Ultragenic Warlord

Chapter 817: An Annoying Foe

Regardless, if the world tree wanted to survive this ordeal, it would have to give its all to stop Sun Mengmeng—or die in the process.

The entire world shook as a thousand thick roots emerged from the ground like gigantic dragons. The world tree itself morphed into a titanic devil, its branches and leaves twisting to form two thick palms. The devil uprooted itself, inclined its head, and roared up at the sky.

"[Lunarflame Shot]!" Fire-attuned genetic energy burst from Sun Mengmeng's body as her body erupted in flames. She pulled her greatbow taut.

Only a series of afterimages were visible of her hand as she shot countless arrows of black flame of her bow, producing what seemed like a meteor shower that tinted the air black and gave the valley a phantasmagorical appearance. The air turned dry and arid, as though a cataclysm was nigh.

The flaming black meteors gave off an aura of destruction and annihilation. The devil tree king swept an arm before Sun Mengmeng's arrows, causing them all to explode and summoning up a strong gale.

With overpowering strength, it wiped out the arrows from the sky—at a cost. Black flames ravaged the king's palms, burning as it spread.

"[Netherworld's Gaze]!" Hundreds of arrows, like beams of moonlight, shot toward the devil tree king at such high temperatures that the very air warped and began to combust.

The devil tree king blocked them all with hundreds of branches. The flames erupted with a spectacular explosion, but the branches bolstered by the king of the realm's authority survived the onslaught and flew toward Sun Mengmeng.

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"[Lunarflame Shot: Extirpation of the Garuda]!" As Sun Mengmeng infused her genetic energy into the bow, the image of a garuda appeared behind her. Black flames whirled around her like a cyclone, and the air turned scorching.

As she released her arrow, it morphed into a human-faced, golden-winged bird that radiated red light as it arced through the skies. Black flames flared from under its wings that seemed to cover the sun, spreading out in waves from the garuda, charged with so much energy that they could destroy heaven and earth.

Sun Mengmeng's attack scorched the heavens and the earth, dyeing everything in sight a patch of black. The devil tree king's branches splintered and cracked in the face of that attack.

"[Lunarflame Shot: Extirpation of the Garuda]!" Sun Mengmeng pulled her bow taut once more, infusing the rest of her genetic energy within. The image of a garuda materialized from thin air and, supercharged with Sun Mengmeng's energy, readied for a devastating blow.

Even before the arrow landed, lava rose out of the ground, igniting the earth and sky alike. Black flames gathered, sucking in the light from all around like black holes and devouring everything in sight.

With its branches burned to a crisp, the devil tree king lost its primary means of protecting itself. It stretched out its black, burning palms in an attempt to block the fierce garuda's assault, but they broke and splintered in an instant. The flaming garuda struck at the devil tree king with the power of annihilation, sending huge gales whirling through the battlefield on impact.

All the remaining devil trees were wiped out by those gales, and the devil tree king, its whole body aflame, finally fell to the ground. The entire world shook as shockwaves buffeted everything in sight.

The world tree's roots, now exposed, burned amidst the black flame, giving off a malodorous smoke. With one final arrow from Sun Mengmeng, the fallen world tree ceased its struggles, and the will of the world mourned the passing of another king.

A rain of blood fell to the ground, though it was unable to extinguish the black flames.

Sun Mengmeng stored her bow. The battle was over.

Meanwhile, Zhou Ying had turned the entirety of the demons' world green. She had used her vitality to fill the entire world with greenery, thinking that she would be able to ferret out the primordial demon, only to be unable to find him.

"Could he have escaped from the world?" she wondered.

That was unlikely, so there was only one possibility: it was hiding in the poisonous sea that she had just vacated.

"[Avatar of the Fae: Worldbound Enclosure]!" Zhou Ying summoned a large number of ebony dragons to search for any traces of the primordial demon. She could vaguely sense its presence deep below, but was unable to capture it.

Her ebony dragons could only survive for a short period of time, and they weren't able to track down the primordial demon during that time.

Zhou Ying recalled how Zhang Lie had mentioned that it would be very difficult to trap a king of the realm who was completely focused on fleeing and hiding.

She had avoided the poisonous sea during her reforestation. With her trees as surveillance, it should have been very hard for the primordial demon to escape unnoticed, but it had indeed done so.

Zhou Ying quickly thought of a skill that kings of the realm possessed: spatial teleportation.

That had to be how the demon king was able to escape her surveillance and head into the poisonous sea!

Although the primordial demon hadn't demonstrated this power during their battle, that didn't mean that it was incapable of doing so. Each king of the realm had varying levels of affinity with their authority, and spatial attunement was one of the hardest to make full use of. Invoking that element of a king's authority required careful thought and deliberate practice, especially in a combat-oriented environment.

Most kings of the realm who were unfamiliar with the inner workings of space tended to avoid using such techniques in combat, but that didn't mean they wouldn't use it outside of combat. While Zhou Ying was slowly reforesting the entire planet, the primordial demon used that unfamiliar power to teleport itself into the poisonous sea.

Even if Zhou Ying were to slowly dredge the toxic sea, the primordial demon would likely teleport away again.

"Indeed, a king's authority is truly a blessing. There's no oxygen in the sea, so the fact that the demon king can still survive there is..."

Hold on—oxygen??Zhou Ying thought she had the spark of a new idea. How did the primordial demon deal with the issue of lacking oxygen?

The answer was simple: an existence on the level of the demon king didn't need oxygen to begin with. It was already past the level of a peak-grade lifeform, and it could survive even without consuming food or breathing.

Zhou Ying sighed when she realized that her new idea wasn't a breakthrough.

Once again, she returned to the problem of trying to drag out the primordial demon. It would be relatively easy, if time-consuming, to dredge the silt from the sea, or even to strip the neighboring area of oxygen, but neither strategy would get her closer to the primordial demon, who possessed the power of teleportation and could escape at will.

"What would Zhang Lie do at a time like this?" Zhou Ying wondered.