PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

Desmond looked extremely serious now that he was looking at the werelion. Rekna was much stronger than Desmond expected, and defeating him would not be easy. However, Desmond didn’t regret one bit about starting this fight. In contrast, Desmond had a wide grin filled with excitement and aggression.

Gusts of pain flooded Desmond’s system endlessly. Still, he kept his gaze on Rekna as his hands moved of their own accord. Desmond brought a potion to his lips before injecting another elixir into his neck.

One of the potions reached the stomach and began to be digested, steadily generating small doses of healing energy, while the other elixir went straight into the bloodstream, revitalizing any injured tissue in its path. To Desmond’s surprise, despite his savage appearance, Rekna was as cautious as he was, consuming some kind of pill to heal his wounds, no matter how minor.

Aisha watched this with concern and a touch of hope, but she did not dare to say or do anything for fear of becoming a burden. With her injuries and her current strength, there was no way Aisha could bring anything to the fight, and she knew it, so she decided to stay on the sidelines.

Inside her, Aisha kept scolding herself for being lazy during her training for the past few years, devoting herself almost exclusively to her craft as a craftswoman. “When this is over, I’ll make sure to forge something for him,” Aisha said as a way to comfort herself as she looked at Desmond’s firm and dominant figure.

The silence in the cave lasted a couple of seconds, during which Desmond and Rekna only looked at each other, analyzing their adversary and replenishing their strength. To some extent, both of them were a bit surprised by the other party’s stillness, as neither of them came across as the content and patient type.

Under the image of calm, all kinds of ideas, plans, and scenarios were developing in both minds. Still, it was Desmond who took the initiative. With movements so methodical that they were frightening, Desmond drew, reloading both of his silver pistols in a fraction of a second before opening fire indiscriminately on Rekna.

Rekna had seen how fearsome the weapons were in Desmond’s hands, but he had also seen through their weakness. Using his absurd physical power and cat-like reflexes, Rekna saw through Desmond’s firing trajectories, dodging most of the bullets with his superior speed.

.....

The few bullets that found their mark did no more than break Rekna’s momentum a bit and leave a couple of bruises on his sandy skin, dissolving upon impact by the werelion’s rock-like muscles. This was more or less within Desmond’s expectations; Rekna was clearly different from the werehyenas. He was much more powerful and much better equipped.

A stray bullet hit Rekna’s black shoulder pad, one of the few pieces of armor he wore. The result? Without the slightest effect. Desmond wasn’t naive enough to think that the werelion didn’t possess weapons, treasures, and tools, and he had to be on the lookout for such things.

Rekna seemed to have foreseen when Desmond ran out of bullets, his muscles producing immense power, causing the werelion to shoot at Desmond.

Desmond was decisive when he saw this, giving up both weapons and tossing them aside without even trying to reload; he knew he didn’t have enough time for it. Rekna was farsighted, and with his physical might, there was little one could do once he got close. However, there was a reason why Desmond’s first move was to use his silver pistols, even though he knew they would be ineffective.

As Rekna covered dozens of meters in milliseconds, Desmond took a small leap back, and from his back, eight sapphire mana spheres shot out. Rekna immediately understood that Desmond had used those strange weapons to buy time. In the meantime, he prepared the next attack, using his silhouette to hide the existence of those eight spheres behind him.

Mana fluctuations warned Rekna of the hidden danger in Desmond’s move, but it was too late to retreat. Rekna had to grit his teeth and use his vast Aura to strengthen his body even more.

Under Desmond’s command. “Eat this, .” The eight blue spheres transformed into snakes before chasing after Rekna with a hungry surge.

Rekna did not expect to see such a sophisticated technique. Only entities in the three-star class had this kind of control and precision, and it scared him. If it wasn’t for the fact that he could still feel that Desmond could barely match his strength, Rekna would have already run away upon seeing Desmond’s ability.

Instead, since these snakes only looked intimidating, Rekna clasped both hands together. Rekna raised his arms covered in sand-colored Aura flares before bringing them down in a hammer blow. “Go to hell, .”

A gigantic explosion of energy shook the entire cavern to the point that it seemed like it would collapse at any moment. The Mana and Aura flashes almost became blinding, leaving behind a half-dozen-meter crater in the ground as they faded away.

Rekna had a victorious smile on his face. A moment ago, he watched as his powerful attack crushed the water snakes into oblivion. Given how long the cast time of Desmond’s attack was compared to his own, Rekna was increasingly certain of his victory.

The smug smile on Rekna’s face had not yet fully formed when two massive water serpents emerged from the dust cloud in front of him. As he looked at the realistic-looking, well-defined scales, Rekna still wondered what had happened, with no time to do anything before he felt run over by a mammoth.

On the other side of the cloud of dust, Desmond clung to control of these two water snakes as some cold sweat trickled down his forehead. In the last second, before the two attacks collided, Desmond realized that he would still be on the losing side despite the vast amount of mana he had invested.

Without even thinking, Desmond used all of his mental strength to redirect two of the snakes just in time to avoid the area of ??destruction as the other six collided with Rekna’s fists. Despite the ridiculous destructive power, Desmond was quick to see that Rekna’s attack lacked range, and he used that to his advantage.

All of that happened for what seemed like an enormous amount of time, but it was less than a second. Hence the werelion didn’t see it coming. Of course, Desmond never believed this would be enough, and his thoughts were correct when he watched as the werelion ripped apart the remaining two snakes with his bare hands.

Rekna now had a stern expression on his face as blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. His powerful torso was full of dense muscles, now in disrepair, his previously sandy fur now looking bruised and reddish.

Although he managed to injure the werelion relatively badly, Desmond didn’t seem the least bit pleased. That attack that carried a massive amount of mana could have shattered or nearly fatally wounded other opponents Desmond had faced; Rekna’s wounds weren’t much in comparison. Besides, it only took one glance to know that, with the werelion’s tremendous vitality, those wounds barely dented his strength.

Rekna felt every bone and internal organ in his torso jerk in pain, but he paid no attention. The anger inside him burned brightly, but Rekna only grew more cautious. He was the kind of scum that feared the strong but intimidated the weak; with his fear of death, there was no way he would act recklessly.

Rekna looked at Desmond for a second before turning his attention to Aisha, who was still an onlooker. The smile on his face grew wider and more twisted as a sinister idea entered his mind. “Only stupid people fight with honor.” He thought.

From the massive belt at his waist, Rekna produced a fist of intricately patterned gray spheres that he flung without hesitation in Desmond’s direction. The spheres grew in size in mid-air, turning into small demolition spheres.

This strange movement puzzled Desmond even more as the spheres seemed to take on their own life. These spheres spun and rushed toward him, much like the armored armadillos he had encountered recently.

“Shit, of course, the bloody asshole had some weird tricks up his sleeve.” Desmond cursed under his breath.

It only took a glance to realize that these spheres were dangerous and tough. These strange demolition spheres couldn’t be considered an invincible trump card. Still, one only needed to see how Rekna gathered Aura in vast quantities to know what he was up to.

Desmond wanted to complain that the not-so-stupid werelion was copying his style. Still, such ridiculous complaints were more suited to secondary characters that ended up dying without knowing how pathetic they were, so he reserved the right to comment on that.

“I also don’t have much mana left. I guess I’ll use that.” Desmond commented to himself before adding, “I may be poor, but I still won’t be humiliated by a stray cat’s collection of treasures.”