Chapter 1398 - Chosen of the Malefic Viper vs Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord (4)

Jake’s sheer arrogance and Pride manifested into the world and forced away the spinning sphere of fire, lightning, and wind. He felt the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord push back against him, as if his soul were in a meat grinder, but Jake held on and kept pushing.

Whatever destructive energies got within five meters of Jake were instantly nullified as Jake slowly stabilized and held it there, not wanting to push himself further than he had to. Pride fought against the spinning sphere for several more seconds before the other chosen's magic finally started running out of steam. When it subsided and the last flame was extinguished, Jake’s haggard form was revealed as his entire body was covered in cuts and burns, but even then he raised his head and looked at the other Chosen before flashing a smile.

“Good one,” he said, his heart still beating fast. “Now my turn.”

Jake pulled out his bow, ignoring the pain of every movement as he nocked an arrow and fired a quick shot at his opponent. She raised her hands and summoned a shield. The physical action told Jake that she was also starting to struggle, and her labored breathing only reinforced this conclusion. Not surprising, considering she’d just pulled off her most powerful combo attack to date.

She blocked his arrows as Jake kept shooting them quickly, while his vital energy worked at high speed to regenerate the most important parts that had been destroyed by the combo-elemental attack. He’d wanted to launch an Arcane Powershot, but he felt that if he did so immediately after escaping the sphere of destruction, he would likely have blown off his own arm and shoulder because of how damn feeble his body felt.

For several seconds, the Chosen only blocked Jake’s barrage, for the first time finding herself on the back foot within her own domain, something she certainly didn’t seem to enjoy as she spoke again, her voice sounding slightly weaker than before.

“Repel.”

Jake felt his body start to get pushed backward with incredible power, making him grit his teeth and resist with every fiber of his being as Pride responded once more, denying her attempt to impose her will upon him. He was barely sent skittering back, much to his opponent’s surprise, as her eyes widened and she quickly pivoted away from the ground she’d started warping toward where she’d planned to launch Jake.

Her failure to regain momentum allowed Jake to land a solid arrow, drawing blood for the first time since entering the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord’s domain. His grin only grew upon seeing his arrow penetrate her arm, and while he couldn’t explode it as she quickly pushed out his ability to control the arrow, it was good enough.

His body was also starting to feel a little better; the emergency repair his vital energies had made was complete, with arcane energy temporarily fixing the rest like duct tape. Usually, physical damage would have little effect on Jake’s combat abilities, but the problem was that what the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord did wasn’t simply physical or even energy attacks.

Every single action done by her was infused with her will, leaving an insidious lingering concept that seemed to hurt Jake’s soul and mind directly. He hadn’t even noticed it at first, as the most apparent danger of a massive spear or a sea of fire was the physical damage it could inflict, so he didn't notice her willpower slowly infecting him as well.

Only when he’d taken this much did he realize, and at that point, it had accumulated enough to become a problem. It didn’t simply deal extra damage; instead, it seemed to “weigh down” his soul and will, making every action more difficult and slightly weaker.

Jake also realized now this had definitely been part of pushing Pride to get its upgrade, as while Jake hadn’t realized what was happening, his subconscious instincts definitely had. The mere concept of having someone else’s will dictate what he could and couldn’t do was so fundamentally against Jake and his Bloodline that it resonated and pushed his pride further than ever before.

Now, Pride was suppressing and eliminating her will’s effect on his body as his other energies slowly filled in the gaps left behind, quickly bringing Jake back to full power once more.

His opponent had clearly also realized the change, but she didn’t immediately react, but kept only defending herself after taking a blow. Jake had expected her to be significantly weakened after unleashing that combo and believed he had time to recover a little before pushing his advantage and fully regaining momentum, but yet again he’d underestimated his opponent.

Having realized Jake’s resistance to having her will imposed upon him had increased several times over, she didn’t try to directly affect him but made the ground rise up as several large boulders were shot towards him like massive bullets. Jake dodged them all, finding the attacks rather unimaginative. At least he did so until she spoke right as he dodged one of her boulder bullets.

“Golem.”

