As time passed, the Special Service reinforcements gradually arrived near the battlefield. The weaker members opened fire with their guns, while the stronger ones stepped forward to help ease the burden on their respective captains.
The pressure on Jessica and the eight Special Service captains was instantly relieved. The battles slowly shifted from the initial five-on-one to three-on-one, and then to two-on-one. Once the legion's Soldiers lost their numerical advantage, these Rank Four captains easily dispatched them, and the scales of battle began to tilt.
Splurt! However, just because the Rank Four captains could withstand the onslaught of the Soldiers didn't mean the newly arrived Special Service members could do the same.
Within just a few breaths, many of them were wounded. Seeing this, Jessica shouted, “Find a way to break their formation!”
Freya had shared information about the Battle Array with Euphy beforehand, who then passed it on to the Special Service. In the previous simulation, during the battle against the legion controlled by the Adjutant, they had dealt with these Soldiers precisely by breaking their formation.
Led by several Special Service captains, the crowd began attempting to weave through the battlefield, hoping to slice through the formation of these shadow soldiers. They succeeded, splitting the originally vast battlefield into several smaller skirmishes. However, everyone soon discovered that the strength of these shadow soldiers had not decreased much.
Formations weren't limited to just one type. While a hundred people standing in a neat, square block was a formation, four people standing back-to-back and coordinating their combat was also a formation.
Moreover, splitting the shadow soldiers meant that the Special Service members were also scattered across these small battlefields. At this moment, Jerome rejoined the fight. Seeing this, Jessica felt her scalp tingle, but as the only Rank Five on her side, she braced herself and met him head-on.
Just then, a hearty voice rang out from the end of the street. “What a coincidence! To think I could run into something like this while just taking a stroll. I absolutely love beating up bad guys! How about counting me in?”
Delivering these somewhat familiar lines, Archbishop Pantheon walked at the very front. Beside him was the petite Life Freya, followed by church members dressed in green robes.
It was worth mentioning that in the last simulation battle, Pantheon had still chosen to jump right into the middle of the enemies at the start, attempting to disrupt the shadow soldiers' formation. However, he failed to break the formation, and the gigantified Pantheon was surrounded and attacked by shadow soldiers from all sides, with Jerome even stepping in to take a shot at him.
In almost the blink of an eye, Pantheon had been severely injured and brought to the verge of death. It was Life Freya who had forcibly saved his life.
Therefore, this time, Life Freya had specifically warned him not to jump into the crowd of enemies and to just approach slowly from the rear.
The Church of the Earth actually didn't need to help fight. The combat power of the Mobile Squad and the eight Special Service squads was completely sufficient. What the Church of the Earth needed to do was heal the wounded, reducing the casualties of the Special Service.
“The Church of the Earth?!”
When Jerome and the Special Service saw such a large crowd suddenly appear, they almost simultaneously showed astonished expressions. However, Jerome's tone was grave, while the Special Service's was one of relief.
“Damn it, why are the people from the Church of the Earth here?”
“Great! It's the Church of the Earth!”
Actually, if the Church of the Earth hadn't come, given the current rate of casualties in the Special Service, Jerome might have had a slight chance of breaking through. Although it was just a tiny chance, the probability was at least not zero. But now that the Church of the Earth had arrived, Jerome was truly in a certain-death scenario.
Pantheon and Atticus, the two Rank Fours, joined the front lines, further easing the pressure on the Special Service, while the ordinary members of the Church of the Earth stayed in the rear, healing the injured official extraordinaries.
As for Life Freya, she headed to the battlefield where Jerome and Jessica were fighting, ready to engage in a righteous two-on-one.
Since Jerome, a summoner, could personally engage in hand-to-hand combat, why couldn't Life Freya, a healer, personally join the battlefield?
With a wave of Life Freya's hand, four small spheres emitting white light appeared in front of her. Back when she was Rank Four, relying on her ability to manipulate life energy, hadn't she fired an energy beam from her fingertips?
