The earth quaked, and the atmosphere thundered.
But Byron did not look back at the explosion, nor did his steps pause in the slightest.
The adaptability of Clown's Trickery and the "Four Part Division" from the Bone-Eating Clown were still fresh in his memory; he was keenly aware that physical attacks would hardly be deadly against such a monster.
It's best to take this chance and slip away quickly, he thought.
Like a leaf, he drifted forward rapidly, riding the hot air current behind him.
As expected, an angry roar soon echoed through the night sky:
"ROAR!"
Violet's counterattack had indeed failed to finish off this fiendish monster, immune as it was to most physical attacks.
But that attack, its intensity long surpassing the upper limit of a Middle Sequence "Blood and Fire Sing As One," had indeed made it pay a heavy price.
Its massive body couldn't dodge in time and could only barely split all the clown heads from itself.
And the last shred of Human Nature and rationality belonging to Koraskin, the Bone-Eating Clown, also completely vanished in that great explosion.
"HEE HEE HA HA..."
When an eerie laughter once again pursued them from the dense night, only dozens of clown-like heads in the form of balloons remained, with colorful hair strings hanging from them and a thin, incomplete clown body attached below.
The only purpose for its existence is to spread Fear throughout the world.
Note: Due to the mystical connection among the clown Class, the major demon card, and the Capricious Joker, the current Bone-Eating Clown could be considered a close affiliate to the said Capricious Joker."
After all, Byron was only a Second Order Storm Knight.
The powers bestowed upon him by the Son of the Storm were gravity nullification, not flight.
The so-called flight effect was simply an illusion created by integrating various abilities in a Flow State, being blown aloft by a gust of wind.
No matter how fast he was, his speed could not surpass that of the wind around him.
Even a Force 6 strong wind at sea only has a speed of 10.8-13.8 meters per second.
Unless he could break through to Third Order Storm Admiral and truly acquire the ability to command gales, even Storms, his running speed would still be faster than this kind of flight.
WHOOSH!
Holding Violet tightly, Byron ran wildly, with a group of head balloons chasing relentlessly behind them.
One "Blood and Fire Sing As One" could not deal with the clown, and after the opponent dispersed into smaller parts, a second attempt was even less likely to succeed.
Violet, with the "Black and White Keys" in hand, fired a shot to push back the pursuers each time they were about to catch up.
But Byron's physical strength and Spiritual Radiance were limited. Fleeing like this wasn't a sustainable solution; sooner or later, they would be caught.
"Got it!"
As Byron fled, he kept a close eye on the strategic map. Suddenly, his eyes lit up, and he immediately turned around, charging deeper into the Golden Apple Orchard.
Before long, a campsite that seemed to belong to a certain Pirate Group from Black Sails Harbor appeared before them.
Bonfires blazed as a large group of fierce and malevolent Pirates were busily gathering nearby golden apples through the night.
The discipline of this group was clearly much more stringent than that of the Black Tongue Brotherhood; they hadn't fallen into infighting like the latter.
At the same time, the pirate Captain was, like Byron, at the peak of the Second Order, preparing for the "Pirate's Treasure Chest" ritual to ascend to the Third Order Pirate.
However precious the gold and silver on the road might be, what he coveted most was a Great Pirate's treasure cave and the treasures that best represented a Great Pirate's lifelong Glory.
Of course, he was unwilling to stop his progress there.
Or rather, the "possessiveness" enhancement from merely the first night on Silvergold Island was not enough to break their moral boundaries.
This also served as anecdotal proof for the sociological theory: "The more something is lacking, the more it will be emphasized."
The more civilization is lacking, the more the Beacon of Civilization will be touted; the more culture is lacking, the more cultural plagiarism will be embraced...
And the Black Tongue Brotherhood, which deliberately emphasized "secrecy and brotherly love," was precisely lacking in these two aspects, which is why they had erupted into conflict on the spot.
However, as the saying goes, it's not a lack of good things to fear, but the presence of bad people.
Although this Pirate crew had not fallen into infighting, an unmitigated disaster struck them with shocking suddenness.
"HEE HEE HA HA..."
One moment, they were all looking up at the sky due to the huge explosion and the sky-reaching flames nearby. The next, scattered head balloons came whooshing in.
"Balloons? What kind of weird things are these?"
"Shoot them down!"
Before the Pirates could even line up for a counterattack, the human head balloons had already rushed before them, each dragging a long, colorful rope beneath it.
As if alive, they effortlessly looped around the Pirates' necks, pulling them into the sky in an instant, then harshly tightening.
