Chapter 601: Echo
Barely a second after the echoes of his strike demolished the statue, Dante rolled in the air, hauling himself toward the next statue.
It was a crusader, and it was already swinging its massive stone sword toward him.
The crusader's blade carved through the air with a deafening roar, its edge glowing faintly with the blood-red sigils etched into its surface.
The force alone threatened to shear the very air in two, but Dante was faster.
He twisted midair, a streak of white light in the crimson haze, his sword meeting the crusader's blade in a cataclysmic clash.
The impact sent shockwaves rippling outward, the reverberation shaking the chamber.
"Too slow," Dante muttered, his voice cutting through the chaos.
His blade hummed with essence as the light shrouding his body and sword suddenly burst and propelled him in an instant.
He appeared behind the crusader, his weapon slicing clean through its torso with surgical precision.
The stone figure cracked, crimson energy spilling from the fissure like molten blood. It let out a guttural roar, collapsing into a heap of rubble that disintegrated into ash.
Northern, standing at the chamber's edge, chuckled under his breath. 'Impressive. He is no doubt a strong person. Despite being made of stone, they are not stopping his sword from hitting its mark.'
Dante was actually strong, very strong, but because of how brightly Northern was shining and how seemingly easy he was making things look, one would almost forget that the Lieutenant was a Paragon.
Northern suppressed a proud grin.
"At this rate, you might not need me to deal with all of them."
Dante didn't spare him a glance, already moving toward his next target.
The remaining crusaders began to shift, their movements fluid and unnervingly lifelike. Sigils flared to life across their bodies, pulsating with a crimson, blood-like essence as they synchronized their attack.
Two crusaders broke formation, their massive shields raised as barriers while another launched a torrent of blood spells toward Dante.
The crimson spell morphed midair, transforming into jagged spears that rained down with deadly precision.
Dante's form blurred, weaving through the onslaught with inhuman grace, but Northern's eyes weren't on him.
They were locked on the crusaders, analyzing their patterns, their essence. His Chaos Eyes flared, the world splitting into layers of raw information.
Lines of weakness. Fissures in the constructs of their forms. Tendrils of soul essence pulsing through their cores.
"Interesting," Northern murmured while standing, his arms folded as he patiently waited for his chance to tag in.
He observed the crimson red statue that sat on the tallest throne seat for a moment.
Despite the havoc that was being wrought in its chamber, the Blood Guardian seemed unbothered.
There was a deep emptiness to its dark eyes, with a tiny dot of red light glowing in the pitch darkness of its gaze.
Northern felt something try to burrow into his soul as their gazes met, so intense that he took a step back with a gloomy frown on his face.
Dante suddenly tumbled across the chamber, rolling on the ground past him.
Northern's eyes rose in excitement as they followed.
"Tag?"
Groaning, the Lieutenant painstakingly raised his hand, then gave a thumbs up. "Tag... you bastard."
Northern immediately, with a raw and vile light burning in his polycoria eyes, swung his head forward with malevolent hunger.
Barely perceptible, he vanished, his body looking like it was losing form, blurring. The movement was short-lived, for in an instant, Northern was before a crusader.
Lieutenant Dante had managed to take out two of the statues in the chamber. It had gotten tougher since they all began to synchronize their attacks, not waiting for one another.
While the crusaders were attacking, the casters were casting their spells.
And it all gave no time for a proper calculation that should yield a sufficient and efficient reaction.
But this was not the case for Northern. All four pupils of his eyes were looking in different directions.
Grengar finished manifesting in his hand as he reached the crusader.
Grengar materialized in Northern's grip with a crackle of chaotic energy, its twin blades gleaming like blackened voidfire. The staff thrummed with raw power, as if it hungered to carve through the crimson haze.
The crusader swung its massive sword downward with the force of an avalanche, its blood- red sigils burning brighter as the weapon descended.
Northern didn't dodge-he stepped into the attack, twisting Grengar in his hands. The twin blades sang as they met the crusader's strike, splitting the massive sword down its center. The resulting shockwave was a violent roar of energy, but Northern stood firm, his boots skidding only slightly on the blood-slick floor.
The crusader reeled back, off-balance, and Northern's grin widened.
"You're not bad," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "But not good enough."
With a flick of his wrist, Grengar's twin blades rotated, the weapon spinning in his hands like a tempest. Northern surged forward, closing the gap in an instant.
The crusader raised its shield, but it was too slow.
Northern struck. The first blade of Grengar bit into the shield's edge, carving deep grooves
into the slab of stone.
The second blade followed, sweeping in low and slicing clean through the crusader's knee
joint.
Then Northern, with a satisfying grin marring his face, muttered.
"Echo."
Coated with a purplish dark essence, invisible strikes of the same kind bolted out of nowhere, cleaving not just the entirety of the stone monster but even the far end of the wall before
which it stood.
The statue, cleaved and chopped in bits and pieces from its head to toe, stumbled, its massive frame collapsing to one side.
Crimson blood sprayed from all its severed limbs; only one leg was intact, but Northern didn't give it a chance to recover.
He spun Grengar overhead and drove it into the air with the force of a train.
"Echo."
To the direction of the incoming crusaders and blood spells that weaved eerily in the air, the same void-infused strikes appeared, magnanimously multiplying Northern's strike into the
air.
The impact sent cracks spiderwebbing across the ground and nearby wall; even the cadaverous chandeliers trembled, their crimson ichor sputtering violently.
With a final twist of the staff, Northern swung Grengar to his side, drawing a swift trail of
cleave that parted the air.
"Echo."
The other crusaders were already moving. Two charged at once, their synchronized steps shaking the chamber, while a third caster chanted a spell that filled the air with an ominous
hum.
All of them were sliced from their torso to their lower waist.