Chapter 293: Chapter 290: A Held-Back Battle

It shattered the Blue Light Barrier just like that... Rorschach frowned. Luckily, Freddy and Singrev reacted fast enough. Like it was a hot potato, they decisively dropped the weapons that had been struck.

As the tentacle retracted, the viscous black liquid that the gun had transformed into was siphoned away, disappearing under the old man’s black robes.

Rorschach frowned. His opponent had made no move to cast, yet had effortlessly pierced his barrier with just those bizarre tentacles.

’Even Transmuting Dust should be able to block something like that. This shouldn’t have happened.’ Rorschach prepared to fire a Molten Beam at the Black Cultivator, but just then, a wave of obscure energy surged from the Black Cultivator’s core. Rorschach felt gravity gradually vanishing.

Weightlessness was a novel experience. Freddy and the Dwarf had been poised for battle, but they lost their balance in the sudden ascent, and the world began to spin.

"BLECH..." The Inverted Church already had its ceiling and floor swapped. Freddy’s constitution was far inferior to the Dwarf’s or even Little Coal Ball’s. The poor guy instantly lost his sense of direction and, after spinning freely for a few rotations, immediately vomited.

The now-floating Singrev drifted between Rorschach and the Black Cultivator, forcing Rorschach to abandon his attack. He quickly cast the Floating Skill on his companions, trying to stabilize their drifting postures.

Thanks to Rorschach’s Casting, Singrev quickly stabilized himself in the weightless environment. But he wasn’t yet familiar with this new form of movement and tried to doggy-paddle through the air.

Rorschach, meanwhile, used the reverse thrust from his Air Cannon to control his own posture and movement. He used Mage’s Hand to pull on Singrev, keeping the Dwarf from drifting too far away.

Theoretically, this was the perfect opportunity for the Black Cultivator to strike. In the weightless environment, his countless tentacles floated with ease, completely at home. But he did not attack.

From Rorschach’s limited and obstructed vantage point, he could see that the paints, turpentine, and buckets, which were also floating, had been hooked by the tentacles. Even suspended liquids were being absorbed by the tendrils, cleared away completely.

Finally, another wave of tentacles attacked. The poet was nearly struck by a whipping tendril, but he was suddenly pulled aside at the last moment. It was Little Coal Ball who had saved him.

Little Coal Ball was now being pulled by three bats. Weightlessness wasn’t a vacuum, so the three pairs of wings pulled both Little Coal Ball and Freddy, allowing them to maneuver easily through the main hall.

Rorschach had now adjusted his position. His Molten Beam easily sliced through an extended tentacle from the side, like snipping off a lock of hair with a SNAP. A thick, rich smell of burning protein filled the air.

The Black Cultivator’s tentacle attack was temporarily interrupted. However, that was just a feint from Rorschach’s Magic Staff. The moment the true Rorschach’s Great Dissociation Technique was ready, he fired it. An invisible Ray shot out, whistling as it aimed for the Black Cultivator.

But it didn’t have the expected effect. The old man (though the enemy’s form was little more than an old man’s head) seemed able to see the trajectory of the invisible Ray and easily sidestepped it. A clump of tentacles rapidly deactivated, crumbling into ash, but the Black Cultivator could also actively sever the connection to his tentacles. His main body, like a cloud of black fog, dodged the disintegration.

’Damn it!’ Rorschach considered his Great Splitting Technique a killing blow, but it had a serious flaw: Molten Beam could be sustained, easily sweeping across a wide arc. The Great Splitting Technique, on the other hand, not only took a long time to cast, but due to his mere blue-level proficiency and the limits of his own Magic Power, the Ray could only be maintained for an extremely short duration. That was how the Black Cultivator had successfully dodged it.

What was even stranger was that the enemy flicked his black robes, and the ash blasted away by the Decomposition Skill stopped scattering. A viscous black liquid emerged from his main body and successfully recycled the ash, restoring the number of his tentacles.

"Heh heh, for someone your age to have mastered such a Magic is indeed incredible." The Black Cultivator gave a creepy smile. He was completely unhurried, even offering a critique: "But it’s immature. The Magic is far too immature! In my eyes, it’s nothing special."

Despite the sharp critique, Rorschach’s Decomposition Skill had not been entirely useless. Everyone felt a sudden "sensation of being dropped"—in other words, the weightlessness in the space had vanished for an instant. The Black Cultivator’s offensive rhythm was interrupted again. For some reason, he was fixated on manipulating the environment’s gravity, and once more, the obscure energy spread out.

Rorschach tried to use a Magic Roar to interrupt the process, but the obscure energy itself didn’t seem to be exactly the same as the ambient Magic Power. The Mage’s effort failed to stop it.

With a loud CLATTER and CRASH, all the unsecured furniture and other odds and ends fell onto the *true* floor. The interior of the Inverted Church had been inverted once again; the ceiling and floor returned to their normal positions. Rorschach waved his Magic Staff, casting the Feather Fall Skill on each of his companions. It wasn’t just the furniture; the walls of the entire building were shaking and trembling. Rorschach was momentarily dazed. ’Was it the gravity shifting, or did the Church itself just flip over again?’

The Black Cultivator remained floating in the air, looking down on them from above.

Just then, a cacophony of sounds arose from outside the building—the flapping of wings and screeching cries. "It’s the flying mice! They’re back!" Singrev shouted.

Bats hunt periodically and travel in groups. Apparently, the entire Inverted Church was the nest for a colony.

"AHHHHH—"

Little Coal Ball suddenly let out a long, piercing scream. It was deafening to Freddy, who was closest to her. The sound of flapping wings grew louder and louder as a gray cloud surged into the main hall from the doors and windows on all sides.

"How many flying mice are there?" Singrev’s scalp tingled with fear. He looked up to see his vision completely blotted out by a dense swarm of bats—tens of thousands of them. They flapped and shrieked, surging like a single entity beneath the Black Cultivator’s tentacles and over everyone’s heads. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Little Coal Ball let out a few more screeches, this time with a change in pitch. Under her command, a portion of the bats circled around to form a living barrier for the group, while the rest charged toward the Black Cultivator.

"A Mouse Speaker can command an entire colony?" The old man frowned. Faced with the aggressive swarm of bats, he could have waved his tentacles and turned the little creatures into pools of black water. But the old man didn’t attack. Instead, as a group of bats charged him, he dissolved into a cloud of black mist, letting them pass through him before reforming his body.

’What is his intention?’ Although the bats were an interference, Rorschach was certain the Black Cultivator had stopped his attacks.

The battle had been sudden, and Rorschach and the others had been exhausted just trying to cope. Now that Rorschach had calmed down and was standing on solid ground, he no longer needed to continuously cast protective and levitation spells on his teammates.

Extending his Arcane Vision and Magic Mastery, Rorschach re-examined his surroundings. Although they were now standing normally inside the building, the Church itself was upside down within the cavern, meaning gravity was still reversed.

’How is he doing this?’ Rorschach could feel the energy fluctuations, but they were different from Magic Power.

Then he remembered another detail. When the old man had first altered the gravity, he hadn’t taken advantage of the chaos to deliver a killing blow to Rorschach’s group. Instead, his first priority had been to secure the paints, buckets, and other things that could have ruined the painting.

The painting! He looked up. With his normal vision, he could only see bats. But in his Arcane Vision, a Spiritual Light covered the ceiling like a layer of clouds. Before, everyone had been immersed in this "cloud," and Rorschach hadn’t realized it. Only now was it revealing its true face.