This time even the vines were ripped off together and slammed straight into the floor. As a mass of vines snapped, the floor beneath them, already covered in cracks, was exposed.

The pressure within a five-meter radius came crashing down again.

Kriel raised his blood-smeared head and, clutching his left arm, shakily forced himself to his feet.

With each cough, fresh blood dripped from the corner of his mouth.

He'd been affected by the pink mist again, but that wasn't the real problem now.

He forced his emotions back under control.

"You've mastered a Scepter Level Treasure?" He stared at the blue light flickering as Chadite appeared five meters away and asked.

This absurd strength was absolutely not something a Fourth Stage who only controlled one or two Treasures could achieve.

And in that instant when their powers clashed just now, he had felt his own Treasures being suppressed.

This went beyond what someone who had just barely stabilized at the Fourth Stage, not even at mid-tier yet, should possess.

His speed and strength had both reached a peak.

He knew full well that Chadite was the most threatening one. The problem was, most of the time he simply had no way to deal with this guy.

Too fast, too agile.

The all-pervading pink mist restricted his speed, forcing him to constantly use pressure collisions to push the mist away.

Unless he could go all-in on dealing with Chadite, maybe plus one more person at most. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

But with these four together, all sorts of methods kept interfering with him, and he had no choice but to spend more than half his focus counteracting their effects.

He had to keep stealing moments to unleash colliding air blasts, generating large-area shockwaves to disperse the pink mist.

Otherwise the mist would seep in from every gap; even if it couldn't drag him fully into the Dream Realm, it could still disrupt his mind.

It would completely scramble his judgment, putting him at an absolute disadvantage, to the point he might not even be able to bring out his current strength.

He might even make completely wrong calls and shove himself straight into danger.

As for those damned vines, he also had to seize opportunities from time to time to drop a wide-area pressure crush to stop them from interfering with him.

Pororo was in charge of offense.

Thinking of Pororo, he suddenly looked up at him.

He'd clearly taken that insanely powerful hit—if it were a normal Fourth Stage, they would've been pounded into minced meat by now.

But although Pororo looked miserably battered, he was still standing back up.

The wounds on his body were knitting together at a speed visible to the naked eye.

So one Treasure was that insanely destructive lightning, and the other Treasure was some sort of powerful self-recovery ability?

Kriel came to that conclusion.

At this stage of the fight, only Pororo had taken serious damage; Alka and Chadite were almost unscathed.

And the other seriously injured one, Matilda, had already wrapped herself inside a thick cocoon, controlling masses of vines to attack.

So he had no idea that Matilda had long since restored herself to normal and was just staying hidden inside the cocoon.

Her contribution to the battle was remote control of the fine needles for healing and the vines spreading across the entire battlefield.

There was absolutely no need for her real body to be exposed and turned into a target in the fight.

This behavior led Kriel to misjudge, assuming that the powerful healing came from one of Pororo's other Treasures.

As for the one Chadite had, which he suspected was a Scepter Level Treasure, that should be the blue light.

He had seen that golden natural radiance before.

Alka's Treasures were still the pink mist he'd seen before, and the Mirrors that could be created at will and even used for teleportation.

That brief recollection and judgment took place within one or two seconds.

Maintaining the five-meter heavy-pressure field, he shifted sideways a little and came to stand upon the throne.

"Planning to sit on your throne one last time before you die?"

Alka's figure slipped out of the mist, and the instant he emerged, Kriel punched toward his direction without the slightest hesitation.

The compressed air blast smashed apart a huge swath of the cloud-like fog.

Alka's figure was still just an afterimage.

Dodging multiple beams of light, Kriel arrived behind the two guards who had been completely drawn into the Dream Realm earlier.

"Now, offer up your lives for me."

As he spoke, both hands pressed down. The air thickened with crimson, laced with the stench of sulfur.

An ominous reek began to seep from the two guards' bodies.

"Using these Demons' power is not exactly a wise choice." Watching this, Chadite spoke.

This smell was all too familiar to them.

"But it works, doesn't it?"

The stench of blood filled the air as the two guards jolted awake from their dreams and began screaming in agony, their entire bodies writhing and convulsing.

Their bodies even started twisting into grotesque shapes.

Two long horns pushed out from their foreheads, a pair of broad bat wings unfurled, and their skin turned bright red.

The two soldiers who had turned into Demons stood up, their bulk shredding the Armor they'd once worn.

They grabbed their former weapons and wrapped their fingers around the hilts.

"Oh, the outside world feels pretty damn good," one of the Demons said, rolling his neck.

"I need blood. I'm hungry," the other bared a bloodthirsty grin.

Kriel looked at the two Demons. "By the contract, the two of you will each pin down one of them for me."

"Damn human, don't you dare order me."

The words had barely left his mouth when he felt a sharp pain in his forehead.

"Arrogant little mortal hiding behind a tiger's fangs." Though he said that, he still raised the longsword in his hand.