Chromie gave up on the idea of looking for more information. Right now, what he needed to do was consider how to either kill the monster in front of himself or retreat.
Darr's appearance might have stabilized temporarily, but the Gear of Impurity was still continuously applying its power. Perhaps after a while, his body would become like the previous creatures who became the host of immature Gears and collapse by itself.
Darr uttered a mad howl as his mutated body continued to wildly swing his limbs. Whenever he got hurt, his body would spew out a large amount of corrosive blood, then quickly regenerate.
During such unstable mutation, unless one could continuously inflict heavy damage on the mutating body, he could always rely on the mutation in order to recover.
The weak point is the head.
Chromie very quickly recognized this. Apart from the tentacle growing from his right eye socket, the rest of Darr's head was relatively normal.
The reason why he still hadn't destroyed himself through his mutations was partly because the Gear of Impurity had matured once before. Even though Darr had broken the balance from within to make it incomplete, the Gear had still already expended part of the power of Impurity contained within.
Another reason for this was because Darr had continued to maintain his brain functions, utilizing his psychokinesis and willpower to suppress the mutations somewhat.
If he could destroy Darr's brain, although that might not necessarily kill this monster, it would at least quicken the monster's mutation and lead it to collapse.
However, a short moment later, Darr turned his gaze directly at Chromie, the tentacle within his right eye slightly wriggled, causing the ring that was now lodged in his eye socket to also shift.
Chromie suddenly felt a sense of danger, a sort of premonition that manifested in his heart as he rolled to the side without hesitation.
With a shrill noise, blood was spilled. A gash appeared on the side of Chromie's cheek, which was deep enough to even see the side of his teeth, while the stone pillar immediately behind him had a hole that was still smoking, clearly displaying the power of that earlier attack.
Darr already had the power of Psychokinesis, it was only because he was fusing with the Gear that he couldn't use it and had to rely on the ring. But now, that restriction was no longer present, and the combined force of both his own Psychokinesis and the ring's psychokinesis was enough to perform this attack.
Using psychokinesis to pressurize air, then instantly release it while using psychokinesis as a guiding path.
This attack had an overwhelming amount of penetrative power, enough to bore through even solid steel; at the same time, other than the fact that the air might appear a bit warped right before the attack, there were no other signs of warning.
Facing this attack, a split second of distraction would mean having a hole drove through your body.
Chromie's sense of danger rang out intensely, the other party might need some time to pressurize the air, but it wouldn't take too much time, and this meant that he could unleash the same attack again very soon.
With that speed, Chromie wasn't confident in being able to dodge it every time.
Should I make a sacrifice?
Chromie started considering this option. Against such monsters, a one-time sacrifice of his body part to unleash a single-use magical attack was the fastest way to defeat it. Either sacrificing his finger to use the piercing finger of death, or sacrificing his remaining eye to use the petrifying gaze, or any of his many other options was enough to unleash a powerful magic.
These sacrificial magic all contained an extreme level of power. For example, even the Evil God Bardimor had no choice but to avoid these attacks, and once he was hit, he couldn't do anything else but let his host body at the time die.
In gaming terms, the sacrificial magics of the Tome of Sacrifice all had an extremely high level of priority.
Wait a minute, that sense of premonition earlier.
Chromie immediately recalled a sensation he almost forgot about earlier. Just before his enemy attacked, he received a certain level of premonition.
Those who were frequently in battle would always have a sharp sense intuition and mind capable of recognizing incoming danger, but the premonition earlier had already surpassed what normal intuition was capable of.
Chromie observed the ring in Darr's right eye, at which point the Moonlight Ring on his right hand vibrated very slightly.
Chromie had an epiphany, his Moonlight Ring and that other ring was connected somehow. It was also thanks to this connection that when his opponent used that ring to unleash an attack, he managed to perceive it ahead of time.
Furthermore, this sense of connection had already existed earlier whenever he used psychokinesis to attack me, it was simply not as prominent.
"That ring is somehow connected to the Moonlight Ring?" Chromie swiftly moved away to avoid the monsterized Darr's physical attacks, while also constantly watching out for his long-ranged attack. After discovering the connection between the two rings, he was a bit confident in being able to deal with such attacks.
Watching the approaching Darr, Chromie started to run in the other direction, as he found that there was actually another way to leave this area during his Spirit Vision. It might sound very heroic for someone to fight as a human against inhuman monsters, but only soldiers in such battles knew just how tough it was to do.
If he could temporarily avoid this battle, Chromie would definitely choose to avoid it. The other way out of this hallway was a relatively smaller gate, which Darr would definitely not be able to trespass in his current state.
In other words, Darr had actually been trapped here, and his body would eventually collapse from being unable to withstand the unstable mutations.
…
〖 That won't do at all 〗while staying on the clock tower, Negary seemed to be able to constantly observe the events in the underground ruins; he had basically grasped the course of their battle and concluded that Darr was still a bit too green.
〖 However, that willpower is barely passable 〗with a single thought from Negary, the ring in Darr's right eye socket started to vibrate. The psychokinetic air pressurization structure within Darr's eye was quickly altered, and so were his tear ducts, both of which were connected together.
…
The thing gathered within his eye was no longer air, but the fluid that flowed from his tear ducts. This modification made it so that air wouldn't be necessary to activate this ability, and the relatively obvious forewarning of the attack from earlier was also gone almost completely.
A light blue jet of light shot out almost right away, piercing through everything in its path. The gate that was supposed to lead outside of the hallway also collapsed from the attack.
Chromie hurriedly prostrated himself, the jet of light had shot through and pierced a large hole in his shoulder, the opening of the wound was also giving off a sizzling corrosive sound.
Obviously, the current Darr had no tears, what he shot out earlier was his own blood like a high-pressure water jet. Under the pressurization of psychokinesis, both the piercing and cutting power became terrifying.
Observing the collapsed pathway, Chromie sighed heavily. He had been trapped inside the hallway of this ruins as well. The only way to leave this place now was either if the ring automatically activated and transported him away, or if he pushed open the larger gate leading into the ruins and tried to find another way out from within.
"May the Moon be with you!" Chromie once again uttered the prayers on the ring.
The faraway gate seemed to have sensed something as it slowly pushed itself open, a dusty breath that had been sealed for many long years swiftly poured out from within.
