Book 10: Part 8 – The Overwhelming Power of the Golden Sun Pirates

Hearing Ace's words, a vein on the side of Joleon's head pulsated as he fought to control his rage.

He didn't particularly care about the death of his clansmen, but he couldn't bear to be disrespected so publicly. Still, he didn't dare to rush to attack as he scanned each member of Ace's crew. Even his Godrealm was stretched to its limits as if he was looking for something or someone in particular.

It didn't take a genius to figure out Joleon's concern. In fact, it wasn't just him. All the senior members of the Boleyn Clan appeared to have the same look of caution, fear, and hesitation.

Seeing their reactions, Ace snorted disdainfully before reassuring them that it was Garot who became a paragon, allowing them to escape the seal, and he was no longer with them, having chosen to hurry back to the Infernal Realm to his own Clan.

Seeing how Joleon didn't appear to completely believe him, he said he didn't need Garot's help dealing with their trivial Boleyn Clan.

Ace's words struck a nerve in all of the members of the Boleyn Clan still alive, so much so that one of the clan's elders, one of the more impulsive and impatient Commander-level experts left here, threw caution to the wind to attack Ace.

Ace's eyes didn't budge from Joleon. Still, Ace sneered decisively as Leona, who looked more like an adorable little kitten curled up on Ace's shoulder than the terrifying Apex Divine Beast that she was, hopped off her partner's shoulder.

Her body moved like a flash as it grew to its true size, not hesitating to meet the incoming attacker head-on.

Ace and the others weren't the only ones to have improved drastically over these last few thousand years. In fact, Leona's transformation was no less impressive than Ace's.

Not only had she, using her mutated bond with Ace, completely fused five Profound Mysteries of the Laws of Fire, but she also began fusing her insights into the Edict of Destruction with Fire's Profound Mystery of the Essence of Fire.

It had to be remembered that being able to fuse the Divine Energy of different elements and Edicts was only the most basic of abilities for a soul-mutate. Their real power and envious abilities stemmed from their ability to fuse the mysteries of one element with the mysteries of another.

Unfortunately, fusing mysteries of the same element was already hard enough. Fusing the mysteries of separate elements was 100 if not 1000 times harder, but when accomplished, the results were terrifying.

Leona's fusion of the Edict of Destruction with the profound mystery of the Essence of Fire was still in its most embryonic form, but as she coated her whole body in a skin-tight aura-like crimson-black armour, the power she radiated was terrifying.

As the two met, the Boleyn Clan Elder's eyes constricted into pinholes as he watched the space around Leona's body tremble violently as though it wanted to shatter, unable to bear her presence.

In the end, the man's arm was incinerated, as was half of his sword, before he was sent flying hundreds of meters back before coming to a violent halt after crashing into several buildings.

Realising the true threat the Golden Sun Pirates now posed to their clan, the Boleyn Elders commanded all of their experts at or above the five-star fate seeker level to prepare for battle.

At the same time, aside from Killian and Leona, who stood calmly by Ace's side, and Kannal and Faye, who had already slipped away to find Qimai and Weslor, Amira and the other Golden Sun Pirates were stood in front of Julius, whose round, chubby face dripped with sweat as his spiritual essence flared, wrapping itself around Amira, Alissa, and the others standing around him.

With his understanding of formations having grown so much in the last thousand-plus years, he had long since edited the [Dual Battle Tactics] Technique he found. Now, instead of simply fusing the souls of two together, by using himself as a conduit, he is capable of absorbing the spiritual essence of up to five people and channelling an enhanced power back into each of them.

It was a technique, Julius, carrying on the sun/star theme of their crew, renamed [The Constellation Battle Tactics].

At that moment, Amira, Alissa, Joel, Osiris, and Yulana felt their power skyrocket, temporarily transforming them from Full Gods into High Gods.

