The General didn’t ask how the creature knew his name, or what they wanted. Instead, he attacked. Drawing power from his lower core, Eric lashed out at the beast with a punch that would have beheaded a normal human.
Daisy dissolved into smoke and re-appeared in the street behind him. “You’ll have to be faster than that if you want to catch me,” she said with a laugh before dashing away.
Eric ran after her, his feet pounding on the street as he tried to keep up. At level twenty he was fast, but it was hard to outrun a horse. She kept taunting him as they made their way through the nearly empty evening streets. “You’re too slow!” Daisy called out, “Your friends were much better at this game!”
He was nearly out of breath when they came to an old burned out warehouse halfway across the city. The roof was gone, only the stone walls remained, and those were crumbling. Cautiously, Eric looked inside to see the spirit beast waiting for him in the shadows. “Come in, General!” she called out, shaking her head from side to side, “Come in and play!”
It was obviously a trap. Eric had no doubt in his mind that the creature had brought him to the warehouse for a reason. But he was also a senior disciple of the Rock Mountain Mollusk sect, and would not be easy prey. “What manner of beast are you?” the General asked as he stepped inside, “And what do you want with me?”
Daisy threw her head back and laughed as she weaved between the remaining stone pillars. Each one she touched developed a sickly black sheen. “I have come to pay you back for an insult, dear General. You dared to touch the Awakener.”
“I’m not familiar with the name,” Eric replied, trying to close the distance between them, “Are they someone important?”
The horse continued to circle around the pillars, keeping at least one between them at all times. “Is the sun important?” she asked rhetorically, “Is essence important?”
The General knew that he was being brought into position for some kind of attack, but he couldn’t see what it might be. His senses told him that the spirit beast wasn’t charging up any ability. So what was going on?
“Are you the one who killed the members of my sect?” he asked, “Are you the one who killed Lily?”
There was a brief pause as the beast hesitated. “What is she to you?” Daisy asked.
“She was my friend,” Eric replied, closing in to attack, “I came to see what became of her.”
Daisy flowed like smoke to a spot behind another pillar, keeping her distance. “That is most unfortunate. She does not feel the same about you, General. Lily fears you will harm her for leaving the sect, though I can’t imagine you will be a threat for much longer.”
Eric froze, Lily was alive!
“Where is she?” Eric asked, his heart pounding in his chest, “Where are you keeping her? Tell me, before I decide to beat the answers out of you!”
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
“She is a disciple of the Awakener now,” Daisy taunted, continuing to coat the pillars with that strange black ooze, “But you are in no position to be making threats, General.”
“And why is that?” Eric asked as he approached. It had taken time, but now he could almost reach out and touch the spirit beast.
Daisy responded by kicking the pillar that separated them. The General grunted as a thousand pounds of stone hit his chest. He tried to roll the weight off of him, but the black ooze made it stick to him like glue. The spirit beast laughed as she danced around, toppling more stone pillars onto the cultivator.
Eric strained against the weight crushing him, drawing on the power in his lower core. The stone stuck to his flesh, but he stood up anyway. “It will take more than that to defeat me,” the man taunted as he smashed the pillars together, freeing his hands.
The General let out a startled gasp as a void stalker shimmered into existence in front of him. “YOU WILL BEG FOR DEATH BY THE TIME I AM DONE,” Dumpling promised as she reached a paw towards his chest, “SISTER DAISY DOES NOT FIGHT ALONE.”
There was an incredible sensation of pressure as gravity pulled Eric to his knees. He could barely lift his arms, and thousands of tiny cuts appeared across his skin. The void stalker floated just out of reach, taunting him.
The General barely managed to grunt out a threat. “I’ll fucking kill you…” he said, drawing on his lower core to charge an ability. Eric hated the idea of using it within a city, but it was that or be crushed to death.
Dumpling licked her paws as she waited for her technique to finish off the cultivator. Before long, he would suffocate under the weight of his own body. The extra cutting damage from her Rend ability was just a bonus.
Daisy didn’t feel like waiting. The horse walked over to the cultivator and raised a hoof. “Goodnight, General,” Daisy said as she stomped down towards his skull.
Before she could end him, Eric’s technique went off, creating a shockwave that powdered stone and sent both spirit beasts flying back. He stood up, bleeding from every inch of exposed skin, but still alive. “Now,” he growled as he approached the wounded beasts, “Where the fuck is Lily?”
***
Zane was about to go home when he heard the explosion. Stone rained down on the city as the walls of the warehouse were converted to shrapnel. The rogue cultivator ran, drawing on his faulty core for a speed boost. When it worked, he moved faster than ever before. But it had a tendency to stop and start randomly.
As he saw the hulking figure of the General standing over his wounded pets, Zane no longer felt any obligation to preserve the man. He summoned a cleaver and threw it.
Eric caught the weapon in mid air and turned to face his new opponent. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded, “And why are you pretending to be a member of my sect?”
Zane looked down at his black robes. He had forgotten that he was wearing them. “Why are you blowing up parts of the city?” the young man asked, stalling for time.
Daisy and Dumpling were crawling away from the General, painfully making their way back to the street. Zane walked over to put himself between them and the furious cultivator, repeating his question. “Why are you trying to destroy this city?”
Eric looked at the massive crack his ability had put in the outer wall. That hadn’t been intentional, but the warehouse butted up against it and there was nothing he could do to reduce the blast radius. The General watched the two spirit beasts retreat. “They attacked me, and have information I want.”
“Too bad,” Zane said, standing his ground, “You can’t go around blowing up the place just because you want something.”
Eric wasn’t sure if he could take this cultivator in a fight. They radiated essence and the General was already injured. But the spirit beasts had claimed to know about Lily, and this man might be with the group hunting his fellow disciples. “Step aside,” he said, “Or share their fate.”
The rogue cultivator shook his head and drew his sword. “I can’t do that. If you want them, you’ll have to go through me.”
Zane had zero desire to fight a cultivator that could turn an entire warehouse into a crater, but he wasn’t about to let them kill his friends. The two men stood still, each one waiting for the other to make a move.
Finally, Eric gave a short bow. “It seems that I must destroy you,” he said.
“No, you won’t,” Zane replied as he started pulling essence into his faulty core, “I might destroy myself, but you won’t be the one that kills me.”
The rogue cultivator removed his storage bracelet and threw it to Daisy. She caught it and continued her retreat, disappearing into the city.
Eric could feel that something incredibly bad was about to happen. The man in black was pulling an incredible amount of essence into himself, but it was leaking out of him almost as fast. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Zane could feel the energy crackling through his body. So far his core was holding, but he could already feel the strain. “I’m just making sure that whatever happens, you don’t leave this place alive,” the young man said pleasantly, as if he wasn’t seconds away from exploding, “You really shouldn’t have hurt my friends.”
Then, without warning, the rogue cultivator dumped every bit of essence in his core into one single attack. He accelerated towards the General like a comet, boosting his speed, agility, and regeneration all at once. Zane thrust his sword towards Eric, the blade coated black from his Death Siphon ability. “Kamehameha, motherfucker!” he screamed.