Mystical Journey

After he somersaulted and landed, Garen stood steadily, he then felt like he just came out of a brawl.

"At least 15 points of power, that was terrifying.." he mumbled, the first clash with the shadow was actually a minor scuff, whereas the second time was its full power. Luckily Garen had familiarized himself with Secret Techniques and other martial arts, so that even if he could not use his unique abilities, as a Master-level Secret Technique user comparable to the King of the Century, all the high leveled power leveraging techniques came gushing, and were still similarly strong.

Five times the power for one unit of strength, under the use of strong combat Secret Techniques, it was as though multiplying your own power by five against an opponent which is all brawn. This is the peak efficiency of the King of the Century. Let alone the fact that Garen actually surpassed that realm, he ha completely understood the Secret Techniques and himself, and has almost reached a level of complete transparency.

The reason it was "almost", was because there was one final point which he had not completely understood yet, which was the talent pane in his brain.

After defeating the shadow, Garen took out a match and torch from a bag in his robe. He lit up the match, and its tangerine-yellow spark fell on the torch, kindling the cotton cloth doused in oil.

This torch was specially made, with its handle hollow, within it was a large amount of fuel. It bore a similar concept to an alcohol lamp, which could burn for an extended period, until the oil in the torch completely ran out.

The bright light then illuminated a radius of four to five meters, and a faint smoke similar to that of a kitchen gas stove had since traveled further.

Garen checked the surrounding stone walls while holding the torch; there were no signs of combat either, even the black needles in his hands had suddenly disappeared.

"Since Cthulhu King has invited me in here, there should be a high possibility of meeting up at the end, walking further in should bear some results." Even though he didn’t find any remains of the shadow, he had a rough estimation in his thoughts.

This shadow was very strong, in this environment which suppressed unnatural powers, only with the body of form 5 which endured many years of fusion power was he strong enough to handle it.

If it were any other regular totem user, they would probably be shredded into pieces with the initial "greeting". However, Garen had his doubts, even if he could not use his unnatural powers, he might be able to tame some mutant creature, or use Obscuro’s derivator to forcefully control the larger mutants, and bring those in to fight the shadow.

As to why Cthulhu King and Divine God Palace Master were not doing this, perhaps there were other reasons.

Torch in hand, he continued advancing.

The tunnel ahead of him gradually became wider, and the atmosphere was once again filled with the faint blue mist. His surroundings cleared up again.

Garen extinguished the torch. With his eyesight, the blue light sufficed to provide a clear field of vision.

After an unknown period of time, Garen stopped twice midway and ate three times before the tunnel’s topography finally had some change.

The blue mist turned pitch black once again, the tunnel was thrown into darkness.

Bam!

A large shadow pounced again, this time from behind Garen. Like a large pile of black mud, it didn’t make any sound, much like an inanimate material being splashed onto Garen.

Without hesitation, Garen did a back spin kick. This time he did not reserve any power, all the raging power in his body was leveraged. With a ferocious spin, the tip of his leg conjured deafening howl, similar to lightning.

Bam!

The speed of the shadow was obviously of no match for Garen. Even its ambush was instinctively countered by Garen with a kick. In that split second, it was smashed against the wall on the right like a cannonball, smashing the abnormally sturdy walls into smithereens.

The shadow gradually disappeared, the tunnel returned to its previous calm. Only the rumbling of the debris from the wall was present.

Garen gasped for a while. Obviously the regenerative properties of the NIne-Headed Hydra had been suppressed. This one explosive display of power had left the usually strong Garen fatigued.

"Looks like my body’s endurance is mainly dependant on Nine-Headed Hydra’s vitality…. Without the unique powers, these immensely explosive moves seem to be unsuitable…"

It was like a mixture of steel and cement, together they could sustain huge loads, but the steel within was removed, the remaining cement would be much more brittle.

Likewise, the Nine-Headed Hydra’s unique power was the steel of the cement in its genes.

As the capacity of the body had been drastically reduced, coupled with the consistent use of such explosive moves, there would naturally be a large load on the body.

As Garen thought about this, he couldn’t help but to think about the other two people. Divine God Palace Master may still be fine, he already possessed strong and balanced build, but it may be tough for Cthulhu King.

With such extreme suppression of unnatural power, that’s obviously his strongest handicap.

Under this environment,, his abilities will be drastically lowered, making it extremely though for him, perhaps even worse. Of course, one cannot assume he didn’t have a workaround.

Following the shadow’s destruction, the tunnel quickly returned to its light blue state. By the looks of it, the tunnel will only turn dark when the shadow was attacking.

As usual, Garen checked the surrounding for traces, but there weren’t any.

