62: Chapter 62 Encounter with the Displacement Beast

"Don't worry, I'll use Revealing Powder to suppress the illusions first."

Jinbao patted his toolkit and pulled out two bulging linen bags.

"This lord has improved the formula. This dust floats in the air longer, and I've added aluminum powder to it. When it explodes, it'll stick to those Displacer Beasts, making it easier to identify the target."

Just as he finished speaking, the forest clearing ahead suddenly opened up without warning.

Within a few steps, the trees disappeared completely, replaced by an open area covered in rubble and broken stone pillars.

In the dead center of the clearing stood the ruins of an elven watchtower.

The tower itself was built from grayish-white elven stone.

In the sunlight, this kind of stone would emit a warm ivory-white luster, but now, after being eroded by hundreds of years of wind and rain, it had turned dull and grey.

The main structure of the watchtower barely maintained the outline of three stories, but the roof had collapsed, with half of a stone beam jutting diagonally into the ground.

Vines climbed the stone walls like veins, some so thick they had cracked the wall bricks from the gaps between the stones.

Broken stone pillars and statue fragments were scattered around the ruins. The faces of the statues had been weathered into blurriness, but from the remaining outlines, one could still recognize the exquisite, almost obsessive carving artistry of the elven craftsmen.

In the next second, something stirred in a corner of the ruins.

It wasn't the swaying of vines blown by the wind, but the silhouette of a living creature flashing past the stone wall.

Its movement was too fast—so fast that Richard's retinas only caught a blurry dark shadow.

The dark shadow left behind an identical illusion of itself in place, while its true body vanished in another direction the moment the illusion appeared.

Immediately afterward, a second dark shadow emerged from behind a stone pillar on the other side, also leaving an illusion the moment it appeared, while its true body moved off to who knows where.

Two adult Displacer Beasts. This was going to be a bit tricky.

They hadn't actively launched an attack yet, but they had already begun using illusions to duplicate themselves to test the intruders' reactions.

The true body of one of them slowly paced out from behind a dead tree ten meters to Richard's left, fully revealing its appearance.

The Displacer Beast's body size was close to that of a large black panther, but it had six legs—two forelegs and four hind legs. Because of the extra pair of hind limbs, its body appeared longer and lower to the ground than a normal feline.

A pair of tentacles extended from its shoulder blades, each about one and a half meters long. The ends of the tentacles swelled into flat, keratinous serrated edges of a brownish-yellow color, their surfaces covered with fine barbs.

Its fur was deep blue-black, gleaming with an eerie dark purple luster in the dim forest light, and the patterns on its fur shifted positions with the changing angle of the light.

The fur itself did not change color; rather, the illusion field surrounding its body was interfering with the refraction of light.

Its overall body length was nearly three meters, and it weighed at least two hundred kilograms, yet the sound of its six legs stepping on the gravel was so soft it was almost inaudible.

It didn't roar, only parting its mouth slightly to reveal two rows of fine, sharp fangs.

Richard could feel something watching him, and he tightened his grip on the halberd in his hand.

One of the Displacer Beasts actively launched an attack.

Its six legs exerted force simultaneously, and its entire body pounced forward like lightning close to the ground, moving so fast that Richard had no time to dodge.

The keratinous serrated edges on its tentacles whipped violently against his steel breastplate, letting out three extremely piercing metal scraping sounds!

Three parallel shallow scratches appeared on the surface of the breastplate, the paint scraped off to reveal the dark silver steel underneath, but the steel plate itself suffered no substantial damage.

Richard stepped forward half a pace with his left foot to stabilize his center of gravity, drawing his dwarven roaring battleaxe with his right hand. Under the interference of the illusion field, the Anti-magic Rune on the axe face suddenly flared with a dark red light.

"Watch me!" Jinbao also roared loudly.

As he shouted, Jinbao threw the two modified Revealing Powder bags at the same time.

The linen bags spun and tore open in mid-air, and the fine silver dust exploded over the clearing like two small clouds. The dust particles suspended in the air, glittering as they were illuminated by the faint sunlight filtering through the forest.

All the illusions created by the two Displacer Beasts were instantly exposed under the coverage of the dust; the illusions themselves wouldn't catch the dust, only the true bodies would be coated by it.

At that instant, they could clearly see the true positions of the two Displacer Beasts:

One was less than five paces directly in front of Richard, adjusting its stance to prepare for a second pounce; the other was hiding behind a broken stone pillar, showing only half of its head and its still slightly swaying tentacles.

Selina seized the opportunity to cast Paralyzing Lightning, a crowd-control divine spell unique to the Storm Temple.

A silver-blue arc of electricity burst from the lightning-struck wood bracelet on her left wrist, striking the Displacer Beast that was adjusting its stance.

The lightning didn't cause much damage, but the paralyzing effect was instantaneous.

The Displacer Beast's six legs twitched violently at the same time, its muscles forced to contract by the electric shock, and its entire body froze for a moment.

In that brief moment, Cecilia cut in from the side. The light blue sword light of her enchanted sword drew an arc through the dust, slashing onto the Displacer Beast's left foreleg.

The moment her blade sliced into muscle and tendon, the Displacer Beast let out a sharp howl, its body trembling violently as it tried to break free from the paralysis.

But the effect of the Paralyzing Lightning was still ongoing, and it could only struggle passively.

In the next instant, Richard swung the dwarven roaring battleaxe down!

The moment the magic-breaking runic blade made contact with the Displacer Beast's fur, it erupted. The blade sliced through the interference of the illusion field, hacking directly into the joint gap between the Displacer Beast's shoulder blade and foreleg.

The Displacer Beast let out a tragic shriek as a stream of hot blood splashed onto the scratches of his breastplate.

The Bloodthirsty Brand activated the moment the blade hacked into the flesh, and a warm surge of vitality flowed backward from the wound, pouring into his blood vessels.

Immediately afterward, under Richard's terrifying, monstrous strength, he swung his axe backhanded, cleanly decapitating the Displacer Beast.

The other Displacer Beast hiding behind the stone pillar let out a low whimper.

It lunged out from behind the stone pillar, its six legs trampling over the gravel and vines as it pounced toward Morpheus at a startling speed.

The Displacer Beast's instinct told it that the human wearing the robe was the most vulnerable target.

Morpheus's staff had just been raised, and his Magic Missile had only condensed its first orb of light, when the Displacer Beast's tentacle already whipped in front of him.

He had no time to finish chanting his spell, his eyes widening.

He instinctively took a step back, tripped over the gravel on the ground, and lost his balance.

Richard noticed his teammate under attack.

Without the slightest hesitation, he pressed his right index and middle fingers together, a brief light-blue glow lighting up at his fingertips.

In this critical instant, a sudden wave of heat surged through his entire body, and mana rushed along his blood vessels toward his right fingertips.

—Blink!

Space tore open a crack less than half a meter in front of him that only he could perceive, and he felt his entire body pulled in by an irresistible force.

It was truly a marvelous feeling; one moment he was still in his original spot, and the next, he was already standing less than a step in front of Morpheus.

The ten-meter distance was compressed to zero, and his body reacted the moment the displacement was complete.

His left hand drew his backup hand axe, crossing them in front of his chest.

The Displacer Beast's serrated tentacle slammed into the intersection of the two axes, producing a sharp, piercing metallic clash as sparks flew in all directions.