Gale’s vision turned red. The sight of Rachel bleeding on the ground flipped the world feel upside down. He noticed her lungs still shallowly going up and down. She was alive, at least for now.

Dashing towards her, the knight blocked his path. He threw his spear at the thing, taking another from his back.

The knight blocked and swung its giant sword at him. Gale jumped over the low swing.

Using the spear as a pole, he dug it onto the ground. He vaulted himself over the massive knight. It reacted, swinging at him mid air.

He couldn’t dodge. Another spear drawn from his back. Stabbed onto the knight’s visor. The spear point being repelled from the visor allowed him to vault over the swinging sword again, launching himself further to where Rachel’s body lay.

Picking up her head, her mouth dripped with blood. Her eyes fluttered. Face pale. He examined where the stab went through. Nothing vital. Thankfully. But she was still bleeding profusely.

You’re going to lose her.

The knight came at both of them, swinging its sword downwards to where they were. Not before Gale had picked her up, carrying her, and dodged the strike.

“Gale!” Ollie shouted. The portal behind him had waned. More cracks appeared, webbing inwards like a shattered mirror.

“The rift’s closing! We need to go now!” Annett shouted. “HURRY!”

Ollie and Annett rushed through the rift, exiting after saying that line. The whole convoy had already gone through the rift. It was only Rachel left.

Behind him, the knight chased. He wasn’t going to make it. If he didn’t make it, Rachel wouldn’t make it. And if she didn’t make it, then she would die here. She’d be gone forever.

Gale gritted his teeth. Looking at Rachel in his arms, the decision in his mind was already made.

Another strike dodged from behind. The rush of air just centimetres behind him. Earth shook as the knight stomped its way to his position.

He held on to Rachel tightly and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Then, with all the strength he could muster, using up the last reserves of his essence, Gale threw Rachel towards the rift, pouring everything he got into that one throw.

He saw her look back at him, seeming to say something. Tears poured out of her eyes. Hand outreached to him.

And in the next blink of an eye, she passed through the rift. Cracks webbed more violently after she had passed, like glass meeting a hammer. And in that moment, the rift’s edges trembled, reality itself bending and warping before zipping shut.

The rift was gone. Out of existence. Taking Rachel and his own last hope of finding a way back home. Gale stood alone. Behind him, the knight and Elliot’s forces.

The dark knight crashed into where Gale was. Dust thrown up created a small dust cloud. Its massive sword hung in the air, ready to strike him, but the blow never came.

Instead, the knight’s helmet swivelled to look behind him. The approaching horde of Blue Haven thralls looked like a tidal wave of bodies coming directly at them.

“The sacrifices! It’s all because of you! You insect!” Elliot’s manic shout sounded more like a screech at this point.

The rift was gone. There was no point in staying here. The only thing left to do was survive, back to his old ways. It would be easier, not needing to worry about other people’s lives. Easier that he wouldn’t have to see anyone disappear again. And the damned sight of being between two horrors didn’t even allow him to feel.

Time slowed once again.

One breath felt like an eternity.

There was no choice left. He let his mind fall into the void, and its breath reciprocated, encasing his whole being.

The ecstasy the power gave him made him want to lose himself in it. Lose himself in the unknown power that the thing called life had given him. The first time he felt it, he felt he could own the world, make it his, and everything would be fine.

And then suddenly, the world around him shifted. Reality bent, shapes twisted. Trees looked both upright and upside down. The rocks on the ground both existed and didn’t. Exhilaration numbed his pain. The familiar feeling when he fought the shadow flowed through his flesh and veins.

Gale closed his eyes. He could go deeper. Allowed the skill’s breath to seep into him more fully, more deeply. Strands of darkness permeated throughout every fibre of his being. It nipped at his skin, changing his flesh in ways he couldn’t fully comprehend.

When he opened them again, the view of the world had changed. The night turned into day. Colours bled into each other. Objects looked sharper than before. The odour from the ghouls smelled sharper, but also no longer disgusting.

The thralls in front of him no longer looked human. They’ve become translucent apparitions that held no body. It was as if reality struggled to tell him what those were. Struggled to maintain the sanity of showing inexplicable beings.

Through it all, the knight remained untwisted. Instead, the darkness of the metal the knight bore turned into white. Inverted colours of galaxies floated in between the very same armour that he fought.

The knight appeared beside him, sword already in motion. Descending at his neck. It was fast, yet slow at the same time. He could actually react easily now, able to keep up.

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Gale was no longer there. He moved. Skidded along the grass. The grip of his shoes couldn’t keep up with the sudden movement.His speed had increased to the point where he couldn’t control it.

“Surround the criminal! Don’t let him escape!” Elliot’s voice rose above the chaos.

Criminal? Laughable. As if the man who had enslaved hundreds of people could even call himself a judge.

The thralls rushed forward, their vacant eyes fixed on Gale. However, in this altered state, he saw more than just their physical bodies.

He saw the threads of light that connected the ghouls to Elliot. The threads seemed alive. Strings like a puppet master, pulsing slowly. Each one connected to where the neck of each ghoul was. Small bits of light pulsed like a peristalsis that fed the crazy bastard.

He danced between the thralls. Fluidly jumping over their swipes. Ducking under their blows.

Gale struck at the threads of light that connected the thralls to Elliot. However, the sharp point passed through.

[Essence: 3/100]

His essence was basically empty. Still, Gale activated Phase Touch. Jumping overhead and slashing the tip of the spear at the thread, this time it worked. The thread of light snapped cleanly off. The same thrall connected to Elliot dropped down like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

As he moved through the horde, Gale felt a strange sense of detachment.

