novelraw Chapter 247: Twin-Star Concerto
Chapter 247: Twin-Star Concerto
Two ornate crystal chandeliers thundered to the floor, the crash and the shower of glass marking the opening act of a slaughter.
The Tongue-Ripper, freed from the trap, felt no relief at surviving.
On the contrary, the searing pain of flesh torn by wire mesh and the phosphorescent marks it could not shake off ignited the primal ferocity of this jungle predator.
From its enormous maw came a sharp, furious hiss full of killing intent.
Immediately its massive body became a golden phosphorescent afterimage as it moved through the darkness.
Its target shifted from Lin Jie, who had just humiliated it with the trap, to the noble hunter blocking the doorway, two silver revolvers clutched in his hands—those guns made it uneasy.
The beast’s instincts told it at once who posed the greatest threat in the room.
It moved with terrifying speed.
Even with the phosphor powder outlining its silhouette, the golden afterimage still crossed more than ten meters in the instant of its hiss and appeared in front of Ethan.
Sharp claws, carrying winds powerful enough to shred steel, lunged straight for Ethan’s heart.If that claw connected, even a battle-hardened elite hunter would be gutted on the spot.
Ethan did not flinch in the slightest.
A trace of a smile flickered in his eyes, the expression of a hunter spotting prey entering range.
“Finally come to play with me?”
He murmured the words like an aria.
Then he moved.
His motion was not a backward dodge or a rifle block.
He fired.
But Ethan’s shot was aimed at the empty floor in front of the UMA.
Bang!
A gunshot, slightly different from a regular round, erupted from the left-hand revolver embossed with a rising-sun motif, Morning Star!
An alchemical bullet of dark gold, etched with spiral runes, traced a low arc at an unhurried pace and struck the oak floor along the Tongue-Ripper’s charging path.
The bullet did not explode;
the instant it contacted the floor it silently melded into the wood.
Then a strange sight unfolded.
Centered on the bullet’s impact, an invisible force strong enough to warp light erupted.
Gravity.
A roughly three-meter-diameter gravity field unfurled in that space, producing an inescapable pull.
The Tongue-Ripper, hurtling forward at high speed, faltered.
Its explosively powerful body felt as though it had plunged into a mercury swamp, its movements sluggish.
A heavy tug from all directions glued its body to the center of the gravity field.
Its speed was forcibly reduced from extreme to sluggish.
Its steel-tearing claws were less than half a meter from Ethan’s chest.
But that short half meter was suddenly impossible to cross.
This was Morning Star’s hidden power.
The rounds it fired were not only ordinary lethal projectiles but also deployable miniature gravitational singularities.
They could not directly injure an enemy, but they created effective control.
Roar!
The Tongue-Ripper had never encountered such a bizarre attack;
the beast’s instincts registered fear.
It roared madly, iron-like muscles bulging inch by inch, erupting with strength that could shear iron cables as it tried to break free from the viscous zone.
Its body shuddered violently under the gravity field’s restraint, emitting creaking sounds, on the edge of wriggling free to strike again.
That was exactly the opening Ethan had been waiting for.
While the UMA poured all its strength into fighting Morning Star’s gravity and froze in a stiffened gap, Ethan’s face split into a cold smile, like the executioner passing sentence.
He slowly raised the right-hand revolver, Evening Star, its barrel engraved with a waning-moon pattern, like a twin to Morning Star.
He then aimed at the golden phosphorescent target thrashing in the gravity well.
Precise and clean, he squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
A distinctly different gunshot tolled the bell of death.
This time the round fired from Evening Star was a strange, mirror-smooth bullet of mithril-hued metal.
That bullet flew extremely fast.
In the moment of the shot it traversed several meters and struck the Tongue-Ripper’s unguarded chest with exact precision.
A raw force was released, pushing everything aside.
Repulsion.
A powerful kinetic repulsion shockwave burst outward from the point of impact of the mithril round.
Where Morning Star’s power drew inward to the extreme, Evening Star’s power was the ultimate outward expulsion.
A pull, a push.
A tug, a shove.
These two opposite yet complementary forces formed a control-and-kill duet on the Tongue-Ripper’s body.
Already at the limit fighting the gravity, the UMA could not maintain balance after being hit by the frontal repulsion.
Although its tough hide was not pierced by the bullet, the repulsive force transmitted through the skin shattered its bones and internal organs.
Rumble! The gravity field collapsed.
The Tongue-Ripper smashed into the granite wall at the rear of the study, cracking the entire face of the wall into a spiderweb of fissures.
Chunks of stone and dust rained down.
The creature slumped like a heap of goo sliding off the wall.
Its body continued to convulse unconsciously, black blood mixed with organ fragments spilling from the vast wound in its flank.
It had taken grievous damage.
The fight was not over!
As the Tongue-Ripper hit the floor and froze in a brief, rigid opening, an even deadlier shadow rose silently from another corner of the study.
It was Lin Jie!
He had not stood idly by to watch.
He had been waiting.
The Serene Heart in his hand had already been aimed for some time.
Its target was the most lethal weak point on the UMA’s body.
The roaring bone hidden beneath that huge gash in its throat.
The Mental Staircase activated silently.
The world slowed to a time-frozen slow-motion in Lin Jie’s vision.
He could see the creature’s muscles tremble minutely.
He could hear the disordered soundwaves emitted from its throat bone as it had been injured.
Then he pulled the trigger.
A death-round imbued with the Absolute Straight Line streaked through the darkness, pierced through the UMA’s gaping wound,
and struck that fragile throat bone issuing its final chaotic wail.
Squelch!
That throat bone, facing the alchemical round from Serene Heart, crumbled like tofu and was shattered in one blow.
The convulsing body of the Tongue-Ripper stiffened violently.
Its huge maw opened soundlessly as if trying to release a final lament.
But every sound was cut off;
finally the body went limp and the last vestige of breath faded away.
The battle ended cleanly and decisively.
From Ethan’s first shot to Lin Jie’s finishing blow,
the entire sequence took less than thirty seconds.
This was tacit coordination.
It was also the first real cooperation between Lin Jie and Ethan as a newly formed duo.