Chapter 818 - Is that bad?

I move further away, joining Savant’s side just in time to watch Skreth slam Morwag to the ground, only for the demon to climb up entirely unwounded and then get thrown by the monster into a smaller mountain nearby, with its side exploding under the impact.

The monster ignores us entirely, and that huge volume of bone dust swirls around it and shoots in a street wide stream towards the mountain. It keeps hitting the peak, grinding it down. The particles travel at such high speeds that they heat upon impact, melting the solid rock.

Morwag climbs out of that half-rock, half-lava mess, pushing himself forward even as the particles continue to batter and push against him.

He takes another step, then another. With a massive stomp, the mountain cracks beneath him, and the resulting shockwave scatters the particles, leaving them to hang in the air like falling snow before Skreth seizes control. Its huge body slams against Morwag, who tanks the hit, grabs the monster, and slams it into the ground. He then throws it with such force that it crashes through a neighboring peak and flies further, with Morwag following at high speed.

“Did he get stronger?” Savant asks next to me, done cleaning his sword, which gets absorbed into his body. His wing is gone now, but [Dawn] continues to gather around his right arm, which is now entirely orange.

“It seems so, his output increased. From Weslin, I heard he improved his body strengthening to something that is straight up suicidal without his binding. New right arm?”

“How does his strenghtening compare to your sister? And yes, from the 9th floor.”

“It is stronger, and he can keep it up, while Vic’s duplicate would likely explode after a single punch. Still, it would be a hell of a punch, so after seeing this, I will have to tell her to try to talk to him. But let’s move closer.”

Both of us move swiftly after I check one more time in the direction of Weslin and Brich. Where before I sensed around 100 monsters, now there are over 300 of them. Still, it does not seem that I need to worry too much. The body strengthening Morwag is using was something created with the help of Weslin, who is one of the best when it comes to it. Meanwhile, Brich is... well, Brich.

The scale of the fight is now immense, with miles and miles of destroyed area and evaporated mountains. And no one here is a Champion. Still, as before, I keep most of my mind scouting the area, something I kept doing during the fight as well. Out of all of us, my senses reach the furthest, and with my combination of sensing mana, kinetic, and thermal energy, I am the most reliable scout.

“Are you okay?” I ask while glancing at Savant again. Something about his mana feels off, and when I look closer, there is a wound in his side through which that rot seems to spread.

“Not everyone has potent thermal energy to burn it away,” he says without skipping a beat.

“Yeah, bullshit. I bet your [Dawn] can do it. Are you trying to absorb weird stuff again?”

“Maybe.”

I shake my head and land at the top of the destroyed mountain. I absorb the heat from the molten rocks everywhere and redistribute it into mana. The blood orb that has been following me the entire time now elongates, and I use [Empyrean Lance], canceling it mid-activation and reusing that mana to build it around the blood, which strengthens it.

[Empyrean Lance - lvl 54 > Empyrean Lance - lvl 55]

[Weave - lvl 12 > Weave - lvl 13]

I will have to find what action levels up [Weave] the fastest, because it is currently too low, bringing shame to poor old me.

Looking down the broken mountain, there is a small rocky valley where Morwag, still without any wounds, faces the monster that is now missing multiple arms and legs. It seems tired, with a deep cut across its chest from Savant’s attack, and my attacks likely did not help it either. Still, even now, that storm of bone particles grinds the area. Wherever they pass, they leave a mirror smooth surface. Patches of such surfaces are all over the place.

Morwag breaks off another leg of the Skreth and stabs it deep into the monster, pulling down and cutting. He then punches, cracking the bone armor, and strikes the same spot again, burrowing his hand inside. His binding seems to weaken, or the monster found a way to counter it, and its next attack stabs into Morwag but does not push through all the way.

With a roar, the demon swings his hand and cuts the arm impaling him off. He leaves it inside, not even bothering to pull it out, as he attacks again, pummeling the monster.

Each exchange is quick, even to my partially accelerated mind. If it were me from a year ago, I would be barely able to follow them. My kinetic senses also sense the vibrations of each attack, movement, and the force behind them.

Savant moves to join the fight, but I put my hand in front of him. “Are you crazy? If you try to join now, Morwag will stop fighting the monster and attack you instead.”

He furrows his brow and looks at me, but still decides to listen and stop where he stands. “He is running out of mana, and it will get dangerous. And we fought together until now.”

“Sure, but now it has turned into a one on one, and he is locked into the fight. And what do you mean by dangerous? The monster isn’t even that strong.”

“It is four question marks.”

“Not a Champion.”

“Four question marks mean over level 450, so of course it is dangerous. This is such a bother, you know. We could have already killed it together.”

“It’s fine. We weakened it, and you got your rot or whatever it is, so let the poor demon have some fun.”

As before, I meet his gaze, and only then does he pull his [Dawn] back.

“I will check on the others,” Savant says and moves away by using kinetic energy.

I observe him for a while, judging his use of it to be no better than a speck of sand on Lioren’s boots.

Morwag, meanwhile, continues to have fun, with more and more wounds forming on his body, but with that, his mood continues to improve. The maniac sometimes even uses his horns to attack and even bites into the monster, which also finally begins to run out of steam.