After advancing to Rank Five, her charging speed, power, and even attack frequency had achieved a qualitative leap. After a brief charge, these four light spheres simultaneously unleashed pure white beams, sweeping toward Jerome's position.
The momentum of this attack was too immense, forcing Jessica to take a few steps back to escape Life Freya's attack range. At the same time, she couldn't help but exclaim, “Rank Five?!”
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The four beams hit the ground, cracking the earth, slicing the walls along the street horizontally, and even piercing right through a house in the middle. However, only the last shot slightly grazed the corner of Jerome's clothes. With an almost bizarre movement, this guy spun and rolled in the air, executing a Stance Recovery and a double jump, barely dodging Life Freya's volley of four beams.
It was worth mentioning that other Pathways also had similar beam attacks. For example, the Death Pathway would carry a life-depriving effect; if hit, one's body would likely disintegrate, making it extremely lethal. The Sun Pathway would carry high-temperature and burning effects, which were also highly destructive. This was all related to the energy characteristics of the Pathways themselves.
But unlike those, the beams fired by Life Freya were condensed from life energy. This was essentially a very gentle energy, and even if it carried an effect, it could only be something like healing. Obviously, she couldn't let her beam attacks carry a healing effect, which resulted in Life Freya's beam attacks looking a lot like magic attacks, but dealing the most pure physical damage.
Seeing her first wave of attacks miss, Life Freya was not discouraged. The white spheres floating around her increased from four to six, and she continued to charge.
Her beam attacks might not have as much single-shot power as other Pathways, but the advantage of the Earth Pathway was that she never lacked energy. If there were no special properties, she would just increase the energy supply, emphasizing quantity over quality. As long as the numbers were high enough, who cared if there were special effects!
While charging, Life Freya said, “Captain Jessica, please try your best to hold him down. I will be careful not to hit you. Furthermore, even if I accidentally hit you, I can heal you, so please don't worry.”
But for some reason, when Jessica heard this, she suddenly felt a chill run down her spine. However, what Life Freya said was indeed the truth. She had already taken her revenge on Jessica earlier, and the grudge was gone. She naturally wouldn't maliciously stab her in the back during combat now.
But in battle, swords and spears had no eyes... and beams had no eyes. If Jessica and Jerome got tangled up in combat, Life Freya certainly couldn't completely guarantee that none of her shots would go wild. That was unrealistic.
Although she felt a bit uneasy, there was nothing wrong with Life Freya's tactic. Jessica still braced herself and charged forward. However, Jerome was even faster. After dodging the first wave of beam attacks, he leaned forward and dashed straight toward Life Freya!
Bang!
This was not a simple accelerated dash, but also carried a certain special force-exerting technique. The ground beneath Jerome's feet shattered as he stepped on it, and his entire body moved so fast that he left afterimages, arriving in front of Life Freya in almost a second.
As everyone knew, in a team fight, you target the backline and the healer first. This was common sense. Jerome naturally couldn't allow Life Freya to keep blasting him from a distance; he had to deal with her first.
Jerome swung a simple hook at Life Freya's cheek, while Life Freya stood there quietly with her eyes closed the entire time, looking as if she hadn't reacted at all.
Jessica also shouted from behind, “Watch out!”
But in the very next second, just as Jerome's attack was about to land, Life Freya suddenly raised her right hand, precisely grabbing Jerome's wrist and blocking this heavy blow.
Bang!
The abruptly stopped punch whipped up a wild gust of wind, blowing Life Freya's white-and-green hair into the air. Although Life Freya didn't have the Intuition ability, her Heart Perception's insight was too strong. She could see Jerome's every move very clearly, so blocking his attack was naturally not difficult for her.
“How can this be?” Seeing this, Jerome couldn't help but show an astonished expression. You had to know that he was of the War Pathway, and currently, he even had the physical attribute bonus from the Battle Array. Yet, his dashing hook was easily blocked just like that, and Life Freya didn't even take half a step back. Was this reasonable?!
