This Lightning Is No Ordinary Lightning

"Hmph — you really think you have what it takes to fight me? The number of Black-Beast Demons I can control is far greater than you imagine!!" Gray One dropped all pretense, his smile twisting into something cold and sinister.

The words had barely left his mouth when a foul stench began seeping through the entire maze, thickening into dense clouds of miasma.

Put plainly, it was poison gas. Breathe it for more than a minute and you'd be poisoned outright — fall unconscious in it, and there was no difference between that and suffocation.

The group from before had no time to register what was happening before the miasma enveloped them. They collapsed one after another, all except a single student who also wielded the Shadow Element; he used Shadow Fade to slip quickly into another section of the maze.

"Get your friends out of here," Mo Fan called out to the Shadow Element student, his voice cutting through the chaos. "Leave them and they'll all die."

The student responded without hesitation: "Understood — thank you!"

The miasma surged in from behind, churning and thick, threaded through with high-pitched shrieks — the Black-Beast Demons, announcing themselves with their usual flair.

They lunged at Mo Fan with claws bared and fangs bared, hungry to tear him apart.

Mo Fan shifted his weight and melted into the darkness. He became a fleeting shadow, flickering across the wall beside him — and an instant later materialized behind Gray One.

He rose slowly from the shadows, lightning seals already crackling and writhing across his palm…

But just as he moved to strike, Gray One let out a contemptuous sneer. A biting chill erupted from his body, and Ice Lock burst from the ground with vicious precision, shooting toward Mo Fan at point-blank range.

"Ice Element!"

Mo Fan was caught off guard and scrambled to leap backward.

The ice chains whipped and thrashed through the air, closing in on him from every direction in an eerily coordinated formation. The cold radiating from them was fierce enough to lock a man's joints solid.

*I underestimated him.* Mo Fan released the seal within his soul, activating the power of the Blood Beast Boots.

Red light blazed at his legs, weaving itself into armored coverings that encased his lower limbs. Simultaneously, crimson threads like exposed veins pumped power into his legs, and his strength surged explosively.

**Whoosh!!!!**

A massive ice chain swept savagely at his back in a wide arc — like a colossal white serpent coiling to crush him whole.

Mo Fan unleashed the Blood Beast Boots' explosive power and vaulted upward, clearing the encircling chain just in time…

He landed on the thick chain for a split second, used its own momentum to launch himself sideways, and shot toward the dark wall beside him.

"Go." Gray One guided the remaining ice chains, apparently having already predicted where Mo Fan would land. He moved them there instantly, forming a massive interlocked binding array.

The ice chains swarmed after him. Mo Fan knew he had to evade their full force, so he planted his foot hard against the dark wall and launched himself even farther away.

The chains pursued him on both sides, coming within a hair's breadth of dragging him in. If they ever got hold of him, breaking free would be nearly impossible.

"And you think this scrap of skill is enough to fight the Black Church?" Gray One watched Mo Fan scrambling to stay ahead, his smile stretching wider. "Let me tell you — no one the Black Church sets its sights on gets to live peacefully. You are no exception!!"

He was an Intermediate-Level Ice Element Mage, and on top of that he had all these Black-Beast Demons fighting alongside him. The nerve of this Mo Fan, thinking he could hold his own — what a fool.

As luck would have it, the Shadow Demon-Beast was already too exhausted to run. Finish off Mo Fan, deliver the Shadow Demon-Beast to Lord Priest, and he would be the greatest contributor to this entire operation.

"Trash like you?" Mo Fan stood his ground, gaze sharpening into something lethal. "I could put down a dozen more and not break a sweat."

Gray One sneered again. With a wave of his hand, every Black-Beast Demon lurking in the miasma converged around him — at least ten of them, by any count.

He had no intention of meeting Mo Fan head-on. He would let the Black-Beast Demons grind him down, then finish the job with Ice Lock at the right moment. Clean and simple.

A long, resonant howl split the air.

From a rift in the shadowed darkness, an enormous wolf's head pushed through — followed by a powerful, muscular body.

Long blue fur swayed without any wind. A pair of bright, keen eyes burned with the raw wildness and fury that was the birthright of all wolf-beasts.

"The Black-Beast Demons are yours," Mo Fan said to the Gloom Wolf Beast.

True to form, the Gloom Wolf Beast had no patience for formalities. It didn't care how many were waiting on the other side — it lowered its head and charged.

The Black-Beast Demons were furious. They had the numbers advantage — what right did this creature have to be so arrogant? To treat them as if they weren't even worth a second glance? They were all Servant-class; surely ten of them weren't going to lose to one?

The Black-Beast Demons spread into a hunting formation, using their agility to adopt a hit-and-run tactic: bite once, claw once, retreat immediately. The idea was to bleed the Gloom Wolf Beast slowly, draining its vitality through sheer attrition.

But the Gloom Wolf Beast was no easy prey. Not every Black-Beast Demon that drew blood made it back in one piece — two of them that had managed to scratch it were already smashed against the wall by a single swipe of its paw, dead on impact.

Mo Fan noted that the Gloom Wolf Beast's combat power was genuinely formidable. Even if it couldn't overpower all ten Black-Beast Demons outright, it wasn't losing ground anytime soon.

The priority now was to cut down this Black Church operative who had been posing as a student. Judging by the power he'd displayed, he was probably a small-time figure — a minor operative at most.

*Good enough. Taking out his underlings before I find whoever's pulling the strings is still progress.*

Closing in was out of the question — the man's Ice Lock was nothing to scoff at. Getting trussed up and flooded with that cold could be genuinely dangerous.

*Forget it. Why waste breath on someone like this? Just blast him into the ground.*

As a man who commanded both Lightning and Fire — the two most brutal elements in existence — a single punch could solve most problems. And if that weren't enough, there was always Thunderbolt to finish the job. He refused to believe a minor operative like this could withstand that kind of punishment.

Mo Fan said nothing more. Purple-black arcs of lightning flickered into existence around him…

Star Trails linked together, swiftly forming a Lightning Element Star Chart beneath his feet.

*What else screams dominance like lightning?*

There was no reason to hold anything back here. He would show this Black Church lackey exactly what it meant to have grown up in Bo City.

"Purple-black… that lightning — it's no ordinary lightning!"

Gray One had been pulling his ice chains back toward himself, trying to shape them into a defensive array — but the moment he saw Mo Fan's lightning blazing that distinctive purple-black, his eyes went wide.

Lightning was already the most explosive element there was. But if this was *spirit lightning* on top of that — then his ice chains condensed into a full defensive barrier, combined with whatever Enchanted Gear he had on him, might not be enough to walk away from it unscathed.