One moment, he was standing near the auction house at the center of the city. The next, he was violently ripped from the ground and sent flying like a ragdoll, tearing through streets and buildings alike before slamming into the inner city wall with bone-shattering force.
On his way to the walls, he smashed through houses and buildings alike, but at that moment, Alex wasn't in the mood to wonder whether this had caused the death of any civilians or not; he was more concerned about himself.
The wall exploded on contact, a thunderous boom ripping through the city as cracks burst outward from the point where his body struck. Stone fractured and caved beneath him, unable to withstand the sheer violence of his momentum, and debris blasted into the air in a lethal storm of dust and shattered brick.
His body didn't bounce—it buried itself into the structure, driven deep into unforgiving stone. The entire inner wall shuddered, trembling as if on the verge of collapse.
After a moment, with some difficulty, Alex climbed out of the dent he had made in the inner side of the wall. His body ached, yet he didn't seem that badly wounded.
'He isn't as strong as the rhino,'he remarked, inspecting his torn clothes. 'He is much faster, though.'
Although he had a few broken ribs, he suffered much less damage than he initially thought considering the sheer power of the blow. The impact had been violent enough to send him flying across the city, yet his internal injuries were limited and no vital organs seemed to be critically damaged.
'I have never been so glad to have a high defense stat,' Alex thought, pleased with how solid his body was.
Although his new opponent was a little less powerful than the last one, it didn't mean that he was less of a danger; in fact, this one was much more dangerous, by far.
The rhino was stronger physically, but what good was his strength when he couldn't touch Alex because the latter was much faster than him?
This one, however, was different. He might not match the rhino's brute force, but his speed alone made him a far greater threat—especially to Alex.
Besides this wolf man—or werewolf, or whatever he was—insane speed, Alex had noticed that he also had the ability to control the wind element. This was one of the elements that actually made his use of the smoke element difficult, as shown by how easily his smoke cloud had previously been dispersed by a gust of wind created by the wolf man.
It could be said that this new opponent of his was going to be very hard to deal with, but Alex wasn't at the end of his rope yet.
Despite the sudden increase in danger, it still wasn't enough to paint him into a corner; he had many ways to get himself out of this predicament, one of which was the system.
He currently possessed around one thousand soul points, maybe even two thousand—it had been a while since he checked. If he wanted, he could use these soul points to enhance his overall strength. If he did that, forget doubling it—he might very well quadruple his power.
Yet, Alex didn't even entertain the idea, and that was largely because he didn't want to rely too heavily on the system.
It's true that he had the Lust Artifact and its system to thank for his current—and probably future—strength, but Alex was certain of one thing: if every time he found himself in a pinch and about to lose he used the system to make himself stronger than his opponent, then he was doing himself a disservice. What was he going to do the day he had no soul points left to enhance himself? Or worse, what about the day when even the system's enhancement wasn't enough to surpass his opponent? What then?
The answer was all too clear to Alex—on that day, he would die.
He had no intention of letting that happen.
Besides, he knew for a fact—because it had happened just moments ago—that it was during life-or-death battles that one improved the most. The perfect example was his smoke mastery skyrocketing during his fight against the rhino man.
Moreover, he was currently saving his soul points to copy Freya's ability as well. That ability would disappear by the end of the month, so he needed to preserve his points for that.
All of that to say that unless the situation reached the point of no return, Alex had no intention of using the system to enhance himself.
'I guess I'll have to truly go all out,' Alex thought, stretching his body as his muscles loosened with a series of sharp cracks.
Against the rhino, he had also decided to go all out, but what he meant at that time was using his full physical capabilities. Besides using his smoke element, he had made sure to spend the least amount of mana possible. He wanted to conserve it to deal with the approaching beast tide.
But… how could he do that if he died before then?
'I'll cross that bridge when I come to it,' he thought, Marnak appearing in his hand, the skull holding the dual curved blade gleaming with a dark, ominous light.
He began to walk away from the wall, and with each step he took, he felt his body becoming more energized as his mana surged through him, flooding his muscles with its invigorating power.
Alex felt his strength increasing in real time, and that was only natural—after all, a body revealed its true worth and capabilities when empowered by energy. He was already strong and fast without using mana to boost himself, but when he did…
Boom!
An explosion thundered through the air, forcing the werewolf—who had been flying toward the direction Alex had been flung—to narrow his bloodshot eyes in suspicion.
Before he had the time to understand what caused that second explosion, danger bells rang in his head as he felt the transparent wall of wind he had made around him to detect attacks being torn to shreds.
He stopped mid-flight, about to slash his claws upwards, but he was a tad too late.
"Time for round two."
As those words drifted into the werewolf's ears, a strong, bone-shaking impact collided against him, throwing him off balance.
Clang!
The werewolf groaned as Marnak slammed against his claws. He attempted to keep himself in the air by using his wind element as a cushion, but the force behind Alex's strike was so immense that it still sent him flying toward the ground with a violent thud, cracking the pavement beneath him.
An explosion followed, sending a cloud of dust erupting at the point of impact, but it was soon swept away by a powerful gust of wind, revealing the werewolf standing in the center, barely unscathed.
He sported several scratches across his body, but he seemed fine nonetheless.
He glanced down at himself, then a mad grin spread across his face.
"YOU ARE MORE FUN THAN I THOUGHT," the werewolf's voice boomed like a thunderclap echoing throughout the city.
The following instant, he swiped both of his arms in Alex's direction. At first glance, it looked like he was swiping at nothing, but in the blink of an eye, several sharp wind blades formed, rushing toward Alex with dizzying speed.
Alex, falling toward the ground, was little more than a sitting duck against such an attack.
Yet, he maintained his calm.
A grey cube suddenly appeared in front of him. He quickly grabbed it and used it to change his direction, completely avoiding the wind blades before landing on yet another grey cube.
He couldn't use his smoke element against his opponent, especially in its gaseous state with the werewolf's wind abilities active, but that didn't mean he couldn't use his element altogether.
More wind blades came at him, but more grey cubes appeared. Hopping from one to another, Alex kept avoiding the blades. Not only that, he granted the cubes elastic properties, so the more cubes he stepped on, the faster he became.
Quite quickly, Alex became a blur, moving so fast that the werewolf couldn't track his position, forcing him to stop his barrage of wind blades as it was useless.
Meanwhile, Alex, his speed still climbing, closed in on the werewolf.
His grip on Marnak tightened with deadly force, and he came crashing down against his foe with such power that a small crater formed beneath him, shaking the surrounding city streets like a miniature earthquake.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A series of explosions tore through the air, hurling debris and dirt in every direction.
Thankfully, the battle was taking place away from the houses, but even then, the violent gusts of wind generated by Alex crashing down were enough to tear apart the few nearby buildings, sending splinters of wood, shards of brick, and shattered tiles flying like deadly shrapnel.
"What the..." the second hooded man, who had been chasing behind his companions, froze in place, his eyes widening in horror as he stared at the massive, churning cloud forming before him.
'What kind of monster are we even dealing with?' he thought, cold sweat racing down his back.