Peeking over my shoulder I tried to see any weaknesses. But the only weakness of this monster was that some of its rocks were smaller than others. This wasn’t the most comforting observation. While I was faster than it on level ground it will be able to climb down cliffs a lot faster than I can especially now when I don’t have any rope left to quickly descend.

We were on a relatively narrow plateau, so I needed to find a place where I had some more room to manoeuvre. If I was able to keep out of its range, I might have a chance, but another problem was I didn’t have any good, ranged attacks. There was another problem I didn’t even know how hard it will be to damage this creature’s body.

I pushed my legs to pump as fast as possible to get as much distance as I could. The monster didn’t seem to like that, and another roar of anger came from behind me. Perhaps if it thinks it can’t catch me it will stop chasing me. But I can’t count on that.

I was somewhat lucky as there wasn’t a cliff that I needed to go down when this current plateau ended. But it was still extremely hard to descend, and I had to slow down quite a lot or otherwise, I might trip and who knows if I can walk away from that.

The creature was now gaining ground and I tried to hurry as much as possible. I had to pay attention to so many things that I felt my brain was starting to overheat. Every step needed to be determined, rocks that tumbled past me needed to be dodged and I needed to follow a certain path to not be trapped so the monster couldn’t get me.

My legs were barely holding on as the constant shocks every time I needed to jump and even just running started to take their toll. We have been playing our game of tag for nearly four hours now. The bastard is relentless.

On the level ground I was able to get away but if anything slowed me down the monster started to gain on me. But I was able to keep away and now it was time to stop running as I made it to a fairly large area that was still quite steep but it was quite open as well giving me enough room to work with.

I put on a burst of speed that I didn’t know I still had in me and got to the centre area quite fast. I was now able to get my breathing under control and rest for a few moments. The training and every other thing I was able to achieve in this world help me to recover at a crazy fast speed. I had less than a minute for a break, but it was just the thing I needed for the battle ahead.

As the monster ran closer to me it seemed a lot more bestial than that one at the hot spring. Hopefully, if it is not as intelligent then I might actually have a chance at winning. It would be a slim chance but I’ll take it.

For the first time, something new happened and I guess it’s because I was standing still. It seems that the monster did have a ranged attack as it swung one of its arms a rock detached from the top in a perfect moment so it would have accuracy and strength as it moved towards me.

The monster itself didn't wait but started to run towards me again. I sent a flying slash towards it but only a few chips fell off it, but it was diverted from its path a bit. I wished I had the two-handed sword, but my one-handed sword will have to be good enough. I powered my sword and when the rock flew past me I tried to bisect it. It didn’t work as I wanted it and I was only able to leave a deep cut into the rock but I was able to shatter it.

It was time to run again. I was easily able to outpace the monster, but it also gathered up the rock that it threw at me and when I stopped it threw at me again but this time with a different rock that it had. What was even worse it seems that the rock that was damaged seemed to be healing the damage I made.

“Son of a bitch.” I was never going to be able to outlast it. Perhaps diplomacy might work? “I don’t want to fight you. Perhaps I can give something to you so you would leave me alone. If I trespassed on your land I apologize and will give you anything you want.” I yelled at the top of my lungs at the monster that was preparing to throw another rock at me. It didn't even pause and didn’t seem to understand anything I said.

It seems that it truly is just a monster. Another rock was flying towards me and this time I used my core energy in my flying slash and this time I did bisect the rock, but I still needed to run away as the monster was still chasing me. But even the bisected rock was picked up by it and slowly the rock started to merge back together when it placed them close to each other.

It did seem to take longer and more energy to make the rock whole again, but I didn’t have enough core energy or regular kind of energy to use this method to defeat this monster. I looked at my sword and it wasn't really meant to do anything to a rock. To split a rock, you would need a relatively sharp tip that would slowly get thicker like an axe, but it needed to be a lot longer than that.

Perhaps I can do something like that and as I run away from flying rocks and the monster itself, I start to modify my sword by constructing with energy. I even strengthened the handle so I could use my other hand on the now a lot flatter pommel to push the sword even deeper into a rock with a lot more strength. The tip of the sword was still the same, but it now got a lot thicker the further down it went. It was time to test if this theory worked.

My heart started to race a bit differently and I recognize that beating, it only happened when I was fighting for my life. It took just a moment longer for my brain to catch up. Surrounding our makeshift arena was a lot more of those creatures. None of those were as big as the one that I was currently fighting.

This situation just got from deadly within a day to deadly within a few moments. Quickly checking the hundreds of new monsters, I found that none of them were above silver. And it seemed more and more were coming. But they didn't seem to join the fight just look at it from the edges. Perhaps it might not be so dangerous, but I think I might be deluding myself. Whatever the case let’s try to win at least the first fight.

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The next rock flying at me will be the most dangerous situation I have put myself in this fight. For this method to work I needed to stand directly in the path of the rock and push my sword into it.

Just in case I did use my core energy to make the sword as powerful as possible. The rock itself was bigger than my torso but not by a lot. As in slow motion, I could see the tip of my sword breaking into the rock. The sword then starts to split the rock slowly, but more and more cracks started to show up on the rock.

