Chapter 167: Crazy in Pursuit
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Benjamin flew at top speed in the direction of the Gateway.
Surrounded by steam, he was wet from top to bottom now. The biting wind howled by his ears and his wet clothes stuck to his back. This made him looked rather shabby at the moment.
He furrowed his eyebrows and looked behind him from time to time. With every glance, his expression became graver.
Not too far away behind him, the Bishop was flapping his Wings of Holy Light. The Bishop was right on his tail and did not intend to let him go.
"Troublesome..."
Upon seeing this, he could not help but sigh and mumble to himself.
Probably because he fooled by Benjamin for a few times, the Bishop was utterly infuriated. Therefore, with the blessing of Wings of Holy Light, he made sure to be right on Benjamin’s tail. If it wasn’t for Benjamin who interfered with the Bishop’s flight by throwing a few Water Bombs behind from time to time, he would have caught up to Benjamin by now.
Obviously, the Bishop would never give up so easily.
Benjamin’s head hurt.
He produced a few Water Bombs and over ten arrows, releasing all of them toward the Bishop who was at his back. Upon seeing this, the Bishop did not make a sound but immediately threw a cross out that turned into a Holy Barrier, thus blocking most of the Benjamin’s attacks.
See, this was the part that troubled Benjamin the most.
In his pursuit since the beginning until now, the Bishop did not do much at all. All he did was just throw crosses one after another. Benjamin’s attacks were not even able to make the Bishop consume his Spiritual Energy. And so, the Bishop was not too disturbed and was able to slowly close the gap between them little by little.
The distance between them now was still considered not too close, but...what will happen after a while?
When Benjamin reached the Gateway, is the distance between them sufficient for Benjamin to enter through the Gateway and quickly close the Gateway to shut the Bishop outside?
If he could not make it, then there was absolutely no point at all for Benjamin to flee towards the direction of the Gateway.
He had to do something about it.
After giving it some thought, Benjamin collected more than ten Water Bombs. Then, he turned around and threw them towards the Bishop all at once.
The Bishop blocked the Water Bomb as usual, but Benjamin stopped all of a sudden. He controlled the water that were splashed in front of the Bishop to let them gather and envelop around the Bishop. It formed a gigantic water ball.
He wanted to test whether the Anti-Magic Waterball was able to trap the Bishop inside of it.
The waterball formed in an instant, enveloping the Bishop. The Bishop then performed a Holy Barrier on his body, blocking the water outside. But because of this, he was also forced to stop his pursuit.
Upon seeing this, Benjamin breathed a sigh of relief.
At first, he was afraid that even the water ball would not be enough to block off the Bishop. That pair of glimmering wings of his may just softly flap and fly him out of the water ball. Now, it seemed like it worked fine. The water ball was able to temporarily trap the Bishop inside.
However, he was not able to enjoy the delight for even a few seconds. Very soon, his expression turned grim once again.
He could feel that a lot of Holy Light was being summoned around the Anti-Magic Water ball by the Bishop. All were rus.h.i.+ng into the water ball like there was no tomorrow. The violent Water Particles in the water ball were also pus.h.i.+ng back the Holy Light. But in this process, the consumption of Spiritual Energy could not be easily described as "large" anymore.
s.h.i.+t... How strong is his affinity to the Holy Light?
Although his Spiritual Energy had increased quite a bit, he still would not be able to stand such a huge consumption. At most, he would be able to hold on for another half a minute. Then, he would definitely collapse.
Had to think of another way...
"Is this everything that you have?" The Bishop’s gaze pierced through the thick water layers, coldly landing on him. "You can summon such a gigantic water ball in the Imperial Capital and create confusion that even troubled the whole Church. But you only have this extent of strength?"
Benjamin simply acted as if he did not hear the mockery. At that moment, he dismissed the thought of creating a Water Vortex. Instead, he began chanting the Icebreaking Spell.
In an instant, five Ice Needles compressed to the utmost extent formed. Benjamin curled his palm into a fist, put the Ice Needles in between his fingers, turned around and flew towards the water ball. With the thrust of the steam, he gave a punch to the gigantic water ball that trapped the Bishop.
Boom!
A m.u.f.fled thump.
The form of the whole water ball was rather solid. Benjamin’s fist could not penetrate it, but the five Ice Needles were completely stuck in the water ball. After that, the water ball started freezing in a speed that was observable by the naked eyes. From the time Benjamin hit the water ball, it did not take more than two seconds for the freezing to spread to the whole water ball.
Just like this, the water ball turned into a giant ice ball.
Just when the ice ball formed, Benjamin decided not to control the "Anti-Magic Ice ball". Instead, he maneuvered the steam, turned around then fled.
Without the control of Benjamin, the giant ice ball could no longer be suspended in midair. Along with the Bishop who was inside it, the ice ball fell straight towards the ground.
"This way... should be able to give me more time, right?"
He mumbled to himself as he flew away without turning back.
In fact, he did not need to turn back at all. For some reason, the System had the leisure to pop up and live broadcast to him the situation of the Bishop and the ice ball:
"The ice ball is still falling! The ice ball is still falling! Ah... This is bad. The ice ball stopped. The Bishop has started to fly again. He is flying upwards while carrying the ice ball. The Bishop looked a little sad. He is flying a little slow. I think maybe the ice ball is too heavy for him. Carrying it while flying consumes a lot of energy. Of course, there is this possibility that he did not eat enough for lunch today...Ah! Look! There are many cracks on the surface of the ice ball! The Bishop is starting to destroy the ice ball from within! Impressive! He is destroying the ice ball from within! I wonder how long the ice ball can last for... Okay, it only lasted for a few seconds. Let just have a moment of silence for the ice ball. Now, we can see that the Bishop has come back and has begun speeding up. Oh, the wings behind him look absolutely stunning! This has helped him win over many support from the audience..."
