Rise Of The Infinite Sovereign-Chapter 435: Unwanted Visitors

With the gatekeepers now but a pile of bones, Ezra takes his time inspecting his rewards.

No molten core in sight, but the shards lay aplenty.

Initially excited, as Ezra looks over the shards, he finds that not all of them are the same.

While some looked exactly like the shards he absorbed before, others had a different type of shape and luster.

Here, Zydrax intervenes to explain the difference.

[These type of shards are called ember shards. They are used as crafting materials to increase the fire resistance of any item they are imbued with, preferably armor]

[And making armor is what those bone fragments are usually used for. So you’ve gotten yourself very decent material to make a fire resistant armor]

Though the prospects sounded nice, it dowses Ezra’s spirit to realize that such shards aren’t meant to be absorbed.

In any case, it is still a good haul, so Ezra picks up the pace with due haste, inducting all the materials into the sovereign universe within a minute.

Rising, he stretches his body, straightening his bones, before looking towards the opaque wall leading to the third section which lay close by.

Heading to face trials lie in the third section, Zydrax alerts him of nearby dangers.

[Ezra. You have visitors]

"Who?" Ezra replies, unnerved.

[Higher beings, a group of them]

Concealing himself, Ezra steps back into the first section, looking out for the said visitors.

They weren’t hard to locate.

Dressed in black armour, Ezra identifies them to be blue dragons.

And from the looks of it, they were strong individuals.

"Tch!"

Some unwanted visitors had arrived.

Without a doubt, meeting them here was an unplanned inconvenience.

But no matter, within the time it would take them to get past the gatekeepers of the first section, Ezra planned to have cleared the trial of the third section.

So Ezra runs towards the opaque wall. No point in dilly-dallying any further.

Crossing the opaque wall, Ezra is met with an astounding sight.

In front of him lay a landscape with a similar layout to the ones before, scorched earth with rivers of boiling lava flowing unhindered.

BUT. At the center of this landscape lies a gigantic Minotaur seated with its legs crossed.

Its body lay riddled with scars, the most prominent one’s being a two slashes on its face.

One vertical, stretching from its head through its left eye, leaving it visibly blinded and the other, diagonal, stretching across its face till below its mouth.

Its hooves and leather fur lay fully pronounced, with its axe, equally gigantic, lodged into the earth a meter away.

Its eyes, a glow of ferocious red, lay locked onto Ezra’s figure, both parties locking eyes for half a minute to which the minotaur abruptly stands.

In doing so, its intimidation factor multiplies because it reveals its real height at three meters and some inches, making the largest of gatekeepers amongst all of the others.

Following up, it dislodges the axe and bellow’s so loudly Ezra covers his ears.

Its bellow served to announce the start of the battle it seems as the minotaur follows up with a toss of his large axe-something Ezra dared not try to parry.

Dodging, he finds the minotaur upon him.

Literally, the minotaur had leaped into the air and was about landing on top of him.

Hastily, Ezra had to cut apart the large amount of debris flying his direction while being careful not to get hit by droplets of lava either.

Honestly, if not the entourage of blue dragons in the first section, Ezra would’ve have loved to take his time defeating this gatekeeper, but with the rewards at stake, he’d rather not leave it for others to benefit from.

So he amplifies his body with energy and strikes, slashing the minotaur’s ankles with Skyfall.

Contrary to expectation, it only resulted in shallow wounds, with a single drop of blood falling to the ground.

Ezra’s face turns unsightly instantly.

That was powerful attack! Yet it only left such a shallow wound!

From this alone, Ezra concludes that the minotaur is a existence way out of his league.

Yet that didn’t hinder its determination to defeat the minotaur.

In Ezra’s mind, there was simply no way he would leave the minotaur for the blue dragons to kill and claim the respective rewards.

The minotaur, enraged by the shallow wounds, is already back on Ezra’s tail, looking to split him in half as it swung its gleaming axe.

And with its insane physical attributes, Ezra had to be on his best performance to dodge, else it wouldn’t be strange for him to die at any minute.