After 1000 years, even the weakest of them had fused at least four laws, essentially making them seven-star fate seekers in their enhanced state, even without the use of their peerless concept-infused weapon master.

And that didn't include Alissa, who wasn't only a little over 50% of the way to fusing her fifth mystery but also had her White Tiger Transformation to boost her to the commander level and Amira, who had not only completely fused five mysteries of the laws of wind and was almost 75% of the way to fusing five mysteries of the laws of light, but even with her not being able to use her Visual Manifestation, just the Gol Clan's Haki, when added on to the rest of her abilities, made her fearsome Commander Level expert.

With all that said, one shouldn't be hard-pressed to understand what happened the moment the two sides met. Especially as Killian and Leona went out of their way to suppress all the Boleyn Clan's commander-level experts, preventing them from protecting the five, six, and seven-star fate seekers being massacred by the incredible teamwork and overwhelming power of the Amira and the others.

The Boleyn Clan's experts were all veteran warriors. They may not have understood the mechanics of the technique, but they could clearly see that Julius was the linchpin. Unfortunately, they were simply unable to get close.

Even if they were somehow able to slip past Alissa and the others, they would find themselves with a jet black arrow between their brows, which seemed to erode their souls – courtesy of Osiris, who was stood by Julius' side whilst overwatching the battlefield using his incredible archery to support any of his crewmates who needed it.

While the battle was raging on, Kannal successfully slipped away to free Qimai and Weslor. Thankfully, Ace had long since found them and let him know exactly where they were being held. The only slight issue was that there was an expert standing guard over their clan's dungeon, and according to Ace, the man was an expert also at the level of a seven-star fate seeker, and to make matters worse, Kannal was too far away from Julius to receive the boost of the [Constellation Battle Tactics].

Still, Kannal wasn't too worried. His improvements this last millennium were anything but minor. As it stood, he had completely fused four of the profound mysteries of wind and was around a quarter of the way to fusing the fifth, but the improvement he was most proud of was his [Zephyr's Sword Art]. In terms of Concepts, Kannal was the only member of the crew whose weapon handling was a match for Ace's, having also reached the limits of the Full God level.

As a result, it was no surprise that Kannal was able to easily hold his own and even faintly suppress the dungeon guard.

Seeing their master, and the closest thing to a father both Qimai and Weslor could remember, tears threatened to spill from their eyes as Kannal freed them from their cells.

On the way back to the main battlefield, Kannal apologised to the two for their suffering due to the fact that they were merely acquainted with them (The Golden Sun Pirates).

In Kannal's mind, he felt responsible for the fact that they had to witness their whole crew being slaughtered, but Qimai explained that none of their crew actually ended up dying on that day.

Kannal's expression turned to one of disbelief when he heard that Qimai and Weslor managed to hold Joleon back for long enough for the rest of their crew to escape.

Kannal's shock was understandable. As much as he hated to admit it, Joleon's strength was the real deal. There was simply no way for his two disciples to hold back a monster like that for even a second, not as they were then.

But Weslor explained that it was thanks to the [Dual Battle Tactics] that Julius made sure to teach them before they left the Golden Sun Pirates to venture out on their own.

According to the siblings, there was aside from the standard power boost it gave both parties when truly mastered; it allowed the twins to temporarily fuse their Divine Power, despite it being of two separate elements – effectively giving them the power of a two-way soul mutate.

They also went on to say that after using that technique, Joleon lost any interest in chasing down their fleeing crewmates. He captured them, hoping to gain the secrets of the [Dual Battle Tactics] for himself.

Initially, they had been physically tortured for it, but once they realised they couldn't break either sibling physically, they decided to resort to scanning their memories. Unfortunately for the Boleyn Clan, scouring the soul for specific memories against the will of the target took an exceptional level of skill, one that no member of the Boleyn Clan had.

It was for that very reason that Druelle, Joleon's mother, left and wasn't there right now. She went to invite an expert capable of effectively scouring the soul of a target.

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