Benjamin could not help but sigh and complained in his heart, "I should not have downloaded any video commentary for whatever compet.i.tion, right?"
The System told him, "No, you only cache it in your phone apps."
Benjamin found no words to reply to that.
He had no choice. He was busy fleeing. Every minute and second was extremely precious to him. He had no extra time and energy to enter the s.p.a.ce of consciousness to fix the System properly.
"I will remember this. We can slowly settle it in the future." And so he said in his heart.
Frightened, the System immediately muted.
But just as the System explained, from the moment the ice ball started falling until the moment the Bishop broke free of the ice ball, the whole process did consume a sufficient amount of time. And during this period of time, Benjamin seized the chance to greatly increase the distance between him and the Bishop.
For such a long distance, even if the Bishop wanted to catch up to him, it would surely not be that easy.
In fact, during the Bishop’s pursuit, Benjamin felt somehow strange. From the distance just now, he could attack the Bishop and so could the Bishop attack him. For some reason, the Bishop did not do so.
Also, it seemed that the Bishop has never once cast a divine charm since he started flying. Even for blocking attacks, he would use his cross. It was as if there would be trouble if he used other divine charms while he was in midair.
Could it be that there are some limits or side effects of using the Wings of Holy Light?
Strange...
But soon enough, Benjamin lost the desire to think about it.
Why should he care so much? Not using divine charms should be a good thing. If the Bishop was chanting some earth-shattering High-Level Divine Charm while flying in midair in pursuit of him, Benjamin really had no idea whether he would be able to take the attack.
He simply felt rather fortunate.
Just like this, the distance between the mountain road and the Crusader Gateway was not too far away anymore. Thanks to the time that was earned with the help of the gigantic ice ball, Benjamin was slowly closing in to the Gateway that is currently occupied by the mage.
From a hundred meters above ground, he could see that the main gate of the Gateway was closed from afar. And on the top of the Gateway were a few figures that looked familiar to him.
Upon seeing this, Benjamin quickly came to a realization that those were the mages who stayed outside to aid him!
Thinking that, Benjamin became more spirited. Holding his fist, he used his Spiritual Energy that was quickly depleting and increased his speed, flying towards the Crusader Gateway.
"Quickly! Hide in the Gateway! The Bishop is right behind me!" As he sped up, he kept shouting. He used the maximum volume he could ever use in his life and shouted to the few mages who were on top of the Gateway.
Upon hearing this, they saw Benjamin and the Bishop who were in midair and understood the meaning of Benjamin’s words. Thus, they quickly ran into the only entrance on top of the Gateway and went for the staircase. Among them, a person reached out his hand and held the door k.n.o.b of the entrance. This way, he could close the entrance at any time to completely seal off the Gateway.
They were all squeezed in a narrow staircase. With their heads up, they nervously awaited the arrival of Benjamin.
"As expected, this is the most critical moment."
Upon seeing this, Benjamin once again sped up. Without caring about the depletion of his Spiritual Energy or whatever thing there was, he only focused on the small entrance on top of the Gateway at this moment.
The wild wind screeched by his ears. He could not even keep his eyes open properly because of this. At that instant, he felt as if he had turned into a bullet that was just fired from the bore of the gun, enjoying his short life span that came and went in only an instant in midair.
For no reason at all, Benjamin felt wild all of a sudden.
It was as if he was riding on a roller coaster that flipped and turned at increasing speed. At this particular moment, the roller coaster reversed at its highest point, going through the most exciting part of the ride. Benjamin turned his head to see the Bishop who was crazily in pursuit to the extent that his eyes were getting red. Suddenly, he burst out in uncontrollable laughter and yelped with joy.
"Hahahahaha!"
The Bishop’s face turned grim.
In this crazy pursuit, the gap between them was closing in and so did the distance between them and the Crusader Gateway. Soon, Benjamin turned around and aimed straight for the staircase to finish his last sprint.
"Quick! Quick! Quick! Close the door!"
Shouting in a loud voice for the whole journey, Benjamin finally dashed into the small entrance.
In a swish, he knocked over everyone. The mages who were guarding by the staircase had no chance to dodge at all, so they were all knocked over by Benjamin.
Fortunately, they did not forget to pull the doork.n.o.b.
If they were to look up from the staircase, they could see the face of the Bishop that kept getting bigger as they gradually closed the metal door. Both were happening at the same time as if it were a compet.i.tion. But at this point, they were all disorientated from being knocked over by Benjamin, and so they did not have energy to look outside anymore.
On the whole staircase, a bunch of people were lying there and rolling around. The exclamation of "Ouch!" was all over the place. Benjamin knocked them over when he dashed in. He fell on the ground and rolled for at least two meters. He even almost rolled down the staircase.
After resting for a while, they supported themselves on the ground, ready to stand up.
Bang!
As they were helping each other to get up, an extremely loud bang was heard from above them suddenly. It was as if something banged hard on the strong metal door.
Everyone was stunned.
After a short moment of silence, they could not help but look upwards, only to see that the metal door at the entrance was firmly closed. The Bishop was well blocked outside. And the rather loud noise they heard just now could only indicate that... something had happened between the Bishop and this door.
"..."
For some reason, Benjamin also felt a stinging pain on his face.