Reborn as an Extra Chapter 557: The Unstoppable Bard. Part-2.
Previously on Reborn as an Extra...
Using the air as his stepping point with a powerful kick, Rio hurled his form straight into the skull of a bull-like beast.
This enormous creature dwarfed entire structures in size, its rushing speed utterly ferocious, yet Rio collided his head against it recklessly!
From the brutal force of Rio's head collision, the beast's frame exploded outward, its brain tissue spraying in all directions like a melon crushed under a heavy mallet!
Numerous beasts in the vicinity got hurled back by the resulting blast wave, though several endured the force and lunged toward Rio right away.
Within just a few milliseconds, Rio whipped his flute around ten thousand times, slicing through every creature within a kilometer's reach!
Not delaying for even an instant, Rio surged ahead at tremendous velocity.
By eliminating thousands of beasts in milliseconds, he had torn open a vulnerability in their array, and since his goal was to skirt past the chaos entirely, he had no desire to eliminate them all.
Rio hoisted his flute over his shoulder before slashing it down, crushing a beast flat with intense atmospheric force and harnessing that pressure to propel himself upward into the heavens!
Even though flight was possible for him as an S-ranker, this wind technique propelled him far quicker; it resembled teleportation in its swiftness!
Propelling skyward brought Rio nearer to the rifts in space that endlessly vomited forth beasts!
Sensing Rio's impending action, hordes of serpentine aerial creatures dove at him to intercept, but they arrived too late.
Making the air and emptiness his base, Rio positioned himself aloft while grinning slyly.
"If it was in the outside world, I couldn’t have done it with my current strength, but the space-time fabric here is weaker in the spirit realm, so I am quite sure this skill will succeed today!"
As though slicing through mere atmosphere, Rio swept his flute through the void, but its true impact tore at the fabric of space-time!
Rio had witnessed Ashtel once brutally ripping apart the space-time weave and then sealing the rupture shut using only the raw power of his grip!
Though he couldn't replicate such a feat just yet, Rio had devised a diminished variant of that technique.
These rifts in space merely represent fractures in the space-time weave that have torn and split, making it entirely logical to mend or 'stitch' the damaged 'cloth.'
Drawing from that reasoning, Rio integrated it into his ability; he employed space and time essences to mend the fractured space-time with his sword intent serving as the 'needle' or connector.
In this way, he effectively sealed the rifts that kept disgorging beasts without end!
"I succeeded! Hehe~..."
Rio felt immense joy upon his initial triumph; this technique had lingered in his thoughts for ages, yet his prior lack of power had prevented its execution.
However, the fragile space-time structure of the spirit realm proved an ideal testing ground for Rio, allowing success on the very first attempt!
Detecting Rio's elated state, the aerial serpents grew furious and charged him at velocities surpassing military aircraft!
"Heh, you are just on time; I just learned a new skill, lemme use it on you!"
With a sly grin, Rio adjusted his posture and resumed his aerial pose.
Rio repeated the identical technique, though now directing it not at a rift but toward the encircling serpents!
Circling his flute around his form, he harnessed space and time essences to bind the swarm of serpentine beasts together!
Treating space as the canvas and his sword intent as the thread, Rio stitched the monsters' forms into one another!
The serpents' bodies fused in bizarre, uneven configurations.
Overburdened by their merged mass, their frail wings failed, sending them plummeting to the earth in a flash!
Ignoring any further engagement with them, Rio blasted forward like a projectile!
Soaring through the air, he drove his flute into the visage of a colossal ape leaping to assault him!
The ape's upper body disintegrated completely, its guts erupting across the scene as Rio sped past without pausing for the wreckage to hit the soil.
Vast hordes of beasts numbering in the hundreds of thousands barreled toward Rio, yet he precisely exploited gaps in their ranks each time.
By pulverizing the creatures at those vulnerabilities, he advanced relentlessly, sparing not a single millisecond!
Rio's velocity was such that beasts barely registered his presence before he vanished into the distance, having slain their allies.
His blistering pace made continuous pursuit nearly unattainable.
Various distant-attack beasts unleashed their long-range assaults on Rio, but such efforts proved futile, as they could scarcely glimpse his lingering trails.
Moving at such velocity, every minor shift from Rio generated deafening sonic blasts that scattered hundreds of beasts via shock alone, prior to pulverizing the formidable ones into pulp!
A particularly robust S-rank beast obstructed Rio's path, by which point he had penetrated the heart of the horde's arrangement!
"You are too slow and late!"
Rio deployed the technique he'd freshly mastered; he packed miasma at his blade's edge under immense sword intent pressure, compressing it to utmost density!
On this occasion, Rio confined two million threads of miasmic essence within that compacted miasma sphere!
"Checkmate!"
A detonation of cataclysmic might erupted, spawning enormous fissures in the surrounding space!
Its ferocity vaporized thousands of beasts instantly, their forms shredded by violent spatial tremors in mere milliseconds!
A vast pit spanning ten kilometers wide and plunging a hundred meters deep materialized!
The blast's ripples carried such intensity that rubble melted into liquid fire, hurtling outward with devastating might!
Rio had deliberately targeted the array's center for this move to maximize devastation, and the plan unfolded flawlessly!
The elite beasts clustered around the formation's nucleus, which bore the brunt of the onslaught.
Almost every S-ranker and elite creature nearby dissolved into oblivion as space-time fractured; the rest fragmented under spatial chaos.
Even the scant survivors endured soul-shattering corruption from the miasma immediately!
So devastating and fearsome was the strike that, in the outer realms, it might pass for an SS-ranker's assault, drawing scores of SS-rankers to berate Rio by now.