I waddle through the enemy on the yellow stone corridor. Not exactly the same as it had been before the system's arrival, as it had been repaired and modified. Now growing to be just high enough for most humans to walk upright with bends that provide way more protection than a straight line. The tone of the rock and the way its maintenance match with the earlier class trials, but that seems at most a curiosity.

I feel an invisible weight on top of the visible Aether streams floating and bending around my own Aether field.

This weight had initially been even weaker than the ‘less important’ Himalayan mountains and or the few pyramids tops I landed on to get my Wonders of the World titles but entering the corridor made that impression significantly stronger.

Though this shift seems to have been prompted by the enemy’s ‘unlocking’ of the pyramid.

The thousands of roots covering my body and a good portion of my surroundings are stained in blood, my armor in desperate need of repairs as I regrow it and the flesh underneath each time the powerful system enhanced defenses get through my defenses in this confined space.

But I keep stepping forward.

I sense… not panic, but surprise infused in the elves every action.

They didn’t expect this level of power. Even after witnessing me in action in the middle of their battlefield several times, few actually managed to strike at me with enough force to reveal how high my constitution stat was. I technically had others backing me now, but my raw capabilities are on display without giving the enemy any opening to exploit. Concentrated power that is enhanced by the stat formation on my back. Similar to Alex’s armor but mine isn’t buffing speed. Instead, from the three engraved options I choose a couple of extra percent in Constitution to beef up my last layer of defense.

Enough mana to power a small fortress drives the formation on the back as my other half spares the barest of attention to keeping a thread of QI further empowering it. He also sends a second stream of Qi enhancing my personal shield which breaks every couple of seconds under the strain of powerful attacks.

Each time the enemy gets through, my skin boils and flakes off while a stream of Life flows from my core and instead of retreating, I can heal just about fast enough to keep myself advancing. Even with my huge pool of ‘health’, each attack eats into it, destroying muscle layers and without constant regeneration, it would eventually get to my bones, ending any chance I have, but for now, the tenuous balance is in place.

My mode of attack was supposed to be impossible. But if I can survive it, my flesh can be the sacrifice instead of the lives of thousands of our best fighters. We don’t have to resort to charging over the corpses of our comrades. Not even our best healers would change that fact. We would need to send them pretty close to danger and each one would at most delay the inevitable end for a few of our fighters. The danger they would be exposed to is quite significant given that not a single one amongst them has a ranged heal skill. Even at touch range their efficiency and speed are atrocious which means that wasn’t an option. With only 6 healers in the public eye and at least one more I had found being hidden by their country, each one is treasured.

But once again I broke conventions. Speed, strength, damage resistance, Qi skills, multitasking ability and extremely efficient healing. My advantages wouldn’t last forever, especially if I rest on my laurels and saw fit to push my responsibilities with my belly, but I won’t do that. I push for more, for variety leaning on the odd powers others couldn’t explore and taking them to new heights.

Aether wielders like myself are supposed to be able to break a few conventions and accelerate their learning. I just took an unconventional path there even amongst my own kind. Though in direct combat I’m probably not at the same level as a few of the stronger ones out there.

Directly ending these many lives weighs on me. I know they are invaders and the rational part of my mind, tells me I shouldn’t be wasting time ruminating on it, but in the end, I still have to account for all my actions. Each death may be a little stain on my soul, but I chose this path. So I simply steel my heart and walk over the corpses absentmindedly sending them to a scavenging station in the inner world.

The metal and inherit value of the equipment aren’t anything impressive, but the cost isn’t negligible. It isn’t like steel, copper and silver have no use, they just aren’t enough to be a meaningful incentive to go out ‘farming’. Well, maybe for the most sociopathic percentage of our population. But If I’m already here, no sense in letting it all go to waste as metal vapors from the very attacks of the enemy.

The corridor barely reaches twenty meters, but somehow traversing it is a slog even for me. Several minutes and hundreds of deaths mount making their desperation clear. Then any pretense of skill is gone as I approach the end of the corridor. The people at the back press their bodies like this is a Japanese subway train trying to push me, but even if that forces me to change how I approach they aren’t trying to push someone with 50 or 100 percent stronger. No, I have a lot more power at my fingertips. This isn’t even where I most shine as I push forward their mass with no concern for their safety.

That pressure both from the environment and the bodies pressing against me builds until I hear a pair of pops. One from a cracked rib and another broken Ulmer as the elves at the back push without mercy. Flames shoot out from the tiny holes in the walls on some of the last defenses that the system built in that corridor.

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The ground is so slick with blood in any spot that the fire hasn’t touched would have even a gymnast sliding uncontrollably. But I don’t play by normal rules. I grow hand and footholds everywhere and when that isn’t possible, Qi is a wonderful help in ‘gluing’ my hands or feet to the ground.

I brace my feet while pushing the enemy forward with such strength that I could probably benchpress a bus. It takes another few seconds, but then I get the leverage and take another half step forward. The mages and front line fighters at my back keep advancing now protected from the defenses after I survived them. My roots grow to match my movement precisely, a single step from their last defense and the end of the corridor.

