The entire cavern exploded into action. The people nearest to me acting first caused a ripple effect to go outwards to the rest of the group that wasn’t reacting to me but instead to the klaxon going throughout the entire camp.
None of that distracted me as I hopped into the lightning bolt and rode it to the entrance of the cavern. Despite the impressive speed of my [Chain Lightning] that distance still took a few seconds to travel. I stopped just short of the entrance and tried to blast through on speed alone.
One of the soldiers had been given enough time to gather himself and swung at me with the sword in his hand. I intentionally didn’t activate [Dodge]. Instead, I chose to save it for another situation. One second of heightened speed on a one-minute cooldown.
That one minute might as well have been an eternity in combat. No, I needed to save it for a more dire situation, this was not one of those.
Sliding under the attack with contemptuous ease I made it out of the cavern.
The soldiers out here were much more focused. I wasn’t sure how much time I had to try and make my getaway here. If Lurks got within range of me now I was screwed, the entire attempt was done. It would take her at most a couple of seconds to wrangle me under her control. No, I was in a serious time crunch right now, any of the cell block leaders could beat me down given they were all in the fourth tier. Nothing to say of Drikith being stronger either.
I highly doubted he would bother with me though.
I took a brief moment to view my entire surroundings. And by that, I mean my entire surroundings. [OWN] was good for things like that. I saw Soldiers rushing around covering travel points, I saw the giant spotlight pillars glowing red, and the slaves were just looking around confused and scared.
In my brief hesitation, the soldiers behind me caught up, I reacted quickly spinning around blade flying up to block the attack coming down on me. I formed a dagger out of the ground and flicked it up with my foot catching it in my off-hand and using it to try and shank the soldier.
He backed off quickly, his friends running to my sides to assist him.
I didn’t stick around. I turned around and bolted, bounding across the ground and throwing up barriers wherever I could to slow them down.
The entrance to the cave was a giant circle, at the edges of the circle you had five paths that led to different areas of the gorge. Those paths would branch inside into the artificial pathways the slaves had made, the five main ones that just existed naturally. Or so I assumed.
The farthest right one was the one I wanted to take. It was the only one that didn’t lead to more mining operations and was instead was the only way in or out of the gorge without scaling the walls.
I hummed thoughtfully to myself as I ran. Why couldn’t I just go up?
I started spawning barriers under me and leaped up and up and up, quickly clearing distance. Immediately dozens of arrows blasted through the sky from above me.
I let out a yell of panic and threw a dozen angled barriers in front of me and then used another one to launch myself back to the ground, landing heavily.
I pulsed a heal through my legs. The dull ache that had been building disappeared and I stood up looking above to see my barriers.
I started running while I observed. Some of the arrows bounced or skittered off, but every now and again one would just punch straight through a barrier like it was made of paper.
Okay, so going up wasn’t good. I panned my view with one of my minds to determine where the arrows had come from. Most of them had come from soldiers on the walls, others had come from the spotlight pillars. Or I guess they were towers if archers were on top of them shooting from them.
That put a damper on my plans.
Suddenly there was a flash to my side and I immediately threw myself to the side and panic spawned a bunch of barriers. A sword slammed into the barriers cutting through half a dozen of them before stopping.
“Hah! You respond quickly slave, I wonder what possessed you to try and break out, but that doesn’t matter now. I’ll do my best to make it painless.”
The voice of the woman was almost friendly. Almost. There was an underlayer of menace in her words. Looking up I managed to get a quick view of her. Long blonde hair, perfectly straight, came out the back under her helmet, and piercing blue eyes met mine. She was one of those girls that were beautiful and knew it too. She was flaunting her appearance, swaying her hips sensually as she walked, giving me an arrogant smirk.
I bared my teeth back at her as I rolled backward flipping to my feet and taking a defensive stance.
“You’re pretty cute, it’s gonna be a shame to have to hurt you,” I quipped back at her.
She stopped for a moment before laughing loudly, “You’ve got balls elf. Let’s see if your fighting is as solid as your testicles then shall we?”
She then disappeared in a blast of wind. My mind erupted in action trying to determine where she went.
Not left, not right, not behind. I nearly didn’t snap my sword up in time to avoid being brained. I activated [Enchanted Redirection] and used it to redirect her sword to the side and then jumped upwards rotating around and planted a kick in her ribs. With a grunt of effort, I used it to launch her behind me clearing up my path ahead of me which I then started sprinting down at full speed.
I’d avoided using combative skills so far while outside, I hoped to keep it that way while I could.
