Chapter 547: Chapter 57: Battle with Bloodshed

“Wait.” Seeing the other party’s reaction, Valian’s expression suddenly changed.

He suddenly remembered something, which was the significant jumping of the Giotto Bell’s minute hand, a reason that had not yet been analyzed.

Due to Bishop Landeng’s bold intrusion, exposing his own existence, he had hurriedly brought people to capture the bishop.

However, was the movement of the Giotto Bell caused by Bishop Landeng?

It must be that Bishop Landeng, despite the risk of exposing himself, also wanted to encrypt and conceal the truth!

Leaving Bishop Landeng to the Pope’s Guard, Valian raced back to the monitoring room, and upon entering, he immediately asked:

“Have we re-established contact with Lord Aske?”

“Not yet!” the priests cried anxiously, “The encryption programs have been tampered and modified by the intruders, now both the replicability and aggressiveness have increased many folds! The current antivirus processing efficiency is insufficient; can we apply for more computing power?”

“Has he woken up yet?” Valian rushed to the information link pod.

If Aske had awakened, it meant that his body in the virtual world had been killed, forcing his will to exit. This would cause damage to his self-awareness, but at least he would have escaped from danger.

However, if he hadn’t woken up, it meant he was still fighting valiantly in the virtual world. Although as his brother-in-law, Valian felt very sorry for his sister Nora…

But he truly hoped that Aske could hold on a bit longer, kill off more of those burst encryption codes, so that the truth behind the jumping of the Giotto Bell could be uncovered sooner.

“Hold on!” While comforting the worried Nora, he also prayed with a guilty conscience.

I know it must be extremely dangerous inside, but you must hold on, brother-in-law!

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“This is so boring,” Aske complained.

After a lot of bullying the weak, Aske quickly found the most efficient method of slaughter.

The Barbarian Battle Technique.

That was the technique he originally taught Sigrdrifa, combining “close combat” with “long-range throwing”.

The same tactics, at Sigrdrifa’s end, rarely made an appearance; at most, she would throw a battle axe at first sight, but in Aske’s case, it could display miraculous power.

The throwing weapons of the Barbarian Battle Technique were based on being able to snatch weapons from the enemies’ hands at any time.

However, due to the existence of Conceptual Weapons, he didn’t have to worry about whether he lacked weapons, and this just made the killing efficiency skyrocket.

He swiftly dove forward with a heavy plunge, his hands repeatedly reaching into the void to pull out weapons, their sharp contours barely stabilizing when Aske hurled them forward.

Knife, sword, spear, lance, axe, hammer, dagger… like a fierce storm, they densely peppered the area. Several Physical Demigods on the opposite side swung their weapons to either forcefully deflect them or skillfully parry them away.

However, these purely cold weapon throw attacks were quickly mixed with bullets, grenades, shells, and rockets.

The Demigod, who was closest, tried to repeat his old trick, attempting to swing his weapon to deflect them, but the grenade hidden behind the battle axe exploded…

This explosion quickly triggered a “chain reaction” of the surrounding explosives, covering the entire corridor in a massive blast instantly.

“Wait, wait!” the Artificial Intelligence yelled anxiously from behind, “Don’t destroy the source data!”

However, her voice abruptly ceased because the blast had engulfed the location of the Demigods but hadn’t touched the accumulated data blocks behind them—as if measured and drawn with a ruler.

With the brief immobilization caused by the shockwave from the explosion, Aske charged into the fray like a tiger among wolves, stabbing his longsword at the nearest Physical Demigod.

Calm in the face of danger, the opponent horizontally blocked with his sword. However, Aske’s longsword slightly shifted, slipping over the top of the enemy’s block.

Star Nine Forms—Sharp-breaking.

Yet, the opponent, being a Demigod, still managed to react in that split second. He loosened his grip on the sword handle and kicked off the ground, rapidly retreating backwards to escape the longsword’s range.

Then, the suddenly unleashed sharp blade pierced his neck.

Aske’s mastery of the Conceptual Weapon was so terrifying that there was almost no lag between the contact and activation of the skill. The moment the summoned longsword disappeared, a long spear emerged in its place, and with a mere forward thrust held by his wrist, he assassinated the Demigod who had already moved out of range.

Then he swung the long spear around, sweeping across a giant circle. This time the Demigods did not try to block but scattered to evade, rapidly retreating to either side of the corridor.

They rapidly moved four to five meters away, a distance that even the long spear couldn’t reach. However, as Aske spun around with his sweep, sparks exploded again on the bodies of these Demigods.

This guy, while swinging the spear, had silently switched it for a rocket launcher. Aiming at the nearest Demigod as he swept, and then, unsummoning and resummoning to reload, he continued to sweep, aiming and firing at the next Demigod… In less than a second, he had swung the rocket launcher around a full circle, hitting each Demigod with ammunition.

The Demigods stumbled in the blast’s shockwave and were then pierced by a barrage of thrown spears, swords, and daggers, collapsing into a pale green data stream.

“Wow wow wow oh!” the Artificial Intelligence, bearing the image of an Angel, flew over, clapping cheerfully, “Awesome! Awesome! You even handled the Demigods so neatly! Truly worthy of the Aske I initially favored!”

The ultimate strength of the Physical Demigod is their monstrously superhuman physical ability. Without the ability to replicate physical strength, what combat power do these anthropomorphized Li Gui Demigods still have?

Thinking thus, Aske continued walking forward along the corridor without a word. He wasn’t about to boast or show disdain to a mere virtual program, especially not to one who was such a chatterbox.

You can keep silent, but every word you say, I can extend into countless topics to annoy you—aren’t you afraid?

“We’ve reached another dead end.” Aske stopped at the end of the corridor, “How long is this going to go on?”

“Why don’t you stop making corridors and just create a square environment? Let all the encrypted programs attack me.”

“Hey!” Raphael exclaimed, “The reason it is designed as a corridor is to extend the distance and range of encountering the enemy, to prevent you from being attacked by a large number of enemies!”

“If I expand the portal, are you sure you can handle the accompanying surge in data? If it’s just to look cool in front of this beautiful girl, don’t use such boyish bravado~ Actually, there are many safe and effective ways to increase my favorability…”

“Expand the portal,” Aske said, pulling out a grenade launcher, “or you can explode right now. Choose one.”