In the next second, Life Freya kept her grip on his wrist, raising her other hand and punching straight at Jerome.
This completely skill-less strike was naturally blocked by Jerome using his other hand. But after he caught Life Freya's fist with his palm, he only felt his palm and wrist throbbing with pain. Immediately afterward, Life Freya's fist suddenly opened, interlocking her fingers with Jerome's.
At this moment, Jerome's Intuition began to frantically ring alarm bells, but both of his hands were firmly held by Life Freya, making it impossible to retreat. Meanwhile, relying on her body's excellent flexibility, Life Freya raised her right leg, and her shoeless, fair, and cute little foot kicked hard from bottom to top, striking Jerome's chin.
Of course, to Jerome, this kick was neither sweet nor soft. Several of his teeth were knocked flying, and his entire body was sent flying backward.
All of this happened in a flash. Until the very end, Jerome couldn't understand why a healer from the Earth Pathway could have such immense strength!
As for the truth, before the battle started, Life Freya had completed a wave of Lifeform Modification on herself, changing her body structure to that of War Freya.
The result of this was that her physical attributes were close to War Freya's. However, because she didn't have the Blood Rage ability, Life Freya's physical attributes couldn't continue to rise as her health dropped, but this was already more than enough for a healer.
As a Rank Five General, Jerome's physical attributes could only equal a normal Rank Four Warrior's if he received the full buff from the Battle Array ability. But now, the shadow soldiers were split into small formations and small battlefields, so he couldn't get the full buff of the Battle Array. Therefore, Jerome's physical attributes were actually inferior to Life Freya's.
However, others didn't know these details. Especially in Jessica's eyes, she had just seen Jerome rush toward their healer. While she was full of worry, in the next second, she saw Jerome get kicked flying back by the healer.
Jessica: “???”
Huh? Is... is this right?
However, Jessica reacted very quickly. Taking advantage of the moment Jerome was kicked flying, she directly raised the spear in her hand and threw it.
Along with a flash of lightning, the spear pierced straight through Jerome's chest.
Just as Jerome had caught Jessica by surprise at the beginning, achieving such results now was entirely because Life Freya had caught Jerome by surprise. Talk about a boomerang effect.
It was worth mentioning that after Life Freya completed her Lifeform Modification, she found that her Heart Perception and Trace Origin abilities had weakened a lot. Her perception range, perception precision, and the speed of recovering spirituality had all decreased.
To use an analogy, if Life Freya was a tree, her feet were naturally the roots. Stepping on the ground was equivalent to taking root in the soil, allowing her to absorb nutrients from the earth. But now, after her Lifeform Modification, it was like plating a metal shell over the roots. Her defense had indeed increased, but for a large tree, this didn't seem to be a good thing.
At this moment, Life Freya's most obvious feeling was that walking barefoot on the ground was not as comfortable as before. But it wasn't a big deal. Lifeform Modification was not a permanent effect. If Life Freya wanted to, she could completely modify herself back to her original appearance after the battle ended.
Turning back to the battlefield, with a thud, Jerome crashed to the ground. In this instant, the entire battlefield seemed to quiet down. No, it wasn't just “seemed”—all the shadow soldiers had actually stopped moving.
After coughing up a few mouthfuls of blood, Jerome slowly turned over and climbed up from the ground. Jessica's attack had dealt him an absolutely fatal wound, and he had now triggered the Battle Continuation state.
If any other War Pathway extraordinary were in this position, they might take advantage of their strongest state at this moment to seek frantic revenge. But this was meaningless to Jerome. Instead, his expression calmed down. He scanned everyone present and then let out a sigh. “Perhaps, this is heaven's will? This ending isn't bad for me either...”
In reality, Jerome himself had carried a heavy psychological burden over the thought of destroying a first-tier city of the kingdom. Now, failing even before his operation could begin might not necessarily be a bad thing.
“It's just a pity... I still can't let go of that territory, those three cities...”
......
Rate on N.U.
