I manually pulled the Essence Core apart and spread it out over the inside of my entire body as the technique required. I then began the binding process of the Essence combining with my own flesh and guided the Qi to help it stick.
“Can I ask you something?” The old ghost began. “Why are you…” He stopped himself mid-sentence. “No, never mind.”
I ignored him and finished the action, letting the automatic process of assimilation of Essence take over.
“You got company.” He announced.
I opened my eyes slowly and looked around. The area seemed clear to me, but I stood up regardless. The Mountain Apes tired me out a bit, but I was still ready for a fight if it came down to it.
“To your left, behind those bushes. Seems like your battle attracted some unwanted attention.”
To be fair, it has been a few hours since the battle. I expected some beasts to come after the fact, but after waiting for so long I thought I was safe.
I heard some quiet rustling and turned around. Long Dong was right, there was definitely something there. I was just about to shout to see if it was a human when I heard a low growl. Out stepped a pale-skinned abomination with long thin legs and a bony torso with long arms ending in sharp claws. It had a ghastly face like that of a deer, only with the teeth of a predator. And, of course, it had a pair of antlers growing out the top of its head.
[Well, well, well, look who’s here... Haven’t seen you in a while.] It was the first native I have met in this place. The Wendigo. Or a beast that looked just like it at least.
“Hah! Now that’s some nightmare fuel for young children. Err, what were they called again? Can’t remember… Oh well, it doesn’t matter. But I would suggest you don’t try and fight it, they are quite tough.”
[Mhm…] I stared at the monstrosity and watched its eyes calmly. Its Aura was contained, but so was mine. We just watched each other for a bit in silence, evaluating, weighing the risks… Well, at least I was doing that. I had no idea what thoughts swirled in that ghastly bald head across me. I could see every muscle on its bony body twitch in anticipation, and saliva slowly began dripping out of its opened maw.
I was slightly nervous just looking at it like that, and considering those abominations were chasing me after I was just resurrected, that did not surprise me. Even if I didn’t want to admit it, I was subconsciously afraid of it. But fear quickly gave birth to anger, and my hands began itching for some action. I was much stronger than I had been mere months ago, and I wanted to test myself against it.
[Come on! You want some of this? Huh?! You want it?!] I shouted at the beast, displaying my Aura proudly. Nascent Soul I! I was announcing my strength loud and clear.
The Wendigo responded by throwing its head back and releasing a loud scream that hurt my ears. At the same time, it also displayed its own Cultivation, Spirit Accumulation IX.
I smirked. It was lower than mine.
“Wow, now you are really in trouble.” The old ghost suddenly said, and I quickly understood why.
Two more Wendigos soon came to light and stopped beside it, at the edge of the clearing, just at the edge of shadows. Clearly, they weren’t fans of the sun. Not that that would stop them.
The first one retracted its Aura, and the other two didn’t display it, but I could guess they were all at about the same level. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be working so closely together. They didn’t strike me as social creatures.
I let my Qi flow freely and activated the Elemental Avatar right off the bat, pushing my defense up as high as it would go. I was taking no chances with them.
[Any advice for fighting them?] I asked.
“Yeah, don’t let them hit you.”
[Really? Gee, thanks…]
After that useless advice, I lifted my hands up and took a boxing stance. I had no plan on boxing, but it felt right guarding my chest and face against those monsters. I already knew they liked to go for the jugular.
We stood about ten meters apart, just looking at each other. A bead of sweat rolled across my cheek. Their look was making me nervous. Those empty, dead-looking eyes… They carried no emotion except hunger and bloodlust.
The first Wendigo began moving slowly. It took a tiny step and began leaning forward. I almost thought it was going to fall flat on its face when it suddenly moved. An explosion of soil came from its hooves, and by the time I blinked, it was already upon me.
