Chapter 408 Ambush
Usually, if Daneel were stuck in a situation like this where the only option was to put himself in life-threatening danger, he would have been panicking by now.
After all, the other party was an Eminent Warrior with unknown trump cards while he was still an Exalted Human.
However, ever since he had gotten the message that someone had stepped into the vicinity of the Withering Leaf Sect Headquarters, he had gotten a suspicion that his method of going about becoming a Warrior was flawed.
The experiences of the top assassins had been invaluable, but instead of sitting down and understanding them in-depth, Daneel had rushed into trying out a plan because of the urgency he felt.
That had been his first mistake. The 'need' varied from individual to individual, but the moment of it appearing was never perfectly planned by anyone. If so, how could he have hoped to make it come by just directly applying what the others had gone through?
Secondly, from his experience on Earth, Daneel knew that this 'need' might correspond to some evolutionary instinct of an organism to continue surviving.
Although the method varied, stepping past the threshold was all about adapting oneself into a higher realm. That was the clue: to push past.
If so, the end goal in his mind during his training had been correct, but his way of going about it had been completely wrong.
A man who was in a fight would definitely not try to push his limits if he knew that there was no risk of him dying.
It was very simple logic, but one that he had missed in his hurry.
Regardless, he would soon have a chance to test his hypothesis.
Closing his eyes, he entered into a state of meditation first, where he constantly told himself that he could rely on himself in the next fight. Either he would win, or die.
If his opponent ended up being too weak, then he would just have to look for a different, stronger one.
But if that was not the case, then he would either break through or die trying.
The fate of Angaria itself rested on his shoulders, and as he realized it, his chest puffed up with confidence.
For all those who were depending on him, he had to do it, no matter what.
This self-hypnosis worked, as he felt his heart beat rising in anticipation of a blood-boiling competition.
He would use every trick in the damn book. Nothing was off-limits.
For once, he was going to go all out.
…..
As the sect leader wandered through the Valley, he kept trying hard not to let his mind stray from his goal of killing the King of Lanthanor.
If he had succeeded before, he wouldn't have found himself in this position now, where he was constantly reminded of a few scenes in his mind.
The first was always the same: it was the one where he could only watch as the elders of the sect were slaughtered before they made their way out of the Valley of Mist.
The second, though, was very strange.
It looked just like the first one, but it was morphed.
Sect members had been slaughtered left and right, but instead of watching from afar, the sect leader was amongst them.
He could see clearly with his own eyes how each of the bodies had a disbelieving and fearful look on their faces, as if they couldn't get themselves to believe who or what had killed them.
Each body had a large hole in the stomach area, and they all also looked like their blood had been drained.
Through all this, the sect leader was constantly walking between them.
Women, children, teenagers. Whoever the culprit was, he had shown no mercy.
There was one thing which was off: no matter what the sect leader did, he did not look down at his own hands.
Repeatedly, he kept chanting the words "King of Lanthanor", the man he saw as the devil who had caused all this carnage.
At the last moment, he was just about to look down at his body in his memory once again, but the sect leader shook his head, making that scene freeze while forcefully pulling himself back to the present.
The King had done it all. He had slaughtered his sect, his family.
He would pay.
Just as he was about to contact the last few sect members alive whom he had positioned outside the Valley to activate the trap once again, the sect leader heard a few voices from a particular direction.
It had been over an hour since that man had escaped his attack, and he had been frantically searching everywhere while expertly avoiding the traps placed at every step.
It didn't make sense for someone else to have entered the Valley, and he had told his sect members not to enter at any cost. Besides, they didn't even know how to navigate through the traps, so they would have been mincemeat by now.
Maybe that King had called for reinforcements?
That didn't make much sense, as the sect leader was still constantly checking the formation. He couldn't even wrap his head around the fact that the King had escaped its surveillance, so he couldn't accept that even others in the Central Continent were capable of his feat.
Regardless, anyone he didn't know were threats, and they had to be eliminated.
Silently, he made his way through the bushes toward the source of the sounds.
However, merely a few seconds later, when the voices became clear, the sect leader froze.
They were familiar.
Hauntingly so.
"Jaqueline, run toward the front! You can get away, leave us be!"
"No, grandpa!"
"Throw all the young ones forward! They must teleport away! Even if we die, he will avenge us!"
That voice…belonged to the man who used to bring him candy late at night whenever he fought well in the morning.
As for the other man, he had carried him on his shoulders while taking him around the Valley.
No! It was impossible!
There was no method to record audio or video in the Central Continent that he knew of, so he couldn't make sense of what was happening.
Besides, these things were what these people had said before their deaths.
How could he be hearing them now?
Unless…they had found out what he had done, and had come back?
Whatever the reason was, crippling shock encapsulated the sect leader's body, making him stand still.
His mind was blank, so by the time he heard a strange noise above him, it was already too late.
Some kind of…object had floated to the spot right above him, before silently shooting forward 4 projectiles which all looked like eerie, green skulls that wanted to eat him, piece by piece.
It was a trap!
Wait…hadn't he been the one to trap the King inside the Valley? How the hell had the man laid a trap for him, instead?
There was no time to think. Thankfully, he was a Warrior, so his body responded quickly, allowing him to jump away at the last moment.
However, the 4 projectiles which looked like fiery cannon balls had been cleverly shot with the added effect of sealing off all escape routes, and they even seemed to be able to edit their paths.
2 still managed to hit him, with one brushing past his shoulder and the other hitting him square in the back, making him thud to the ground before skidding on it.
In the process, 3 traps activated, with 2 shooting ice shards at him and the third releasing some kind of poison.
Facing so many attacks all at once, the sect leader showed his experience.
First, he blocked off the air entering his nostrils before making barriers appear around him that stopped the ice shards. These were powerful traps, so he needed to conjure multiple barriers before the thick ice shards finally dissipated.
Finally, he realized that the man problem was the green fire, which was slowly engulfing his whole body.
It looked like it wouldn't stop spreading till there was nothing left of him, and it kept eating through every barrier he made.
Still, he had managed to reach an equilibrium with it, so the next step was to look for a way to purge it from his body.
His back had thankfully been protected by a Warrior level defense trinket, so he had only been hurt by the impact of hitting the ground.
That had been…scary.
However, just as he was about to snarl and look for his opponent, he realized that he had been surrounded by 4 more objects just like the one that had shot at him from above just now.
Sh*t.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
As they all once again shot those devastating cannonballs at him, the sect leader at least had the chance this time to grasp a few items in his pocket.
One after the other, Warrior level defense trinkets came into being which were supplemented by his own Warrior level barriers.
As he saw the trinkets which were worth millions of gold coins that had been earned by the hard work of the sect members be burned away one by one, the rage in him once again increased.
The caster of these things must be close, and as he extended his senses outward, he realized that his opponent was being very sly: he had hidden himself covertly on top of a tree just a few meters away. If it hadn't been for his skills that had been honed in countless battles and the secret techniques of the sect which had once been part of the Big 4, he would never have spotted him.
However, now that he had, it was finally time.
BOOOMM!
At a speed that wasn't visible to the naked eye, the sect leader shot towards his target, but as he did so, the image he had been blocking in his mind finally became clear.
He looked down in the scene in his memory, and he saw his clothes drenched in blood, while his fingernails had bits of flesh still stuck in them.