Chapter 7: The Sprint

Howl. Thousands roared at once, and the air trembled as their collective pressure rushed forth with the force of a tsunami.

 

Monsters dotted the wide and uneven plain, nothing was hindering their senses. If he had been able to hide his Qi signatures he could have bypassed the mess that had been created. He ran with no other choice and it announced his presence to everything.

 

He was like a bonfire burning in the night. He shone with a light and it made him conspicuous.

 

Throwing a stone in a still pond. Ripples of hatred propagated through the thousands upon thousands of monsters and specters alike. It was intense and it made their collective aura only more tangible. It gained a real, physical pressure that weighed him both physically and mentally.

 

His mental energy was furiously consumed as he tried to combat a hatred so intense that it had physically manifested.

 

Why did they possess such an intense hatred?

 

Thousands of intensely emotional intents created an aura that cover the field. The pressure kept increasing as more and more monsters joined. He was reaching the limit, his body would not endure anymore.

 

The pain ailing his body grew severe. It hurt but he was even more tired. At some time his brain had started filtering the pain. He could still feel it clearly, it grew worse and worse but it did not disturb his judgment.

 

The hoard rushed, each step shortened the distance and the pressure became greater, more condensed. Breathing started becoming difficult and this was despite puppeteering every aspect of the body.

 

Ice blocks levitated into the air and then crashed into one another, merging. A dome started coming into shape It was difficult. Stupidly difficult.

 

The aura got even more intense as tens of thousands of intents combined and tangled.

 

The Qi gathered below his feet, into the solid, hardened ice. He was still running. Blocks of ice continued to rise, one piece after another. A dome was formed that enveloped his body from all sides.

 

The pressure kept mounting. As more and more of the monsters and specters gathered the effect on reality further solidified. Thoughts, and desires of thousands of creatures forcefully moved the atmospheric Qi and a massive formation was on the verge of being constructed.

 

His only refuge was the Grand Formation.

 

The dorm had to be morphed until it was sticking with his body otherwise it would consume too much Qi. The pressure was too great and he was in no condition to waste his Qi. The ice dome morphed, the forward-facing direction gaining a sharp edge. A sharp, aerodynamic construction that would protect him from the air and to a lesser degree, attacks that he could not deflect all the while it cut through the monsters.

 

It was still a dead object. It could do nothing for him in its current state.

 

Qi strings extended out and connected with it, he quickly applied the spell formula no the construct. Qi threads remained connected, acting as a bridge for the Qi to travel.

 

Acceleration!

 

Impact. He collided with the army.

 

He had to do one thing only, clear a path. Only that. The rest would be handled by his spell matrix.

 

Unending, undefendable. Just like rain. The attacks were numerous, it revived his dead expectations. The thing he desired so dearly. It was just ahead. He just had to compromise. He just had to let go. All that was needed was a little half-heartedness. He would die. It would be quick, and painless.

 

Even his body would be obliterated.

 

The price for his desire was too heavy, how could he break the promise?

 

What would he be without even that? He was nothing. He had no dream. He had no desire. He had nothing. What would he tell them? How would he face them? He had endured until now and he would continue doing so despite the misery.

 

Icy whips arose, their heads changing into sharp blades. With a buzz, blades spun. Hundreds faced the grinders as they tore through the bodies, cutting off the appendages of some, and whole bodies of others. 

 

He cut a path straight path toward the barrier.

 

Just a few seconds was all it should take but that was when he performed exceptionally in his optimal condition. With his current condition, he could not do that.  He still needed to save some level of endurance for the last stretch of the journey.

 

The construct kept morphing, its edge getting sharper and stronger. All he needed to do was to make sure nothing dangerous could hit it.

 

Thousands of threads surrounded the ice construct relaying data about the surroundings. The quantity was massive and it had to be processed. The massive load heated his brain despite having automated many steps that cut off much of the useless noise in the data.

 

He endured. This plain was anything but even, filled with pits, and cracks all caused by the constant battles that took place. Crossing this stretch of land at high speed required constant surveillance of the land.

 

Alarms. Multiple Qi threads pinged him simultaneously. His focus snapped there. Something fast. One of his whips moved, and its blade sliced through the claw. 

 

The construct shuddered, strong gales hit from all sides as the air was thrown into disorder from powerful attacks.

 

Another ping. A tentacle carrying a crushing power capable of mincing anything in its path. He waited.

 

Waited.