Before I even had time to process what had happened, my body already moved on its own, Matrix-style, dropping back toward the ground. Black claws, longer than my fingers, cut the air right above my nose as my upper body became parallel to the ground. It was a bad move on my part as it put me in an awkward position, but I didn’t have much choice.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the second Wendigo move, just as fast as the first one, and aim at my exposed stomach. I struck the ground with my hand and pushed myself out of the precarious position by rolling to my left. The clawed hand scraped across my back as I did so, an action that was followed by searing pain. I rolled away from the two and quickly jumped back on my feet, just in time to dart away from the third attacker who also rushed at me without hesitation, aiming for my neck.
Thank god I trained in the explosive movement of the Hunting Tiger technique! At least I had some instinct at avoiding obstacles at high speeds. I quickly distanced myself from the three hungry monsters and ran in a straight line, as much as the terrain allowed, away from them.
I mentally checked my back, and it seemed the scratch wasn’t that deep, more like a shallow cat claw mark, but it still hurt a lot, which was odd.
[How can it hurt me? I’m at a higher Realm!]
“So what? That doesn’t mean anything. Your Body Cultivation is still shit! Until you reach Demigod Realm, lower Realms can still damage you. Though, the extent to which they can do that becomes less and less the higher you go.”
[Damn!] I dodged another lunge and jumped to the side. They weren’t letting up, and I didn’t know where I was going, so I decided to just fly away. I couldn’t go too high or the Wraiths would try to take a bite out of me as well.
I rose off the ground in a superman pose and accelerated as much as I could while still being able to avoid getting splattered against the tree trunks. It was not easy, and the G-forces I was pulling during some maneuvers made me feel sick, but I had no choice.
I was probably going close to 200km/h, and yet the Wendigos were still on my tail. They seemed exceedingly good at running through the forest, their long jumps making them look like oversized grasshoppers.
I wondered if they were ever going to let up. I didn’t want to fight them as I was still wounded and tired from the previous battle, and those guys were clearly better at close combat, so that was a no-go.
I did try some quick Earth magic, such as creating walls and spikes from the ground, but they just jumped over or broke straight through. I considered fighting them hand-to-hand, but I didn’t want to get scratched as if I had an incident with an angry cat.
I was just going through my options when something unexpected happened. I was flying at full speed when my gravity-manipulating magic just… cut out.
With no warning I plummeted from the sky, from more than ten meters high, and smashed into the ground at highway speeds, rolling and tumbling for a good while. After breaking through numerous bushes and thorny vines, I eventually came to a stop on a small patch of dry leaves.
My head was spinning from the tumbling, but I was otherwise completely fine. I expected at least some new scratches, but there were none. I was getting more and more appreciative of my defensive arts.
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“Hey, what are you doing?!” Long Dong suddenly shouted as I was slowly getting back up.
[I… don’t know. I suddenly lost control…] I tried twisting space around me, but it wouldn’t budge. The Wendigos were closing in on me fast! In a slight panic, I tried again, this time as if trying to increase gravity 10X. Nascent Qi poured out of me, pushing against the structure of space, but it was futile. It remained rigid and fixed in place. I was just about to put full effort into it when the first one came.
The Wendigo became a stream of black, trailing behind an opened maw. Two clawed hands lunged forward on either side, the pointy ends sticking into my chest and shoulders as the creature smashed into me, its long fangs going for my throat.
[Uff!]
The strike took my breath away and we went tumbling on the floor before I could even react. I felt as if getting hit by a truck, and the wounds I received burned like hell! I felt its foreign Qi trying to make its way toward my heart, but I managed to resist. Its body strength, however, was something else entirely.
I could barely hold it back by grabbing its neck, keeping the thrashing maw away as it tried to bite me. As I lay on the floor with the monster on top of me, I began kicking it in the chest to get it away. It took me at least five good hits to get it to release me. I then started spewing flames toward it, but it mostly ignored them. Only its sparse fur was singed, making it look and smell even worse than before.
By that time the other two already caught up, and I was in real trouble. One of my shoulders felt as if it was on fire, partially disabling my left hand. But I had to push through the pain, and resist my brain telling me to stop. It was so annoying, having the body not listen to my orders when I needed it most. It wasn’t even that much damage, just severe pain.