About halfway down the sword the rock split open and cracked into multiple smaller ones. It lost a lot of momentum like that but not all of it and if I wasn’t wearing my armour and enhancing it this would have been the end of me. But thanks to my defences I was completely unharmed, and the monster was now down one rock. I believed it could still try to repair it but if it did it would be wasting a lot of energy and I would win that race.

It obviously didn’t like that and bellowed in rage, but it didn’t stop and charged me again like a mad animal. Seeing that its tactics didn't work it was still continuing the same way. The other creatures were still watching, and it seems like they enjoy the show. I still didn’t understand why they didn’t join in but I wasn’t complaining.

I felt a lot more confident now and I also know that using core energy was not necessary with this method unless the rock that he threw at me were a lot stronger than the current one. I did see some rocks that were stronger inside of its body, but it currently didn’t seem to be using them for attacking.

However stupid this creature is it is still capable of reason no matter how slow it might have been to accomplish it. In the end, it took 24 rocks before it stopped throwing them at me. I would celebrate that fact, but a bigger problem emerged. It was getting faster.

At first, its movements were quite bad and the only reason it was so fast was because of its size. Most likely the creature never had to move that fast or as long, so it never learned how to properly move but now it was getting a lot of practice.

It seems like my only advantage was slowly disappearing. Before this happened, I wanted to use up my ranged capabilities. For that reason, I sheathed my sword and took out my bow. Shooting arrows like they are currently would be quite pointless but using the same principle as the sword I modified the arrows to make the same effect as my sword.

The arrows weren’t as good as I had hoped but they were still doing something. If I only had a stronger bow, I might have been able to kill this monster with the bow itself. On the fifth shot, a smaller rock finally shattered. I had 15 arrows left in my quiver and 20 more in my backpack. I could continue to shatter more of its smaller rocks but perhaps I would have enough to destroy its biggest rock.

That rock was located where the stomach of a normal humanoid creatures would be. It was a smaller room-sized rock and without it, the monster would need to change its shape and hopefully it will not be that well versed in manipulating the new shape it needed to make.

I had to shoot a lot faster, and I didn’t have as much time to aim as I wanted to as it was getting faster and faster. If I was less experience I might have panicked but I have lived through worst situations than this.

So even when the monster was in melee range I stick to the plan. It took 22 arrows when the rock and the monster’s own movement finally started to crack the rock. It hadn't even noticed it was happening and before it could start to repair. I did something the monster wasn't expecting I charged it.

This time I wasn’t sparing energy and used as much core energy as I could to bury my sword as deep into the creature as possible. The strike not only split the rock but shattered it with explosive force. The creature fell apart and many of its other rocks were damaged as well. But as soon as they fall onto the ground they again started to reassemble.

I had to dodge a few flying rocks as I started to move out of there as fast as possible. But I soon figured out something was wrong. No matter what direction I moved I wasn’t getting out of the rock cloud. The rocks were floating all around me and while I was dodging them trying to get away, I didn’t notice that they were actively trying to attack me.

The creature didn’t start to reform like I thought it would instead it created a sort of a rock cloud that was able to attack me and keep up with my movement, so I was always in it. But if I did not move the bigger rock started to catch up and dodging them was a lot harder. I still didn’t give up and shattered as many rocks as possible. Still, I was getting tossed around and multiple rocks started to hit me.

I was surrounded and attacked constantly it will be only a few more moments before I was killed. I pulled on everything I had and activated everything I could. Heroic stand gave me time. I was able to strengthen my armour and thanks to the heroic stand it was more robust. My attacking strength was higher making me able to shatter the rocks easier.

That gave me enough breathing room to visualize the weapons for call of the ancestors. They emerge quickly and I added most of my remaining core energy to them powering them up immensely. They had a similar weapon to mine, but they had a two-handed version instead of the one-handed one that I had.

This gave me more breathing room and I didn’t waste it as I focused everything on attack and hoped that my armour would be able to do its job. My energy was disappearing at an alarming rate but I just kept piercing every rock that I found in front of me. I could feel it whenever a ghost came back into me. But before I could run out of energy the area around me was clear.

I looked around in confusion not understanding what happened. There was silence all around. My vision cleared and slowly everything came back to focus. There were two ghosts left and they were standing at my rear protecting my back.

Only shattered rocks were all around us. My breathing was ragged but slowly I was able to get it back under control. It seems that I have won this fight. This could have ended really badly. Who would have guessed that it could have manipulated its rocks this way? I was trapped before I could notice.

Suddenly roars came all around me. I looked up expecting to see rushing monsters trying to kill me but instead, I found them all starting to fight each other. From the quiet after my flight to the loud roar that now seemed so quiet after the loudness of something that sounded like a rock avalanche as hundreds of rock monsters were fighting. Throughout my fight, it seemed a lot more of them showed up and I couldn’t even tell how many there were now.

Even though they were fighting each other I had no way of escaping. At least my bones weren’t broken but I was battered quite badly, and my entire body was shaking from the effort of standing.

I quickly sat down and hopefully I will have time to recover as much as possible. Knowing the monsters their fighting might take quite a while and perhaps I might be able to recover enough to escape or kill whoever survived. I didn’t know why they were fighting. But I was too tired to think about it. I just couldn’t keep my eyes open.