CLEAVER OF SIN Chapter 782: Water Body

Asher felt the blinding white light swallow him whole. He already knew he was being teleported, so he didn’t bother to resist. He felt the world and reality blur before his eyes as his consciousness seemed to flicker out for a split second.

The next second, Asher felt himself return to being, as though he had landed. But there was something wrong, he felt suffocated as he couldn’t exactly breathe, he immediately snapped open his eyes. The moment he did, he found himself inside a body of water, his head turned to the left and right, but all he saw were what appeared to be tree roots, vines, and other debris within the water, and it was green, dirty, and unclear. Visibility was poor, and even the faint light filtering through the water did little to illuminate his surroundings.

He wasn’t able to breathe as he was underneath a body of water.

Asher immediately swam upwards without wasting any more time, his mind already spinning with the possibility that they had just teleported him into an endless dark ocean.

The next instant, his head burst out from the water’s surface, the moment it did, his lungs expanded as he took in a large inhale of air, but the moment he did that, Asher immediately exhaled and didn’t dare inhale anymore.

Asher’s purple eyes scanned the location he had landed in. At first, before the blinding white light swallowed him whole, he had subconsciously thought that he would appear midair, plummeting from the sky. After all, if anything within the Star Academy had taught him anything, it was that powerhouses loved teleporting people into the sky and watching them fall.

But he had been wrong; he had been teleported directly into a body of water.

’Talk about bad luck,’ Asher mused to himself as he wondered what would have happened if he couldn’t swim.

At this moment, he was standing within murky water, he could feel the ground beneath his feet as he remained upright. Floating upon the water’s surface were various pieces of dirt, vines, broken tree branches, and the like, then around him were trees that stretched towards the sky.

But this wasn’t just a normal forest. It was damp, and the land itself seemed to be made of mud. It seemed as though sunlight barely reached this particular place, the atmosphere felt sticky and untouched, as though very few living creatures ever ventured into this region willingly.

And that wasn’t the worst part; the worst part was that the air was literally filled with poison, it was the reason he had immediately stopped breathing the moment he completed one breathing cycle. Although he didn’t know how poisonous the air was, nor how resistant his physique was against it, he wasn’t willing to test his luck or find out.

Virelass’ Crimson Pact couldn’t remove poisoning, so he couldn’t afford to be reckless.

Before Asher could even take a step to walk out of the small body of water he had landed in, a crocodile immediately swam forward at considerable speed. The moment it reached Asher, its enormous jaws opened to rip him apart.

Asher didn’t even acknowledge it, as Virelass was already on the move. She unsheathed herself as she shot into the air, her figure appearing above the crocodile as she slashed downward, decapitating it in one smooth motion. The crocodile immediately froze in place, its green blood painting the water. The creature’s massive body drifted lifelessly as ripples spread across the stagnant surface.

Asher raised his left hand as he glanced at his wrist, he was trying to check how many points the crocodile had netted him, but the bracelet simply reflected the same number it had shown him back at the coliseum: ’0’.

’Right, only Viel-class Monsters and above, along with Rank 3 Emovirae and higher, offer points,’ he thought to himself as he immediately remembered what the male host, Thomasinho, had said minutes earlier. The crocodile had been at the Whisper-class, the weakest of the weak, so Asher gained nothing.

And as though drawn by the smell of the crocodile’s blood, small fish swam forward, all of them racing towards Asher and the dead crocodile. They were piranhas. Many immediately dove into the crocodile, while some bit into Asher in an attempt to eat him alive, but the moment they bit into him, their teeth shattered, and they bled to death from the damage they had inflicted upon themselves.

Asher and Virelass didn’t even bother with them. These piranhas were ordinary monsters; they weren’t even at the Whisper-class.

Asher finally walked out of the water, his wet boots squishing as he moved. His body was covered in dirt as water dripped from him, leaving him soaked in filthy water. Asher couldn’t help but wonder when his luck had started running so poorly for him to end up in such a situation. His fine Murim-style outfit had literally gone from a ten out of ten to a three out of ten. Even his sleeves and lower garments were stained with mud and plant matter.

Asher decided to forget about all of this, he had to leave this poisonous and dangerous forest first. Although he didn’t know how long he could hold his breath for, it was best not to find out in a scenario like this.

He raised his hand and tapped the screen of the bracelet to see the functions it provided. The first thing Asher saw was his elements, each of them costing two thousand points to unlock, which was ridiculous by the way, because four out of his five elements were locked, meaning he would have to spend eight thousand points to unlock everything.

As for his fifth element, the bracelet couldn’t even affect it, as the element worked more on Star Energy than Astra Energy to begin with.

Although Asher could immediately begin using his fifth element without waiting, he knew he was being watched. He hadn’t even gained a single point yet, so how would he explain that he was miraculously using an element? Of course, that was only a concern for now, because if he ran into any danger, he would immediately abandon such thoughts and use his fifth element without hesitation. It wasn’t as though he could be disqualified for it, he wasn’t breaking any rules and couldn’t be accused of cheating.

Crymora was a world of abilities, and countless strange abilities existed after all.

He scrolled down further, his eyes landing on Astra Energy next, and unlocking it cost double the point requirement of the elements, a whopping four thousand points. Which was understandable. After all, Astra Energy was the foundation of everything, and almost every ability in Crymora needed it to function, so one couldn’t simply ignore it, not even Asher himself.

The funniest part was that Asher could simply decide not to spend any points. He could just substitute Astra Energy with Star Energy, using it to manipulate his elements and thereby bypass the restrictions placed upon him by the bracelet.

If people knew this, they would lose their minds.

Asher, thinking of this, simply shook his head and decided not to go through such an easy route. He should have as much fun as possible during this competition. Although doing something unimaginable was perhaps the best way to gain attention during this Inter-Empire Competition. Besides, competitions like this only came around so often, and there was no point in ruining the experience by taking the simplest route available from the very beginning.