He tidied himself and continued the journey.

As he passed through two arched halls that he had seen before, the tunnel became more and more inclined. Now it was obvious enough to feel that he was descending.

Soon, the darkness engulfed the tunnel again, the tunnel was absent of light.

Garen focused, waiting for the possible ambush

Fuu!

Suddenly, a flame was lit head of him. A tangerine-yellow flame, bright and scorching.

Garen suddenly realized he was facing a man in front of him. A man who had his head on flames.

He donned a black shirt, and only his head were exposed. It was clear that this was a young man. His eyes were unfocused, but he was gazing directly at Garen. His head had black curly hair, and his skin was visibly pale from the lack of exposure to sunlight.

Oddly enough, the man’s facial skin was burning along with the flame, and it quickly turned burnt yellow, and then black. Drops of human fatty oil started dripping from the burn, hitting the ground after gliding along the face.

The man shouted, and quickly flew towards Garen.

Bam!!

A ball of blinding flame burst and formed a crimson red fireball, and flying through the air.

Garen was thrown backwards due to the explosion. Both his legs tried hard to anchor him to the ground, his boots were instantaneously torn apart from the tremendous impact, and the soles even started smoking.

Garen’s hands shot up to protect his chest. His senses told him something was off at that moment, and he instinctively covered his head and torso.

The explosion dissipated in an instant, leaving only an incessant ringing in his ears.

Garen put down his smoking arms and examined his injuries; the outer layer of his arms were completely roasted, his skin was burnt to a hard crisp, and there were even some hints of plasma fluid oozing.

Guu….

"Compared to before, this one’s got faster speed…" Garen took a long sigh, the man’s suicide bombing charge was unavoidable for Garen. He could only hold up his hands to defend himself, and it ended after the explosion.

The explosion was very strong, but compared to the surrounding rock walls, Garen’s body was stronger. The surrounding walls lost an entire layer, but only Garen’s arms were hurt. This place suppresses unnatural powers, and the Nine-Headed Hydra lost its monstrous regenerative abilities, but the basic biological regenerative abilities of his genes was also a league above normal creatures.

This kind of injuries only needed a few days before it fully recovered.

As he felt the intense pain on his arms, Garen carefully observed his surroundings, the light blue mist came back, obviously the ambush this time had ended.

He sat down with his legs crossed. The surrounding stone walls were made from an unknown material, and extremely hardy, such a strong explosion only resulted in the destruction of about a knuckle’s depth of material.

He dared not advance further; he didn’t know how many suicide bombers lay ahead. If there were a lot of them, this journey would then require a better plan, and would have to redo his preparations.

In this situation without unnatural powers, it was very cumbersome to face this kind of

adversary.

Jiii….. Jii ….

There was a hopeful ringing sound in his pocket.

He quickly took out the dark red button, and gently tapped both sides of the button’s protrusion.

"Something happened over at your side?" Cthulhu King’s voice crackled across.

"You felt that?" Garen was surprised.

"A large explosion right? It was faint on my side." Cthulhu King replied coldly.

"I faced three of them before you."

"So what’s the situation now?"

"Really bad, most of my abilities were suppressed. Or perhaps not, they felt more like they were completely wiped away, disappeared completely. This situation is troublesome." Cthulhu King sounded anxious, his situation over there was much worse than he had estimated.

"Can we use gunpowder here?"

"Yes, so long as you’re not using unnatural powers, or anything involving totem’s power or mutated bronze’s pollution. All of those will be completely suppressed. Buy normal items are not being limited here." Cthulhu King immediately understood Garen’s plan. "You mean you want to use gunpowder? Guns?"

"We could try." Garen came from Earth, so he understood the tremendous power of gunpowder in its later stages, he emphasized a lot more on gunpowder compared to the people of this world.

"Let’s plan it outside." Cthulhu King fell silent for a while and then said.

"Self-destructing men? I have already passed that stage." a calm man’s voice suddenly came in, it was Divine God Palace Master. "After the fire man, there will be a type of shadow bearing a blade. It’s humanoid, with a black blade on his arm. He is strong, I am being blocked here."

Garen and Cthulhu King’s heart sank, Divine God Palace Master Actually passed the self-destructing men and reached a deeper level, Single Bladed shadow? There was actually something even more troublesome.

"Let’s meet up and plan it out at first floor, I will get my subordinates to send over something" Cthulhu King muttered.

"Okay."

After Garen left a marking on the walls, he immediately left.

He had to be careful when he came in, observing every detail, so his progress was slow, but it was much faster when he returned, under his full speed, he was leaps and bounds faster than his advancement previously.