Chapter 16: 16 – Tremble

Ruith and Vaeri raced down the cracked pathway, eventually reaching the bottom. They now stood on a destroyed road, plants growing through the gaps in the stone. Crumbled buildings and ones that looked like they were ready to fall surrounded them.

They had seen the group moving a few miles away, it wouldn’t take more than ten minutes to reach them. The two shot forward once again, heading in the general direction that they had seen the humanoid forms.

“We should be close now, let’s get up into that building.” Vaeri said a few minutes later, pointing towards a building that had not fallen yet.

A few seconds later, they burst through the doorway of the building, the door was long destroyed, wooden splinters covered in dust lay on the ground. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dirt, and furniture lay rotten and broken on the floor. 

“There.” Ruith spotted the stairway, moving up with Vaeri following behind.

They traveled up three stories until they reached the roof. The place was eerily quiet, leaving Ruith with an uneasy feeling in his stomach.

The roof of the building had fractures running through it and several large pieces had fallen down. However, the group they saw shouldn’t be more than a few hundred meters away now.

“Get down, don’t let them see you,” Vaeri said while laying down onto her stomach.

They crawled to the edge of the roof, looking down to spot the group. 

“Right there,” Vaeri whispered. 

The evening light was starting to make it harder to see, but Ruith spotted them. It was a group of three, currently standing facing each other about a hundred feet away, closer than the two had thought they would be.

The boy squinted his eyes, almost sensing something wrong with them.

“Humans, you think?” Ruith asked Vaeri.

“I can’t tell yet.”

They continued watching the three, until one of them moved enough for the two atop the roof to see the front of one of the beings.

Though it was hard to see, Ruith was able to make out their features. It seemed to be a short-haired and human young man at first, but there was definitely something wrong. He had pitch black eyes with no pupils, and peeking from under his collar, black scales could just barely be seen.

Ruith’s eyes widened as he turned to Vaeri.

“They’re Voidborne…”

The girl nodded. “But I’ve never seen a kind of Voidborne that looks so close to humans in appearance,” She said with confusion evident on her features. “We should just get out of here, this is a type of Voidborne I don’t think anyone has ever come across before.”

“Wait,” Ruith said as he tugged her sleeve when she began to move back. “They’re Voidborne, shouldn’t we…fight them? They don’t seem too powerful.”

Another perk of gaining a red mana core was that he could now roughly sense the mana core level of anyone who wasn’t insanely more powerful than him. 

Ruith felt as though these three were all around the gray core stage. He and Vaeri were only a red and brown core, but he had no doubt that they were much more powerful than the average human at their level.

“It’s too dangerous, Ruith. They’re obviously intelligent creatures, far different than the ones we’ve fought so far. Plus we have literally no information on them,” Vaeri responded in an annoyed whisper.

“We’ve sparred together and you’ve fought humans before though, right? This can’t be much different,” Ruith said.

“We have no idea if the estimate of their power level we see is actually accurate. For all we know, they could be much more powerful than our standard for a gray core.”

“Ugh, fine.” Ruith understood what she meant. It would indeed be dangerous without knowing the capabilities of their opponents, but in the end they were Voidborne and probably not that much more powerful than them. It left a sour taste in his mouth to spare what were likely Voidborne, even if they were humanoid.

Ruith and Vaeri began to quietly crawl backwards, their clothes brushing against the stone. Once they were far enough from the edge, they stood.

“Let’s just go back towards the wall by the cathedral, we can get out through one of the gaps in the wall.” Vaeri was looking towards the wall that they had fully seen from the little outlook. It was just like the others, covered in vines with several massive portions destroyed.

But as they walked across the roof, Ruith felt the ground shift underneath his feet.

‘Huh?’

He looked down at the cracked stone beneath his boots.

A few feet in front of him, a crack started to spread across the roof, making little sounds along the way. 

And then it widened.

“Oh shit…”

A large portion of the roof began to fall to the floor below, and Ruith quickly stepped over the crack to save himself. However, that would not prevent the noise that this event was about to make…

BOOOOM!

The stone slammed into the floor below, which caused that floor to also start to sag and crack. Dust billowed out of the new hole in the roof.

Ruith and Vaeri looked at each other, grimacing. There was literally zero chance the group of three Voidborne hadn’t heard that.

“...”

“Let’s get out of here. Fast,” Ruith said.

“Yeah, probably a good idea.”

