Jaden swung his knightly lance, knocking away the clinging Evelyn, and stared at Zoe in disbelief.
Meanwhile, Zoe, whose entire body had turned blood-red, charged straight at Jaden.
D-grade combat technique: Rose Flurry!
Jaden wielded his noble knightly lance as countless blood-red slashes swept toward Zoe, looking to tear him to pieces.
Acid Wave!
Without a second thought, Zoe expended 8,000 mana to spew another tidal wave of acid, creating a battlefield advantage for himself.
“Don't think such a clumsy attack will ever hit me!”
Jaden leaped off the ground, shooting high into the air.
Zoe locked onto the airborne Jaden.
Acid: Heart-Piercing Needle Rain!
One by one, the steel needles forged from the Ore Dragon's body were spat out by Zoe toward Jaden, forming a dense rain of needles.
Jaden's eyes swept across the rain of needles, tracking every single steel needle, and he swung his lance.
Clink! Clink! Clink!
Amidst the crisp ringing of metal, his lance blurred into afterimages, deflecting every single steel needle.
However, on the other side, Evelyn's Golden Eye flashed with golden light.
The straight-flying steel needles suddenly curved midair, bypassing Jaden's defensive gaps to pierce straight into his arm.
“The Golden Eye again!”
Jaden spat in fury, once again unleashing Rose Bud as he ripped the steel needles from his arm.
Enveloped in the flower bud, Zoe quickly manipulated the massive amount of acid.
The acid continued to corrode his wounds, but Jaden manipulated his muscles to force it all out.
Having promoted to a High-tier Rose Knight, his resistance to all forms of attacks had received a qualitative leap.
Innumerable streams of acid condensed into thick acid tentacles, wrapping themselves toward Jaden.
At that moment, Evelyn flashed to the other side. Golden light shimmered on her longsword as she chanted rapidly.
“In the name of the Sacred Circle Covenant, I judge thy sins: Condemnation!”
All of a Sacred Circle Knight's Sacred Circle Magic originated from the Sacred Circle Covenant.
The chants were incredibly short, and the effects were immensely powerful.
Condemnation, a C-grade Sacred Circle Knight spell, could degrade the defenses of anyone the caster deemed evil.
It was an absolute hit.
Golden light shot from the cross-shaped blade of her sword, sweeping toward Jaden.
Jaden had absolutely no way to block it. He could only watch as the golden light sank into his body, damaging the flower bud enveloping him.
Seeing this, Zoe hurriedly spat out a Corrosive Gas Slash!
The sharp slash struck Jaden from behind.
His defenses degraded, Jaden chose not to withstand it head-on and swiftly leaped aside.
Yet, the straight-flying Corrosive Gas Slash unexpectedly curved to follow him.
What?!
The slash broke through the flower bud's defense. Evelyn charged forward at extreme speed, thrusting her sword precisely into the ruptured gap.
Zoe was currently not his usual self.
Whether it was his combat instinct, comprehension, or skill manipulation, everything had been boosted to the absolute limit of his current body.
Advanced maneuvers that were normally impossible for him could now be performed effortlessly.
The longsword pierced through Jaden's arm, causing blood to pour from the wound.
Jaden quickly thrust his lance out.
C-grade combat technique: Rose Petal.
The illusory rose bud blossomed as a rain of razor-sharp petals flew out, slicing in every direction.
Evelyn's Golden Eye rapidly captured the trajectory of every single rose petal, allowing her to dodge nimbly.
However, her wounded body and depleted physical strength could no longer sustain her current combat performance.
The petals sliced through her flesh in an instant.
High-speed Regeneration: Gigantification!
Zoe rushed toward Evelyn, his body rapidly expanding into a giant slime as he met the storm of flying petals head-on!
The tornado of petals shredded Zoe into countless airborne fragments.
Yet, Zoe remained completely unfazed. His body was shredded and regenerated rapidly as he absorbed the dense corrosive gas in the air.
His massive body acted like the core of a tornado, swallowing up all the corrosive gas generated by the countless pools of acid around him.
“It's that move!”
Jaden quickly recognized Zoe's attack.