The boulder flying past Jake suddenly turned into a golem of stone, the transformation happening in an instant, and all its momentum simply disappeared, allowing it to attack Jake as it tried to punch him with its hand replaced by a morning star.

Jake barely managed to raise his bow and block in time as he was launched backward; the blow was pretty damn heavy and more than capable of doing significant damage had he failed to block. Even so, the situation was not yet that bad, as he shot an arrow at the summoned golem, still believing he had an advantage against an exhausted opponent. It struck true, blasting off the creature’s arm, prompting Jake to conclude this golem wasn’t a problem for roughly two-tenths of a second before its arms instantly regenerated after absorbing the atmospheric energy filling the domain.

Still, he could handle one golem while-

“Duplicate.”

A second identical golem instantly appeared next to the first one as both charged towards Jake, their speed also taking him by surprise as Jake prepared to handle the two-

“Duplicate.”

Four, as the two had been cloned before they even reached Jake. For a second, he thought that these clones had to be weaker or something, as otherwise, this had to drain far too much energy to pull off. However, no, all four of them were operating at full power, and Jake could only quickly prepare himself as they reached him.

Channeling energy into his improved Pride, he attempted to destroy these golems and deny their existence within his personal space, but to his surprise, it didn’t work at all. He was confused until he realized why. These were considered summons, operating based on their own will with their own Soulshapes and everything. Denying them wasn’t easy.

Of course, their will was fully determined by the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord, and while Jake could probably disable her ability to issue commands, their existing programming would remain. Programming that consisted solely of attacking Jake with reckless aggression based on how they acted.

Jake dodged several swings as they attacked him, their arms and hands warping into various weapons to stab, cut, smash, or otherwise cause him unpleasantries. They were decently fast, but Jake remained significantly faster, allowing him to deal with all four of them relatively easily as he looked for a way to permanently destroy them. Cutting away with Eternal Hunger and his Voidblade Katar, Jake constantly broke parts of them, but they regenerated instantly every time, drawing mana from the atmosphere to do so.

This definitely did weaken the domain itself, as its energy was consumed, but the entire space had so much energy infused into it that it was utterly negligible. Keeping these four summon golems did appear to take a toll on his opponent, though, based on how she hadn’t taken any further steps to attack him, and while dealing with four golems was annoying, Jake was confident he would still be able to-

“Duplicate.”

For a moment, Jake questioned his own sense of hearing, but how could his wonderful Perception ever be wrong, as of course he’d heard her right. The four golems swarming Jake suddenly duplicated once more, bringing the total to eight.

What the fuck, Jake cursed internally, as all eight charged, each with the power of a pretty respectable B-grade genius in their own right. Most Administrators in the antechamber wouldn’t have been able to deal with a single one of them, and now, the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord had summoned eight at the same time.

Speaking of the Chosen, Jake saw through his sphere that she’d retreated and summoned a sphere of metal around herself after speaking that one final word. Jake wondered what she was up to as she did something that made his eyes widen yet again.

Within her protective bubble, she sat down cross-legged and closed her eyes. She was meditating in the middle of a fight, something Jake had never seen anyone bold enough to do before, as meditation usually left one defenseless. However, between Jake facing these eight golems and her metal sphere, was she truly in any danger?

Jake immediately knew that letting her meditate wasn’t an option, as even a single minute would allow her to significantly recover. Sure, she wouldn’t be able to gain many resources, but her mental energy would surely be significantly refreshed, and, given how she dared to meditate in combat, he was highly suspicious that her meditation skill might have some kind of quick-recovery state or something. Some function that made it incredibly effective in combat, or perhaps only for a brief duration after activation.

No matter what, Jake had to stop her as soon as possible, but he didn’t have an easy way to do so. He managed to get enough space to shoot a single arrow, but her metal sphere was more than durable enough to block it, and she had smartly used something Jake couldn’t see through to block Gaze as well. His only realistic way of getting to her was with an Arcane Powershot, but the golems weren’t going to give him time to charge one, so he had to deal with those first.

Dancing with them for several hundred exchanges, Jake cut and broke several of them into many pieces, hoping to find some kind of core or weakness, but no matter which part of them he broke, they just regenerated and kept swinging at him. He was fairly certain they were weakening a little every time they healed, but it was far too slow to be a solution he would accept.

