Chapter 200: Giving Your All

"Use all your genetic energy. Let's end the fight as quickly as we can!" Zhang Lie's eyes glinted with excitement. In quick succession, he activated his forest wolfman, flamewing eagle, runic salamander, and blood ant soulshards.

The dazzling glow of the activated soulshards surrounded Zhang Lie, turning him into a gigantic wolfman almost ten meters tall. The moment the wolfman emerged, a ring of wind surrounded him, and black runic patterns crawled up his skin, causing his muscles to bulge. A bloody mist dyed his fur red and strengthened his genetic energy fluctuations by almost an order of magnitude, so much so that space began to distort around him.

The bloody moon in the sky, as well as the shadow of the winged tiger, began to expand, causing the domain to cover a region almost a kilometer wide. Within this patch of land, lifeforms began to slump over, trees began to decay and wither, and the ground turned dry, cracked, and arid, as though the vitality they possessed were being quickly transferred to the massive wolfman.

Shining silver armor appeared over the wolfman's body, and he held an exquisite violet shortsword in his right paw. Zhang Lie's aura was no less commanding than the moonlight wyrm's itself.

All this happened in the blink of an eye, while the moonlight wyrm was extricating itself from the six-element formation.

"Kill it!" he howled. "[The Boundless Blade: the River Lethe]!"

As Zhang Lie leapt into the air, the ground cracked where he stood. Frightening pressure from [The Boundless Blade] poured out of him like a tidal wave. An underworld river formed from thin air, rushing toward the moonlight wyrm in a torrent.

Enraged that a lowly human would dare challenge him, the moonlity wyrm roared, but it could clearly sense the changes in Zhang Lie's strength. As a result, it didn't dare strike so carelessly any longer. Raising its maw to the heavens, it breathed out a pure-white mist, crystallizing the air and turning it into a heavenly river.

Compared to Zhang Lie's underworld river, which corroded and decayed all that it touched, the wyrm's heavenly river purified and cleansed everything. As the two attacks clashed against each other, waves of genetic energy spread through the air. The ground rumbled, as though there were an earthquake; space seemed to collapse where the two attacks met. However, neither attack could dominate over the other, and the two rivers eventually faded away together.

At that moment, Zhang Lie grasped the belt of wind floating around him, imbued it with his three-element attunement, and sent it flying at the wyrm. At the same time, he leapt up once more and activated [Mirrored Refraction], his humongous body dissolving into countless afterimages.

The moonlight wyrm spat out a fusillade of water arrows at the chakram, which ultimately lost all its momentum from the wyrm's counterattack. However, the fact that the wyrm had to defend itself against that blow earned Zhang Lie plenty of time for his next move.

"[The Boundless Blade: Dragon's Wrath]!" Before the wyrm could retaliate, a bloody dragon was already dashing toward it, followed quickly by Zhang Lie himself. Venombane glittered with the coldness of death, and Zhang Lie had already charged up [The Boundless Blade: Requiem of the End].

However, despite being faced with Zhang Lie's potpourri of attacks, the wyrm merely stretched out and howled, coalescing what seemed to be an air bubble around itself. Zhang Lie struck at the bubble, but instead of breaking it, the attack was flung backward by the recoil. The rebounded attack struck a small hill and smashed it into flat ground.

The only trace that the bubble had been attacked was a slight distortion in the membrane.

Zhang Lie widened his eyes at the unusual bubble, but continued his attack regardless. "[The Boundless Blade: Requiem of the End]!"

After realizing how elastic the bubble was, however, Zhang Lie imbued his attack with as much of the winged tiger's sharpness as he could. The bubble resisted the blow for a brief moment, but ultimately burst like a balloon that was popped by a pin, negating much of the attack's force as it did so. The moonlight wyrm ducked to avoid the blow, then lashed out with its tail.

Zhang Lie reacted quickly, but it still knocked him back. Luckily, he had concentrated his white-grub armor by his chest, so the lash didn't lead to a particularly devastating injury; however, the wolfman transformation he had applied to himself was forcibly canceled as a result of damage to that form.

The six hunters still fuelling the formation from below groaned, but they transferred more and more energy into the formation to speed up Zhang Lie's recovery.

However, the peak-grade moonlight wyrm certainly wasn't going to give up on such an opportunity to strike. Flicking its tail, it darted forward and shot out a breath of cold air. Before the attack could land, however, Zhang Lie suddenly extended a pair of bladed wings out of his rapidly rematerializing wolfman form.

The icy breath catapulted Zhang Lie backwards and slammed him into the ground, but the wings that had folded protectively around him negated much of the injuries that he would otherwise have suffered. Regardless, he was certainly at a disadvantage, because the moonlight wyrm was drawing near. Its tail was raised high up in the air, and genetic energy streamed off its body.

If this tail strike were to land, Zhang Lie would surely be flattened into nothing more than a pancake. The six hunters watched on breathlessly, unable to help more than by channeling into the formation at full power.

"Stay strong, Captain!" Fang Yi shouted, wind and storm crackling around him. Within the domain of [Eclipse], the obsidian spear that had been stuck in the ground now shot toward the moonlight wyrm's right eye.

Opposite him, Sun Mengmeng shot a purple firebird toward the moonlight wyrm's left eye.

Yang Ze concentrated on the formation, focusing as much on the healing and regenerative powers of water as he could.

Zhou Ying leaned down and dug her hands into the ground, forming a gigantic jade-green shield by Zhang Lie's side.

Sun Xiaowu punched at the ground, trying to cause Zhang Lie's location to shift relative to the wyrm's attack.

Li Feng was the closest to Zhang Lie, so he focused on sending a flare of light toward the wyrm, trying to distract it and affect its vision.

However, because the moonlight wyrm was a peak-grade lifeform, and because they had to focus most of their attention on maintaining the formation, the hunters were limited in terms of what they could do.

Although they had all activated their genetic energy, they made little impact on the wyrm itself. Fang Yi's spear and Sun Mengmeng's firebird were wiped out by the vortices of water surrounding the wyrm, whereas Sun Xiaowu's fist didn't have much of an effect on the ground close to Zhang Lie at all.

Zhou Ying's shield and Li Feng's flare of light were, in the wyrm's eyes, nothing more than childish tricks. Its tail would overcome even Zhang Lie's bladed wings, let alone Zhou Ying's shield. As for Li Feng's misdirection, the peak-grade moonlight wyrm had such developed senses that it would be able to attack Zhang Lie even without its vision.

As its pearlescent tail made to strike, the force of the attack seemed to distort space itself. It was so quick that it sent soundwaves through the air, causing Zhang Lie's wolfman transformation to explode as his aura vanished.

There was no blood, no broken limbs—it seemed as though the moonlight wyrm's attack had annihilated him whole. The six-element formation, of which he was the center, broke apart. The moonlight wyrm looked to be the battle's final victor.

"No, Captain! This is impossible!"

"Captain!"

"I won't believe this!"

"Captain, how could you lose? Stand up! Stand back up!"

The moonlight wyrm roared in triumph, announcing its strength to the world.