Using my local omniscience I saw the woman land on her feet using her wind magic. She ran a hand along her side before looking in my direction and taking off.
She was gaining quickly.
I brought up a bunch of tendrils, manually controlling each one to try and grab her. It shouldn’t be considered an attack. None of the pillars activated focusing on me so I kept it up.
To little avail. She quickly bounded through each and everyone, twirling with impossible grace. Half of it seemed like she was just showing off as she flipped, rotated, and practically flew over the tendrils. My efforts weren’t slowing her at all.
Worse other soldiers were starting to approach, from the front and the back. I quickly grabbed an overall view piecing together positions in my mind. I started spreading more flowers and plant life to get a better idea of the map in my mind.
My mind worked overtime coming up with a plan and a path. I smiled a little as the pieces started to come together. There was a branch off the path coming up. I had to take it.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t make a straight run away, but I could run around the opposition to make it out instead. In fact, that was my only choice.
Sparks erupted out of my feet with every stride I took, I saw my path coming up on me as I sprinted covering massive distances with each step. I formed a wall of barriers and ran up them using them to curve me while I wall-ran across them so I could change my direction without losing speed.
The turn was almost instant at the speed I was traveling at, unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to lose, or even slow down my follower. I growled in annoyance. I didn’t want to fight her. She could potentially kill me if I wasn’t careful, but it looked like I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to kill her easily, but I needed to hurt her somehow. Without using attack skills…
This wasn’t going to be easy.
I jumped doing a half turn and landed sliding across the dirt. The woman launched herself forward with a blast of wind so fast I almost couldn’t keep track of her. She aimed to take off my head, but I swung both of my weapons to meet hers in the air… and my blades shattered on contact, splinters of wood going everywhere.
I quickly bounced back, using one of my minds to form another pair of weapons that I grabbed just in time to meet her next attacks at me.
A veritable whirlwind of attacks came against me, each one I barely managed to parry or dodge with only inches of room to spare.
She was easily the fastest opponent I had ever faced, and the problem I had been worried about came to the forefront of my mind. An opponent faster than me was one I didn’t know how to fully deal with. Especially one that outclassed me so thoroughly.
She let out a joyous laugh as I struggled to hold on, “What level are you? Last I heard you weren’t even third tier! And yet you fight so well! It will definitely be a shame to kill you, I wish I could’ve kept you myself!”
Anger built up at her words, but I didn’t have the mind space to try and banter with her.
A bit of hatred built up in my heart though at the, more than likely, unintentional dig at keeping me as a pet.
I managed to find a slight opening to attack and I took it with zero hesitation, activating [Second Strike] at the same time. She blocked my attack and wasn’t fully prepared for the return stroke that clipped her as she tried to dodge out of the way.
I didn’t stick around to see how she would respond and immediately threw up barriers in between us and turned around to run and took one step before a bright light flared into my view.
One of the pillars nearby was a neon green instead of the red of all the others. And it was looking right at me.
Fuck I used an attack skill.
I immediately shot out [Chain Lightning] and jumped into it. It carried me a distance away and I hopped out of it. Once again using my omniscience I was able to see the aftermath of the attack. The woman was still alive, having just been outside of the collateral since she had dodged backward. The ground was melted and looked like glass where I had been standing instead.
I swallowed. I doubt I’d be able to survive that. How much heat did that attack even output? How could they sustain that?
Not important, I started pathing again in my mind, what was the best path to avoid the towers at this point? Something I had noticed with my sight was that only the tower that had seen me attack had reacted. All the others were still ‘dormant’, waiting for their moment to react to an attack.
After my [Chain Lighting] the same tower was looking for me, but I was just out of sight by pressing against the wall underneath it. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to just wait it out and I didn’t have time to do so. The wind woman was rallying and one of the other soldiers had caught up with her and helped her out.
I didn’t feel confident in being able to fight two at once, especially with how strong she was. I started taking time to [Identify] every soldier I could. Maybe knowing their levels wouldn’t help, but maybe it would.
I turned and started sprinting along the wall underneath the tower. In front of me, there was a squad of maybe a dozen soldiers. I couldn’t go back given the fucking wind demoness behind me, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to press forward either.
I focused on them with my eyes squinting as we approached each other. None of them had bows.
Perfect.
I made a barrier to leap off of. I shot up into the air several dozen feet by using barriers to bounce off of and then used one to launch forward putting me behind the group.