Seeing that time wasn’t on his side, Jake resigned himself to pulling out one trump card he’d held back from using. He felt that the souls of these golem summons weren’t particularly powerful, likely due to their existences only being temporary in the first place. They weren’t even “real” summons. Summons were usually based on some template, and it could be argued that when a summoner called forth creatures, it was the same ones every time. This resulted in them having far more powerful souls that were more grounded in existence.

These golems weren’t that, and Jake took advantage of their obvious weakness. He didn’t need to destroy their bodies... just their souls. After dodging a barrage of attacks, Jake managed to get off a One Step, and as all eight were charging for him, his eyes opened wide and started glowing orange as he went one step further.

Boundless Sight activated, and for a moment, the world was once more filled with odd lines that didn’t appear real, yet were undeniably there. Jake recognized them, but ultimately focused on the task at hand as Primal Gaze, empowered by Boundless Sight, struck all eight golems at once.

Jake’s own soul was pitted against eight others, a contest that usually wouldn’t end well for the outnumbered person, but in this instance, it wasn’t even worthy of being called a contest. The souls of the golems began to crumble rapidly as they froze, their bodies suffering the same fate as they cracked and smoldered.

Within only a few seconds, all that remained of the eight golems the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord had summoned to buy herself time were reduced to crumbled rocks falling towards the ground.

It hadn’t been instant, but Jake had taken out the golems far quicker than his opponent could have possibly anticipated, and he didn’t for even a second doubt that this was the opening he’d been waiting for. Right after the golems crumbled, Jake already had his bow back in hand as he prepared to land the deciding blow of the fight.

From within his quiver, he pulled out a Protean Arrow he’d been holding onto throughout the fight. He had originally started making one for Azal, but after that fight had ended prematurely, he’d shifted it into one to take down the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord.

Nocking the arrow, Jake took aim and started charging Arcane Powershot. From within the metal sphere, he saw his opponent slightly frown, leading him to conclude she still had the ability to detect the world outside despite meditating. That, or she’d simply felt her summoned golems being destroyed.

Either way, it looked like she couldn’t stop her meditation skill instantly, making Jake smile as Arcane Powershot rapidly charged as the arcane energy revolving around him grew stronger with every passing moment.

The air quivered and shook with the sheer destructive potential Jake was gathering, and to his annoyance, the domain itself seemed to respond. Jake felt the atmospheric energy start attacking the energy gathered for Arcane Powershot, like some sort of instinctive reaction from the world itself.

A reaction that Jake denied as Pride of the Malefic Viper came back in force, pushing away the influence of the world to allow Jake’s Arcane Powershot to continue accumulating power in peace. His opponent looked like she was trying to wake up as quickly as possible as the seconds ticked by, and soon, Jake felt his body reach its limits, and thus the Arcane Powershot reach its peak.

He wasn’t done yet, though. Jake had done a lot of fighting that day. He’d killed the many Administrators, fought the disciple from the Sword Sect alongside Ghost King Azal, only to afterward enter this battle with the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord. That much fighting had naturally resulted in quite a bit of Hunting Momentum accumulated by Relentless Hunt, and now Jake infused every bit of it into the Protean Arrow, making it even more powerful.

With every shred of power he could pour into the attack, given his current state, Jake locked onto his target and loosed the arrow. An arcane explosion rocked the domain, cracking the space immediately surrounding Jake as the arrow tore through any resistance the domain instinctively mustered to stop the Protean Arrow.

The arrow met no resistance that could stop it as it soon reached the metal sphere surrounding his opponent. This barrier, which had effortlessly stopped his regular arrows, couldn’t withstand the destructive arcane energies surrounding the attack at all. It was destroyed before the physical arrow could even make contact, as the arrow kept going straight towards the other Chosen, who still sat defenselessly in meditation.

Her getting hit seemed like a foregone conclusion; however, right before it reached her, the eyes of the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord suddenly shot open, and she immediately spoke, raising her hands to summon the strongest defense she had.

“Aegis!”