 

Waited.

 

Just the pressure was enough to cause cracks in the construct. He used that pressure. The bottom of the construct changed, morphing into a cone. The air made it spin, moving it just barely. He jumped just before the tentacle hit the ground. Whips moved, cutting it to pieces.

 

An opening. He slipped through it. His goal was to run away, not fight until he died.

 

They followed. He deflected some and dodged many more but just the number of attacks made it impossible to deflect or evade all. He had to take hits but as the number of attacks that he dodged increased, the number of hits he had to take also rose. 

 

He had to endure. He had to fulfill the promise.

 

Ice pierced through the frozen ground, chaining a specter, and then he again spun. The kinetic energy transformed into centrifugal energy. The chains were further strengthened. The Qi burst into explosive motion multiplying the power as he spun. 

 

Cracks spread through his frozen limbs, on the verge of shattering.

 

A circular space was cleared with him at the center. The chain was in rags and the monster bared its fangs. He had gained precious few seconds.

 

Qi circulated in the circuits, moving faster and faster. He readied his arsenal and as the wave came back, he accelerated back to top speed.

 

He killed where he needed to, side-stepped, and evaded doing what the situation demanded.

 

***

 

It should at most have taken a few minutes but just as the time had slowed down to a crawl, the few kilometers of distance seemed to have stretched to infinity. It appeared to be never-ending. The monster kept attacking. It did not matter how many he killed they were unending, unrelenting.

 

It had been more than a hundred years since the last major expansion of the Grand Formation. Since then, this place had been a constant battlefield with most of them between the monsters and the specters unless some humans were courageous enough, powerful enough, and mad enough to willingly venture out of the barrier.

 

Vestiges of constant battles scared the land. The geography had been changed, twisted. What should have been a wide open plain was littered with pits, big and small. Hills and valleys, gorges, cracks some of which just kept going down.

 

Another ping. He further accelerated, his focus sharpened. The distance was covered instantly.

 

A massive crater was just ahead. Qi passed through the Qi strings forcing his will on the frozen ground. It morphed and changed into an inclined plane.

 

He flew across the barrier. The whips spun as they cut a massive number of things that wanted to kill him.

 

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The construct changed again. The blade portion of the edge became longer, sharper, and harder as he quickly updated the spell formula in this current moment of peacefulness. 

 

Thunderous roar.

 

Thunder rumbled. Massive voltages passed through the clouds above. They started small but quickly grew up to be goliaths. It looked as though massive snakes were flying inside the clouds. The lightning struck the ground at regular intervals, breaking into smaller snakes that shocked anything in the range to death. 

 

It was like pillars of lights descending from the sky, one after another.

 

The ground exploded in the aftermath, and ice vaporized. Just the shockwaves of the impact were difficult to bear but hidden in chaos existed opportunity. With everything in similar disarray, it was a perfect chance to get out of there.

 

***

 

Cracks spread through the construct. It was on the verge of shattering and as though that was not enough, he could not fully concentrate. He had been lapsing out only to realize and forcefully concentrate again. It was with much difficulty that he kept the direction correct.

 

The time between each thunder strike shrunk. Despite giving his best he could not save himself from the current. He had been shocked many times but within the limit of his endurance. He would not have survived a direct thunderstrike.

 

He endured the shocks and changed his path a little bit. Just enough that he would pass through the outskirts of the thunder strikes. The shocks allowed him to wake up and forced his mind to concentrate.

 

The air screamed as he passed through the bodies, cutting through them. It was a test, of whether he could endure or would be overwhelmed by the massively greater number of monsters. All the monster needed to achieve was lowering his momentum. It needed to flatter just a bit, lose a few percent of its energy and he would come to halt.

 

He ramped up the speed again while strengthening the blades and grinding the ice sharper.

 

It was a constant cycle. The bodies were hard and his speed was fast. The pressure on the construct only jumped higher. It forced him to decide, where would he use his Qi. With constant attacks and lightning strikes, the construct was repeatedly damaged. It took a lot of Qi to repair it.

 

He doubled down on offense. Either he would survive or he would die while taking as many with him as possible.

 

With the Qi being diverted to enhance the basic skeleton and the blade, the rest of the construct quickly deteriorated. The attacks were like droplets of water that ate through the stone. Though he avoided most of them, they scrapped the protective layer a bit at a time.

