Chapter 55

Evasion Techniques

(Martial Sergeant Blue)

Martial Sergeant Blue could only smile to himself as he clearly saw his target trying to hide while in the forest.

The only problem was the kid, their target, had bright glowing hair. Hair that all but burned like a traveling flashlight that detailed where the kid was.

What had originally been a near impossible mission, of tracking down a kid who had more than a mile head start on the group was turned around to less than a few hundred meters.

Having first started from so far away, the advance squad hadn’t even bothered with proper procedures of keeping quiet. First the target they were after was a kid, granted it was some type of darkling touched advanced cultivator, which was part of why he had made the purge list.

Second the kid seemed to flinch once or twice once he heard the trio talking and giving commands upon their approach.

Given that every step counted, particularly as the group really wanted to get out of these gods forsaken cursed woods quickly, the Major encouraged the lack of protocol. Encouraging the hunt team to call out to each other, hoping that the kid would slip up while looking over his shoulder and slip in the thick mud.

While the kid had not tripped yet, Blue figured it was only a matter of time before the kid started to lose focus and trip.

For his own part Blue was at least one realm above the darkling touched cultivator, meaning that he should easily be able to outrun and outpace the kid. Which he had, although it was clear that the boy had a hidden ace up his sleeve or something, as the kid was able to maintain his relentless pace. While Blue now found his body beginning to have a harder time converting his reserve energy into actionable energy, he felt relieved knowing that the kid had to be worse off.

To help conserve his energy, Blue had long ago turned off his supernatural tracking senses. With the kids glowing hair, following the kid seemed to be a no brainer. Additionally, if he had kept up his tracking powers, his rate of speed would have been greatly reduced. This was why it was deemed acceptable to cut off his tracking powers and preserve his energy for the final encounter.

“The boy is powerful, and clearly darkling touched. As such we should go in guns blazing and hit him with everything we have right from the start. No hesitations, no second guesses.” The Major said, pointing to the wounds he suffered from his own hesitations.

That had been enough for Blue and Gunnery Sergeant Pi to join the Major in his pursuit. Particularly as the boy all but confirmed that he was darkling touched by the way the Major was having a hard time healing the injuries he suffered. Knowing that the boy was a darkling touched, meant it was best to put him down now before he becomes a danger to everyone who was ever associated with him.

The idea of the boy being a darkling touched was the real reason that Blue even agreed to join such a mission. Despite being a kid, he came from the subterranean, meaning that all their underground secrets. Humanity’s last refuge to be able to survive if everything went tits up on the surface, as they seemed to be doing right now. If everything failed, then humanity would need those subterranean layers to just survive.

If the boy was a darkling touched, or someone who was both touched by the corrupting energy of the darkness. Then he would be a treasure trove of potentially invaluable knowledge to the enemy. From his knowledge alone, he would be able to expose the vital underbelly of civilization’s last hope to an enemy who was ruthlessly taking every corner of the world and corrupting it slowly.

Only by a miracle did researchers realize that corruption only went but so far below the surface, after which positive life affirming energy patterns were not only seen but also able to seemingly flourish. This was why hunting down and killing any and all darkling touched was paramount.

Humanity needed to survive, even at the cost of a child.

Breathing heavily, Blue steeled himself as he saw the glowing hairs of his target getting closer. By now they were so close that he could have fired off blasts of energy, had he had any extra reserves left to fight with. As it was, Blue felt that he was already close to being at dangerously high levels of dark energy now.

If he survived the mission, he might himself have to be purged to prevent the very same issue that they were trying to stop right now.

But that would be tomorrow’s problem. For today, he still had to achieve his end goal and take down the darkling touched soldier Fotos.

***

Frank Fotos

Running.

Even at a full out sprint Frank knew he couldn’t hold a candle to the speed and pace of the group of cultivators trying to catch up to him.

Still, despite all this, Frank felt alive.

With each panting breath Frank pulled in deep breaths of tainted miasma. Just being out here would be a death sentence for most cultivators.

Even now Frank could feel the way the cultivators tailing him were taking longer between breaths. Their feet were hitting the ground a slight pulse slower. Everything showed that the only true way to flee death was to go deeper in the woods.

“Deserter!” A panting voice cried out in the night.

“Follow his hair, it’s a dead giveaway for where the traitor runs.” A second voice cried out.

“Follow him, he’ll take us straight to the enemy.” The voice of the Major cried out.

Feeling the pressure Frank continued to run, though he had a slight advantage, despite the sun dropping down, the amount of ambient light here on the surface was still more than enough for Frank to easily find his way forward through the streams of fog that were rising up in the cool night air.

