「That night.」
Taking advantage of the turmoil and chaos in Oran City, the advance team from Dongfu City weaved through its streets, wreaking havoc.
Naturally, such a high-risk operation came at a cost.
Over half of them were injured, but all were expected to make a full recovery. Three were unfortunately killed in action, but none of the Runes that materialized upon their deaths were taken by the enemy.
According to the corps’ regulations, the deceased’s Runes and Rune Equipment would be transferred to their families as an inheritance.
Although their class couldn’t be directly inherited, their fundamental power could be passed on.
This system was established so the corps’ members could enter battle with peace of mind, free from lingering worries.
In a way, this was one of the unique aspects of Elemental Rune Power: it required no personal enlightenment and could be used immediately.
By 9:30 PM, for safety’s sake, the vast majority of the team had already withdrawn through the Teleportation Gate, closing the portal behind them.
Su Chen, however, remained in Oran City with a small squad of six to continue their infiltration mission. Everyone had access to skills like the Teleportation Skill and items like Town Recall Scrolls, so they had no need to worry about their escape routes.
「Over half an hour later.」
‘Going for something this big?’
The most shocking scene of all unfolded at the Lorentz Building, headquarters of the Lorentz Group, just outside the downtown Financial Street.
Shrouded by the deep night, Su Chen’s figure, hovering high in the air, successfully unleashed a devastating attack.
VMMMM!
An incandescent orb of white light, like a colossal sun, came crashing down.
‘Molten Core Collapse’!
CRASH!
The summit of the 300-meter-tall skyscraper, a symbol of corrupt and absolute evil, began to crumble.
The private rooftop helipad was the first to vaporize.
Immediately after, the dual impact of extreme heat and a gravitational implosion completely obliterated the top section of the building, erasing over a dozen specially reinforced concrete and steel floors from the 85th all the way down to the 69th.
Its steel frame melted into a rain of crimson iron, and its bulletproof glass shattered into countless fragments, drifting down on the dispersing shockwave.
The entire city trembled.
In the distance, the people of Oran stood dumbfounded in the streets, staring up at the slowly collapsing steel behemoth. Someone murmured, “...Did they really hit the Lorentz Building?”
There is a saying: a god cannot be allowed to bleed.
Its authority must never be challenged.
Yet, after suffering successful, back-to-back attacks on both its grand estate and now its headquarters, this vast ruling power had well and truly revealed its own fragility and incompetence.
In an instant, cheers erupted all around.
Some even took the opportunity to rise up and attack.
“An eye for an eye! Blood for blood! Go and take back the money you’ve bled and sweat for!” An agitator who had come prepared used a spell to amplify their voice, fanning the flames and instantly igniting the long-suppressed fury of the crowd.
To unleash this ultimate attack, Su Chen had inevitably been forced to endure a barrage of enemy assaults while casting.
His two-layered Telekinesis Barrier and his Water Mirror Screen were both shattered, forcing him to resort to his protective Elementalization.
“FUCK!”
To his enemies’ fury, unlike the single-element transformation of a normal person, this guy’s flesh and blood had instantly reconstituted into a trinity of Elemental Energies: Light, Dark, and Fire.
The tri-colored Elemental Power coalesced into a humanoid form that hovered between the tangible and the intangible. The combined attacks from a Radiant Lord, a Netherlord, and a Hell Arbitrator all passed straight through him.
Of course, Su Chen still took some form of mysterious, unknown damage.
A Five-Star Secret Art Bishop, hidden in the shadows—’He’s probably Six-Star by now,’ Su Chen thought—had managed to silently curse him through some arcane method.
The True Spirit Dominating Armor within his Sea of Consciousness granted him immunity to mental attacks.
As for the malicious curse afflicting his physical body, it was constantly suppressed by his Vitality Burst trait, leaving him largely unharmed.
When he regrouped with his allies, a Holy Light Judge with a Lv8 Purification Skill dispelled the malevolence. By removing the tracking marker along with the curse, they eliminated any possibility of him being followed.
“Let’s keep going.”
Wild Beast was giddy with excitement, made fearless by his Symbiosis trait.
However, he clearly hadn’t learned from Wyatt’s mistakes, as he was repeatedly immobilized by enemy skills like the Water Prison Skill and Dark Chains.
If Su Chen and the others hadn’t been there to bail him out, he might very well have lost his life.
Operating so recklessly on enemy home turf was an extremely dangerous endeavor.
Fortunately, the city was in such chaos that it gave their small squad an opportunity to exploit the situation.
The squad didn’t teleport away safely until midnight.
Back at the camp, Su Chen took stock of his personal gains. He had acquired three Soul Cores and two Lv8 Runes—the Leaf Blade Skill and the Light Bullet Skill—all of which had dropped from the Five-star Spellcasters he had defeated.
‘Five-star class Authorities are anything but common.’