They stood at the edge opposite of where the Voidborne would come from, and jumped. Ruith slammed into the ground, his joints creaking.

The two of them burst into a sprint while also being as silent as possible. But when they were only a few hundred feet away… Ruith looked back and saw the group of three come around the corner of the building that they had just been on top of.

Ruith and Vaeri had no time to take cover. They were running on the edge of the road, and hadn’t expected the Voidborne to be there so fast.

The three were staring up at the building, wondering what had caused it to collapse when the young man they had seen looked away. Directly at Ruith and Vaeri making their retreat. His eyebrows raised, and he opened his mouth to shout.

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“Valkrt yihviur caelum! Halkoun?!”

A string of words that the two had absolutely no idea the meaning of was let loose from the young man’s mouth.

The other two in the group also looked at them. They seemed to also be not that much older than Ruith and Vaeri. Then, all three of them squinted, observing the two.

The young man once again shouted words that they couldn’t understand.

“Navlae…Scorkaou!”

At his words, all three of them began to sprint after Ruith and Vaeri.

“Oh shit…Vaeri, go into the ruins! They are too fast for us to simply outrun!”

Vaeri gave a subtle nod, and the two of them veered off into the overgrown rubble of Bastion Idrulia.

Their boots slammed against a narrow road almost completely covered in broken pieces of stone and shrubbery growing out of every single crack.

Ruith’s speed reached new heights, adrenaline coursing through his veins. They both skidded to a stop, shooting off to the side and onto a new path. It seemed to be an alleyway, well, it would’ve been if the buildings weren’t piles of dust.

The two glanced back. The group of Voidborne reached the same place just a few seconds after them.

“Shit,” Ruith said under his breath.

He looked at their surroundings. Trees of varying sizes and long vines grew everywhere.

‘Perfect.’

Ruith sent his mana down into the ground, and made it move towards a few of the trees that were close to their current road. In a few seconds, he took control of five of them. It was a sizable drain on his mana, but all worth it.

The boy glanced back again, this time activating Mana Sight, allowing him to see the mana in the world.

‘Need to see if they’re going to attack…’

Sure enough, the young man raised a hand, and Ruith saw him raise a hand, the faint glow of mana traveling down his arm.

“Vaeri, we can’t outrun them.”

They ran out of this ruined alleyway, and came out onto a much wider road. Though it was of course in no better shape than the alleyway.

‘Alright, this is a good place.’

Ruith grinded to a stop, his boots sliding on the stone beneath him. Vaeri also stopped after him.

They turned back towards the Voidborne just in time to see the young man jab his hand forward, the group barely a hundred feet away from them.

Glowing white flame burst forth from the tips of the man's fingers. It was as though a beam of light had appeared from thin air, warping the air as it traveled towards them. However, Ruith was no longer simply a black core, and he expected an attack.

‘Fuck, of course it had to be fire.”

Below the ground, tens of roots moved around, taking their positions in order to ambush the group and defend Ruith and Vaeri.

[Root Barrier]

The stone of the road cracked even more, large roots bursting up and resulting in a rain of stone and dirt. They twisted around each other, forming a curved barrier that was about ten feet in width. It was completed just in time.

WHOOM!

BOOM!

The man’s spell slammed into the barrier, a sizzling sound coming from Ruith’s roots. But its job was done, the barrier had successfully stopped the spell.

‘Damn, 20% of my mana just to stop that!’

Vaeri drew her dagger, and Ruith quickly prepared even more roots that lurked right under the surface.

And then the two of them burst out from behind the barrier.

The group was now around fifty feet away, where they halted as soon as they saw the two humans. The young man seemed to bark out some commands, and the other two men by his side moved forward while he stayed put.

Both of the young men were tall, approaching seven feet at the least. They had dark red hair and grayish skin. Their pitch black eyes were locked onto the two humans in front of them.

In their hands appeared large, two handed swords.

‘The fuck? Where did those come from?’ Ruith wondered. But they had no more time to spare.

“Vaeri, I’ll stay back and attack. Can you deal with the two in front? I’ll defend you from the Voidborne in the back,” Ruith said hurriedly.

Vaeri nodded, blasting forward to meet the two men head on.

Ruith used even more of his mana, sending it into the ground. Almost a hundred roots of varying sizes were now under his control.

The ground trembled.

Ruith smirked.

“Idiots.”

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