The panic that centuries of training and experience they managed to hold back until now rears its ugly head as the weakest link breaks. The closest thing to a full blown panic attack I have seen from the enemy manifests as I reach the open ground and with another pulse of Life, Qi and Vigor through my veins, I PUSH.

Two more steps with my arms wide open in the small central chamber open up space for the people at my back to fan out.

That is the moment that the cycle of elves coming and leaving from the other pyramid to recharge the mana batteries to power the defenses ends. Combating me to any reasonable degree demanded a huge mana consumption. They couldn’t recharge the batteries at a sufficient rate, not with the couple dozen people that fit in this small chamber. It’s definitely not tall enough for them to build several levels. They didn’t have enough time to fill the ‘batteries’ with mana. So that portal to the other pyramid is essential in their plans.

Slumped shoulders, kneeling elves and even a few dropping their weapons in a sign of surrender as others simply keep attacking me.

Then, my own anger manifests as a pair of Elves starts swinging weapons at the ones trying to surrender, but I won’t allow that. With the strongest kinetic blast I can summon I create then prop up strong shields thicker than anyone would consider reasonable. They aren’t intended to be flexible or to work in a small corridor against the formations in place. Nor do they need to be permeable to my attacks.

All I need is to protect the ones that gave up for a slip second.

The restrictions of the system and space slowly lift as more people enter the small central chamber and I open portals into the inner world to allow the four people who clearly surrendered a path to safety. Then I free myself and explode with Qi and roots covering the entire place.

Their homeground advantage is gone. Seeing that fighting is futile, elves in the 8 meters wide chamber all end up either surrendering or fleeing through the portal.

A moment later, I step forward to touch the portal myself.

I know it’s dangerous, but the opportunity won’t come again. Reaching just a kilometer I can feel the minuscule mana consumption. All my senses analyze both ends. With the help of the system, the mana consumption is downright cheap compared to maintaining the longer range portal one between Elve’s City in the US and the great pyramid of Giza over here. The principles behind it are incredible when compared to the much more primitive portals we used to cross between instances during the tutorial.

I could feel aspects of the wonder at a distance, but even as incredible as the perception field is, standing a couple of meters away provides a different type of feedback. It has a weight I simply couldn’t feel from a distance that my natural sense of space picks up on.

A crazy idea pops into my head as the elves take the mana away from the connection waiting for it to collapse, so I send both Qi and mana to try and keep the portal open.

If could keep it open, assaulting the other pyramid would be one hell of a lot easier.

I try to get a deeper feel for the portal, forcefully shoving tens of thousands of mana and Qi to try and balance that, but while the other side doesn’t fully understand what is happening without a space mage to directly operate the portal, their surprised faces reveal they know something is wrong.

A smile starts to form in my head, even as I feel the strain from attempting to keep the portal open. But that smile freezes a second later just when I think that I have it under my control.

They proactively cut the connection and the portal instantly destabilizes. Like a switch being flicked, the path is gone leaving only dangerous disturbances in the interveaning space. When they saw that clamping the fuel line to the car engine wasn’t enough to kill it, they pulled all the electric cables preventing even a single more detonation cycle. Without any sparks, the fuel can’t burn and even if the engine is still moving, it’s in a death spiral.

It can’t regain any of the momentum lost.

I engrave each moment in my memory, trying to keep it all in mind, given I probably won’t have such an opportunity again to observe and interact with both ends of the portal at the same time.

The runes that had been powering our side fade away just before the last vestiges of the system’s restrictions completely fade. The significance of our actions strikes at me: we recovered the one Pyramid.

“Now, we are the ones that will have the system defenses on our side.” Says a mage happily poking everywhere trying to find how to control the pyramid.

I join in, walking around, touching the empty sarcophagus, the walls, art and anything that might have a system interface. I pull up my screen while trying to feed mana into the pyramid’s stores. The minutes pass without result and somehow I know, we got a plane toy without the batteries. I sit for a minute growing defenses while the fighters inside give way to engravers to enhance the defenses, add mana storage and connections should the enemy try to take the pyramid again.

This time, even if they manage to get a hundred people in the perfect position to assault this position, they will have to contend with proper defenses, runic arrays to reinforce everyone inside powerful turrets and at least a few dozen melee fighters already fully armed and armored.

As the minutes pass no one gets any closer to realizing how the enemy ‘unlocked’ the pyramid or interfaced with the system.

“Things aren’t this simple are they? The system hasn’t told us what to do. Our method of unlocking the Pyramids has to be different.”

Everyone’s faces grow gloomier at the inherent truth of my words. But they don’t give up the search. My mind turns over everything I know and I use some of the very carefully saved up potential in my book to get a clue.

Leaving the chamber and climbing to the top of the pyramid, I sit turned to our remaining enemies. The conditions that allowed me to bulldoze the defenders on this pyramid don’t really exist on the Great Pyramid of Giza. The corridors are wider and now my sneaking suspicion about how close I would be to my limit is proven. I don’t have enough of a power reserve to assault that position.

I flip my first ‘reward’ from the system. A book with ‘infinite’ pages. Even now, it carries more information than most libraries, but still only a fraction of human generated knowledge. As I feel the pool of potential take a substantial dip, I read the words:

‘The native's method of unlocking Aether Icons is unique to each planet.’

“Damn, I had hints of this, but damn.”