Better still, his new affinity for earth energies all but showed where the pockets of water would be. Not that he couldn’t run through water, but finding the firmest placement for his feet to land, finding the dry spots to place his feet. All if this helped Frank maintain his optimal speed.

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Splish-splash.

Meanwhile, those that still hunted down Frank seemed to find every pot mark, ever divot in the ground. It didn’t help that Frank would often shift his posture or footing after making his way through a particularly tricky set of land.

All of this made it so Frank was able to maintain his distance, at least at first.

He had over a mile, which was cut down to a few hundred meters before Frank lured them out here, to the denser portions of the forest. To the parts of the woods where the miasma all but beckoned Frank to find a calm dry place and sit down to cultivate.

The only problem was, that given his current predicament of being hunted down as a rogue cultivator, Frank didn’t have the chance to find a calm place anywhere.

While he had been fairly lucky with being able to avoid the monsters of the deep forests, Frank knew that this was only because the pursuing cultivators all but found Frank’s aura to be benign by comparison.

In fact, Frank used this time to try to mask his scent and energy signature. He did this by pulling in negatively charged earth particles that were freely floating in the air and draw them into his body.

This did multiple things. First, it constantly infused Frank’s body with a never-ending source of energy, a factor that was also paying off for Frank. For despite how much more powerful the cultivators pursuing Frank were, their energies were finite. At least until they managed to leave here and get back to normal lands claimed and used by most cultivators.

However, there was one thing that Fank couldn’t help but think about while running.

That was the polarity of the land.

Logically for the top layer of the land to be positively charged, then the negative inverse would have to be somewhere nearby.

At least that is what Frank had come to understand about the odd energies of the world.

This would also explain why the subterranean layers that Frank had come from were so far removed and had to be picked up, moved out and then taken to the surface through a series of long and angled tunnels that ultimately led to the surface.

Frank had thought that was due to mining and the idea of not wanting an entire excavated mine shaft to fall onto a final city. But what if there was something bigger to the problem?

What if the way humanity was able to survive was by living under the areas of land that were conquered by the corrupted beings?

“Oh ho. He is smart. Already able to dissect the way humanity was able to survive all this time.” The thoughts of the Dark Queen filled Frank’s mind, filling him with dread as he realized that his thoughts on his home were now at risk.

With those thoughts, he had just betrayed his family. Particularly as Frank realized the way the giant worm monster and corrupted rats were able to tunnel under the Academy. Something that should have been impossible, had it not been for the polarity of the University keeping the positively charged energy on the surface of the campus, with the negatively charged particles just underneath the ground.

It was also clear that the tunneling effect had a slight shifting of the area, or at least made it so the lands were momentarily neutral in their polarity. This was why the university had been temporarily shut down and Frank had been sent to SERE training to compensate for lack of actual training, while needing to be spun up for mission purposes.

Then realizing that he was effectively giving off not only his own thoughts and understandings of the world, but recent events of the resistance to the remnants of humanity to the Dark Queen herself, Frank felt frustrated.

Frank had been aware of this connection, as the Dark Queen had used the same mental connection to Constance to talk to him directly before. Now it seemed that she had done so again, that is, if she ever stopped the connection to begin with.

“Oh relax. We are perfectly content to have you all live out the rest of your miserable existences underground. That would be the perfect irony. Almost going full circle in the evolution of life. But no, your precious family and their subterranean existence are fine. You have my word on that.” The Dark Queen stated in Frank’s mind.

Crackle.

Just as Frank was about to think about not being able to trust someone who calls themselves a Dark Queen, Frank’s thoughts were brought to the immediate danger, as a snapping branch could be heard in the forest.

“There he is!” The first voice called out again. By now the voices were close enough to let Frank get more distinctions from their tones.

It was clear that the person chasing him was a female. As he focused, he could almost imagine the team of transport warriors who had been assigned to take Frank to his newly argued for prison sentence.

Despite all this Frank could almost kick himself for thinking that everything had been going too smoothly there for a bit.

He had managed to get it so that his charges for cultivating during a base breach was nothing more than going to a prison he had already escaped from.

The only problem was that apparently Frank had made some enemies. Though in the case of this group, they seemed to be more of religious zealots more than anything. The way they spoke and acted, it was clear that they had only one intention, and that was ridding the world of corruption.

Or what they thought of as corruption, which was just energy in an altered form.

“Fascinating. It is good that we do not have to train you on how oppressed we as a people are.” The Dark Queen stated.

