Sword Art Master (Please Recommend, Please Bookmark)

With two barbarians in tow, Lu Chen once again headed out of the village.

As he walked, Lu Chen pondered how to quickly locate malevolent entities outside.

"Only weaklings like Human Head Fireballs reveal themselves at night. The other aberrations can't be seen at all. What I need to think about now isn't how to hunt them, but how to find them."

Malevolent entities and aberrations were mostly powerful and bizarre creatures. Many did not even possess physical forms. What troubled Lu Chen now was that although he had abundant vitality and blood, he could not find the aberrations.

Standing at the edge of the Totem Pillar's range, Lu Chen carefully scanned the silent darkness ahead. He intended to use his eyes to locate a malevolent entity before engaging it in battle.

But after looking for a while, Lu Chen found nothing but silence outside. There was no sign of any aberration.

"Just looking isn't going to work."

After hesitating for a moment, Lu Chen extended one foot beyond the Totem Pillar's protection. Yet this time, no aberration attacked him.

"Could it be that there are no aberrations in this area?"

Just as Lu Chen was considering this, the sound of a bone horn suddenly rang out from the distant sky.

The sudden sound startled Lu Chen. He had thought an aberration was attacking.

But he immediately realized something.

"No, this isn't an aberration's attack. It's the village's distress signal."

As Lu Chen realized this, the other two barbarians were already shouting anxiously at him.

"A'Chen, hurry! A malevolent entity has invaded the village!"

After shouting that, the two men sprinted toward the source of the horn.

Without hesitation, Lu Chen quickly returned within the Totem Pillar's range, then immediately rushed toward the horn's source.

Though his agility was somewhat low, his immense strength gave Lu Chen explosive speed. Each step blasted a crater into the ground as he surged forward like a gale.

Before long, Lu Chen had overtaken the two barbarians and arrived where the horn had sounded.

Five or six barbarians had already gathered there. Under the lead of a tall barbarian, they were fighting a strange man holding an umbrella.

As Lu Chen approached, one barbarian was pierced through the body by the strange man's umbrella and fell straight down.

"Move aside!"

Without slowing down, Lu Chen shouted from a distance, telling the others to get out of the way.

Then, raising the longsword in his hand, Lu Chen charged before the strange man with the momentum of his running charge and smashed down at the man's head.

Bang!

The Barbarian Blood Warrior's body, along with his additional 29 points of strength—one added at Level 3 of Swordsman—made the iron sword whistle mournfully through the air as it fell.

Right now, Lu Chen felt that even a boulder could be smashed apart with one blow.

But just as Lu Chen was brimming with confidence, a voice suddenly sounded beside him.

"Careful! That malevolent entity is highly skilled in swordsmanship!"

The warning surprised Lu Chen quite a bit. He understood claims that aberrations were powerful and strange.

But what the hell was a malevolent entity being skilled in swordsmanship?

Still, Lu Chen immediately understood why that Barbarian Blood Warrior had shouted.

The iron sword Lu Chen brought down carried tremendous force, but just as it was about to strike the enemy, the Black Umbrella suddenly opened.

The canopy spread wide, resembling a shield as though it intended to block Lu Chen's attack.

Lu Chen sneered at that.

"Block it? What are you going to use to block my 29 points of strength?"

With the Barbarian King Bloodline, Lu Chen had never feared a head-on clash.

Without hesitation, he smashed down fiercely at the umbrella with unstoppable momentum.

He intended to shatter the canopy along with its owner. Yet the instant his iron sword touched the umbrella, Lu Chen sensed something was wrong.

There was barely any force behind the canopy. Moreover, as Lu Chen's iron sword chopped down, the canopy kept shrinking. Soon, the umbrella in the strange man's hand changed from a shield into a tightly folded thrusting sword.

The lack of resistance should have been good news for Lu Chen. After all, the aberration he wanted to attack was not the weapon in the strange man's hand.

Unfortunately, this aberration truly was not simple.

When the umbrella had spread open, it had already shifted its body to the side. The canopy had not been meant to block Lu Chen, but to obscure his vision and allow it to move.

Now that the canopy had folded, there was no trace of the strange man where Lu Chen's sword had struck.

Meanwhile, as Lu Chen slashed down with immense force, the folded Black Umbrella had already become like a black spear, stabbing straight toward his heart.

Clang!

A fierce clash of metal rang through the area.

Amid the violent impact, Lu Chen's vision went dark. Yet even so, he did not die. At the last moment, the iron plates on his leather clothing saved his life.

Lu Chen was, after all, a Barbarian Blood Warrior. Several iron plates had been sewn onto his leather armor. Iron plates were scarce in the barbarian wilderness, so naturally they were sewn onto the most critical areas.

The heart was extremely important, so there was naturally an iron plate over it. Because of that, the malevolent entity's thrust did not pierce through Lu Chen's body, instead striking the iron plate with a metallic clang.

However, although he had blocked the deadliest part of the attack, one side had thrust while the other had taken the blow head-on. Lu Chen's condition was far from good now.

Even though the iron plate had blocked the most terrifying piercing attack, the monster was bizarre, like a martial arts master. When it thrust, a strange force passed directly through Lu Chen's skin and flesh and burrowed into his heart.

An icy aura also sought to corrode Lu Chen's heart.

Under that force, Lu Chen felt as if his chest had been struck by a heavy hammer. His breathing instantly halted, his vision went black, and blood pooled in his chest, wanting to spill out but unable to.

The sensation was agonizing. The icy aura kept drilling into Lu Chen's heart, trying to numb it and turn it cold.

Once his heart stopped beating, Lu Chen would naturally die.

At the same time, the black-clothed monster raised the Black Umbrella and thrust it toward Lu Chen's head.

With his body injured and a powerful enemy attacking before him, Lu Chen hardened his heart in that dire moment. Without hesitation, he clenched one hand into a fist and fiercely slammed it into his own chest.

Bang

Lu Chen struck himself with tremendous force. Pain flared through his chest, but it was still bearable. At the same time, the blow finally forced out the blood that he had wanted to vomit but could not. Naturally, he sprayed it toward the evil creature.

The blood and vitality of a Barbarian Blood Warrior were extremely lethal to evil creatures. That monster naturally did not dare take Lu Chen's blood and vitality head-on, so it shifted aside at the last moment. This finally gave Lu Chen a chance to catch his breath.

At the same time, Lu Chen felt much better after spitting out the blood. The other barbarians also charged at the monster, drawing it away from Lu Chen's side.

Still, the situation before them could hardly be called good.

The monster was not especially powerful. At least, its body was not as tough as a barbarian's. Yet it wielded its weapon like a Sword Art Master, its swordsmanship exquisitely skilled.

It used a single umbrella in countless ways. As it opened and closed, it changed constantly—sometimes becoming a shield to block attacks, sometimes a spear for thrusting. Meanwhile, the umbrella canopy opened and closed to conceal the monster's figure, preventing the barbarians from seeing its position clearly.

And unable to see it clearly, the barbarians' attacks naturally accomplished little.

When the evil creature drew a slender sword from beneath the umbrella canopy, the situation became even more dangerous.

One hand manipulated the umbrella canopy, shifting it between shield and rapier, while the other held a Black Rapier, repeatedly attacking through gaps in the canopy. The evil creature's attacks became even more unpredictable.

In a short time, several people had already been stabbed to the ground by the evil creature.