Apotheosis

Ezra's bloodshot eyes glowed an intense cyan as he fully activated the Bronze Blood.

The effects were instantaneous on his body: thick, snake-like veins popped underneath his skin as his meridians significantly bulked up on his arms and his muscles.

The amount of power within him would be enough to overturn mountains in the Lower World.

But not here. His strength wasn't nearly enough to pull the two axes out of Zen's hands.

'Just a bit more… He should've already reached his limit!'

Ezra thought, urging himself to go on.

"Slash at him now!"

Ezra roared. Since he couldn't pull the bloody axes away then he would have to recalibrate his strategy. What if he pushed instead?

With a roar, Ezra threw his entire weight onto his bulked-up arms and violently pushed the bloody axes towards Zen. The sudden change should've caught the young man off-guard, perhaps even made him drop the axes.

But that wasn't what happened. Whether he pushed or pulled, Ezra's efforts remained ineffective against Zen.

"Hey, dude!" Zen called. Ezra frowned when he saw the mocking smile on his opponent's face. He was then caught off guard by the sudden force that Zen exerted into his hands.

"Crack!"

The bloody axes that he had been holding suddenly started to split and crack along their surface.

"Plop!"

The force was devastating on the axes which quickly shattered into fine fragments right in front of everyone's eyes.

Ezra could only watch in despair as the mighty axes were reduced into wooden stumps.

These bloody axes were his clan's greatest treasure but there was another cause of his frustration.

It was important to remember that they were in the Illusion Battlefield where nobody died and no weapon was damaged for real. Everything and everyone were mere projections and whatever weapon was damaged within the arena, whether it was a simple stick or a clan's treasured weapon, was only a copy. The real one was perfectly safe and sound outside the battlefield. This was why divine and supreme divine weapons could be used by mere Soul Sea Realm warriors. Such weapons of caliber were often only wielded and owned by world lords, grand world lords, or Supreme Lords. It was only in the Illusion Battlefield that lower-ranked warriors had the opportunity to take these weapons out for a spin. The bloody axes that had unfortunately shattered into a million pieces just now were still safe and sound in the real world.

So why was Ezra finding it so hard to stomach the loss of his weapon?

It was because of the fact that Zen was able to crush a secondary first-rank divine weapon with his bare hands and Ezra wasn't willing to accept the horrifying strength his opponent had.

The young man in front of him couldn't be this strong, right? He couldn't be. But as Ezra gazed at the two wooden sticks in his hands, the disbelief gradually turned into some kind of deep-seated fear. He looked up at Zen and couldn't help but think to himself, 'This guy is a monster.'

"It's ove

main city, another three charged towards him.

He wasn't that much interested in this group considering his experience with the former. It was evident that they only had a few Illusion Points based on the aura that they exuded.

Zen didn't have the time to bother with them so he quickly took a step through space and disappeared right under everyone's noses.

With his departure, the warriors on top of the walls sighed while those on the outside began to move once again.

Meanwhile, back to Zen: he had once again encountered another ogre, almost at the same level as Ezra's, who was continuously harvesting Illusion Points from ordinary warriors outside the city walls.

He was cocky but it was his unfortunate luck that he ran into Zen who was very interested in his stock of Illusion Points.

Like all of Zen's other opponents: the ogre quickly turned into a red dot and flew back into the main city.

Zen had encountered two 'sheep' outside the main city, one being Ezra and the other being this ogre. He absorbed an additional thirty thousand points this time and his accumulated number of Illusion Points had now reached around seventy thousand. His ranking in this supreme world was already at the four hundred and ten-thousandth place while it was at the nineteen millionth place in the Illusion Battlefield.

This was incredibly high but still not enough to be noticed. He still had a long way to go to reach the top.

Zen was hard at work harvesting as many points as he could. The warriors he faced were the sort to spend a lot of time fighting over a target for mere fifty points but he was someone who got tens of thousands by easily defeating one skilled warrior.

However, it wasn't just him who made his return.

There was a saying: grass was eaten by sheep, and sheep were eaten by wolves.

Zen was a wolf who fed on these fat sheep who gave him lots of Illusion Points.

However, he wasn't the only wolf in town and he was about to meet another of his kind very soon.