According to what Captain Zhang had told him, a mere 18 people in their entire Combat and Defense Division had successfully been promoted to Five-Star.
The number of powerful individuals outside the organization was unknown, but it was estimated to be no more than 15.
The reason for this was that promotion certificates for Five-Star and above were extremely rare, gold-quality rewards. Only those in the top 100 of the contribution leaderboard even had a chance of obtaining one.
Yan Ruoruo, despite being ranked 19th, had only received two gold-quality rewards and had not obtained one of these promotion certificates.
This just went to show how rare High-Star ranks were.
‘Awakening, Flying Skill, and Flashing Skill. The Runes themselves have successfully reached Lv8.’
After acquiring a Wind Element Soul Core, Su Chen chose not to rashly upgrade his Vortex Skill. Instead, he focused on strengthening his Aurora Shadow Technique, which would be extremely useful for ultra-long-distance travel in the future.
The absurd thing was...
This triple-composite Technique had become exceedingly powerful. Its maximum warp distance had already broken through the 2.6-kilometer mark.
Each time he turned or stopped abruptly, it would automatically trigger a brief phase shift, causing all offensive and tracking-type Magic to miss their mark.
‘In gaming terms, I’m basically triggering invincibility frames constantly.’
His figure flickered. With a simple turn or leap, his body would turn incorporeal for a split second, as if he were being frame-skipped out of reality.
This was the upgraded version of Aurora Flash.
It wasn’t that he was too fast to see; rather, his very existence could momentarily slip through the cracks of reality at will.
That female phantom agent known as ‘Night Owl’ was a Five-Star Radiant Shadow Cardinal, which was a Superior advancement of the Three-Star Dazzling Shadow Warlock.
This class line was known for being mysterious and unpredictable, its practitioners coming and going without a trace. The Aurora Shadow Technique, which also drew power from the Light-Dark Dual Element, bore some resemblance to it.
‘Still, it’s a fair bit stronger than the innate class abilities of a Five-Star Radiant Shadow Cardinal,’ Su Chen privately assessed.
However, this incorporeal state wasn’t a true ‘invincibility frame’ in the strictest sense of the term. This phased superposition of Light and Dark Particles could still be countered by certain Techniques that would force him to reappear.
Even so, it was more than enough to ignore the vast majority of attacks.
The effect of his now Lv9-equivalent Awakening was also ridiculously powerful. Although its “bullet time” effect only extended to four seconds, the bio-electrical currents surging through his body allowed him to instantly break free from any restraint and dispel all negative effects.
Wild Beast’s main weakness was his lack of a powerful skill to break free from crowd control; his Rune Map build wasn’t comprehensive enough.
Otherwise, once he was pinned down by the enemy’s various crowd control effects, he’d be a sitting duck waiting to die, no matter how much health he had.
It was like being stuck in jail.
Before long, while testing the new effects of Aurora Flash, Su Chen found himself in a forest ten kilometers away from the camp.
‘Time to absorb the ginseng.’
Before heading back, he took a large Mithril chest out of his Soul Pocket and placed it on the ground.
He was afraid that forcing it open might damage the ginseng inside.
Fortunately, he had an Unsealing Key, and its conceptual power to bypass any seal came into play.
“Open!”
With a point of his finger, the chest sprang open. The lid slowly rose, and in an instant, an immense wave of life force erupted outward.
Doused in this energy, the surrounding forest erupted in rampant growth. Vines shot out like dragons, a long-dead tree just beyond the clearing instantly sprouted new buds, and the entire patch of woodland transformed into an ocean of jade green in the space of a single breath.
Inside the chest, the giant, man-shaped ginseng, its body as translucent as jade, immediately opened a pair of eerie green eyes.
The moment its will awakened, an invisible force enveloped Su Chen, attempting to drain his blood essence and life force.
He was prepared for this and had already deployed his Lv10 Dual Element barrier.
With his right hand, he unleashed a terrifying wave of Telekinesis, seizing and immobilizing the giant ginseng to prevent its escape. At the same time, his family’s Jade Pendant floated up from his chest, glowing brightly. A vortex formed within it, rapidly devouring the ginseng’s life force and Spiritual Energy.
“URGH!!”
The creature began to struggle violently. Wave after wave of psychic screams sent faint ripples across Su Chen’s Sea of Consciousness, but they failed to harm him in any fundamental way.
A minute later, the forest fell silent once more.
Su Chen put away the Jade Pendant, now glowing with a crystalline green light, and turned to leave.
Only the sea of explosively grown forest remained, proof that what had just happened was no illusion.
The Jade Pendant’s previous feat of absorbing multiple Lv7 Runes at once had also provided a handsome return, granting him a total of ‘Power +3, Agility +11, and Physique +5’. It served as a good benchmark for future Rune absorptions.
After all, he had obtained 25 Lv7 Runes that night alone.

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