Chapter 149: Advancing Flesh

After quickly looting the storage bracelet, wand, and other supernatural equipment from the slain third-rank curse-caster, Gune poured a vial of mid-grade Blue Soul-Extinguishing Water onto the corpse.

The robe on the body had been completely torn apart by Gune and held little value, so he burned it away with the Blue Soul-Extinguishing Water as well.

Following the positions he had observed earlier, Gune moved stealthily through the building like a nimble leopard, heading toward the next prey.

Moments later, Gune easily located the second enemy through his wall-penetrating perception.

In two adjacent rooms near the windows.

A male and a female elementalist were working together, continuously unleashing elemental curses toward the opposite street and the hiding spots below.

Among them, the male was casting Explosive Fireball.

It was this man who had bombarded Gune earlier when he arrived.

Gune crept over silently, and just as another explosion erupted outside,

he quickly used Puppet Thread to open the door and bombarded the two elementalists, who were casting outward, with Magic Blade Barrage.

Gune attacked the man first; the woman reacted swiftly, firing a rapid series of instant Lightning Arc spells at Gune.

If it were a fourth-rank Lightning Arc, it might have had a chance to break Gune's Blood Shield.

But this rank of Lightning Arc was simply not impressive.

By the time the fourth Lightning Arc struck Gune,

Gune had already torn their bodies apart with Magic Blade Curse.

"In close-range curse duels, elementalists can never beat curse-casters," Gune muttered to himself as he quickly looted the two bodies.

The syllables of elemental curses tend to be longer, so the core of an elementalist's curse rune formation is always the 'Acceleration Rune.'

No matter how much the Acceleration Rune speeds things up, powerful curses can never be cast instantly.

In close-quarters, short-duration skirmishes, encountering a face-rushing curse-caster like Gune, who can unleash a barrage of curses, they die in a particularly frustrating manner.

After looting and disposing of the bodies,

while drinking a vial of Source Power Recovery Potion, Gune sensed his Blood Shield.

"Energy loss less than five percent. Your Lightning Arc is really weak," he glanced at the corpse of the female lightning elementalist and thought to himself.

Without pausing, Gune again stealthily moved toward the next location where curses were being bombarded.

Like a ghost, Gune relied on the visual advantage provided by 'Source Power Vision.'

Like a seasoned hunter, he began his slaughter in the deep, pitch-black depths of the building.

Almost every minute, some unlucky soul died at Gune's hands.

After five or six consecutive minutes,

Seven spellcasters and one combat-type transcendent had already died at Gune's hands.

Gune's own Blood Shield had burst twice.

Even the third-rank late-stage combat-type expert, while enduring Gune's Magic Blade Curse barrage, managed to land a heavy sword strike on Gune.

That heavy sword blow knocked Gune to the ground.

A blow that would be fatal to any other second-rank curse-caster only caused Gune minor injuries and interrupted his casting.

Gune flipped over and got up again, then, under the horrified gaze of the combat-type expert, blasted his head into fragments.

Gune's continuous killing of these curse-casters and elementalists

caused a significant drop in the firepower of the many curse-casters from the Human-Face Flower Sect on the second and third floors.

Gune clearly felt that the enemy's fire suppression was now exceptionally fierce.

This was a good thing for Gune.

The fiercer the suppression, the more Gune could thrive here.

Boom, boom, boom...

Another series of curse bombardments made the building tremble slightly.

"The spellcasters from the opposing Pioneer Group are too destructive; this building is about to collapse."

Just after looting a slain elementalist, Gune felt the building beginning to show signs of instability.

Then Gune saw a purple, head-sized fireball fly in through the broken glass of the balcony window.

It was a high-rank fire elemental curse.

"Damn!" Gune cursed under his breath and quickly ducked into a corner to take cover.

Boom—

The violent explosion covered the building with cracks, and collapse was only seconds away.

Gune was flung several meters away, and his Blood Shield shattered on the spot.

Being in the enemy's fire coverage area, it was easy to get bombarded by one's own curse-casters.

After casting a new shield on himself, Gune spotted a window, leaped to the exposed wall opposite, broke through a window, and entered a building in the adjacent alley.

Gune had just entered the new building

when the previous building slowly collapsed with a rumbling sound.

The explosions and collapse masked the noise of Gune entering the new building.

Keeping low, Gune continued moving forward silently.

The originally stalemated situation had tilted with Gune's killing of several spellcasters.

The scales of victory had begun to tip in favor of the Pioneer Group.

Amid the waves of explosions, Gune once again reached the stairwell.

Just as he opened the door and entered the stairwell, Gune's expression suddenly shifted slightly.

There, in the building opposite,

were five or six figures gathered together.

Moreover, each of these figures radiated an extremely intense fourth-rank Source Power.

These were all top-tier fourth-rank experts.

"With so many people, charging in directly would be no different from suicide."

By ambush, Gune could still kill a fourth-rank expert; he had done so earlier.

One-on-one, Gune was not afraid of fourth-rank transcendents, unless his soul was suppressed.

Currently, in terms of Source Pool energy, Gune was also a third-rank curse-caster, even slightly stronger than an average third-rank curse-caster.

But facing so many, Gune alone was likely outmatched.

"Tearing open the door with curses and bombarding directly would also be hard to inflict effective damage."

"What if..."

Gune narrowed his eyes and looked at the writhing flesh in his storage space.

Gune had tested the writhing flesh on a Silver-Armored Rat before.

The moment the Silver-Armored Rat saw the writhing flesh, its eyes burst open, and it died on the spot within a second.

Gune tested it seven or eight times, and it was always the same.

The writhing flesh placed in the system space lost its active life characteristics, but its terrifying curse-meme lethality had not diminished in the slightest.

After all, the pieces of flesh Gune had picked up were the few that had survived by fighting their way out of so much flesh.

However, against these fourth-rank transcendent experts, would it still have such powerful lethality?

Gune didn't know.

But Gune knew that the writhing flesh would at least cause enough trouble for these guys.

And that was enough.

Outside, the sounds of various curse bombardments, explosions, and impacts continued to rise and fall, in a state of turmoil.

Occasionally, the building would even shake slightly.

This gave Gune an opportunity to approach quietly.

The Mithril Battle Boots on his feet made Gune's steps as light as a cat's.

Arriving at the door, following the principles of the World Framework Rune, Gune silently cast a Puppet Thread that extended into the door lock.

With a 'click,' the door suddenly opened.

At the same time, Gune threw a complete piece of writhing flesh inside.