Holding two of the legs he tore off, the demon continues to stab the monster with them, with the particles encircling them finally grinding down his skin and revealing his muscles and, in some parts, even his bones, but he does not stop until the Skreth finally dies.

[You have defeated Skreth - lvl 461]

[Lvl 412 > Lvl 413]

I watch the demon stand there before he slides down and sits on the ground with his back resting against the body of the monster. When I move closer, he looks up at me, and the aggression from his eyes is already gone, replaced by his usual control that uses that aggression as a tool and lets it rage only when he wishes to.

Even now, he does not bother to pull a stabbed limb from his body, which now otherwise slowly begins to heal. It makes me wonder how he deals with that necrosis or rot or what it was, but it does not seem to cause him much trouble. A trait? Is his body just that powerful? Or maybe he uses his binding energy in some exotic way to get rid of it?

“Not enough,” he mutters.

“Pardon me?” I ask, standing there near him.

“Still not enough to beat you,” Morwag says, his eyes firmly locked onto me. “I have developed my body strengthening and use of my primordial energy further. Day after day, training after training, fight after fight. Yet no matter how much I replay it in my head and compare it to our fight, I do not see myself winning against you as I am now.”

“Is that bad?”

He stares at me for a second or two before he shakes his head. “No,” he says, “it is not.”

Even as wounded as he is, he pushes himself back up, finally pulling the impaling limbs out and throwing them away. “You are an opponent I respect, as well as the effort you put in to stand where you stand now. I am someone who understands what it requires.”

Passing by me, he leaves towards where Savant went, and I’m left behind, musing on it all over. Then I look down at my hand. I open it, observing it, and then close it into a fist.

Shaking these thoughts off, I move towards the body of the Skreth and start looting, and that looting turns into a hurried one as, like a blow of a powerful wind, a distant presence watches over me. Looking up, I look in that direction, noticing what seems like a burning horizon a dozen miles in the distance, quickly realizing it is the movement of mana I see. It is blazing up to the ceiling of this floor.

I do not have to be a genius to tell that we have no chance against whatever is coming, so I quickly grab a few more pieces and then more, teleporting and using Wraith Dance. I reach our boys’ band sitting tiredly on the ground, surrounded by hundreds of corpses, with only Brich in an excited mood and the others quietly ignoring him.

“We have to get out of here.” Something about my voice grabs their attention right away, so there are no complaints, and we swiftly head straight for the outpost. We should be able to enter easily, as there were still two hundred open spots when we left.

The entire time, I keep glancing back, but that presence does not seem to hurry, and we pick up speed.

Once the outpost appears in sight, we all come to a stop when Zant appears in front of us as if he stepped out of the air. “I am afraid I cannot allow you to enter the outpost,” he says simply.

Right away, I drop all the loot that I took from Skreth’s body.

“That is not it, Sir Gwyn. Unfortunately, each of you carries Necrotic Rot from the wounds you received. It would spread quickly and kill many attendees and locals. This outpost’s leader would almost certainly deny you entry or execute you on sight. So I think of this warning as me showing you goodwill and a tiny bit of bending the rules of my current position to allow for that.” He nods seriously, clearly satisfied with himself.

What a good boy.

I pick up the loot again and gesture at the others to follow as we change direction away from the outpost, slowly approaching the presence in the distance. Right away, I start checking my body for any sign of Necrotic Rot, the little guy has mentioned, and find none.

None at all.

I see nothing damaging my body or spreading through it, and I thought I had burned it out of all wounds that were caused to my body. I can tell Savant is the same, as his gaze is a bit hazy as he looks into himself.

Multiple times, I send a disrupting wave through my body, raise its temperature, and let thermal energy combust under my skin, and a few times I glance at Zant, who runs next to us on his tiny short legs that move very quickly, as he is easily able to keep up. Every time he understands what I want and shakes his head.

I bet Lily would be able to deal with it in a heartbeat, and the fact that Zant did not even mention an option of moving closer for some healer or the outpost’s king to remove it tells me it is not that easy at all.

Maybe I have been underestimating the guy we just killed too much. Still, even then, I do not think it is something impossible to deal with. Not even as that presence changes direction and heads towards us at that same slow speed, and not even as dozens more of weaker presences appear all around us and the night fills with screeching.

My excitement grows slightly, and I feel a smile climb on my lips at the situation. The ever present danger, things going from bad to worse, the night just starting, and us having to survive all of it.

There is no doubt in my mind that it is something I can deal with as I allow my Ignition Heart to beat wilder and gather more mana.

***

Author Note: With Book 10 completed for T3 I will, as I mentioned before, be going on a 2-week break to get some rest and plan things out! If any of you subbed and got screwed by the timing, just send me a message - I will refund you, no problem!

Also, during the break, I plan to write the side story I promised for the Biscuit plush campaign.

If you bought one, you can join the Discord: https://discord.com/invite/s5ARCv7kfG

It might take a bit, but there will be a special role for plush owners and there might be some voting on the side story. I'm not sure yet, it is difficult to do properly with some buyers being from Patreon and others from RR or SH. But I'm confident the side story will be fun even if I just pick the idea I like, so feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Thank you all for your support and for reading through 10 books already - just how crazy this is.

Anyway, see you in two weeks with the usual schedule!