Chapter 119: A Little Sour

Even with joints and muscles repeatedly reinforced by the Box Garden, they were constantly wearing down from the high-speed movement. Were it not for the super-magnetic damping field locking every water molecule in place—effectively nullifying inertia—Kant would have suffered comminuted fractures throughout his entire body at the very first movement.

As Adonsa and Kant grappled, the shockwaves from their clash blew away all of Kazan’s blood serpents, forcing him into close-quarters combat.

Kazan’s lightning-fast hand strike was caught with surgical precision by Adonsa, who crushed his hand like dough. Kazan sneered, and his shattered palm instantly detonated; black blood sprayed like a high-pressure water jet, drilling into Adonsa’s palm, while the exploding gore lashed out at Adonsa’s eyelids, waist, and groin—every conventionally lethal target.

As an assassin, Kazan was truly unscrupulous; he would likely not even blink if he had to squat in a cesspit to carry out a hit.

But his sneer quickly froze. The black blood, with a cutting capability in no way inferior to a high-frequency oscillation blade, struggled to pierce Adonsa’s epidermis only to be met by even tougher muscle.

How could the compressive and wear-resistant capabilities of these nano-gel crystalline muscles—designed to withstand instantaneous bursts of thousands of tons of force—be anything but formidable? Kazan could not advance even another centimeter.

The black blood frantically transformed into countless spikes, latching onto Adonsa, but they only produced a series of grating, muffled thuds. Kazan’s pride and joy, his black blood, was nothing more than a tickle to Adonsa.

Seeing his once-invincible black blood reduced to a mere itch, Kazan was stunned.

"Please, you are so weak." Adonsa’s indifferent voice drilled straight into Kazan’s ears.

"No!" Kazan roared, his entire body undulating like jelly. Almost all of his black blood was squeezed out, lunging at Adonsa like a wolf's maw, much like a hellish slime preparing to feed.

Kazan’s black blood possessed immense lethality and corrosiveness; there was almost nothing he had been unable to destroy. Yet, in exchange, he had lost most of his human structure—muscles, bones, and even his internal organs were in a constant state of atrophy and dissolution. Beyond killing, he could no longer enjoy the basic desires of a human.

To become stronger, he had become crazed and twisted, sacrificing almost everything.

Thus, when Adonsa crushed his hand, Kazan only attacked more violently.

Adonsa had no intention of studying the black blood. To it, the substance was merely an unconscious symbiotic organism that functioned by controlling the arrangement of metal ions via electrical currents. Its powerful corrosiveness was simply a byproduct of forcibly acidifying body fluids to maintain the equilibrium of those metal ions—a primitive and clumsy method.

If Adonsa wished, it could simulate the ecology of the black blood instantly, but there was no need; such a biological model was obsolete to it.

Overall, it had no research value, and things without research value were nothing more than waste.

Adonsa’s expressionless glance filled Kazan with a profound sense of humiliation, driving him to attack with even greater madness.

Seeing this, Provence hurriedly shouted through their mental link: "Kazan, your mission is to contain him, don't force a direct confrontation!"

But it was too late. Kazan—the Black Blood Kazan, the Mad Dog Kazan, the Viper Kazan—whose name was infamous in the Box Garden for the blood debts he had accrued, reached the end of his worthless life.

At this critical moment, when Kazan desperately needed coordination, Kant’s tactical simulation system finally experienced a minuscule delay under the strain of overload.

Adonsa seized this opening. Its palm retracted instantly; the turbulence caused by the movement alone gave Kant the illusion of suffocation, even though he no longer needed to breathe thanks to his nano-suit's life-support system.

Then came a simple, unadorned punch—at least, if viewed at a thousand times slow motion, it seemed quite simple.

Kant was scared out of his wits.

The punch stirred up layers of tiny shockwaves, distorting the air into a blur so intense that light scattered into a mosaic-like pattern. With a mere glance, Kant was certain that this punch exceeded five times the speed of sound. The sonic boom had not even reached Kant’s acoustic sensors before Adonsa’s fist arrived at his chest.

Vector thrusters all over Kant’s body vented white gas, the massive discharge providing the momentum for him to pivot.

With his nano-muscles operating at overload, Kant leaned his upper body, barely dodging the punch. Even so, the terrifying pressure of the fist-wind sent a tremor through his entire frame.

Seizing this opportunity, Kant triggered his high-frequency oscillation blade into overdrive, slashing upward in a vicious arc, aiming for Adonsa’s exposed guard. He was confident he could sever Adonsa’s arm with a single strike!

But the next instant, a massive force struck his chest. Even with the protection of the nano-suit and the super-magnetic damping field, Kant heard the sound of bone shattering as his entire chest caved into a crater the size of a bowl.

Before he was sent flying in shock, Kant saw that the side of Adonsa’s arm—which should have reached the end of its momentum—had suddenly expanded, popping out a brand-new limb. It was as if one arm had sprouted a second joint, delivering a secondary strike with all the force of the initial punch, slamming heavily into Kant’s chest.

Kant was intimately familiar with the unpredictable assassination skills of Black Blood Kazan, but he had been confident that his high-speed combat techniques could preempt any variation. He had never expected that a monster like Adonsa, capable of equal high-speed combat, would have such hidden mechanisms built into its own body, leaving him caught off guard and critically wounded.

Having disposed of Kant in an instant, Adonsa paused, its body radiating intense heat from its high-speed exertion, only to be suddenly doused in Kazan’s black blood.

Kazan laughed maniacally: "Come! Fall into hell in regret and despair!"

Adonsa wiped the wriggling black blood from its face, feeling a stinging sensation as the substance sought to burrow into its skin.

The squirming blood did not drip off; instead, it rolled back and forth in a sickening manner, resembling some grotesque soft-bodied creature.

A smile hung on Adonsa’s lovely face as it said, "You said... hell?"

Kazan’s smile froze. He frantically performed a pulling motion, shouting, "Wait, wait, don't leave me! That is my black blood!"

The thick black blood rapidly vanished on Adonsa’s snow-white skin, diffusing and fading like ink absorbed into a damp cloth, until it disappeared beneath Adonsa’s unblemished surface.

Adonsa had utilized its cells to phagocytose and absorb the black blood into its body, and with that, Kazan lost control over that portion of his blood forever.

With Adonsa’s power, such a biological entity had no chance of resistance and would be broken down into the most basic organic and inorganic materials.

Having lost so much blood, Kazan desperately clawed at his own face, rushing forward in a frenzy to fight to the death. The remaining black blood pulsed, distorting his form and creating a horrifying spectacle, his throat emitting a chilling, hissing sound.

Though he knew it was too late, Provence screamed, "Come back, Kazan!"

But it was already too late.

Adonsa merely opened its mouth—a mouth that stretched wide like a hippo’s—and swallowed Kazan whole.

Kazan’s face of despair was hidden by the closing jaws as he slid into the bottom of the pitch-black, bottomless abyss.

Suddenly, a wisp of black blood poked out from Adonsa’s mouth, and a hand made of black blood, clawed like a chicken’s, struggled to pry open the jaws that were millions of times more secure than a bank vault. Kazan’s despair felt palpable, infecting everyone present, but Adonsa simply slurped it back in with an indifferent expression.

Adonsa burped blankly and said, "A bit sour."

Provence’s breath hitched. Recalling the scene where Adonsa devoured the worm-monster, he murmured, "Hell... is it inside?"

For the first time, his pride and his hunger for victory waned significantly, and it changed his entire approach to the battle to come.