What did it all matter? The knight was behind him, slashing away at the bodies. Corpses flew everywhere. Blood sprayed. Splashing on his face. Yet he couldn’t feel a single thing from it all. No sense of disgust.

He weaved through each thrall, cutting their strings as he passed. It was all too easy. One swing cut down multiple threads at once. Thralls dropped immediately. It was all too easy. No sense of struggle.

Just a sense of mission: survive. That was the goal.

With each cut of the string connection of a thrall, Gale felt the familiar feeling of Origin Extraction. He heard the familiar chimes of notifications. All of them ignored. The Void’s breath coursed through him, numbing the burn of his legs and arms, slowing his heart rate down.

Gale spun. Multiple thralls fell down. He leapt, and a blue fireball came at him mid air. Twisting his body, his trajectory changed. The fireball narrowly missed his body and exploded behind him.

The knight dashed through the corpses. Massive sword cleaved through anything that got near him. The ghouls and thralls should’ve dwindled in number, yet more of them came pouring out of the dead forest. A neverending tide.

Coldness seeped more into his bones. The once flat landscape turned into a jagged reality. Each thrall was a human. It should’ve been easy to distinguish their faces. But now, all he saw were the faceless.

Whispers grew in his ear. Find me. Attain the tools you need for power.

“Criminal! In the name of the Lord, you can’t escape!”

Elliot’s shout snapped Gale out of his daze from the whispers. The crazy bastard was right about one thing. He couldn’t escape. Not like this. He needed to punch through their lines to create an opening. Stay focused. Ignore the whispers. Ignore that big guy coming after you from behind. Get to safety.

A ghoul lunged at Gale, fingers elongated into claws. Ducked. Spear thrusted upwards to the thread’s connection. Dropped.

The knight’s sword came down at him from behind. Rolled forward. Its sword crashed down on the ground behind him. Earth split and exploded from the impact.

A scream tore through the air. Inhuman and filled with torn chords. Gale turned to see where it came from. The knight. It actually had a voice.

The ghouls surrounded the knight, burying him. His form could hardly be seen. That’s when the knight leapt upwards. The sudden movement threw off all the ghouls that hung to the armour.

The knight landed on a crowd of ghouls just in front of Elliot.

“You sickening monster!” Elliot threw a blue fireball at the knight.

It exploded. Smoke clouds rose up in the middle of the two.

A sword slashed through the veil of smoke at Elliot. Blue fire erupted as a wall that stopped the knight’s sword in its tracks.

A ghoul’s hand caught onto Gale’s ankle while he was distracted. Its grip dug into his flesh, pulling him down to the ground.

Spear spun to cut off the ghoul’s wrist. Gale jumped up immediately, avoiding any more hands that grabbed at him.

While in mid-air, he saw the dead forest. The path was clear while the two monsters fought, even if only for a moment.

Gale ran. The world blurred, pushing his body further over the limit.

Upon entering the treeline, he glanced over his shoulder. The knight stood in a mountain of ghouls. For a moment, it looked as if the eyes behind the visor looked at him.

The trees covered up the scene. No longer in view.

He continued to run. Jagged trees passed by him. Rocks seemingly moved to block his way. Roots jumped out of the ground that aimed to tie his ankle.

All of them avoided even if they were all illusions of his waning sanity. The forest that used to tell him ‘welcome home’ became hostile to him.

He didn’t look back. Phase Touch deactivated on its own.

[Essence depleted.]

His goal was the stone tower. It was the only place he could think of that could offer even a hint of safety. A place where he had slept without having to watch the surroundings.

The forest came alive around him. Faces seemed to appear on the trunks. Their mouths formed a single unsaid word: ‘Die.’

Branches moved, whipped at his face. Rocks fell from the sky, placed in front of his path.

The whispers grew. She told him she would offer him safety. Embrace him. Give him the tools to become the one he wants to be.

He ignored it all.

A forest beast passed by at the corner of his perception. Its leathery skin writhed with millions of worms. In his current state, the beast’s face was that of a human.

The beast seemed to whine, not attacking him. It yelped, cowering and running away from his sight.

He pressed on. Up above the treeline, he saw a scene. Flashes of other places from the experiences he had. Fragments of memories.

The orphanage was one of them. Gray walls. Cramped hallways. Kids screaming in the courtyard, talking about who gets to be ‘it’. The familiar musty smell of the cafeteria, where even the most tasteless meal was better than beast meat.

The scene shifted to his first kill. The thick, hard cover book he’d used to impossibly decapitate the beast. He let the adrenaline and exhilaration of being the predator take over his mind when he had killed that beast.

Again, the scene changed. A soft light he saw through the treetops. Three humans fought against the beasts. One of them glowed like a soft, warm candle.

Her presence had put him at ease in times of need. She talked about the things she wanted to do when she got back home. Hopefully, after today, she would do all of those things with her best friend.

He was happy for her. Right?

He lost track of time as he ran while watching the scenes play out above the treeline. Minutes blended into hours. Reality blurred. But finally, he saw it.

The stone tower rose before him. Its silhouette stood out in the writhing forest.

He stumbled towards it, his strength finally beginning to fail. The world spun around him. He reached out, his hand connecting with the cool stone of the tower’s base.

He entered the tower and leaned against its inner walls by the door. The Breath of the Void receded. Each breath started to feel like a slow burn in his lungs. Colours gradually faded back to normal. Darkness. Gray stones. Green grass. Green leaves. None blending in together.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep