Alex finally stopped hurting from his own fire now that the disorienting buzz was gone. The fire still burned around him, but he controlled the heat from transferring onto himself.
The insect-controlling man looked fully in shock at what he was witnessing, and Alex used this opportunity to burn the insects that were in front of him.
He barely singed the wings off a few insects before the man moved them from harm's way. At the same time, the beetles formed a barrier that stopped the fire from burning them.
The man realized that he was in trouble, so he made the insects start buzzing again, but by that point, Alex had made two small earplugs with his blood which he put into his ears. Without any sound, the buzzing noise could no longer affect him.
He let go of the fire around him and showed his fully unhurt body. His hair was burned off all around his body, but he didn't mind that. He had a pill for that anyway.
His blood had lost a lot of its aura, so he needed to finish this fight quickly, or else he would have to run away.
He tried to call for the Blood God's Manual. With the help of his blood beasts, he could win these fights. However, no matter how hard he called for it, the book never came out.
'What the hell?' He was worried now.
The spatial cracks had taken over more than half the room, so he couldn't run around to try and disperse the insects either.
'What the hell is happening?' he thought. He could use his Dao, couldn't bring out his blood god's manual, or even use normal teleportation here.
He had tried the Flickering Shadows technique, so teleport to the man's shadows, but that hadn't worked at all.
'Space here is weird,' he thought. 'I need to be careful.'
The hornets and mosquitoes attacked, and at the same time the man brought out a sword of his own.
Alex stepped back, dodging the insects as he sent out a yellow palm attack. The attack barely did anything to the insects, but he used this opportunity to pour out some blood from his body.
He couldn't use the blood armor as that wasted too much of his blood aura at once. So he reluctantly resorted to simply using a little bit of his blood to preserve the rest of the aura.
The blood bead shot out at incredible speed, going through the beasts to attack the man on the other side, but the man dodged in time. The beads embedded themselves into the wall, and could not be brought back in time.
Alex frowned. What else could he do? These insects were too many to use his blood, the hornets and mosquitoes stole his Qi and blood, and the beetles stopped his attacks too easily.
On top of that, the location he was in, he couldn't fight to his full potential at all.
'Should I run?' he thought. That was the only way out of this fight for him at the moment.
The buzzing got louder suddenly, and even through his plug, he could start to hear it. The headache was slight this time around, but he could feel it.
"Screw off!" He shouted and searched for exactly where the noise was coming from. He saw the stationary bees and dragonfly in the distance that was causing all the buzzing.
Alex thought of attacking them, but the beetles would stop it. He thought of roaring, but instead, another thought came to his head.
'It is the man that is controlling these insects,' he thought. 'I need to make him stop.'
His eyes moved towards the man. "Do you think you are the only one that can cause headaches?" he asked.
The man frowned and suddenly he felt a splitting headache. "Argh!" he cried out and fell to the floor.
When he fell, the symphony of the bees and dragonflies also stopped as they got out of tune.
Alex saw the opportunity and struck again. "Stop it!" the man cried out as his head hurt again. "Defend me!"
The beetles suddenly moved away from the rest of the bugs and landed on the man, covering him entirely with their body.
Alex used Heaven's Impact one more time, but this time around, the beetles buzzed slightly, but nothing happened.
"Not bad," the man said. "But if that is all you have, then you will have to die."
Alex looked at the man and smiled. "If your defensive insects are gone, how are you going to protect the rest of them?" he asked.
He took his sword and jumped into battle. With his left hand, he burned anything that came before him, and with his left, he cut any insect.
With the beetles gone, his Sword aura was now hurting the weaker insects.
The insects in the air were either hurt by his sword aura or burned by his fire. The man wanted to help his insects, but he couldn't remove the beetles from around him, or else he would be attacked.
In the end, he was forced to call back his remaining insects, and then he was face to face with Alex.
Fear grew in his heart. He had thought that he could win against Alex, as he had done with all of his previous targets by making them unable to move and then sucking their Qi and blood dry.
However, that didn't work for him at all.
The man readied his own sword, but he knew that would not be enough. His eyes moved toward the gate and decided to make a run for it.
However, he was too slow.
A small tongue of fire appeared in front of him which immediately exploded. The damage from the explosion wasn't strong, but it sent him flying backward into the wall.
He was disoriented for a single second, and Alex used that opportunity to put a sword through the only part of his body that wasn't covered in the beetles.
His eyes.
The sword came out of the other side and struck the wall behind the man. Alex swung it to the side, destroying the man's skull and killing him right there.
As soon as the man's body fell, the insects on his body started wandering aimlessly. The beetles also left him, many flying into the spatial cracks and easily getting cut in half.
Alex slumped down and sighed.
"That was annoying," he thought to himself. This fight could've ended a long time ago if he hadn't been fighting in this room. Sadly, he was so he couldn't do anything about that.
"Should I wait here… or should I leave?" he wondered. On one hand, there could be assassins waiting for him on the first floor, but on the other hand, someone might be coming here right now.
Alex looked at the other corpse in the room, the one that did not bleed at all. 'Another clone,' he thought. 'How many are there?'
He looked at the blood flowing from the other corpse. "I can't waste that," he said as he sat down to absorb it all.
He had to make it quick though, so he wasted no time and started his absorption technique.
While he absorbed the blood, he took the dead man's storage bag and looked through it.
He found some spirit stones, some pills, poisons, and a bunch of food for his insects. At the same time, he also found a bunch of talismans, which he looked through.
Most of them were talismans where he had recorded his understanding of earth dao that Alex did not want to read through, and the others were communication talismans, one he could use, but there was no point since they would already know he was dead.
Still, Alex kept it all just in case, and while he did, he found another talisman that he could tell what it did by looking at the runes on it.
It was similar to a bunch of talismans he was carrying himself.
Without hesitation, he activated it and found the talisman pointing toward him. This was a talisman that was meant to find him through his aura.
Alex frowned. "So that is how they have been finding me despite my changed face," he thought. "Changing face was useless, to begin with."
However, he was still confused. "How did they get my aura? Was it the Faceless assassin?" he thought. With how close to Alex the assassin had gotten, it was possible that he was the one that did this, but it didn't make sense to gather his aura if they never knew he was going to be changing faces.
"Who else could it be though?" he thought.
Since just thinking wouldn't give him any concrete answer and would only make him suspicious of the people that were already suspicious, he decided to stop thinking about this topic for now.
"I should leave," he thought and became prepared to be attacked when he returned.
Before he left though, he turned to look at the corpses and the many insects that were in the room.
He threw the corpse into the shattered space where they were easily cut apart and vanished from the normal space. As for the insects, while he was curious how they could help him, these insects just weren't good enough for him.
He would rather learn to control better ones if he ever found any. For now, they would have to stay behind.
With everything done, he turned around and left through the gate, and arrived on the first floor.