I landed on the ground in a roll, springing to my feet. I took off in a sprint as the soldiers behind me yelled and turned around to chase after me. They kept pace with me pretty easily though, some of them even starting to gain on me slightly.
I started spawning tendrils again and managed to grab some of the slower ones. The faster ones managed to slide around the roots with relative ease. Although with far less grace than the wind demoness.
I kept running forward, doing my best to keep track of all the soldiers I could while also trying to keep track of my path. It was difficult, but I managed it. I kept running in a straight line.
I needed to break the line of sight somehow, if I could break the line of sight I could break away and take a slightly more roundabout way to get to my exit point. How to do that though?
I quickly mapped out the positions of all the spotlight towers. There was a T intersection coming up. Underneath it was a tunnel, the tunnel ended up on the opposite side of the tower and would allow me to loop around back near the cavern entrance, I could then take a branching path up to my exit point.
If I could get above the gorge I could easily escape. I already knew what skill to use to break the line of sight as well.
Nodding to myself, with my plan of action determined. I poured on every last ounce of speed I had, the tunnel was off to the side of the intersection slightly. That was fine and would serve my purposes better. I started using my omniscience to spawn tendrils out of the ground in the intersection and down the path on a more direct route to the gorge entrance.
Once I made it to the intersection Several more tendrils sprouted up and about half a dozen of them fired [Paralyzing Blast], the balls of lightning shot out at the group and I intentionally detonated them when they were a short distance away.
The balls flashed brightly and violently as they exploded outwards, making the soldiers coming up on me stop and wait, slightly covering their eyes. From there I sprinted in the opposite direction of my tendrils and slid into the tunnel. I quickly slowed my steps to a walk and tried to meld into the dark parts of the tunnel. Thankfully no one was in there, it looked more like a convenient passage to reach other parts of the gorge rather than a place where someone would actually be working.
There weren’t really any places to hide in it though, no convenient cracks or crevices to try and squeeze into so I just had to press myself up against the wall and hope I didn’t get noticed.
After a few moments, I saw, through my vision, the soldiers following the trail of tendrils I made. I enhanced the deception by making them try and grab at their ankles and trip them up. They ran down the false path with confidence, leaving me to my own devices.
I took a deep breath. Alright.
Phase one down, let's move on to phase two then shall we?
The entire cavern exploded into action. The people nearest to me acting first caused a ripple effect to go outwards to the rest of the group that wasn’t reacting to me but instead to the klaxon going throughout the entire camp.
None of that distracted me as I hopped into the lightning bolt and rode it to the entrance of the cavern. Despite the impressive speed of my [Chain Lightning] that distance still took a few seconds to travel. I stopped just short of the entrance and tried to blast through on speed alone.
One of the soldiers had been given enough time to gather himself and swung at me with the sword in his hand. I intentionally didn’t activate [Dodge]. Instead, I chose to save it for another situation. One second of heightened speed on a one-minute cooldown.
That one minute might as well have been an eternity in combat. No, I needed to save it for a more dire situation, this was not one of those.
Sliding under the attack with contemptuous ease I made it out of the cavern.
The soldiers out here were much more focused. I wasn’t sure how much time I had to try and make my getaway here. If Lurks got within range of me now I was screwed, the entire attempt was done. It would take her at most a couple of seconds to wrangle me under her control. No, I was in a serious time crunch right now, any of the cell block leaders could beat me down given they were all in the fourth tier. Nothing to say of Drikith being stronger either.
I highly doubted he would bother with me though.
I took a brief moment to view my entire surroundings. And by that, I mean my entire surroundings. [OWN] was good for things like that. I saw Soldiers rushing around covering travel points, I saw the giant spotlight pillars glowing red, and the slaves were just looking around confused and scared.
In my brief hesitation, the soldiers behind me caught up, I reacted quickly spinning around blade flying up to block the attack coming down on me. I formed a dagger out of the ground and flicked it up with my foot catching it in my off-hand and using it to try and shank the soldier.
He backed off quickly, his friends running to my sides to assist him.
I didn’t stick around. I turned around and bolted, bounding across the ground and throwing up barriers wherever I could to slow them down.
The entrance to the cave was a giant circle, at the edges of the circle you had five paths that led to different areas of the gorge. Those paths would branch inside into the artificial pathways the slaves had made, the five main ones that just existed naturally. Or so I assumed.
The farthest right one was the one I wanted to take. It was the only one that didn’t lead to more mining operations and was instead was the only way in or out of the gorge without scaling the walls.
