Chapter 29: Leaving The Deserted Jungle

Aden treaded through the desert with his bare feet, infusing his energy into his feet to traverse thousands of miles every minute.

His silver hair fluttered wildly in the wind, giving him an otherworldly appearance.

The decision to leave the desert was a rather obvious one since he couldn’t think of any other alternative, but he severely underestimated the distance he had to travel to find a civilization.

Close to four hours had passed since Aden began his journey and apart from the occasional dust that infiltrated his nostrils and caused him slight dizziness each time, there was nothing else that changed.

’Should I try Ghost Feint?’ he wondered.

Although his Resonance pool had increased considerably ever since his breakthrough and stabilization, Aden was still worried he would run out of energy at the exact moment when he would be faced with an obstacle.

Paranoid? No. Cautious is more accurate.

And the Ghost Feint being a perfect travelling hack that consumed comparably low Resonance during its use, it naturally became the best course of action.

The transparent blue interface materialized before him and he mentally clicked on ’Ghost Feint.’

As Aden’s mental command registered, the System hummed with a hollow, metallic resonance. Unlike the full [Void-Cloak], which felt like drowning in an icy ocean, [Ghost-Feint] felt like a lightning strike of absolute nothingness.

___

[SUB-SKILL ACTIVATED: GHOST-FEINT]

[CONSUMPTION: 0.5% RESONANCE PER PULSE]

[STATUS: TESTING MODE]

___

Aden didn’t stop his sprint. In fact, he leaned forward, pushing his speed until the air began to scream against his skin. Ahead of him lay a massive, jagged ridge of obsidian glass, a byproduct of the Seventh-Stage explosion that had flash-frozen the sand into a wall of razor-sharp obstacles.

In the past, he would have had to leap over it or shatter it with a burst of energy. Now, he simply stared through it.

’Now.’

[PULSE]

The world suddenly lost its color. The vibrant blue of the sky turned into a washed-out charcoal, and the roaring wind went dead silent. Aden felt a terrifying sensation of “thinness,” as if his very atoms were spreading apart to accommodate the world around him.

He didn’t hit the obsidian ridge. He glitched through it.

To a bird looking down, it would have looked like a silver streak of light hit a wall and simply failed to stop. There was no sound of impact, no shattering glass. Aden felt a prickling, static-like coldness wash over his skin as the solid obsidian passed through his organs, his bones, and his brain. It was a sensory overload of nothing.

The moment his heels cleared the other side of the ridge, the skill snapped off.

[GHOST-FEINT: DEACTIVATED]

[COOLDOWN: 1.5 SECONDS]

[PROGRESS: 4%]

The color rushed back into the world so fast it made his head spin. The heat of the desert hit him like a physical blow, and the sound of the wind returned with a deafening crack.

Aden stumbled, his bare feet digging deep into the scorching sand as he skidded to a halt. He gasped for air, his lungs feeling like they had just inhaled liquid nitrogen.

“This is absolutely unreal,” he whispered, looking back at the massive wall of glass behind him. There wasn’t a single scratch on it. Not a single footprint led up to it.

He looked at his hands. They were trembling, but not from fear.

’With this… I don’t need to follow the roads. I can just phase through everything like a speedster or something’

Aden straightened his back, a small, cold smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He began to run again, but this time, he didn’t avoid the debris. Every time a rock or a pillar of ash appeared in his path, his body would flicker into that matte-grey ’glitch’ state, passing through the obstacles with the grace of a phantom.

[PROGRESS: 7%… 12%… 18%…]

As the desert began to thin and the first signs of a jagged mountain range appeared on the horizon, Aden realized something.

The journey which he had estimated to take a few days had been completed in a matter of minutes.

And his energy was still at an acceptable level.

“A cheat in every sense of the word,” he muttered in awe.

He skidded to a halt a few thousand meters away from a large gate that exuded an ominous aura. Five guards clad in ink black armor with horned helmets stood at the large entrance, turning back the multitude of people that attempted to pass through the gates with ruthless shoves and kicks.

He spotted a mother carrying a little boy in her arms attempting to slip by one of the guards who was occupied with a man— presumably her husband.

The woman already had a foot in the other side before she was pulled back by the edge of her hair and tossed on the floor like a rag doll.

“Didn’t I tell you all the refugee center is filled up? Go find another place to live!” The guard at the center boomed.

His voice was so loud that it caused the normal folk to fall on the ground while holding each side of their heads with pained expressions.

The woman held her child closer to her chest as she stood up, her husband returned to her side with a purple bruise on his left eye and a swollen lip.

Aden was particularly interested in this group, hence he infused his energy into his ears to hear what they were saying.

“We can’t get past the gates like this, not unless we’re accompanied by an Awakened,” the woman spoke sadly.

The man was continually pushed around by the massive crowd, but he somehow managed not to leave the face of his wife.

“There’s no way an Awakened is in this crowd. They must’ve already passed through the gates or gone to another city to start a new life. We can only keep trying to bypass the guards,” the man reasoned.

Tears threatened to spill out the woman’s eyes, but she somehow managed to hold it in as she hugged her child even tighter.

“This is why the kingdom doesn’t allow any high ranking cultivator fight without being in the battle realm, to avoid causalities like this,” the man continued, his arms wrapping around his wife to avoid the crowd from discomforting them.

Aden stopped the transmission with an unreadable expression.

He took four steps forward, then glitched.

[Progress: 25%]

Aden now stood in the center of an extremely crowded town, reminding him of the hustle and bustle of his past life.

He took a deep breath and his nose twisted immediately.

It wasn’t that the air was particularly polluted or anything of the sorts, but because Aden had already grown used to the immensely pure air in the jungle, his nasal standards had gone up a notch.

Aden shook his head lightly before leaving through the crowd like a literal ghost whilst picking up necessary materials for survival from the multiple stalls that lined each side of the concrete roads.

“I’m merely… borrowing these. When I make it big, I’ll definitely pay them back,” he convinced himself.

A small building with a wooden exterior that had seen better days and a crooked sign that read, ’Croakers Den’ came into Aden’s view as he picked out a matching boot to go with his outfit from an unsuspecting stall.

A light hum left his lips as he placed the boot in his storage ring alongside the rest of the stuff he ’borrowed’.

He walked towards the building while taking note of the surroundings and conditions of the people who walked past him.

“It’s eerily similar to what an after effect of war would be like,” he remarked as he stepped foot in the building.

Meanwhile, the family that has been lamenting on their grim situation a few minutes ago currently stood in the center of the city with bewildered looks on their faces.

Even the kid.

They held each other tightly, and let the tears they’d kept bottled up freely spill from their eyes.

“Thank you, thank you…” The man whispered, as he held his family tighter than ever.

He didn’t know who he was thanking, but there was no doubt in his mind that whoever saved him and his family had no obligation to.

The passers-by looked at them strangely for a split second before going on with their day.

The woman lifted her face from her husband’s chest. “We have to go find a place to live, then I’ll make us a meal”

A warm smile bloomed on the man’s face as he nodded. “I’ll find my friends who live here, they’ll help with accommodation.”

Laughter left their lips as they ruffled the blonde hair of their son and walked down the road where Aden had passed through a few moments ago.

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