“Hey, uh… Bodrick? What’s going on?” Grayfire asked as he prepared his hammer for one more fight. He looked around, trying to figure out what was going on, but all he could see was the 3 men huddled together.

“Is this your doing?” Grayfire asked loudly as he pointed his explosive hammer at them.

Carlos flinched a bit, but the other two showed no reaction to the question at all. Ning had no answer to give, and Kepli only laughed maniacally, to the point that he was starting to lose consciousness from all the flaring pain in his lungs from the laughing.

Bodrick moved suddenly, but Grayfire was prepared for him. He swung his hammer and slammed onto Bodrick. The explosion tore his body apart, and what remained was a shadowy figure, half made up of human and half made up of shadow.

To his surprise, the body still moved, albeit not as well as before. It looked like the shadow wasn’t very good at holding together parts that weren’t connected to each other themselves.

Still, Bodrick’s body moved with a single black eye still visible, slowly approaching Grayfire who had no plans to be attacked.

He swung his hammer again and this time managed to kill the other boss he had come to this place with. When the explosion vanished, he alone remained.

There were 3 of them when they entered, and now only a single one remained.

“You bastard! Where the ** are you hiding from me?” he shouted at the open wall. He didn’t even consider that it was one of the 3 men that were the ones behind it all.

There was just no way for that to be true.

“Fine, don’t come out,” Grayfire said. “Just sit back and watch me kill your men.”

Kepli suddenly stopped laughing when he heard that, and both Ning and Carlos got tense as well. Carlos wasn’t sure what he could do, but the boss was already walking towards them.

“Stand back,” Ning said as he put himself in front of the two. If he fought the man directly, he was most definitely going to die. The difference in their Essence rank was just that much.

“Brother Ning, stop!” Carlos reacted finally after Ning had stepped forward. He pulled out his daggers as well, but it was too late already.

Even Ning realized it was too late. He had been preparing his essence, but the man in front of him was too strong.

‘Guess that’s a reset for my adventure then,’ he thought. He was going to go down, so he would go down fighting.

He used whatever little Essence he had managed and swung his sword at the incoming explosive hammer.

BANG!

An explosion rang in the room, sending dust falling from the open roof.

Grayfire looked in front of him with confused eyes before slowly moving his head to look at his arm. He should have been holding the Hammer with his two arms, but for some reason, his hammer wasn’t completely there at all.

All he could see was part of the handle that suggested that his hammer had been forcefully destroyed.

Ning remained stunned as well. Everything happened so fast that he didn’t even realize that his sword never touched anything as it swung in front of him. By the time it was going to hit the hammer, the upper half of the hammer had already disappeared.

He was a little happy learning that the man could not use the Explosive Essence anymore. As long as he avoided hand-to-hand combat, he should be fine.

So, he prepared his sword and got ready to attack.

Grayfire’s eyes wandered around for a moment and finally noticed the top half of his weapon which seemed to be low on Essence.

‘How did it lose so much durability at once?’ he thought with a frightened look.

He quickly turned around toward Ning. Was it this man? It was most likely the boss, but Grayfire needed to be sure. He saw that Ning was ready to attack, so he prepared an attack of his own.𝒪𝚟𝓁𝒩xt.𝐜𝗈𝓂

Powerful wind gathered around him as it threatened to destroy everything around him. Ning felt the winds too and frowned.

‘Essence Manifestation realm,’ he thought. ‘Damn, I forgot they were supposed to be this strong.’

It was the 4th rank in the Essence realms, one where people could manifest their Essence as a certain element or two.

Most people could only use 1, and it seemed like Grayfire’s element was Air.

The wind became strong as it spun faster and faster around him. As it picked up speed, it picked up the debris in the ground as well. Soon enough, there was a cyclone forming underground that was going to send out the objects at an incredibly fast speed.

If they had any chance of survival before, it was all disappearing now.

“You people forgot that I am alone,” Grayfire shouted from inside the cyclone which was completely stopping him from being seen. “So, I do not have to hold back at all.”

The wind got faster and objects started slipping out of the wind, like bullets from a gun.

“You will all die toda—”

Suddenly the objects started flying out fast as the wind itself slowed down to a crawl. Ning couldn’t create a rock barrier in time at all, but a shadow barrier appeared at the last minute, saving all 3 of them.

Ning and the others could hear the objects smashing walls and doors all around the room and only the 3 of them were safe thanks to the shadow wall.

The shadow wall slowly dissipated and the first thing all 3 of them saw was a lone Grayfire standing still with his lifeless eyes wide open.

A sharp shadow spike had gone through the back of his head and come out from the mouth, killing him instantly.

The body slowly slipped to the side, falling to the ground, and revealed the person that stood behind it.

Clara stepped over the dead Grayfire’s head and stomped it so hard that his skull burst wide open.

“So, we’re done here, right?”