I hummed thoughtfully to myself as I ran. Why couldn’t I just go up?
I started spawning barriers under me and leaped up and up and up, quickly clearing distance. Immediately dozens of arrows blasted through the sky from above me.
I let out a yell of panic and threw a dozen angled barriers in front of me and then used another one to launch myself back to the ground, landing heavily.
I pulsed a heal through my legs. The dull ache that had been building disappeared and I stood up looking above to see my barriers.
I started running while I observed. Some of the arrows bounced or skittered off, but every now and again one would just punch straight through a barrier like it was made of paper.
Okay, so going up wasn’t good. I panned my view with one of my minds to determine where the arrows had come from. Most of them had come from soldiers on the walls, others had come from the spotlight pillars. Or I guess they were towers if archers were on top of them shooting from them.
That put a damper on my plans.
Suddenly there was a flash to my side and I immediately threw myself to the side and panic spawned a bunch of barriers. A sword slammed into the barriers cutting through half a dozen of them before stopping.
“Hah! You respond quickly slave, I wonder what possessed you to try and break out, but that doesn’t matter now. I’ll do my best to make it painless.”
The voice of the woman was almost friendly. Almost. There was an underlayer of menace in her words. Looking up I managed to get a quick view of her. Long blonde hair, perfectly straight, came out the back under her helmet, and piercing blue eyes met mine. She was one of those girls that were beautiful and knew it too. She was flaunting her appearance, swaying her hips sensually as she walked, giving me an arrogant smirk.
I bared my teeth back at her as I rolled backward flipping to my feet and taking a defensive stance.
“You’re pretty cute, it’s gonna be a shame to have to hurt you,” I quipped back at her.
She stopped for a moment before laughing loudly, “You’ve got balls elf. Let’s see if your fighting is as solid as your testicles then shall we?”
She then disappeared in a blast of wind. My mind erupted in action trying to determine where she went.
Not left, not right, not behind. I nearly didn’t snap my sword up in time to avoid being brained. I activated [Enchanted Redirection] and used it to redirect her sword to the side and then jumped upwards rotating around and planted a kick in her ribs. With a grunt of effort, I used it to launch her behind me clearing up my path ahead of me which I then started sprinting down at full speed.
I’d avoided using combative skills so far while outside, I hoped to keep it that way while I could.
Using my local omniscience I saw the woman land on her feet using her wind magic. She ran a hand along her side before looking in my direction and taking off.
She was gaining quickly.
I brought up a bunch of tendrils, manually controlling each one to try and grab her. It shouldn’t be considered an attack. None of the pillars activated focusing on me so I kept it up.
To little avail. She quickly bounded through each and everyone, twirling with impossible grace. Half of it seemed like she was just showing off as she flipped, rotated, and practically flew over the tendrils. My efforts weren’t slowing her at all.
Worse other soldiers were starting to approach, from the front and the back. I quickly grabbed an overall view piecing together positions in my mind. I started spreading more flowers and plant life to get a better idea of the map in my mind.
My mind worked overtime coming up with a plan and a path. I smiled a little as the pieces started to come together. There was a branch off the path coming up. I had to take it.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t make a straight run away, but I could run around the opposition to make it out instead. In fact, that was my only choice.
Sparks erupted out of my feet with every stride I took, I saw my path coming up on me as I sprinted covering massive distances with each step. I formed a wall of barriers and ran up them using them to curve me while I wall-ran across them so I could change my direction without losing speed.
The turn was almost instant at the speed I was traveling at, unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to lose, or even slow down my follower. I growled in annoyance. I didn’t want to fight her. She could potentially kill me if I wasn’t careful, but it looked like I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to kill her easily, but I needed to hurt her somehow. Without using attack skills…
This wasn’t going to be easy.
I jumped doing a half turn and landed sliding across the dirt. The woman launched herself forward with a blast of wind so fast I almost couldn’t keep track of her. She aimed to take off my head, but I swung both of my weapons to meet hers in the air… and my blades shattered on contact, splinters of wood going everywhere.
I quickly bounced back, using one of my minds to form another pair of weapons that I grabbed just in time to meet her next attacks at me.
A veritable whirlwind of attacks came against me, each one I barely managed to parry or dodge with only inches of room to spare.
She was easily the fastest opponent I had ever faced, and the problem I had been worried about came to the forefront of my mind. An opponent faster than me was one I didn’t know how to fully deal with. Especially one that outclassed me so thoroughly.
