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Chapter 310: The Clash of Power and Speed
"Kill her, Lambton!"
Jura's command exploded through the vast cavern. It was no longer filled with his sickly obsession; it had morphed into a freezing, lethal order.
The long whip in his hand wasn't meant for attacking; it acted as his conductor's baton. He snapped it viciously against the ground.
CRACK—!
A sharp, ear-piercing crack rang out like a starting pistol.
The tip of the whip sparked briefly against the hard crystal floor, sending an invisible command surging through the mental link straight into the giant snake's mind.
ROAR—!!!
The Lambton let out a low bellow thick with pain and rage. The muscles beneath its scorched scales bulged. The agony inflicted by Ryuu's Luminous Wind was entirely converted into a towering, murderous hatred for the tiny elf before it.
Its mountainous body lunged forward. With all six pairs of crimson eyes dead-locked onto Ryuu, it transformed into a deep blue tide of death, charging with overwhelming ferocity.
It wasn't a simple, straightforward ram.
The Lambton's serpentine body, stretching over ten meters long, slithered across the ground at breakneck speed. Its hardened scales acted like razor-sharp plows. Whether it was the naturally forming crystal clusters or the jagged rocks, everything in its path was sheared flat and pulverized by its sheer brute force.
Instantly, countless crystalline shards mixed with dirt and water vaporized into lethal shrapnel, firing indiscriminately in all directions.
The calm underground waters of the cavern were violently churned by the sheer physical force, whipping up surging waves strong enough to capsize a boat.
The entire cavern seemed to tremble under the giant snake's wrath.
Yet, upon this stage of death constructed from chaos and destruction, the green figure moved like a sprite dancing in the wind, possessing an agility that bordered on the supernatural.
Faced with the landslide of an assault, Ryuu's face showed not a single trace of panic.
She tapped her feet lightly against the slick ground, her body becoming entirely weightless as she glided backward and to the side.
The split second she drifted away, several head-sized crystal shards screamed past the exact spot she had just occupied, embedding themselves deeply into the rock wall behind her.
Her movements never paused.
Riding the momentum of her glide, Ryuu carved a beautiful arc through the air. The tip of her boot landed with surgical precision on a jutting crystal spike on the wall no larger than the palm of a hand.
That fragile foothold merely dipped slightly under her weight before she used it as the perfect springboard for her next maneuver.
She launched herself again, darting and weaving between the jagged rock walls. Every landing was calculated to perfection; every push-off was flawlessly timed.
One moment, she was clinging to the wall and strafing horizontally at high speed like a gecko; the next, she was leaping weightlessly between protruding crystals like a bird in flight.
The Lambton's berserk charges and the lethal barrage of shrapnel could only ever chase the fading green afterimages she left behind.
It was a clash between ultimate speed and ultimate power.
Ryuu was drawing out the profound truth hidden within her alias, "Gale," to its absolute limits.
"Hmph. Is scurrying around like a rat all you know how to do?"
A cruel smirk crept up the corners of Jura's mouth. He saw right through Ryuu's strategy—she was utilizing her mobility to steadily drain the Lambton's stamina while searching for the perfect opening to land a fatal blow.
But why would he ever give her that chance?
"Jump, Lambton."
Jura issued his next command. Instead of lashing the ground, he cracked the whip sharply upward, drawing a vicious arc through the air.
HISS—!
Receiving the order, the Lambton's massive body abruptly skidded to a halt mid-charge.
The thick, muscular lower half of its serpentine body coiled tightly, like a spring compressed to its absolute limit, and then exploded with force.
The ground shattered beneath it, spiderweb cracks spreading out in all directions.
The next moment, the multi-ton behemoth defied all laws of nature and launched itself straight up, soaring toward the cavern ceiling dozens of meters above in a single, terrifying bound.
"Wha—?!"
Ryuu's pupils shrank violently.
More than ten meters directly above her, the Lambton's massive, deep-blue body arced into the "Great Snake Arch"—a breathtaking, overwhelming posture that felt as if it enveloped the entire cavern.
Its charred wounds stretched open in mid-air. Under the glow of the white ceiling crystals, its deep blue skin radiated an eerie, resplendent light.
Its long, muscular body writhed and twisted freely in the air, as if the sky itself was its true domain.
It was a breathtaking scene, a masterpiece of sheer, violent aesthetics.
Even as an enemy, even balancing on the razor's edge of life and death, Ryuu found her focus involuntarily stolen by the awe-inspiring sight for a fraction of a second.
Time seemed to stretch out infinitely in that moment.
And within that brief lapse of focus, her fiercely tempered adventurer instincts—like an alarm bell struck by a heavy hammer—screamed the most harrowing, terrifying warning directly into her brain.
Threat! Lethal threat!
The amalgamation of pure malice completed its mid-air adjustment.
It twisted its colossal form, its six pairs of amber eyes locking onto the tiny green speck below like twelve freezing stars.
And then, it began to fall.
Slowly at first, grabbed by gravity, then accelerating unstoppably, plummeting directly toward Ryuu's exact position.
The massive silhouette blotted out the white crystal light from above, as if a patch of the night sky had been violently stuffed into the cavern.
Only the specific spot where Ryuu stood plunged into a deep, despair-inducing darkness.
She looked up in stunned silence. Her usually placid emerald eyes reflected a total, overwhelming despair.
What she saw was the colossal body of the great snake crashing down like a meteor. As it fell, it began spinning at a terrifyingly high speed, assuming a horrific posture that looked ready to drill through and crush absolutely anything in its path.
This was an unavoidable, absolute area-of-effect attack that covered every possible escape route.
BOOM—!!!
An unprecedented, deafening explosion ripped through the air, sounding as if the entire Dungeon floor was collapsing.
The Lambton's massive body slammed brutally into the exact spot Ryuu had been standing just a second prior.
The terrifying impact morphed into a visible wave of white, concussive air that blasted outward with frantic violence.
Ryuu was struck hard by the invisible shockwave, her body sent flying by the berserk force.
As she was thrown through the air, a heart-stopping sight flashed across her vision.
The great snake monster hadn't stopped upon hitting the floor.
Its elongated, high-speed spinning body acted like a massive, living drill bit, effortlessly piercing through the solid bedrock and carving a bottomless, gaping hole straight into the earth.
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