Looking to kill the minotaur, Ezra doesn’t attack needlessly, reserving energy while he brainstorms a viable plan of attack.

But to confirm its effectiveness, Ezra had to test it out.

First try, he leaps into the air, aiming to land a hit straight on the minotaur’s face, but he had underestimated the its speed.

Because almost as Ezra leaped into the air, the minotaur’s stretches its mouth wide open, showcasing sparks at the end of its mouth.

’Oh, come on! Why does everyone use this attack?!’

Having experienced this attack multiple times, Ezra’s expression turns into one of extreme annoyance while quickly made a wall of ice to cover his entire visage.

Sure enough, a wave of flames, much bigger and wider than those of the gatekeepers before now, covers Ezra in the next moment, pushing him far away, making a hard landing into scorched earth.

Getting up, Ezra had to take his time to stretch, to which backbones audibly crack.

’That’s going to leave some bruises

Forced to painfully acknowledge the difference between himself and the minotaur, Ezra doesn’t hesitate to resort to tricks.

Trying to fight minotaur normally is more trouble than it was worth, so Ezra conceals himself.

Sure enough, as with the other gatekeepers, the minotaur is thrown into chaos as its opponent successfully and completely eluded its senses.

Rather make a frontal, Ezra runs till he was behind the minotaur before leaping once again.

Firstly, he lets off an ice energy slash, which only nudges the minotaur’s body, doing very little effect.

But it did its work as the minotaur hastily turns around, looking for its opponent.

Putting Skyfall in its twin swords form in preparation for this moment, Ezra bursts forth, his hands pointing the two swords forward.

Without issue, Ezra impale both weapons into the minotaur’s remaining eyes.

Roaring in pain, Ezra is swatted, slapped away like a pesky fly as the minotaur cries out.

Because of how much force he had stabbed with, the twin swords were left lodged in the minotaur’s eye.

Softening his landing with ice, Ezra receives much less damage from this landing.

Deactivating the concealment, Ezra lets out large gasps, his chest heaving while watching as the minotaur falls on one knee.

Perhaps things would end anticlimactically?

*ROAR*

’Of course’

Unsurprisingly, the minotaur pulls out the two twins swords from its eye and roars much louder than before, taking a defiant pose, it rises to its feet once more, though staggering.

Taking advantage of its moment of weakness, Ezra conceals himself and runs, grabbing his twin swords sprawled across the floor, before releasing his concealment.

Following up, he picks up speed, going in a circle to increase his speed to maximum speed, Ezra turns to the minotaur once more, seeking to slash both its legs a second time.

Unfortunately for him, the minotaur’s senses were acute and allowed it to dodge by leaping out of the way.

But this doesn’t stop Ezra, he simply turns direction while still running, heading towards the minotaur that had just landed.

Understanding that’s its opponent had come for it yet again, the minotaur doesn’t leap, it steadies its and readies itself.

Then, out of nowhere, it sets itself aflame and transforms into a true elemental beast, with its entire body glowing and blazing.

To this, Ezra’s gaze simply deepens, not stopping his approach at all.

’Why am I not surprised?’

Instead, he readies his own attack and while keeping pace formulate a response to the minotaur’s inevitable attack.

Entering a distance of one meter of the minotaur, it attacks, stomping the ground to release a full on fire wave, which Ezra disperses with ice energy.

A mistake.

Because such disturbance had given the minotaur Ezra’s exact location and his trajectory of movement.

Without hesitation, the minotaur attacks, bringing down his attack on the point it marked Ezra to be with its senses. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

And with such clear difference in ability, the minotaur’s attack is spot on.

Yet, Ezra does not stop and increases his speed even more.

It seemed he had something planned.

Indeed he did.

Right at the instant where both parties would clash, Ezra conceals himself, completely throwing off the minotaur’s aim as its target inexplicably disappears.

In the next instance, Ezra reappears right in front of the minotaur, having leaped off the floor the instant he concealed himself.

And because of the momentum he had built up from running, the minotaur could not swat him aside, neither dodge the attack.

Holding Skyfall in scythe form, Ezra lands his swing.

*BOOM!*