Lu Mingfei, become the King of Elden!

Chapter 280 Surprise!

Lu Mingfei's nerves tensed instantly, and his instincts, honed by years of combat, made him retreat a step to the side and back almost without thinking!
A cold glint flashed across his breastplate, sending sparks flying.

He steadied himself, and his golden eyes instantly locked onto the attacker.

It was an unusually short figure, only reaching Lu Mingfei's waist, covered in a strangely designed, filthy, tattered suit of armor.

The helmet was deliberately modified to be long and sharp, as if to bluff and make himself look taller.

The soldier held a peculiar long-handled weapon, with a curved, hook-like blade attached to the end of the handle.

With his extensive combat experience, Lu Mingfei immediately saw through the weapon's insidious nature:
Its tricky angles and hooked blades make it extremely easy to bypass conventional parries and launch fatal attacks.

I've never seen an enemy like this before...

Lu Mingfei was on guard. With a whoosh, he drew the Storm Greatsword from his back, gripped the hilt tightly with both hands, adjusted his breathing, and quickly entered a calm fighting stance.

He did not immediately use the energy-consuming Dragon Offering Prayer, partly to conserve his strength and partly to avoid causing unnecessary trouble by making a big commotion.

The energy reaction is not strong, so it shouldn't be difficult to deal with.

Lu Mingfei secretly assessed the situation and planned to first create distance to figure out the opponent's attack pattern before looking for an opportunity to strike a fatal blow.

However, in the instant his thoughts were turning, the filthy soldier launched another attack!

He brandished his hook sword, creating a whistling sound as the sharp blade thrust straight at him.

Lu Mingfei cautiously chose to avoid their sharp edge and retreated again to create distance.

But in the next instant, something unexpected happened!
Suddenly, a phantom school emblem lit up on the soldier's empty left hand, an image that Lu Mingfei had never seen before.

prayer?!
Lu Mingfei felt a chill run down his spine.

The soldier swung his claw in mid-air, and three incredibly sharp claw marks made of energy appeared out of thin air, accompanied by a shrill whistling sound as they fanned out and rushed towards Lu Mingfei!
The scale and speed far exceeded Lu Ming's expectations.

He quickly dodged to the side, but his left arm was still grazed by the very edge of a claw mark.

Bang!
With a muffled thud, a clear tear mark was left on the arm armor.

A savage, untamed power emanated from the armor, causing his arm to go slightly numb.

He was all too familiar with the aura of this power; it was exactly the same as the Claw Mark Holy Mark.

Is that a wild beast praying?!

Lu Mingfei was astonished.

What a joke!
Even a lowly soldier at the entrance of the Beast Temple possesses this kind of power?!
He instantly abandoned all his contempt.

A surge of storm power erupted beneath his feet, and he charged toward the soldier like an arrow released from a bow, intending to overwhelm him with absolute speed and strength!
But the short soldier reacted just as quickly!
Faced with Lu Mingfei's swift attack, he not only did not retreat, but instead held his hook sword horizontally, and with a "whoosh," a strange black and red flame ignited on the curved blade!

Black flames?

Lu Mingfei's first reaction was to think of Subaru Natsuki's Queen Black Flame, but he immediately realized something was wrong.

The color of the flames was wrong; they were black mixed with a hint of blood red, giving one a chill that went straight to the depths of their soul!

A tremendous sense of crisis swept over us.

Lu Mingfei dared not take the blow head-on. At the critical moment, he held his greatsword horizontally in front of him to block!

clang!
The hook sword clashed with the greatsword!
However, the black and red flames seemed to have a life of their own, winding up along the blade, and even a spark splashed onto Lu Mingfei's gauntlet!

"Uh!"

Lu Mingfei groaned, and an indescribable pain instantly surged through him! The flames didn't burn his flesh, but instead directly consumed the concept of "life" within his soul!

He could clearly feel that a part of his life force had been forcibly drawn away by an invisible hand, making him weaker!
What kind of sinister power is this?!
Overwhelmed with shock and rage, Lu Mingfei held nothing back. His golden eyes blazed with killing intent, and the power of the storm erupted in full force, unleashing a torrent of sword energy like a raging storm!

Although the soldier was strange, the difference in absolute strength was too great. Under Lu Mingfei's full power, the soldier only lasted for a few moves before his armor was shattered by a single sword strike, and he fell to the ground dead.

Lu Mingfei, panting heavily, looked at the gradually dying black and red flames on the corpse on the ground, still feeling lingering fear.

The area on his arm that had been scorched by the eerie flames still retained a lingering, ethereal pain, as if life had been forcibly ripped away—a pain unlike any physical or magical injury he had ever suffered before.

"What kind of evil power is this?"

He couldn't help but click his tongue under his breath, his brows furrowed.

Just then, Melina's voice rang directly in his ear:

"That is... the power of 'destined death'."

"This soldier may have served a being associated with 'death' for a long time, and unknowingly, his soul and weapon have been tainted by this terrible power."

"Destined death?"

Lu Mingfei was slightly taken aback.

He seemed to have heard Natsuki Subaru mention it.

Legend has it that in the distant past, the apostles served the Queen of Night-Colored Eyes and obtained the Queen's Black Flame, even possessing the powerful ability to "hunt gods".

However, when they were defeated by a being called "Black Sword," their destined death was sealed, and the black and white flames could no longer kill the gods.

What exactly is a predetermined death?

Lu Mingfei asked in a low voice.

"A predetermined death..."

Melina's voice was ethereal:

"It is death itself, the law, the destination, the end of all things."

"It is closely related to 'Death Runes' and is the source of power for death itself. It is because of this power that it can give 'death' to all existence, even eternal gods are not exempt."

Lu Mingfei held his breath, his golden eyes flashing with shock.

Can even gods be killed...?

To date, he has never killed a demigod.

Their "immortality" is particularly strong; even if their power is completely plundered, their "inner laws" will not be broken, but they will fall into a peculiar state of "living on the brink of death".

"In the not-too-distant past, an event occurred that changed the fate of the border region—the Night of the Black Knife."

"That night, someone successfully stole the power of 'Destined Death' from its guardians. They forged it into a dagger."

"And with this stolen power, they committed the heinous crime of murdering gods—they killed 'Golden' Godwin, the son of the goddess Marika, a true and powerful demigod."

"Goldwin's death was the beginning of everything. Because he was killed by 'destined death,' his soul was completely annihilated and could not return to the Golden Tree."

"Afterwards, these stolen 'dead roots' proliferated and spread throughout the border areas, completely disrupting the original order of life and death... This is one of the root causes of the many anomalies we see today."

(End of this chapter)