Facts proved that for Faen, compared to sneaking around, engaging in intense frontal combat was more in line with his own nature.
His body, tempered through hardships, became even tougher under the blessing of the Demon of Joy, Ashlesh. Ionia's cultivation philosophy of resonating with the spirits also allowed Faen to fully master his current body in just a few days.
In action, he was fierce yet heavy, heavy yet agile.
His seemingly burly body, under this amazing agility, felt like a swift phantom wrapped in clear flowing water.
When the first person raised a cutter towards Faen, Faen's palm heel struck his side face directly like a heavy axe, shattering his jaw and neck into flying parts.
And when the person next to him tried to launch a sneak attack, the surrounding water flow would follow Faen's will along the trajectory of the howling wind, cutting his throat like a thin sharp blade.
Before the first drop of blood from the first victim could hit the ground, several more corpses had already appeared around him.
Reason told Zeri that this scene was a bit too cruel, but before this thought could make Zeri feel uncomfortable, it was immediately replaced by a strong excitement and exhilaration of eliminating evil.
Her face flushed; her arc magic, directly linked to her emotions, produced an excellent chemical reaction with the joy factor in Faen's blood.
Intense joy made Zeri's emotions run high. Under the fierce electric light, Zeri just slightly connected with the conductive chamber of the spark gun, and the crude spark gun immediately sprayed out electric arcs and sparks nearly three times the intensity and density of the past.
In the past, when these electric arcs hit enemies, they usually just paralyzed them on the ground, unable to get up.
Some Chem-Baron thugs who had undergone extensive chem-tech modifications could even withstand the electric shock of the spark gun and launch fierce attacks on Zeri.
But now, everything seemed different.
The moment they were hit, the intense current could even directly overload the augments on these thugs.
Accompanied by sizzling sounds and the screams of these factory thugs, thick black smoke spewed out through the gaps of the chem-tech augments. The temperature of the overloaded prosthetic limbs rose, and even the Shimmer in the tanks boiled and exploded under the high heat.
"Damn it! This guy is a mage!" Seeing Faen's decisive and ferocious form, the foreman's face turned pale, and a trace of fear flashed in his eyes. But then he gritted his teeth and said, "Use guns! Idiots! Shoot him to death! I want to see how many bullets he can take!!"
As he spoke, the foreman was the first to draw the chem-tech pistol from his waist.
The crude gun barrel fired bullets as thick as two fingers. Propelled by Shimmer solution as energy, let alone humans, even those mutated beasts in the sumps affected by chemical venom could be killed with one shot.
Noticing the foreman's action, there wasn't much fear in Faen's eyes. Instead, in the instant he leaped towards Zeri, he spread his hands, twisting the surrounding water flow into thick water mist and churning it into a high-speed vortex to wrap both of them—
Nilah's W skill, Jubilant Veil. In the game, its effect is to increase movement speed, ignore unit collision, reduce magic damage, dodge all basic attacks, and grant the same skill effect to allies upon contact—except for the lack of a stun at the end, everything else would make Jax cry out "Imba!".
It's useful in the game, but its effect in reality is even greater.
Its essence is to use Ashlesh's authority over water to manipulate flowing water into dense mist. Under Faen's control, these water droplets connected with each other while turning into dense mist, forming a tough mechanical structure by strengthening the surface tension of the water droplets, just like semi-solid rubber.
While the structure was strengthened, there was no so-called duration limit like in the game. This made it almost a fool's dream for ordinary mortal weapons to hurt Faen.
Even with heavy muskets, this level of impact simply couldn't break through the water flow controlled by Faen.
Just like that, with water mist surrounding his body, the bullets breaking through the air were wrapped by the dense mist and deviated from their original trajectories before they could even touch Faen's body.
Speeding along the rapidly rotating water flow, the moment the factory thugs paused to reload and their firepower weakened, Faen suddenly clenched his fist.
The water mist surrounding the two compressed slightly, then exploded violently.