She let out a joyous laugh as I struggled to hold on, “What level are you? Last I heard you weren’t even third tier! And yet you fight so well! It will definitely be a shame to kill you, I wish I could’ve kept you myself!”
Anger built up at her words, but I didn’t have the mind space to try and banter with her.
A bit of hatred built up in my heart though at the, more than likely, unintentional dig at keeping me as a pet.
I managed to find a slight opening to attack and I took it with zero hesitation, activating [Second Strike] at the same time. She blocked my attack and wasn’t fully prepared for the return stroke that clipped her as she tried to dodge out of the way.
I didn’t stick around to see how she would respond and immediately threw up barriers in between us and turned around to run and took one step before a bright light flared into my view.
One of the pillars nearby was a neon green instead of the red of all the others. And it was looking right at me.
Fuck I used an attack skill.
I immediately shot out [Chain Lightning] and jumped into it. It carried me a distance away and I hopped out of it. Once again using my omniscience I was able to see the aftermath of the attack. The woman was still alive, having just been outside of the collateral since she had dodged backward. The ground was melted and looked like glass where I had been standing instead.
I swallowed. I doubt I’d be able to survive that. How much heat did that attack even output? How could they sustain that?
Not important, I started pathing again in my mind, what was the best path to avoid the towers at this point? Something I had noticed with my sight was that only the tower that had seen me attack had reacted. All the others were still ‘dormant’, waiting for their moment to react to an attack.
After my [Chain Lighting] the same tower was looking for me, but I was just out of sight by pressing against the wall underneath it. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to just wait it out and I didn’t have time to do so. The wind woman was rallying and one of the other soldiers had caught up with her and helped her out.
I didn’t feel confident in being able to fight two at once, especially with how strong she was. I started taking time to [Identify] every soldier I could. Maybe knowing their levels wouldn’t help, but maybe it would.
I turned and started sprinting along the wall underneath the tower. In front of me, there was a squad of maybe a dozen soldiers. I couldn’t go back given the fucking wind demoness behind me, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to press forward either.
I focused on them with my eyes squinting as we approached each other. None of them had bows.
Perfect.
I made a barrier to leap off of. I shot up into the air several dozen feet by using barriers to bounce off of and then used one to launch forward putting me behind the group.
I landed on the ground in a roll, springing to my feet. I took off in a sprint as the soldiers behind me yelled and turned around to chase after me. They kept pace with me pretty easily though, some of them even starting to gain on me slightly.
I started spawning tendrils again and managed to grab some of the slower ones. The faster ones managed to slide around the roots with relative ease. Although with far less grace than the wind demoness.
I kept running forward, doing my best to keep track of all the soldiers I could while also trying to keep track of my path. It was difficult, but I managed it. I kept running in a straight line.
I needed to break the line of sight somehow, if I could break the line of sight I could break away and take a slightly more roundabout way to get to my exit point. How to do that though?
I quickly mapped out the positions of all the spotlight towers. There was a T intersection coming up. Underneath it was a tunnel, the tunnel ended up on the opposite side of the tower and would allow me to loop around back near the cavern entrance, I could then take a branching path up to my exit point.
If I could get above the gorge I could easily escape. I already knew what skill to use to break the line of sight as well.
Nodding to myself, with my plan of action determined. I poured on every last ounce of speed I had, the tunnel was off to the side of the intersection slightly. That was fine and would serve my purposes better. I started using my omniscience to spawn tendrils out of the ground in the intersection and down the path on a more direct route to the gorge entrance.
Once I made it to the intersection Several more tendrils sprouted up and about half a dozen of them fired [Paralyzing Blast], the balls of lightning shot out at the group and I intentionally detonated them when they were a short distance away.
The balls flashed brightly and violently as they exploded outwards, making the soldiers coming up on me stop and wait, slightly covering their eyes. From there I sprinted in the opposite direction of my tendrils and slid into the tunnel. I quickly slowed my steps to a walk and tried to meld into the dark parts of the tunnel. Thankfully no one was in there, it looked more like a convenient passage to reach other parts of the gorge rather than a place where someone would actually be working.
There weren’t really any places to hide in it though, no convenient cracks or crevices to try and squeeze into so I just had to press myself up against the wall and hope I didn’t get noticed.
After a few moments, I saw, through my vision, the soldiers following the trail of tendrils I made. I enhanced the deception by making them try and grab at their ankles and trip them up. They ran down the false path with confidence, leaving me to my own devices.
I took a deep breath. Alright.
Phase one down, let's move on to phase two then shall we?
