Chapter 0067: Clash of Monsters

At that moment, the entire arena truly collapsed.

Between Mark and Grimm, a vast expanse of ground suddenly began to crack and break apart, then caved in, forming a terrifying chasm. In the center of this pit, waves of mud churned and earthy vapors billowed, as an enormous figure slowly rose from below.

Mark, poised to charge, was forced to halt, his expression grave as he stared at the dreadful silhouette emerging through the swirling dust.

First to catch the eye was a pair of eerie, crimson eyes, burning like fire. Then, as the dust settled, its body of hard, unyielding stone became visible. Its triangular serpent’s head, forged from subterranean diamond rock, appeared utterly indestructible. At the forefront of its snout, a thin fissure split open; those with keen eyes could see that this gigantic serpent, formed entirely of stone, lacked neither forked tongue nor fangs.

Behind the serpent’s head stretched a bizarre, sinuous body, assembled from countless rocks of varying sizes, overlapping and interlocking to form the monstrous, ringed trunk of the stone python. Only a portion of the immense creature rose from the dust, the bulk of its body still concealed in the dense earth, making it impossible to glimpse its entire form.

Yet even what Mark could see—from the ground to its reared, towering head—stood at least twelve meters tall by rough estimation. If its whole body truly consisted of high-metal-content subterranean rock, then its sheer weight and impenetrable form alone would render it a nightmare for most adversaries.

This… such a terrifying stone python was also that man’s puppet?

The thought had barely formed when the colossal python opened its jaws and unleashed a ranged barrage of sand and stone at Mark. Massive quantities of earth and gravel were drawn from beneath its body, funneled through its ringed, tubular trunk, and then ejected from its mouth in a violent blast, surging forward like a wall of earth. It was clear the python had not bothered to filter the soil; within the column of expelled earth, one could see withered branches, bits of grass, plant debris, and countless subterranean insects, moles, and worms.

Faced with such an indiscriminate assault, Mark’s head spun for a moment.

He roared, gathering the power of thunder throughout his body, forging a great net of lightning before him to shield himself. The dense mesh of electricity collided with the onrushing column of earth, emitting a piercing crackle that reverberated across the arena, while a foul, acrid smell of scorched flesh began to spread.

Just as Mark marshaled all his strength to withstand the python’s barrage, cries of alarm erupted from the crowd at the edge of the field.

“Watch out…!”

“Defend yourself—quickly!”

Mark’s vision was utterly blocked by the flying earth, rendering him unable to see what lay beyond the column of mud. But his powerful instincts and battle-hardened experience prompted him, in that split second, to raise his battle-axe across his chest.

Thud!

A muffled impact sounded—the net of lightning shattered.

A fearsome, unyielding triangular serpent’s head burst through the wave of mud, smashed through the broken net, and with fangs bared, bit down hard on Mark’s outstretched axe.

Clang!

A thunderous crash shook the ground as the python’s gaping maw closed. Jagged fangs, formed from jagged shards of rock, clamped tightly onto the thunder-axe, and with wild force, hurled Mark far across the arena.

Had it been any other advanced apprentice, they would have been crushed to pieces by such a blow. But Mark was one of the rare body-forging apprentices in the camp, his strength second only to the bald-headed Arfo, nearly at the level of a proto-wizard. He let out a series of guttural shouts, his bones crackling violently under the surge of battle-power, muscles swelling and bulging, with thick, snaking veins twisting madly beneath his iron-hard flesh.

Now, with one leg bent and the other braced behind in an archer’s stance, Mark’s suddenly thickened arms gripped the axe with all his might, stubbornly resisting the python’s full-force charge.

He held fast, but the ground beneath him could not. Driven by the python’s savage strength, Mark’s body was forced relentlessly backward, his pillar-like legs rending the hardened earth, pushing up a mound of soil that rose behind him.

By the time the python’s rampage had spent itself, Mark had been shoved more than twenty meters back, buried nearly to his waist in the earth, the mound behind threatening to engulf his towering frame.

“Your strength is spent, isn’t it? Now it’s time you witnessed mine!”

Mark, hunched and low, suddenly threw back his head, glaring at the python’s jaws still clamped fiercely on his axe, and roared his fury.

With a mighty heave, he wrenched the serpent’s maw open, and as the head recoiled for a moment, Mark leapt on the spot, swinging his axe with both hands in a savage chop at the python’s brow.

Boom—boom—boom!

The deafening clangor was like a blacksmith at his forge. The python, its ringed body a full two meters thick and made of pure subterranean diamond rock, was battered backward by the berserk Mark, torrents of rock fragments and mud raining down like a waterfall.

