Chapter 145: The Descent of Transcendent Monsters

Countless monsters surged out from the Void Pupil. Xie Yu intercepted and slaughtered more than half of them midway, yet the number that managed to land on the ground remained substantial.

Xie Yu had no leisure to mind the terrestrial monsters as Purple Raven operatives began streaming out from the West Gate to join the hunt.

With a Transcendent-level guardian present—one who had single-handedly thinned the incoming horde by over half—many people found their confidence restored.

Yet Xie Yu's expression had been grim from the very beginning. He had known the outcome of this war far in advance, and the probability of his own death here was exceedingly high. As for Darcy City, it was merely a matter of time before the monsters trampled it to ruins.

Catching sight of a massive claw protruding from the Void Pupil, Xie Yu's heart tightened. His gaze locked onto the aperture, knowing that what was bound to come had finally arrived.

Every opening of a Void Pupil was almost invariably accompanied by the descent of Transcendent monsters, triggering at least a Nightmare-grade beast tide.

Judging solely by the volume of Gold-tier monsters appearing as this Void Pupil neared Darcy City, one could easily deduce that this beast tide far exceeded the Nightmare grade. A Disaster-grade beast tide invariably heralded the emergence of three or more Transcendent monsters.

At an open-air restaurant within the city, the two men and one woman leisurely sipping their drinks wore expressions that grew somewhat solemn upon witnessing this scene.

"Looks like a hefty one..." Team leader Zhu Nian muttered, his brow furrowing slightly.

Beside him, a red-haired woman named Zhou Qian pointed to her mouth, signaling to the captain that she wished to speak.

Zhu Nian sighed softly and nodded. "Go ahead."

"Judging by its size, it should be a colossal breed. But looking at the claws, it resembles a demonized breed or a sub-dragon breed. If it's a sub-dragon breed, this single monster alone is likely sufficient to wipe out all of us except the captain. If it's a demonized breed, that old man might have his hands full dealing with it by himself," Zhou Qian offered her assessment.

"Let's hope it's not a sub-dragon breed. Sub-dragon breeds never deign to team up with other monsters. Once a sub-dragon breed appears in a beast tide of this caliber, there are bound to be at least three of them. By then, the rest of us will have to turn tail and run, save for the captain," Liang Song chimed in, popularizing the knowledge with a deadpan expression.

Zhu Nian offered no opinion, keeping his gaze fixed far away on the location of the Void Pupil.

High in the air, amidst the Void Pupil, a roar traveled from afar as the giant claw stretched further outward.

On the battlefield, not only Xie Yu but numerous Purple Raven reserve members below raised their heads to scan the sky.

When an immensely gigantic head slowly thrust itself out from the Void Pupil, more than a few people could not suppress gasps of astonishment.

Judging solely by the head, one could tell this was a dragon-shaped monster. Yet it belonged to no known variety of dragon, making it impossible to determine whether it was a sub-dragon.

The colossal dragon-shaped creature slowly crawled out from the Void Pupil, its immense form gradually revealing itself to the crowd and exerting a crushing pressure on countless souls.

Even Lin Huang felt a profound sense of shock; he had never beheld a creature of such titanic proportions.

The head alone spanned nearly a thousand meters in length, its crown bristling with ferocious spikes that instantly marked it as a malevolent entity.

When its entire body finally wrenched free from the Void Pupil, the complete form of the dragon-shaped monster was thoroughly unveiled.

Its total length reached a staggering twenty thousand meters, its entire body covered in ash-black scales and shrouded in an eerie aura of death.

Its three enormous eyes were completely ash-white, devoid of pupils. Spikes ran all the way from the back of its head down to its tail, featuring bone-white thorns hundreds of meters long.

Emerging from the Void Pupil, it unfurled a pair of massive black wings and parted its jaws to unleash a sky-shaking roar toward Darcy City below.

Before it, the entirety of Darcy City resembled a toy model.

"Could it really be a sub-dragon breed?" Zhou Qian asked uncertainly from her seat at the open-air restaurant.

"That aura doesn't feel like a sub-dragon breed; it's more akin to an undead breed," Liang Song muttered, shaking his head.

"Neither. It's a undead-type," Zhu Nian, acting as the team leader, finally spoke up, his brow furrowing deeply. "A dragon-shaped undead-type monster is even thornier to deal with than a sub-dragon... What's more troublesome is that other Transcendent undead monsters will descend as well..."

Among hunters, the undead breed was universally the least welcome category to encounter in battle.

This was because undead entities were notoriously difficult to slay, most possessing exceptionally unique preservation-of-life mechanics.

Take the Six-Armed Enchantress, for example: one had to target their mask for attacks to be effective; assaulting any other part yielded zero damage. Or consider the Ugly Dolls, which possessed proxy-death abilities and typically required repeated destruction several times before truly perishing...

These were monsters whose extermination methods had been cataloged by predecessors, making encounters manageable. But when confronted with a novel, never-before-seen type of undead, one remained entirely in the dark regarding their self-preservation mechanisms.

The dragon-shaped monster before them was precisely such a case. To everyone present, it was a riddle wrapped in scales—an entirely unknown entity.

"This new type of undead breed is indeed rather troublesome," Zhou Qian murmured, her brow twitching in slight displeasure.

High in the air beyond Darcy City's West Gate, Xie Yu's brows were similarly locked together. Being closest to the monster, he could sense from the intensity of its emanating aura that its combat strength faintly surpassed his own. Combined with the unique survival capabilities inherent to undead creatures, Xie Yu was virtually certain that defeat loomed larger for him in this battle, yet he had no choice but to brace himself and press forward.

High in the sky, the gigantic dragon-shaped monster had initially focused its sights on Darcy City, but it swiftly detected an obstruction lingering not far ahead.

It raised its head, locking its gaze upon the human blocking its path.

"Human, die!"

A thunderous roar suddenly exploded. The dragon-shaped monster lashed out at Xie Yu with a giant claw. Despite its colossal bulk, its attack speed remained entirely unimpeded by its size, reaching Xie Yu's position almost instantaneously.

Xie Yu's expression darkened slightly, leaving him no room to hold anything back.

He flicked his longsword upward, took a single step forward, and vanished completely from the spot.

The next instant, he reappeared directly above the dragon-shaped monster's head, pointing two fingers through the void toward the creature below as he uttered a low cry: "Lightning Sword!"

The moment the words fell, the purple longsword suspended in mid-air suddenly erupted with golden arcs of electricity, transforming into a streak of golden lightning that darted straight toward one of the dragon-shaped monster's eyes.

"So fast!" Zhou Qian could not help exclaiming from afar.

The dragon-shaped monster seemed utterly devoid of time to dodge as the sword strike pierced straight through its pupil.

"Did it hit?" Liang Song asked uncertainly.

"No. That monster's ability is rather peculiar," Zhu Nian said, shaking his head with a slight frown.

On the battlefield, a momentary flash of elation had sparked in Xie Yu's heart the instant he thought his opponent was hit, but his expression instantly curdled into ugliness. He realized that the blow which had seemingly struck the monster had actually passed through empty air.

A sudden whistling sound erupted behind him. Before Xie Yu could react and attempt to evade, it was already too late. A massive dragon tail struck him with tremendous force, sending him hurtling violently away to crash hard into the distant ground.