the one that turned everything on its head on the military transport ship, seemed to be inferior to this burning wraith.

The form of this demonic body even cast off the formless mass of the void. It was approaching closer to the form of the very initial Human-Faced Arachnid of the R&D district…… From the materials coming from Quantum Corporation, Luo Nan could confirm one step further that the main body of the burning wraith was indeed like a hybrid between man and spider. More precisely speaking, a giant spider was stuck to the back of a human body, looking to be fused halfway. Both beings shared the same head, an ugly and demonic head.

The apparition floated in the air. In fact, it was still absorbing Xue Lei’s and the Black-Suited Male’s strength in an unending stream through an unknown and secretive method. Xue Lei’s symptoms of being tired were actually due to this. His opponent was pretty much the same.

From the responses of the Wraith Sign, Luo Nan was able to hypothesise a few things on a deeper level:

To manifest itself in this form, this burning wraith must have consumed at least over a dozen of its species. In other words, the pure quantity of accumulation made it stronger than Luo Nan’s Wraith Sign by severalfold.

Luo Nan thought back to his ideas of “going hunting” that had existed not too long ago and was inevitably forced lament over his own naivety: At this rate, he would be the one consumed!