 

Vibrations. They were light at first but as time passed he could hear cracking noise. The noise around him made it difficult to find the source of the vibrations but before he could do anything, big cracks spread through the construct. Save for the base skeleton that was further enhanced, everything else shattered.

 

Winds came, filled with ice spikes. At his speed, they could not be ignored. It forced him to create a covering at the front. 

 

This world was cold. Incredibly cold. Now there to protect, his feeble body fell prey to the harsh glacial winds.

 

It was impossible to escape for rain intact. Even with an umbrella at the very least legs would end up getting wet. The attacks rained down from every direction creating a net. No place was safe and with even the construct gone, he was forced to endure again.

 

The damage accumulated. The outer frozen part of his body just shattered but he did not change his direction. He would speed up even if it meant sacrificing the body.

 

He just needed to make sure he did not stray away from what he had promised.

 

***

 

He had been increasing the speed repeatedly but it seemed to have no effect.

 

He gained another boost but even the construct was reaching its limit. It was made quickly and the fact that it had endured this much was due to the repeated strengthening of its structure. The skeleton remained only for one reason, to provide sturdy support to the blade as it cut through rock-solid bodies.

 

He distributed all of his mental capacity to maneuver through the tight net of assaults and the lightning that crawled through the frozen water. The tangible aura of hate only became more intense.

 

He was hopeful. Maybe he would die here. Surely the aura would fully materialize soon marking his end. He hoped he would die here. He tried his best not to because the promise took precedence over his desire, no matter how much that hurt.

 

Running, spinning, evading, cutting. It was all a wind whirl and he could not even understand what was happening. He just moved at the right time to the right place, always finding paths of least resistance.

 

His body started breaking down and Qi started dwindling. Some of it was used, and other leaked out of the broken Qi circuits.

 

Dense Qi supporting the core started to dry up. It had been unraveling at a slow speed and escaped his notice but after the repeated accelerations to remain at high speed, its usage had sped up. He only notice it now when the density had fallen below the critical point. 

 

The core reacted, increasing the speed at which it expelled the Qi but it was still not quick enough. A pulse spread inside the core. It trembled. He had a very small window remaining before even the core gave out.

 

Speed.

 

His internal Qi went haywire becoming even more chaotic. The circuits exploded unable to endure any longer. The leakage further increased. First of the dominos had fallen, rest followed. Massive and complex circuitry that existed inside his body started breaking apart.

 

The amount of Qi leaking skyrocketed.

 

He ramped up the speed. That was the only thing he could do. After repeated boosts, he could no longer control the construct. It was just too fast, before he could even process the sensory data he would have gone far away, it made thousands of Qi threads useless.

 

Qi strings came back inside the body, deconstructed and Qi within them was recycled. It was minuscule.

 

The blade became blunt after slicing through one monster after another. The spell he had carved tried to repair the damage but the speed was too high. Before the restoration could complete it would accumulate even more damage.

 

***

 

First to shatter was his right arm, then the left followed by his legs. He felt nothing, he had long since stopped feeling anything from them.

 

The closer he got to the Grand Formation, the worse the topography became. Uneven, riddled with deeper pits, massive cracks hiding within many monsters. He was blind but he knew what kinds of things would be there.

 

He accelerated trying to reach the fastest speed that he could endure. With nothing else to do he doubled down on improving the spell on the construct by optimizing the flow of the Qi, how the Qi strengthened the construct etcetera.

 

He was almost there, he could feel it. He could feel the aura around the barrier. It was only possible to sense when one neared it.

 

Howles filled with anger and anguish echoed. The individual sound resonated, creating a storm filled with ill will, anger, and desire to kill. It warped reality a bit more.

 

Just a bit more and he would be trapped but now it did not matter, he had escaped inside.

 

***

 

Suffocation. It was awful, this feeling even worse than hunger and as bad as the itch. That feeling of helplessness returned.

 

Vital Qi circulated through the surviving circuits, and a rejuvenating effect spread through the Organs that it circulated through. 

 

Just a bit longer.

 

The air was violently torn apart as he sprinted at high speed, his direction set towards the massive Qi signature that he could sense from this far away.

 

Settlement.

 

With nothing blocking his way, he had reached the highest speed. Monsters were inhabiting the barrier but they were not an army. Before they could even understand what was happening, he was long gone.

 

Finally!

 

He had kept the promise, he had survived. Suddenly he tumbled, crashing at high speed. The remaining trickle of Qi instinctively surrounded his head and chest.

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