Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 121: They Didn’t Multiply When He Killed Them

A large demonic goat-like beast erupted from the crowded building, shattering the remaining wall in an explosion of brick and mortar.

Acidic saliva streaked from its mouth in sparkly lines. Clenched between its yellowish teeth was the splattered half of a human body, limbs dangling bizarrely.

"Don’t move!" Bao Xiong commanded in a sharp tone, his hands shooting toward Leon the moment he saw the boy take a half-step forward.

He exchanged a grim look with Wu Ze. Then, together, they dashed forward at the speed of light, their boots skidding on the debris.

The creature’s red eyes blazed with fire as its head snapped toward their direction. It raised its front right leg and slammed it down onto the already fractured asphalt.

THOOOM.

The impact sent a shockwave through the ground, causing it to buckle.

Before Bao Xiong and Wu Ze could close half the distance, the ground in front of the beast heaved like an earthquake.

Then, with a sound like tearing flesh, the asphalt split open. Molten lava erupted, flooding the street in a steaming tide.

Evaporated air gushed out as the lava streaked across the ground, spreading at an unnatural speed.

From within the bubbling and popping lava, shapes began to emerge. Dozens of smaller goat-like creatures, whose skin was blackened and cracked like cooling slag, crawled out.

They steamed, forming a living wall between the squad and the devilish creature.

"This is bad," Wu Ze said, her voice devoured of her earlier bravery. She halted abruptly, moved a step back, and locked her gaze on the multiplying horde.

"We can’t fight them, Bao Xiong."

"Stay there! I’ll take them all down!" Bao Xiong roared, his eyes blazing with a reckless fury. He plowed into the front rank of the creatures, his fist glowing with a black aura.

He crushed his fist into the blazing creatures.

CRUNCH-SIZZLE

The impact sent half of the creatures flying backward, their forms rolling and crumpling in the air. They hit the ground and twitched without dying.

As Leon watched, his eyes opened wide. Each fallen creature split in two, their forms duplicating.

Instantly, the space Bao Xiong managed to clear became choked with doubled figures.

"WTF!" Bao Xiong cursed under his breath, his eyes full of shock. He swung again with a willpower that scattered even more than before.

The creatures multiplied again. Bao Xiong’s powerful blow, which could make an entire building tremble, was now like a broomstick and a boosting mechanism for the creatures.

Within five minutes, the fifty mini-creatures doubled countless times, becoming a seething mass of five hundred, and began to encircle him.

Their roaring sound and the acidic gas from their mouths sent heat waves that suffocated Bao Xiong, but he didn’t bend a knee.

From Wu Ze’s position beside Leon, she kept a desperate gaze on Bao Xiong’s struggling form. Her knuckles whitened around the katana sword she had made them transform into, now pencil-sized in her palms.

"Hey, Storm," she said in a tight voice the moment her eyes flicked and landed on Leon.

Leon turned his head slowly toward her, his brown eyes meeting hers. A faint smile remained on Leon’s lips, as if watching Bao Xiong struggle was a fun game.

"You seem unfazed by the creatures that are resisting death by Bao Xiong’s iron fists," she said, her thumb nervously pressing the green button on her pencil.

A gust of dust blasted toward them as Leon opened his mouth, trying to speak. His body moved forward before his mind could catch up, and he shoved past Wu Ze.

Swhoooosh!

The black dagger in his hand sliced through the air like darkness tearing a bright sky.

The tip punched into the temple of one mini-goat creature that had impossibly surfaced silently from a crack in the ground behind Wu Ze, its sharp horns aimed toward her back.

Leon wrenched the dagger free in a fluid motion and struck it twice on the frozen creature.

Swhooosh!! Swhooosh!!!

The creature convulsed as the stabs landed at its neck and chest. A wet roar gurgled from its throat before it collapsed, steam rising from the open wounds.

Strangely, the one that convulsed under Leon’s attack lay still, without multiplying, dead.

"How did you—?" Wu Ze’s shocked voice echoed but stopped, seeing the boy already moving toward the direction where Bao Xiong stood.

"Hey, Storm, didn’t I tell you to—!" Bao Xiong’s rebuke choked off when he saw Leon wade into the horde like a nuclear blast.

PUFFF!

Leon’s first downward chop sliced through the neck of one creature, ripping it into perfect halves. His second strike, a reverse upward slice, chopped off the head of another, cracking its bone in perfect halves.

Both creatures scrambled a few steps back, fell, and lay still, not multiplying.

’How is that possible?’ Bao Xiong’s mind reeled with shock. He glanced at the two dead creatures at Leon’s feet, then to the one Leon was rushing toward.

A spike of confusion lanced through Bao Xiong’s bones. "That’s impossible," he screamed, but his voice collapsed with the fourth creature under Leon’s strike.

’I can’t just stand there without doing anything.’ Thoughts propelled through Leon’s skull, pushing him forward. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

He glided through the creatures as if they were mere discarded rugs. Each step, each pivot of his wrist, sent another creature back into its own grave.

Evaporating air gushed out as Leon began walking through the lava, his boots sizzling. As his dagger flashed, bunches of creatures fell like wheat before a sickle.

Within a few minutes, a hundred fell, then another hundred, piling around him in flaming heaps.

Leon closed the distance to the huge B-ranked beast, now only twenty meters away. The creature’s giant head watched the tiny human, malice filling its blazing eyes.

Leon’s chest hammered heavily as he stopped abruptly, panting. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath that burned through his lungs.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, Lieutenant Prince’s final smile and bloody hand touched his soul.

With a roar, Leon cracked his eyes open. Strangely, when he fixed his gaze on the creature once again, a faint gold light seeped from the pores of his right hand.

The gold light traced thin lines along the blade’s edge. And in a blink, the black diamond metal began to glow with a gentle flame.

At his front, the two D-rank mini-creatures his inner panel had shown him earlier hesitated, their red eyes flickering with fear.

Just as Leon shifted his stance, ready to take a leap forward, a deep, mechanical hum vibrated in his chest before reaching his ears.