Book 6: Chapter 39: Surrounded on All Sides

The gigantic monsters launched attacks towards Tsubiro, the so-called “immortal” of the hilltop shrine on Mt. Izumo.

Although these monsters looked different, they had one feature in common, which was that they had a charm attached to their foreheads, and these charms covered their faces partially.

The charms had ancient runes written on them, which Lily felt were similar to and as profound as the Jōmon characters carved on the octagonal walls of the mirror space.

Tsubiro had already begun regretting his decision to jump down the cliff. He looked for her everywhere but failed to find her in the end and got surrounded by monsters on all sides soon after.

A robust, brown-bodied, fat-bellied monster with a crimson charm attached on its forehead issued a guttural roar before it charged towards Tsubiro with a spiked club in hand. Tsubiro exerted a fearsome strength from his arms in response to the charge and raised his golden staff to fend off the monster’s spiked club. He then leaped forward and smashed his staff on the monster’s head. The tenacious monster did not die from the hit though and got up from the ground to swing its club at him again.

Tsubiro tried to fend off the attack, but a twenty meter long lizard, which had a white charm on its forehead, pounced at him from behind at this moment and bit him on the shoulder with its massive jaws.

“Dammit!” Tsubiro screamed in pain and threw the lizard to the ground before he stomped its head, killing it one attack.

Lily felt her pulse race when she saw this from faraway. “Just how powerful is a Throned Saint? How is he able to keep on fighting the terrifying monsters in the valley?”

The monsters seemed to have no wisdom and just attacked the human invader instinctively, but Tsubiro’s strength was a notch higher than theirs. He had already killed two monsters within the last few exchanges.

“This old man’s pretty incredible!” Lily soliloquized internally, “The ten monsters are probably not his match. It won’t take him that long to find me once he kills them.”

Lily narrowed her eyes when she heard the distant cries of other monsters from the depths of the valley.

“Since ten monsters aren’t enough, I’ll just bring more over!”

Lily used the boulders and ditches as cover to sneak into the depths of the valley while holding her parasol. Tsubiro failed to notice this because he was busy dealing with the monsters that had surrounded him.

Lily estimated that the strength of the monsters here was in between the late-stage Permanence and Throned General levels. The fierce auras of the monsters in the valley’s depths gave her the belief that they had a higher strength than the monsters here.

Lily was certain that she could kill most of them in a one versus one battle.

However, the most terrifying aspect of this valley was that there innumerable monsters of such level in it.

Lily climbed a tall rocky slope and saw dozens of ten to twenty meters long crimson lizards underneath it, with the biggest one having a length of thirty meters. All of them had charms with black Jōmon characters written on them attached to their foreheads, and the biggest one among them had a flaming tail. She estimated its strength to be at the level of a Throned Sovereign.

Lily calculated the distance and seized the chance to store her parasol away and attack them with a sword beam whilst their attention was not on her.

Splotch! The sword beam struck one of the lizards and alerted all of them to her presence immediately. Lily turned around to flee the next moment and left behind a crimson afterimage on the rocky slope.

The lizards unleashed their eldritch auras and issued terrifying cries before they chased after her.

However, Lily fled towards Tsubiro with the fastest possible speed, and used her Purple Lunar Force to boost her speed again when she approached him to hide in one of the ditches.

The lizards caught up a few moments later and discovered that the ditch was empty.

Lily had long shaken them off and detoured behind a boulder with her parasol in hand.

The lizards turned furious when they learned that she had escaped from them and looked for her everywhere. Although they failed to find her in the end, they found Tsubiro engaging in a fierce battle with monsters nearby.

Scarlet flames spewed out of the eyes of the lizards as they charged towards him with a thunderous momentum.

“What?!” Tsubiro had somehow killed half the monsters that had surrounded him in exchange for injuries and never imagined the arrival of another wave.

He had a good understanding of the place though and knew that the valley had ancient archdemons that were much more powerful than this, which was why he did not dare to move around too much. Doing that was bound to attract more monsters and make it impossible for him to capture Lily.

Tsubiro gritted his teeth and cursed his bad luck for coming across a group of lizard monsters that inhabited this valley and resolved his mind to battle them.

Lily showed an icy look on her face when she saw the lizards pounce, bite, and ram him, and sprinted towards another direction.

Splotch! Tsubiro used all his strength to behead the Throned Sovereign level lizard, but there were still twenty more lizards around him.

He was drenched in blood and covered in wounds at the moment.