With the boost of this impact force, the bullets wrapped inside acted like shrapnel from a grenade, exploding radially in all directions accompanied by the screech of air friction.
Before those reloading thugs could raise their guns to shoot again, the flying shrapnel bullets pierced countless holes in their bodies, turning them into tattered human sieves.
And even under such a storm of steel, the foreman was actually still alive. Or rather, being able to become the foreman of the thugs in this factory, he had some discernment.
After sensing that Faen showed no pressure at all, he realized something was wrong. And before the killing intent erupted and the water mist exploded into a storm of shrapnel, the foreman dove directly to the ground and dragged two people to block in front of him.
But even so, the flying shrapnel far exceeded the foreman's imagination. Under the boost of the water flow, the heavy bullets directly pierced and shattered the two unlucky guys acting as human shields. Although the bullets passing through the bodies had lost most of their force, embedding into the flesh still made the foreman unable to hold back screams of pain.
Hearing this sound, Faen and Zeri cast gazes of indifference and anger.
Hearing the footsteps walking towards him, under extreme fear, the foreman felt his heart was about to stop beating.
Looking at the two, he struggled constantly, but having been hit by stray bullets, let alone standing up, even crawling caused pain from the shrapnel stuck in his body squeezing his flesh, making him wish he could just smash his head and die.
But smashing his head and dying was impossible; he didn't want to die, he wanted to live.
Thinking quickly, the foreman looked at the two with fearful eyes, crying and saying, "You two! My lords, I was wrong! Don't kill me! I have children to raise! I am also a worker, I'm just working for the Chem-Baron! I was forced too!"
"Acting as a pawn for the tiger, the evil among evils."
Faen shook his head. He had seen with his own eyes the face this foreman used to force those slaves who hadn't signed the indenture contract yet. And if he was this vicious to workers who hadn't signed the indenture contract, did he even need to think about those who had?
Noticing the indifference in Faen's eyes and realizing Faen wouldn't let him go, the foreman's face turned fierce. Gripping a sharp knife hidden behind his back, he wanted to pounce towards Faen.
Unfortunately, before he could prop his body up, a blue light lit up beside Faen.
Flowing water broke through the air and pierced the center of his brow. A line of blood flowed down from his forehead. Carrying residual fear and unwillingness, his fat body fell to the ground again with a thud, losing its breath.
Seeing the foreman die, the surrounding gang thugs immediately scattered like birds and beasts.
Faen and Zeri pressed on, taking advantage of the chaos to kill their way towards the energy workshop of the chemical factory.
As one of the factories under a Chem-Baron, naturally, there wouldn't be just a group of simple gang thugs guarding here.
If it were the past, even Zeri could only choose to retreat temporarily. After all, killing a foreman and a group of factory thugs was enough to give the Chem-Baron a headache.
But this time was different. With Faen's help, the duo was unstoppable along the way.
Rushing in front, ordinary mortals were no match for Faen at all. Even those with extensive chem-tech modifications, Faen could usually cut them down within three rounds.
During this process, the trickiest enemies used Hextech weapons instead of chem-tech. Unfortunately, even so-called Hextech weapons were just an application of magic power.
Because of his knowledge of the future from his memories, Faen had never slacked off on combat training since he gained the ability to take care of himself.
This solid experience and foundation allowed Faen to quickly master and integrate Ashlesh's blessing. Even if the person in front of him had superior equipment, causing some minor twists in the battle, for Faen, it was just sweating a bit more.
As a negative example... "It hurts."
After the big guy wearing Hextech armor and holding a Hextech power spear fell, Zeri, who gradually relaxed, covered her thigh with her hand, looking unwell.
The current Zeri had just debuted, and even her combat experience was very limited. Although the joy factor kept Zeri's state excited at all times, greatly increasing her reaction speed and arc intensity.
But unfortunately, when facing real warriors, this power forcibly raised by external forces could not be effectively converted into a combat advantage.
