John’s mind went into overdrive as he tried to figure out how to survive this. He was certain this blackness was caused by the black horror of the skies.

‘Jump up?! Fly? I can’t run fast enough through the trees, have to go up!’

He put Larang back in his core as fast as he could and pushed the limits of how much essence he could put in his feet, bending down to the ground. The pure essence from the barg would get to show its worth right away.

He pushed with his entire body, feeling the ground disappear from under him, and then he unleashed the most powerful air blast he could muster from both hands. His bones ached from the sheer force, but he had no choice if he wanted a chance at surviving.

Once his speed was at its highest point, he reduced his weight, adding another seventy percent of velocity. The greatshield was summoned above him, and Larang below his feet, pushing him upwards with its reversed gravity.

On his way up, he felt the branches of the trees hit the shield, but it didn’t reduce his speed by much. Thinking it best to reduce his weight, he put the shield away again, only relying on Larang to carry him away now.

‘Fuck! Please don’t let me hit that horror! Tell me it’s not directly above me!’

He prepared another air blast in his hands, not caring about what would happen to his arms, and fired in an angled direction, away from the spot he had been in. Larang fell from his feet, but a quick resummoning put it back below him, pushing perfectly against his own force of gravity.

The wind was strong enough to force his eyes shut, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to see anything either way. His only hope was to get out of the pitch-black area without the blackbird following him.

‘My luck is so god damn bad! Why would it care about me?!’

Larang kept lifting him ever further away, using its tripled reverse gravity, but it had stopped accelerating now. The wind resistance was as high as their upward drift, braking as much as Larang was boosting.

John begged all the powers that might be to let him live, and let the horror remain behind, uninterested in his scrawny little body. His inner armor was drenched in cold sweat despite the cooling wind.

Then, miraculously, his eyes could sense the light again. He was out of the blackout zone, meaning he at least was escaping faster than the bird was chasing him.

He refused to slow down, but he wanted to look behind him to see what was going on. Turning awkwardly on top of Larang, he tried to open his eyes to see.

‘Ahh, of course…’

The bird was sitting on the treetops, lifting the black corpse of the barg in the air with some kind of wind magic and preparing to chomp down. The thing that caught its interest was food, not some tiny morsel entering its domain unbidden.

John felt almost all the tension lift from his body, nearly knocking him off the sword. Now he could stop panicking and lower his speed, but he was still in a hurry to get below the treeline. Tempting fate was generally a bad idea, after all.

‘Holy shit, that scared the crap out of me! Is that what an invoker is capable of? How would I ever be able to counter that?!’

As he approached the leaves below him, he made Larang slow down, countering the momentum by gently pulling in the opposite direction. It worked surprisingly well as a flying tool, letting him travel faster than a free fall.

‘This would take me about five kilometers in a minute, I think. That’s amazing, especially for not taking any essence… How does that work?’

The inner workings of energy appearing from seemingly nowhere escaped him, but he couldn’t be bothered to care very much. His first priority was getting back on solid ground and then staying there for a while.

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The base he had created for himself was now nearly impossible to find again. He estimated it to be about a kilometer in a different direction, but he was more likely to be wrong than right.

‘Eh, I’m more interested in leaving the forest anyway. Those fractured pieces of land looked very strange, but that’s most likely where I’ll have to go. And I think I’m capable of fighting demons now, or at least capable of escaping.’

Hovering lightly above a treetop, he dismissed Larang and landed on his feet. They were shaking from the adrenaline in his body, as it hadn’t even been a minute since he thought he would die. The only thing saving him was the disinterest of the black bird.

After checking his surroundings and not finding anything, he sat down on the ground and exhaled deeply.

‘This is what I get for overestimating myself. I should have escaped after seeing the defenses of that barg, and even more so after I barely survived its ranged attack… What even was that? It didn’t seem like any spell I’ve ever heard about. Was it… an enchantment?’

It made sense to him that beasts also could gain enchantments, but he couldn’t figure out how they applied them. They didn’t have the brains to use equipment, but maybe there was a way to use body parts as equipment? The attack had come from its claws, after all.

‘Well, it could just be a spell they learn by instinct… Ah, fuck, my shoulder!’

A sudden ache from his shoulder interrupted his thoughts as he tried to lift his arm. The air blasts he had used to escape were stronger than his body could handle, and now he would suffer the consequences.

Circulating essence in wounded body parts luckily had a healing effect, but it still took a while with large wounds. And they didn’t always go back to how they were. It was more like it activated the natural healing of the body, increasing the speed considerably.

The liquid essence started flowing through his entire body, making him feel like he was submerged in a refreshing pool of water. It relieved the aches and bruises, and he took a deep, grateful breath.

‘Ahhh… The effect seems to be even better with liquid essence. Or maybe it has more to do with the quality? Probably a bit of both…’

He lay down on his back, taking a moment to enjoy the calm and quiet forest. The constant sense of danger he had felt up to this point suddenly felt a lot more muted after he managed to beat a demon, even if they were still a threat. Now he knew he could escape most situations as long as they didn’t involve horror-level beasts.

‘Did I make any mistakes during the fight?... The only thing I can think of is that I wasn’t prepared for that ranged attack. I should keep an air blast ready at all times, just in case. Other than that… I did well.’

As he closed his eyes, his thoughts drifted to Earth. The fact that there were horrors there as well would make it just as dangerous as this planet, if not more so. And since humanity had seven weavers on its side, it only made sense that there would be tyrants on Earth as well. Otherwise, they should have been able to defeat the beasts by now.

‘I guess there’s a lot I still don’t know… Oh, maybe the weavers are all guarding portals? That would make sense, seeing as how the Lady of Fate was right next to the portal in Paris. She didn’t seem strong, but now I know that was just an illusion.’

The difference between a horror and a demon made it obvious that a weaver, the fourth tier, would tower above anything John had seen before. The purity of the essence alone would make them way stronger than him, and that’s on top of all the enchantments and abilities they would have as well.

But they likely didn’t know about the different forms of essence, which made John an extremely important person. His return could turn the war singlehandedly.

‘Well, I’d better start getting back, then. There's no point in staying here. There are people I have to save, after all.’

Despite knowing what he would choose if he had to, he started wondering who was more important to save now: him or Serah.

‘Easy answer, I just tell her everything about the essence! But then I have to find you first…’

He could so clearly envision her standing in front of him, smiling sadly as she held his arm to her cheek. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her, but nothing mattered more than making sure she was safe.

‘... Wait, why is it getting dark?’

A gradual fading of the light around him suddenly made him open his eyes again. He knew it wasn’t the bird flying above him because then he wouldn’t see any light, but something was happening.

‘What?! How?!’

His eyes widened, nearly falling out of their sockets as he stared into the air. Surrounding him on all sides, several kilometers apart, the forest rose into the air. The edges of dirt and trees rose into the air, ever so slowly drifting toward the center of the planet.

‘No, wait! They’re not drifting up, I’m drifting down!!!’

An entire chunk of the forest was falling into the abyss below, breaking apart from the rest of the planet.

And on that chunk, feeling himself getting lighter and lighter, John was drifting ever downward into space.