The Pirates had barely struggled twice before they were drained of all their essence and flesh by the ropes; a strong wind blew at high altitude, and only a handful of ashes scattered down.
Replenished with flesh and blood, the main body of the Bone-Eating Clown, suspended beneath the balloons, began to gradually restore its once incomplete marionette-like form.
The two, both full of mischievous ideas, couldn't help but frown at the sight.
The obstruction caused by these weak death replacements was almost negligible, yet they served as blood vials, making the Bizarre creature's aura grow stronger and stronger.
After that, every treasure-hunting team they encountered along the way was, unsurprisingly, killed and absorbed by the clown.
It even sent out human head balloons to actively search and Hunt other treasure seekers.
Its main body, however, kept relentlessly at their heels, persistently latched on.
Koraskin's final obsession and hatred from before his death were clearly not so easily supplanted by other irrelevant passersby.
This Bone-Eating Clown is a real pain, Byron thought. "It's much more troublesome than Redbeard Edward, whom we trapped in the Law-Breaking Stone Iron Maiden and sank into the Deep Sea of the Valhalla of Heroes. Although the clown's Immortality is far from Red Beard's Soul-hiding Casket, which allows resurrection even from ashes, its seemingly inexhaustible nature, its inability to be cleanly killed, is truly repulsive."
Violet, curled up in Byron's arms, fired another shot into the Sky, agreeing with him, "Yeah, and the Soul-hiding Casket also has a major flaw: it requires a living sacrifice every year. Maybe by now, Red Beard has already died from the witchcraft backlash for missing the annual Blood Sacrifice deadline, deader than dead. To suppress these kinds of undying Bizarre creatures, apart from suppression by a higher Class, probably only a Law-Breaking Stone would work."
The girl's words sparked an idea in Byron.
In the treasure sites established by various forces, magic-suppressing areas relying on Law-Breaking Stones or other magic-repelling materials were almost standard.
By eliminating all sorts of transcendent abilities, the security level and construction costs of the vaults could be greatly reduced. Nobody would refuse such a cost-effective measure.
Perhaps this was their only current chance for a counterattack!
Byron immediately had the Polar Star God communicate with Silvergold Island's spirit of the land, searching for similar areas nearby.
When the strategic map feedback showed a solitary blank spot in an otherwise clear map, he was overjoyed.
Being difficult to detect meant that the area strongly repelled spirits, indicating a high probability that it was the place they were looking for.
Having no other options at the moment, they immediately turned around and charged toward it.
As Byron pushed himself to his limits to accelerate, he didn't forget to call out to Violet, "Put away the Miracle 'Black and White Keys,' and switch to a few 'Deck Cleaners,' grenades, and Molotov Cocktails that are unaffected by the magic-suppression effect."
After running for another ten minutes or so, the Bone-Eating Clown following them had consumed several more teams and had largely restored its complete body.
Finally, a cluster of Forest Cabins appeared before them.
A dozen or so houses, large and small, were all made from various foods: honey cookies, chocolate, cream cakes...
While the ground beneath their feet wasn't edible, it was a vast expanse of pristine white ground that wouldn't spoil one's appetite, possessing a faint, dull metallic luster.
"That's White Lead!"
Violet recognized at a glance that the ground was paved with White Lead, a byproduct commonly found in the smelting reactions of transcendent substances—a magic-repelling material with the same effect as Law-Breaking Stone but much pricier.
"This is most likely a byproduct of Silvergold Island's Alchemy of Transmutation; part of it must have been used here," Byron deduced.
He accelerated without hesitation, charging straight into the area and actively dissipating the Son of the Storm from around him, crashing hard into this zone.
On the surface, it looked as if his Spirituality was exhausted, forcing him to stop.
Their transcendent abilities were instantly sealed, all Miracle firearms became ineffective, and even their Storage Curios and the 'Overseas Pioneer Command' could no longer be opened.
Fortunately, the pursuer behind them was in the same predicament!
The Bone-Eating Clown hadn't yet realized the danger and was about to swoop down on them with a cackling, bizarre laugh.
But suddenly, the buoyancy of the human head balloons above it vanished.
Then, it too, like a stone, plunged powerlessly to the ground, smacking onto it with a SPLAT.
"Kill!"
The two gunblade fighters didn't waste even a breath, turning to counterattack at the very first opportunity.
Each holding a large-caliber Deck Cleaner, their blades moving in unison, they pulled the triggers once more on this Bizarre creature.
BANG! BANG!
Blood sprayed three feet high!