On the sidelines, the faces of the onlookers and of Grimm in the arena twitched involuntarily as they watched the musclebound giant—less than three meters tall—pummel a monster that, to him, was a colossal behemoth. Had the stone python been a living creature, its skull would surely have been shattered and its bones broken. But it was not alive—it was a summoned construct, controlled by a summoning crystal, and such damage was far from fatal.

Thus, under Grimm’s remote control, the python thrashed its body madly, raising columns of mud in its wake, while it recoiled into the dust and smoke, preparing for another frenzied assault.

Mark, scenting blood, refused to relent. With a savage shout, he summoned a storm of crackling lightning around himself as a shield, hunched low, and charged into the dust, where he and the python once again grappled and fought in a furious melee.

Great clouds of dust billowed, never settling.

The rampant dust obscured all vision, while the surging earth element and stray bursts of lightning cut off all spiritual senses, making it impossible for the onlookers to glimpse the truth at the heart of the battlefield.

Only the occasional boulder hurled from the chaos and the sudden blasts of lightning gave the crowd some inkling of the violence raging within.

Meanwhile, Grimm, astride his Crocodile Hunter on the edge of the arena, could sense the battle’s ebb and flow more clearly than the rest. Under his direction, the Earthmen Hunters launched a barrage of earthen spears, and his periodic flame-spears inflicted heavy damage on the man within the dust.

The furious roars that echoed from within the dust cloud bore witness to the effectiveness of these attacks.

Such an earth-shattering clash of monsters brought an indescribable shock to the crowd. Countless eyes, in all their varied colors and shapes, now fixed on Grimm, their expressions transformed from previous scorn and contempt to solemn scrutiny and astonishment.

Wasn’t he merely a novice apprentice?

And yet, even he could contend so fiercely with Thunder-Axe Mark!

Though he did not personally take the field, summoned creatures were, after all, an extension of a sorcerer’s own power.

If they placed themselves in his position, many camp elites wore looks of pain and inner struggle. Reluctant as they were to admit it, if they themselves had faced such an opponent instead of the tough, powerful Mark, they would likely have been overwhelmed and laid flat by a mere novice apprentice.

That stone python was simply too overpowered!

On its own, its strength was already nothing less than that of an advanced body-forging apprentice. Factor in its terrifying rocky armor and its relentless, fearless attacks, and even the proto-wizards among them would hesitate to face such a foe.

As these thoughts raced through their minds, a thunderous explosion sounded, and Mark—transformed into a muscle-bound giant—was hurled from the dust cloud like a cannonball, crashing heavily to the ground.

The crowd’s spirits jolted, their eyes quickly scanning Mark’s body, immediately noticing the countless dreadful wounds.

Mark’s left arm hung twisted and broken; only his right arm remained usable, barely clutching the battle-axe. The axe itself, forged from rare alloys, was bent and battered, the broad blade scored with deep gashes and bite marks.

Mark’s body was as battered as his weapon. As he rose from the ground, grinning savagely, crimson fountains of blood spurted from the wounds crisscrossing his body, dyeing most of his form red. A ghastly gash from his left eye to his right cheek nearly split his face in two, the edges of the wound now a muddy yellow, evidently saturated with earth element.

Unless those earth elements were purged, even his formidable constitution and healing ability would struggle to recover from such injuries.

“Cough… Not bad, kid…” Mark stood, coughing blood. “This creature’s got some bite! If I hadn’t made the mistake of swapping out my auxiliary witch gear for this trash, you wouldn’t have gotten such an advantage today… cough…”

As the dust cloud parted, a massive serpent’s head emerged.

All eyes narrowed.

The stone python’s plight was little better than Thunder-Axe Mark’s. Its enormous head, as large as a house, was reduced to a third of its former size, shattered fragments still tumbling from its crushed skull. The surface of its head was scorched and blackened from repeated lightning strikes, with many places where the rock had melted and now dripped like hot wax.

In the center of the broken skull, partly hidden beneath layers of diamond rock, a fist-sized summoning crystal glimmered faintly.

Despite its grievous wounds, the python moved and fought as freely as ever.

Some sharp-eyed spectators glimpsed, through the cracks in its battered body, surging waves of earth element swirling with rocks and mud, flooding through its ringed form to patch and heal its surface. Even the massive gap in its head was visibly closing, the stone knitting together before their eyes.

At this rate, in a quarter of an hour, this earth-element construct would have repaired itself completely.