CANYON RUSH

They eventually arrived in a large temple. It was mostly in ruins already as three groups fought for the chalice above the altar. Clara was mad, the canyon rush this time was proving much more annoying than needed. She joined on the fray as she ordered her group to go past the temple and hold their ground as she gave leadership for the werewolf man for a while.

Theo had no plans of coveting the item. It wouldn’t be something game-changing and only put him in danger. He asked Hamon to defend him while he prepared a ritual, condemning himself for not having invested in his current body’s capacity of handling two tasks simultaneously. Luckily, the others bought his excuse that he was ‘preparing a huge spell’ and started defending him too.

Clara, on the other hand, tried to steal the scepter from the temple but ended up being discovered. She initially fought against the three groups, but decided to throw the scepter away and try later; she would never give up completely. Between defending against the unrelenting critters’ waves attacking them and fighting each other, all three groups were a mess.

Clara hadn’t been fighting her best previously with the others, she was saving her strength for this moment. Shielding rings, magical breastplate, and speed enhancing boots. Having worked on helping the others during the canyon trips paid off. The pressure from the wave of monsters was eventually enough to overcome all three groups at once in the next few dozen minutes. Clara caught the scepter as she fought out of the way of the mass of sickly critters. The scepter shot out bolts of lightning as she became a veritable thor, smashing bodies with her hammer.

Theo finished his ritual just in time before the breaking point, one of his clones appearing by his side. Using the baton of autonomy he got from the tomb full of constructs, he managed to leave his original body a bit better than unconscious. Theo ordered Hamon to flee, and the others followed suit. Clara came running out of the sea of monsters she left behind, with cuts and perforations bleeding all over. Wherever it wasn’t bleeding on her body, there were black hematomas of trapped blood. They ran while they fought, everyone’s injuries healing in real-time. Clara had stolen as much regeneration wristbands as she could from the previous warring groups and distributed them. However, the number of new injuries that appeared made up for it. Fighting while detangling yourself from monsters coming out of the ground, diving from above, and latching on you from the sides was no easy matter. The only thing they had for them was the superhuman attributes they had to rely on.

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The arduous training Hamon had with Theo was coming to fruition. He was already deeply used to the feeling of never knowing where the next attack would come from. Despite his age, Hamon fared much better than all the others in the group, managing to also cover from Theo’s clone’s flaws. The biggest advantage Hamon didn’t know he had was the wristband of regeneration. Regeneration and detection were the only two types that weren’t team buffs but personal ones. While all others stacked injuries and got to this point in bad shape, Hamon was able to fight at his best performance. It was a bit selfish of them, choosing regeneration wristbands on the starting point. If all on the team did the same, they wouldn’t have lasted that long, but Theo didn’t care. As long as they could survive, he was fine with others going through some ‘hardships.’

Back on the altar, Theo stretched as he cleared the area around him. He extended the range of his sensing earring to its fullest and used mana on his feet and hands to climb the humongous canyon walls. He waited and waited as the critters below piled up more and more. When the ground could barely be seen anymore, Theo sensed the tremors. He let go of his backpack containing all the crystals he had collected from the tomb and activated the ritual.

Come to me, baby. An earthen worm the size of a really large train drilled from the ground, consuming all the monsters above it into its mouth full of rotating and vibrating teeth. Theo smirked as he saw the huge worm consuming the backpack he had thrown along with the corpses, the first part of his plan was complete. A small explosion occurred inside of the earthen worm, followed by another bigger one a fraction of a second later. He could barely hear the sound of those from afar, only knowing it worked from the sensing earring.

Theo became worried as the third was taking long. Just as he was ready to bolt away, a huge explosion occurred, ripping the worm straight into two halves. Monster goops and innards were sprayed all over the canyon, covering Theo in his entirety. The explosion didn’t stop there as it triggered a chain reaction on the surrounding critters in the vicinity. Theo had to spend huge amounts of mana just to stay tight to the canyon walls, even when he was more than fifty meters above the ground. The monsters that weren’t caught on the initial boom fled in a hurry or were simply blown away. The blinding light and heat covered that whole part of the canyon. However, as quickly as it came. The explosion died out as it consumed everything in its path in a split second.

Theo whistled as the resulting explosion was a bit above his expectations, he was aiming from something similar but not on that scale. The result made him worry as a huge heat vapor started flowing up and down to the tunnel entrance with the wind. The wall he was hanging onto showed signs of collapse, and Theo struggled to move to a safe place fast enough. He quickly found a crevice on a more stable part of the wall and shoved himself there, protecting the entrance, as the world turned itself upside down below.