Previously, by relying on his Slain Dragon Molting, he had perfectly avoided Zoe's Dragon Flame: Accumulative Corrosive Extinction Burn.
However, the power of that attack had left a deep impression on him.
If Zoe in his Withered Fruit State unleashed the same attack, it would definitely pose a major threat to him.
He had to stop him.
The rose bud enveloping the knightly lance in Jaden's hand had bloomed completely, and its countless petals had already fallen away.
Yet, unlike before, in the center where all the petals had fallen, an illusory pistil remained.
B-grade combat technique: Rose Pistil!
The strongest strike of a High-tier Rose Knight!
Destructive power erupted from the knightly lance in Jaden's hands.
Having gone through continuous high-intensity battles, the lance—now covered in corrosive scars and sword marks—creaked under the unbearable weight of this destructive force.
At the same time, Evelyn gathered all the remaining mana in her body and funneled it into her longsword.
“Sacred Circle Manifestation!”
“Tracing the wicked soul through blood: Sinful Soul Judgment.”
Sinful Soul Judgment, a B-grade Sacred Circle Knight spell.
It required a sample of the target's blood or body, and the caster had to genuinely perceive them as evil in their heart. Using the body part as a medium, the spell traced the soul to summon the contracted Sacred Circle.
Through the Sacred Circle, it delivered an unavoidable soul attack.
Evelyn stared at the golden Sacred Circle before her. The extreme drain left her face deathly pale, and her right Golden Eye could no longer be maintained.
The golden coloration receded back to the size of her pupil, and her eye returned to its original light blue.
She thrust her longsword straight into the center of the ring.
“Ahhh!!!”
On the other side, Jaden's spellcasting was directly interrupted as he clutched his head and wailed.
He felt as if his very soul had been impaled.
Sinful Soul Judgment was not omnipotent, and casting it across tiers was almost impossible to succeed.
Even if successful, its power wouldn't be too immense, at most slowing the target's reactions for half a second.
However, Jaden was a special case.
He had not promoted through normal means, but had instead gathered soul power by class-changing into a monster.
At this moment, the souls inside him were patchy and disorganized, having not yet been fully digested and integrated into his own soul.
This soul-targeted strike instantly disrupted his soul-integration process, causing uncontrollable soul power to leak from his body and completely ruining his casting.
However, Zoe was not about to go easy on him—nor did he dare to.
The Withered Fruit State only lasted for a minute and a half. He could not afford a single moment of delay, desperately absorbing the corrosive gas throughout the area.
Accumulative Corrosive: Full-Charge Mode!
All of the corrosive gas generated by the countless pools of acid across the battlefield was completely devoured by Zoe.
Sensing Zoe's aura, Jaden suppressed his chaotic soul and thrust out his interrupted attack.
Spray: Corrosive Torrent!
At the same time, Zoe spat out all of the corrosive gas.
The yellowish-green corrosive gas spewed forth, pouring toward Jaden like a torrential river!
Dragon Flame: Accumulative Corrosive Burn!
Concurrently, Zoe spit out Dragon Flame with all his might, igniting the river-like corrosive torrent he had just released!
Dragon Flame: Accumulative Corrosive Extinction Burn!
Rose Pistil!
The land-melting Dragon Flame: Accumulative Corrosive Extinction Burn engulfed Jaden completely.
At the same time, the beam-like thrust unleashed by Jaden also obliterated and pierced straight through Zoe's massive body.
Scorching heatwaves swept across heaven and earth, warping the air.
Once the air cooled slightly, the area resembled a volcanic eruption site, with the air in their line of sight distorting from the extreme heat.
Jaden's knightly lance had melted down to only half its length, and one of his arms was burned into a stump of charcoal.
Half of his body was covered in severe burns, while the remaining half was enveloped by illusory petals.
“I won!”
Although Jaden was severely wounded at this point, he still had a fair amount of mana remaining.
And on the battlefield, the slime was dead, while the remaining two had no combat capability left.
Seeing this, the exhausted Evelyn forced herself up to stand.
Right at that moment, slime fragments of all sizes drifted down from the sky.
They were the shattered remains of Zoe's body.
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