Seeing this, Faen immediately gathered a drop of plasma fused with the concept of joy, or rather fused with the joy factor, at his fingertip, ready to flick it into Zeri's mouth.
But after gathering it, when it was time to flick, Faen hesitated—the emotion of joy could stimulate the human spirit to secrete a large amount of dopamine and endorphins, thereby effectively activating the body, relieving pain, boosting mood, weakening pain perception, and accelerating recovery.
But as the power of a demon, forcibly advancing joy would also lead to paying more when paying the 'price of joy'. For example, eating one candy was enough the first time, but if you advanced too much, you might need to pay ten candies later.
From entering until now... in order to maintain a full state of excitement so that her electric sparks could keep up with Faen's speed, the current Zeri had already advanced joy four times in a row. If she continued...
Just as Faen was thinking, with an 'ah-woo', Zeri held Faen's finger in her mouth and skillfully used her small tongue to lick the plasma.
Her soft little tongue licked back and forth on Faen's fingertip. The slight itchiness brought Faen back from his thoughts to look at Zeri.
Zeri licked again uneasily. Only after feeling the pain in her leg start to weaken and her mood, which was originally low due to injury, start to rise rapidly again did she let go of Faen's finger with satisfaction.
Drawing it out of Zeri's mouth, Faen's white and slender finger was glistening with Zeri's saliva.
Perhaps because the continuous battle consumed too much physical strength and excessive sweating led to reduced water in the body? Faen could clearly see a charming silver thread connecting Faen's fingertip and Zeri's small tongue, forming a suspended silver line in the middle.
"Eek!" Seeing her saliva hanging in the middle, Zeri hurriedly slapped the silver thread broken in shame, then used her clothes to wipe Faen's finger.
Although appearing flustered, from the electric sparks brightening up again at her temples, it could be seen that Zeri didn't actually mind too much, just felt a bit embarrassed out of a girl's reserve.
"What are you dazing for? We are in battle!" Looking at Faen, Zeri indeed didn't show much shame about the silver thread. Instead, her exquisite pretty face was full of smiles as she said, "Don't worry, I won't drag you down! We are partners, Zeri won't become your burden!!"
"I wasn't hesitating about this."
Looking at the flying spirit on Zeri's face, a slightly helpless smile appeared on Faen's face, then he said with relief, "But you're right, we are in battle now!"
Although saying this, Faen thought: even if continuously advancing joy leads to a higher price of joy to be paid later, with the destruction of this chemical factory's energy workshop, this sense of achievement and self-realization should be enough to save Zeri from suffering intense emptiness due to inability to pay the price.
Thinking this, a look of seriousness appeared in Faen's eyes, and the rhythm of the battle accelerated further.
After the boss guarding the level, the Hextech warrior, was also smashed, the remaining resistance in the factory could be considered virtually non-existent.
Arriving at the energy workshop and looking at the roaring Shimmer furnace below, a look of anger appeared on Zeri's face.
"It really is a Shimmer furnace!" Pointing at the huge storage tank placed above the furnace, Zeri angrily explained to Faen, who didn't understand Shimmer furnaces:
"Although this thing can generate huge energy, the chemical waste gas produced will directly erode the land. And after people come into contact with it, they will lose emotional control, suffer organ failure, and even physical mutation! Damn Spindlaw, I'm going to destroy this thing right now!!!"
As she spoke, Zeri raised the spark gun in her hand with indignation.
But just as Zeri wanted to channel all her emotional sparks through the spark gun to blow the entire energy workshop sky-high, Faen's large hand suddenly landed on Zeri's gun, forcibly lowering the girl's angry muzzle.
"Faen?" Seeing Faen stop her, Zeri wasn't angry but looked at Faen in confusion. Her voice and eyes vaguely held some worry; obviously, Faen's action made her think of some bad guesses.
But Faen didn't say anything, just pointed with his other hand to the dark corridor in the distance.
Those were the 'rescued' laborers.