“Dammit! Why do I have such bad luck? Just where did Lily go? Don’t tell me she got killed by the monsters here already. Did I make a mistake in coming here…?” Tsubiro ran his eyes across the valley while spouting blood from his mouth, but he found no signs of her and just heard a tremor approach him from within the valley’s mist.

A herd of giant bisons, whose horns, hoofs, eyes and noses were donned in blue lightning, swarmed out from the depths of the valley. The bisons, which had white fabric around their backs in addition to the charms on their forehead, charged towards him in the next moment.

“The heck is happening here?!” Tsubiro’s eyes turned bloodshot.

He cursed out when he saw a dense flock of bats with two meter wide wings behind the bisons.

A bunch of demons crawled out from the ground in another direction at the same time, and these demons included a thirty meter tall demon that was also in the Throned Sovereign level.

Tsubiro’s eyes filled with despair when he saw this.

“This doesn’t make sense! Although this valley is pretty dangerous, I’ve traversed it before when I encountered a bottleneck in training. I never came across so many monsters when I battled back then! It’s as if they are gathering here knowing that I’m here! That’s just impossible!”

Tsubiro felt Death’s call right now and abandoned any thoughts of capturing Lily. Killing these monsters was all that he had on his mind since he could just seize the body of one of his best disciples even if he could not get his hands on her.

He needed to get out of this valley alive first to achieve that, but there were just too many monsters around him. He just could not break through the swarm of monsters that surrounded him.

It was impossible for him to climb the cliffs on either side under the onslaught of so many monsters, and there were aerial monsters among them, too. Tsubiro had attempted it a few times, but the monsters pulled him down each time and surrounded him immediately.

“Hmm?” Lily sensed that the anima which she had collected from these monsters were a bit different from usual.

She approached one of the giant bison which Tsubiro had killed and absorbed its anima with little movements.

The bison had a Throne level anima.

Lily had never absorbed a Throne level anima with her cursed blades until now and found that it contained an energy essence that was much denser than the energy essence within magatama.

However, it was not that easy to find Throne level monsters, and it required sufficient luck to have a chance of defeating one. This was why blade maidens rarely trained with a Throne level archdemon’s anima.

This valley was different, though.

Although Tsubiro had fallen into an impasse, he was much stronger than the average Throne and was a Throned Saint who stood at the summit of the Throne level. It was easy for him to kill hundreds and thousands of monsters, ten percent of which would be at least in the Throne level.

Lily took advantage of the situation and collected the Throne level anima of the monsters in the edge of the battlefield while Tsubiro fought the swarm of archdemons.

Tsubiro found it hard to deal with the onslaught of the monsters and moved here and there within the valley, which ended up expanding the battlefield across a few kilometers.

The fight was pretty brutal and lasted a long time.

He was still fighting the monsters when the skies had turned dark.

“A Throned Saint is really too fearsome. Although he’s seriously injured from killing hundreds of demons, he still has enough stamina to continue fighting. I’m afraid he’ll kill all the monsters if this continues.” Lily contemplated behind the boulder. “I’ll bring over some more monsters then, since I’m in need of Throne level anima as well. I might as well let him kill them for me!”

Lily acted with caution to prevent him from discovering her and had already collected a dozen Throne level anima.

She sneaked into the valley’s depths and found a hundred meter tall dark-skinned demon that was shrouded in clouds there, and it had about a thousand small-to-mid sized demons around it.

The giant demon had a stronger aura than her, but it was still a little weaker than Tsubiro’s aura.

Lily gasped when she saw the terrifying demon, but she resolved her mind in the next moment and slashed at the thousand-meter-away demon. She then turned around to flee and heard a thunderous roar from behind her.

The earth quaked as the incredibly powerful demon took large strides to chase after her.

“Thank goodness I made the right judgment. The demon’s much slower than me!”

Lily had already fled to a safe distance by using all her strength and approached the battlefield where Tsubiro and the monsters were engaged in a fight. She fled into the formation of boulders and disappeared from the view of the demon once she arrived at a faraway location by using her Purple Lunar Force to speed up.

“What?! This demon’s in the peak-stage Throned Monarch level!” Tsubiro’s expression turned duller when he saw such a demon approach him. Although he could defeat such a powerful demon in a one versus one battle with little effort, he had long used up his spirit power now and simply had no means to deal with such a gigantic demon and its underlings in his severely injured state1.

Silva: I kind of pity this guy now, turned into exp grinding machine for Lily.

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