With flight disabled, it became clear I wasn’t going anywhere, and I realized the only way out of this mess was to fight. The gravitational anomaly could wait for later when I had dealt with those pricks. I narrowly avoided getting stabbed in the gut, only to get a claw right in my face! I winced and closed my eyes, prepared for pain, but instead, I heard a shrill scratching sound. The claw scratched across my cheek and then continued past my head. I barely felt anything.
“Stop standing there like a dumbass! They can’t break through the Thousand Faces Mask!”
[Oh, right!] I completely forgot I had the Spirit artifact on my face. Even if the Wendigos were strong, they couldn’t just jump over multiple Realms.
I did a backward somersault to get away from another swipe and expertly blocked another one with my face.
A punch of mine flew out, colliding with the face of one of my assailants, but the beast didn’t seem to mind. Its head bounced back from the strike, and it just made it attack with its fangs even more aggressively. I spun around and did a backward kick, using the force of impact to get away.
A few more Stone Spikes flew out of the ground, striking their thin, sinewy bodies, but once again, they received no significant damage. They appeared to have condensed their muscles to the limit, becoming more like steel cables than mere flesh. They appeared ghastly though, with all the bones visible.
Wind and Fire did similarly little to halt their advance, at most they slowed them down a bit as I dodged and danced out of the way of their claws.
While they were keeping up the pressure on me, I was also secretly gathering strength. Qi was being collected in my hand for an attack. No, it wasn’t Lightning. I didn’t want to use that, since I could just as easily hurt myself as the others. Instead, I was gathering Light.
I pointed my hand at the closest Wendigo, straight at its face. [Solar Point!]
100 Qi was released at once, resulting in a blinding flash of light and a pillar of white that appeared from my hand. My fingers heated up and began steaming so I quickly cooled them down with a bit of Ice magic.
The powerful beam hit its target, dealing a grand total of fuck all damage! Probably because it didn’t actually hit, I just thought it did. Most likely Wendigo used that split second before my spell was fully active to shift its head slightly to the side, sustaining only minor burns to its cheek. Heck, if I wasn’t looking for them, I wouldn’t even notice.
After that momentary lull in combat from the light flash, the beasts resumed their assault. I dodged and weaved between their strikes, but they were gradually gaining on me. I just kept gathering cuts and scratches across my arms and body seemingly with no end in sight. I was surrounded, with my path to freedom closing fast. In my desperation, I took another Spirit Shard and immediately drained half of it. Spirit Qi burst out and I just let it decay, before coating myself in the remaining Golden Qi. Unsurprisingly, as soon as I did that, even though the layer of it was extremely thin across my hands and forearms, the Wendigo strikes just bounced off. And while it was a great way to counter them, the mental strain required to keep it stable was immense.
I couldn’t make golden Qi, but I could keep it from decaying rapidly. But doing that and shaping it at the same time was incredibly hard. Anything more than just two hands would be impossible to sustain for more than a few seconds, and even then, I was already panting hard, with my brain nearly on fire.
I created short claws on my fingers and counterattacked, swiping wildly just like the Wendigos themselves. There came the sound of multiple swords clashing as we scraped and clawed at each other like wild animals.
I wasn’t used to this type of combat, but it was the only thing that seemed to work against them. If I had a good weapon, things might have been different, but unfortunately, my Toothpick was long gone.
Eventually, after a few minutes, the strain on my mind became too great and I had to release the golden enchantment of my left hand.
I tried to shape it into a dagger and throw it at them, but as soon as I let it go, it fell apart and turned into mist. Note to self, Qi is really, really unstable without a guide.
With only one golden hand remaining, it was much easier to control, but at the same time, I lost that great defense the Golden Qi provided. The battle immediately went from barely a stalemate to Wendigos’ favor again.
I was doing everything I could, and my body moved like a snake, as if I had no bones, and yet, I could barely avoid getting sliced to pieces. Something had to change because I was definitely losing a battle of attrition.
I blocked the swipe of one of them, barely avoided another, and the third one clawed at my back, making me wince in pain. Then, the first one already lunged at me, ready to strike again.
