Chapter 13: Dragon Tooth Chaos
Garion pushed through the crowd, ignoring the cultivators of the lower stages.
People around stepped aside when they saw his big frame as he went straight for the precious flower.
A cultivator nearest the flower spun, pointing a sword at him.
"How dare you come here to take my Dragon Tooth Flower!"
Garion rolled one shoulder, putting his hands on his hips.
"You haven’t even got it yet. How can it be yours?"
The man’s face hardened.
"It will be. So scram, or I’ll cut you down."
Garion snorted.
"Only you? Please. You don’t even look like you can lift."
The man clenched his teeth and charged, raising his sword.
"Feral Wolf Slash!"
Garion met the attack with a smile. He moved to block before quickly frowning.
The strikes were faster than he thought. His mana and speed actually hid his poor sword form.
Garion bit his lip, thinking about what to do.
Although his cultivation art was better than the others and managed to bring him to this level in a few months, the other had years to cultivate.
He could pour mana into his fists and stop the sword strike, but that would use too much of his mana.
Then suddenly, an idea appeared. No one said that mana had to be used only on limbs or weapons.
Garion closed his eyes and then opened them. He guided the mana from around his body to his eyes, focusing them like lenses.
His sight quickly sharpened. Although it didn’t look like time stopped, it still managed to make the strikes look slower.
Garion’s grin quickly widened as he read his attack pattern: a high swing, a step forward, then a low follow-up.
He shifted his feet, stepping forward with one foot, while the other planted behind, letting the man come.
The attacker smirked upon seeing it, lunging toward him.
"Good, you came for a quick death!"
Garion didn’t dodge.
He blocked one sword strike on purpose to close the distance.
The man’s confidence instantly doubled, quickly making his strikes even stronger and bolder.
But still, at the right moment, Garion slipped inside the sword’s line.
His right hand shot toward the attacker’s wrist and forced the blade sideways.
His left hand dove under the arm, wrapping behind the elbow, and with a quick twist, Garion pulled his arm into an armbar.
"Let’s break your arm."
The man thrashed around, trying to break free, but Garion didn’t have a plan to release him.
"Let go of me, you bastard. You’ll pay for this!"
Garion’s smile became even crueler. He loosened the hold a fraction to show that he could end him anytime.
"You’re strong when you swing and shout, but in the end, you’re just like a child, crying after losing."
The man trashed again, throwing one last desperate kick.
Garion’s grin quickly turned into a frown.
"Tch. You really don’t learn, do you?"
He twisted sharply, bending his arm in the wrong direction.
Crack!
The man howled in pain instantly, collapsing to the ground, clutching his broken arm.
Even though his body had been tempered by mana, it still couldn’t handle Garion’s brute force.
Garion stood, dusted his hands off, and snorted.
"One down and still too many left. Honestly? I don’t have the patience to wait. Let’s end this quickly."
He inhaled and channeled mana into his legs. His veins bulged faintly as he charged forward, sprinting straight toward the Dragon Tooth Flower.
The stronger cultivators shouted in alarm.
"Stop him!"
"Don’t let that burte reach the flower!"
Several saturation stage cultivators leapt forward at once.
But Garion’s eyes gleamed as mana surged into his vision again, slowing their movements.
Two came from the front, aiming their swords at his chest, but Garion didn’t dodge.
He lowered his shoulder and then slammed into them like a human spear.
Both were lifted off their feet and sent flying, coughing blood as they crashed into the dirt.
Another one charged from the side, swinging down a big axe.
Garion just snatched the man’s wrist mid swing, twisted, and hauled him backward.
BAM!
He suplexed the man into the rocky floor, quite hurting him, making him twitch on the ground.
The crowd quickly froze. What the hell was this brute doing? What was with that strange movement?
Garion only smirked, cracking his knuckles.
"Come on, is that it? You guys fight like you have never been in a street brawl. No brains at all."
Those words hit them like a slap.
Four saturation stage cultivators had already been defeated one by one with only one move.
Then, suddenly, a huge snake appeared behind Garion, locking its eyes on him.
A dozen cultivators nearby who had been watching with nervous smiles suddenly brightened up.
"We can’t stop him, but the snake will. Let it deal with him."
"Once he held the snake back, we went straight for the flower."
Garion didn’t like how they talked about hiding behind the snake, relying on it to defeat me.
But the snake suddenly whipped its tail at Garion, and he immediately raised his arms to block it.
The force was so strong that it sent him staggering back, before stopping after a few meters.
The tail whipped again, and this time it was even harder, and he slid backward even further.
For the first time, his grin wavered.
The cultivators face a quick change from smug to a grin as they wanted this.
Their plan is basically for the snake to do the work on killing Garion while they pick up the prize.
And the snake, even though it knew that the cultivars were much closer to the flower than Garion, still decided to target Garion.
It wasn’t stupid but smart. It knew that the group would break apart in the moment and brawl for the one flower.
It wanted to defeat a single threat, the big man who kept defeating the saturation stage cultivators.
Garion quickly knew as he saw the sudden shift in the snake’s expression when it looked at the group and then at him.
"What a smart snake. Fine then, let’s do this properly."