Hearing that, Frank realized that he needed to learn to hide his thoughts from this connection. A connection that should only be to Constance, but apparently the Dark Queen was able to use some form of forced link to Constance to in turn allow her to read Frank’s mind.

“Oh come now dear. Constance is more than happy to share her connection with you. Her only hope is that we can find a way to assist you in your plight. In fact, I’m going to tell you want I will do…” The Dark Queen continued speaking, but as she did, Frank mentally reached out to the part of his mind that allowed a connection to Constance and twisted the feed.

This was not a violent snapping twist that would be enough to break the connection entirely. Instead, it was just a way for Frank to mute the mental pressure within his mind.

Dim.

The minute Frank did that, he felt a few things happen all at once.

First, the little dot in his mind that constantly told him where Constance had stopped glowing. Similarly, the constant draining feed on his mind also stopped pulsing.

Mentally Frank understood this as applying a tourniquet to his odd extra sensory organ within his mind. While it might help save his life in the immediate future, if he kept it going for too long, if he kept the supply of energy to that node within his mind cut off for too long, it would wither and ultimately die.

There was of course a second feature of this that Frank didn’t immediately notice, but those who were pursuing him noticed almost instantly.

“What? Wait, where did he go?” The second speaker, this was the male that had multiple cuts and scars on his face and exposed patches of skin that weren’t completely covered by his uniform.

“He must have found a cave somewhere.” The voice of the Major called out, “stay weary as he might try to strike from a blind spot.”

Hearing the words of the major, Frank realized that somehow this extra sensory organ, or part of his mind that allowed him to connect to Constance was also somehow linked to the way his hair glowed brightly.

The glowing hair was a testament to his time in subterranean catacombs and a sign that he was a multi-generational person from the same subterranean catacombs.

At the time Frank didn’t quite understand why underground cultivators would eventually adapt to have glowing hair. But if it was an alternate light source, and a sign of how powerful an individual was as a cultivator, then why not put the hair on full display. That way strong cultivators could attract other strong cultivators and eventually retake the surface.

Or that was the best rationale that Frank could come up with.

Frank had remembered stories about the first monsters that rose to the surface. How the ancient beings that were the leaders of the corrupted legions that sprang from the depths of hell themselves to take over the surface originally had glowing dark hair as well.

Could it all be a sign of how things were in a never-ending cycle?

One group is forced to go below the surface of the earth, where they dwell, evolve, build up power and then storm to the surface with reckless abandon, only to conquer the surface, thereby forcing the enemy below ground and ultimately restarting the cycle anew?

The entire process seemed wasteful, particularly as there were clearly ways that both groups could live in harmony, or at least balance. With dual cultivation, there was no need to be forced to go underground and follow the changing polarity of the grounds.

Instead, with dual cultivation you could theoretically transform the world to either energy type on a whim. While animals and other creatures might have a harder time making the transition, that could be good, as it would keep down some of the more formidable monsters that are in the world today. By simple applications of bisecting alternating lines of energy, most mega-monsters would not be able to flourish the way they are now.

For now, mega monsters are seen as a necessary evil. A product of having too much land that is of one particular polarity for too long.

Slosh-splash.

Frank felt his whole body tense up, as he heard just how close the soldiers were.

Even now, they still moved about wildly in the darkness, uncaring about the noises they made. Frank realized that this was likely part of their plan, to distract Frank and get him to slip up. That or the group was so formidable that they truly didn’t care about the noises they made, nor the attention they drew.

While Frank had run through a number of monster territories, Frank found himself avoiding the major clumps of monsters. The reason for this was simple, as he didn’t want to appear to be running away from a major corrupted tiger or other equally enhanced super predator. As such the path he took, while meandering was safe for not only himself, but unfortunately it was also safe for his pursuers as well.

That is until now, when Frank, now able to hide his glowing hair particles had seemingly done the impossible. The man pursuing him had slipped.

Pausing, Frank hesitated for a moment. Wondering if this was some type of trap.

Frank could see the girl pausing, and turning to see the clearly flailing soldier in the muck splashing about.

The only problem was that had he charged forward, the female would have seen him.

Worse, Frank paused as he looked around and used his heightened senses to try to see where the third member of the trio was.

Shock.

For a moment Frank could only freeze in place as he realized that somehow he lost track of where the major was.

Pausing, Frank felt around, feeling like a blind man looking for where his prized possession fell.

As he searched, his newly enhanced senses were pushed to their maximum. Only to cause Frank to be surprised by what he found.

“What the?”