That’s exactly when I turned the ground around me into soft mud in a split second. The Wendigo stumbled, and I gathered all my strength and, with my hand like a spear, struck it in the torso. My fingers barely sank in a few centimeters, but my Golden Qi was another thing entirely. I gripped the beast on the shoulder with my other free hand to stop its escape, and grit my teeth as six pairs of claws sank into my flesh from all sides.
All the Qi from my forearm surged towards my hand, and I pushed it with all my might, into the golden claws. Four golden blades pierced through the Wendigo, and the monster released a maddening roar and tried to bite my neck. I instead gave it a powerful headbutt with my face, making use of the Thousand Faces Mask to protect me.
We both remained standing like that for a second or two, hugging each other, when I violently yanked my hand sideways, severing the Wendigo nearly in half. Guts and blood spilled on the floor, and I kicked the beast away from me, bringing the golden claws to swipe at the other two.
I missed it, obviously. I was too tired to keep going at full throttle the entire time, and I was covered in my own blood. My clothes were long since shredded, unfortunately, forcing me to fight naked once more.
The two remaining beasts and I glared at each other, all three of us panting. I used this moment of respite to quickly cast a healing spell to at least stop the bleeding. The remaining monster was slowly dying on the floor, the blood quickly draining out of its thin limbs, making it look even more ghastly than before.
[Alright, bitches! What are you waiting for?!] I shouted, half expecting my taunts to stir them to action.
“You have to decide now, either kill them both or go away now! They might be waiting for reinforcements.” The old ghost made his thought known.
I paled. [More of them?] I gasped. [Oh, hell no!]
Despite my aching body and tired mind, I took the initiative. I threw up a crude wall and pulled stone javelins out of the ground, attacking the beasts from all angles at once.
[Field of Thorns!] The ground cracked and out came hundreds of spikes just as I lunged forward at one of them ugly things. I completely ignored the other, focusing only on killing that one. I pumped out massive amounts of Qi to trap it in stone, but it was also capable of using magic and was as such cutting them apart as if they were made of warm butter.
No matter how hard I tried, it was always just out of reach, racing ahead of me, while the other one was attacking, clawing at my back and sides.
But that was just what I wanted! A false sense of security!
Claws pierced through my ass, and at that exact moment, I spun around and kicked off the ground. The Wendigo had no time to react, and in a split second, I held one of its hands in my grasp. While it was strong, so was I! I held it tightly like a vise and went ham on its chest with my golden claws.
The beat screamed and clawed at my face as I slowly tore its ribcage apart, swipe after swipe taking more of its flesh and blood away. My fingers penetrated the muscle and sank deep beneath the bones, creating fountains of blood as I pulled them out.
In the end, the beast had many dozens of deep holes in its chest as I let it out of my grasp and into the puddle on the floor.
Panting deeply, with the crimson life fluid still dripping off my fingers, I turned around to the last one. I let all my emotions show while releasing my Aura. It was still strong and hungry for blood.
The Wendigo roared at me, turned tail, broke through the stone wall, and ran away without a second thought.
Yeah, as if I would let it.
I dropped into Hunting Tiger's stance and ran after it. My limbs were on fire, but I couldn’t let it go. It was too valuable, and I wasn’t going to let my attackers go anymore. They would just bring more trouble later on, just as the Howler did.
Gathering Qi as I ran, I waited for the perfect moment, jumped upright, and pointed.
[Solar Point!]
Another beam of light shot from my hand, this one slightly weaker than the last one since I didn’t want to do more damage to my fingers than required, but it was nevertheless enough. Light pierced through the back of the escaping Wendigo and came out on the other side. It immediately tumbled to the ground and came to a stop, and I didn’t give it even the tiniest chance for retaliation. I jumped on its back and stabbed my claws down between the shoulder blades, severing its spine, before killing it with a final blow to the heart.
I then sat on the ground beside it, gasping for air and panting like a dog. It was too much. I wasn’t used to battles like that. I looked at the sky and it was already evening. Grunting in pain, I slowly stood up and grabbed the corpse by the leg, and slowly dragged it back to the other two. Even if Wendigos weren’t edible, I could still turn them into Essence.