The man doesn't get a chance to reply as I airstep toward the center of the city, activating my stealth skill and expanding my All-seeing Eye to find the closest dungeon to my location right now.

At my current speed, I'll get to the main hub in less than a few minutes, but the underground train ride to a nearby dungeon could be unpredictable, adding even a few more minutes to my travel time.

Crossing downtown and going into the underground dungeon hub may be faster, but it will also take a few minutes too many.

As I finish my scan of the city, I pinpoint one of the mana-shielded boxes containing a portal underground that connects to the main dungeon hub transport system. Seeing this, I make my decision to create a much faster route in.

I focus on the center of an empty alleyway in a residential area, and dive with a single outreached fist through the hard stone road.

It crumbles and disintegrates instantly beneath the pressure of my Qi and mana shielding, leaving a smooth circle in the ground leading deep into the city's lower levels.

I phase through the road and narrowly avoid important city infrastructure, but don't stop my momentum as I come in contact with one of the outer walls of a mana sheided protection barrier put in place to keep monsters out in case of breaks.

It buzzes loudly and releases a large amount of mana as I break through. It all happens so fast that I don't bother to wait and watch what happens after I dive through the blue floating dungeon portal before me.

Fractions of a second later, I'm flying out of the canyon in Sector 2, rocketing toward the spot in the sky I remember detecting the approaching Dark Guards.

As I airstep through the sky leaving a blue trail of extreme speed behind, I think to myself if they timed all this or if it was a coincidence that they attacked the only hour I was away from the city. All night I stayed up and watched the city, and in the morning I kept a keen eye out for any approaching guards.

Thinking about it more doesn't get me anywhere though, the good thing is I made it in time to stop them from approaching before they made it to the town.

Less than 5kms away, I see them as clear as day; the sharp yellow-orange eyes of an enormous hawk-like bird, leaking orange energy behind it as it rides on a wave of invisible wind magic.

I catch a glimpse of the underside of its wing again, and confirm it says the number 6, but do a full inspect and appraisal to know without any doubt, this is another Dark Guard infected by the Curse of the Lich King.

___________________

[Lv. 1377]

Active Items:

[NONE]

Active Skills:

[NONE]

Buffs:

[Curse of The Lich King]

___________________

No items, no skills, and no other buffs show on its status, but I can feel that it's using wind magic.

However, it's being powered by the Soul Energy within it, just like the 7th guard I fought before. This proves my theory further that when an entity is infected by the Curse of the Lich King, every bit of their being is stripped away and granted new borrowed power to grow stronger under new rules.

Old elements of the user's past abilities can be manifested artificially by using Soul Energy as its power source.

This is a far different use of Shared soul energy than the [Red Hydra's Buff] I've used myself, or [The Sun God's Curse Mark] that I recall the 40th-floor boss having. Both of these shared Soul Energy perks allow the user to retain their original buffs and skills, but The Lich King's Soul Energy works much differently...

As my pulse of energy to read the large bird's status and do a full body scan of it with my all-seeing eye comes back, the massive creature shifts its gaze toward me.

I try to scan the armor standing on its back, but nothing comes back, before I attempt to push my senses further the hawk's trajectory shifts right toward me and I hear a static-filled voice enter my head while the hawk stares me down and speeds up.

"I just killed you. Pesky bug, I knew it wouldn't be that simple if the Dark One Ordered us to finish this job personally. You cannot live, I will be the cause of your demise."

Before the static message stops, I already sense over 20 blades of invisible wind flying my way in all directions creating a sphere of sharp mana blades closing in on me.

I can see how my body double got trapped in such an attack. Every blade of wind here is denser and stronger than the soul energy armor of the Ranked Up Colossal's final form.

Pure mana alone would be useless trying to stop an attack like this...

However, after my own recent rank up and increase in Qi capacity and efficiency, these slow-moving blades of wind are both visible and easily blockable from my line of sight.

I chuckle to myself and pull out my Wind Tyrant's Dagger Set from my item storage, separating the crimson blades imbued with wind magic into two parts and saturating them with Qi to the point where they begin to leak white hot energy with every fine movement I make.

"These kinds of attacks aren't even worth drawing my real sword... Bring it on..."

With a smile on my face, I begin gracefully dancing through the barrage of attacks, but use my Legendary Dagger Mastery along with Dual Wielding to watch two threads of intent guide my movements.

As the wind prison closes in, my blades break every slash at their weak points one by one, dancing through the sky toward the approaching hawk without slowing down my speed at all.

In less than a second, all 24 of its attacks disperse into nothing more than energy in the air, and there's a sparkling display of white Qi dissolving soul energy as it drips from my blades.

The Enormous Hawk's eyes sharpen, and I see the number 6 glow on its wing far brighter than before.

Then, the telepathy channel we were just linked to buzzes with static and cuts out as the bird speaks to the suit of armor on its back, but their words are a mystery to me.

The armor nods once, and jumps off the creature's back, floating in the air right where it jumped staying back while the monstrous bird dives toward me.

Another invisible sphere of wind magic attacks me from all around, but I perform the same graceful dance to dodge and disperse all of its incoming strikes.

The moment I do, the bird sends off another attack and it ends just the same.

The closer I get, the more wind blades it throws, but I just increase the speed of my dance in the sky, not even breaking a sweat.

Its eyes are larger than my entire head, and they burn bright orange while they track my every movement. At the speed that its pupils dart across the battlefield to track me, I'd assume it could throw far superior attacks than the ones it's using now.

Once I get within 50 meters of the monster, its intentions finally become clear while the static noise flows into my ear.

"Your precision with the blade is admirable, but I'm afraid no one's eyes are as precise as mine. I know all of your movements, and this is really the end. Any last words?"

I sigh, twirling my daggers in my hands while I airstep closer.

"Any last words? An Admirable fighter? You all sound the same.... Every last one of you.... Bring it on, let's see what you've really got."

The sky around me changes color.

It shifts from a bright blue with hardly a cloud in the sky, to a murderous shade of orange.

Hundreds of wind crescents appear from this air, coating in a dense orange layer of wind magic and plummet toward me at over 4 times the speed its previous attacks did.

My eyes sparkle with the flame of battle as I finally begin imbuing Qi into my footsteps and around my eyes to aid my vision for the first time during our exchange. My reflexes are enhanced, my visual perception of soul energy is awakened, and my movement speed increases for a whole different level.

I grip my daggers even tighter, and dance through the sky again.

The ringing sounds of Qi on Soul Energy clash through the sky at over 30 beats per second.

Plumes of white energy erupt from my daggers and orange mist fills the air, staining the sky with its coloring.

Midway through my routine, the hawk that set up this attack dive-bombs in at me to take advantage of the confusion it believes its caused.

The monster's sharp eyes begin to overflow with orange energy, and its hard beak sucks all of the protective Soul Energy around its body toward a main point, like sharpening and hardening its weapon to focus on a final attack.

I sense it coming from above me before it's even finished hardening its beak and whisper under my breath. "You really think I'd fall for something like this..."

Either I've gotten immensely stronger, or this dark guard is far too overconfident for its own good. The answer feels like it's obviously both.

Whatever the case may be, it's leaving itself wide open, so I'll prepare to strike once it comes within range.

The bird dive-bombs in, and its speed increases to impressive highs. At its perfect calculated angle, it drops through the storm of wind slashes and threads the needle perfectly on track to make contact with me in the center.

However, my own power is far from hitting its max, and I have plenty of tricks I haven't shown this opponent yet.

It falls into the sphere of wind, and has its beak pointed straight at what it thinks is my blind spot while I continue to fend off its normal attacks.

Once it's less than 10 meters away, and there is no way for it to change directions in time, or else it'll be torn apart by its own blades, I set up my own counterattack.

I activate my flash skill to its maximum potential, lighting up the entire ball of wind into a second sun in the sky. Then, separate into many different illusions using phantom step to disperse into many plausible directions within the slashes of wind.

Next, I activate stealth to disappear from its senses entirely and use my speed buffs to position myself in front of the diving bird's underbelly.

Last, I saturate my daggers with over half of the Qi in my core to release a devastating dual slash of energy on course to slice this enormous graceful bird into pieces.

"It's over..." Leaves my lips just a few milliseconds too soon.

The slashes of Qi are less than a meter away from slicing through the monster's heart and stomach, guaranteeing this victory for myself, however the second flash of light in the sky ruins all of my perfectly calculated plans.

Far away from our fight, over 500 meters above, an enormous release of mana and soul energy hits my senses the instant this lethal attack leaves my blades.

The black suit of armor that was waiting patiently in the sky explodes into pieces and a flash of silver light comes out of it.

It looks like liquid metal streaking toward us, and it's so fast, it makes my own Qi imbued footsteps look like I'm taking a leisurely stroll.

The silver streak of light cuts the distance in an instant and swerves in front of my dual slash.

All I can see in the blur of light is my blades of Qi being completely deflected and thrown off in another direction and a bold number [2] printed on the silver forearm of the figure that deflected them.