Chapter 190 - Countering Killers As Best I Can

Eric gazed at his interface stats with genuine shock, utterly stupefied by his growth. Even with his ever growing fear for his sister and the sudden sharp surge of anxiety he had for Samuel and Pavel, trapped here with him and who knew how many Feng Ren sect cultivators, he couldn’t help but take a moment to savor his profound growth, both in terms of power, and skill.

To think that not that many months ago he had come to a broken wreck with an 8 Strength. And how incredible he had felt when he had finally achieved Gold Medal Olympian levels of 20 in so many of his stats.

“And now I have four stats over a hundred. Who the hell would have thought?”

Though his limbs were still shaking with exhaustion, he couldn’t help but smile in awe when he closed his eyes and savored the wondrous prize he had claimed.

He still thought it a miracle that he had even survived the sweet, indescribable agony of his spirit all but combusting under the incredible spiritual pressure he had endured. Yet it was worth it. So incredibly worth it, to savor the stupendous once-in-a-lifetime boon that devouring twelve Divine spirit fruit had granted him.

Sweet golden spiritual energy roaring through his widened meridians and flooding his body and soul with such strength. Combining the elements of Wood, Wind, and most especially Fire, tied as it was to one of the three Essences he understood so profoundly, all that had allowed him to learn a singular rune that even now resonated within his core.

Even better, where before he had one elemental affinity, now he had three, Wind, Wood, and Fire inextricably linked together within the very foundations of his cultivation path.

He couldn’t help but shake his head at the steps he had dared to tread along multiple paths of power before his eyes widened with surprise, feeling a sudden unwelcome tightness in his chest.

He had thought just a handful of minutes or perhaps hours had passed.

He had, in fact, been struggling to find equilibrium over a period of days, not fully coming back to himself until he was well and truly stable. Only now did he dare think of moving and acting without fear of rupturing still tender meridians, and he sensed that he still needed a few more days to stabilize himself completely. Best of all, once he finished fully recuperating, he was all but certain that the pair of enticing Qi Skills his interface had so kindly bolded in red would finally be available to him.

His cultivation base cared nothing for worldly concerns. Despite his thirst, he sensed that the nectar in those peaches, with all their potency, would have kept him in equilibrium for months, let alone a single week. So why had he woken up early?

Then his eyes widened as one of the perks to his myriad titles suddenly flared to life, and in that instant he knew.

Knew that he hadn’t woken up because perfect clarity had been achieved.

He had been jolted awake too soon because trouble must be heading his way.

Move!

Eric wasted no time second-guessing himself when the uncomfortable niggle in the back of his spine turned to a chill so intense it was as if a sliver of ice had been lodged against his soul.

With a panicked hiss he was already moving, springing back as the planking exploded by his feet.

Unified Perception check – Successful!

Iado skill check made!

In the instant between awareness and cognizance, Eric had already unsheathed his killing blade the color of wind and fire now streaking through the air. A blade that struck something completely unseen in the interplay of light, shadow, rustling leaves, and wooden planks.

Before a single jolt and cry instantly revealed a wide-eyed dark elf glaring at him in surprised disbelief, the pair of long thing blades covered in black ichor falling to the ground as Eric’s sword flowed through movements ingrained under the hard eyes of a cultivator even less tolerant of weakness or failure than Eric’s childhood trainer had been.

Striking so fast even Eric watched in stunned disbelief as crimson lines burst open at abdomen, shoulder and neck, his foe’s brow furrowing in confusion as he collapsed to the ground in literal pieces, spraying Eric’s armor with his lifeblood, eyes jolting wide with the horror of a his own nightmare ending he would do anything to wake up from, an odd moment of communion between dying victim and killer as their eyes met, before the connection was lost as the head wobbled and rolled away.

Move!

Eric’s horror and the flare of regret might have been his last, had his inhuman Quickness not him jolting to the other side of the platform far faster than even Eric of just days ago could have managed, multiple crossbow bolts smacking into the wooden planks, now hissing with a caustic reek he did his best not to inhale.

Perception Check made!

Eric quickly noted the angle of the bolts before the hideously caustic acid ate right through his bulwark and went tumbling to the ground far below. But not before he darted forward, wrenching out the one bolt that had dared strike his priceless tree before spinning around the trunk, desperate eyes gazing all around the east side and sensing absolutely no trace of would-be assassins.

And he wanted to laugh for the bitter futility of it, knowing it hardly mattered when he had almost missed the cloaked assassin who had used Spiritual Energy or whatever odd ability he had to camouflage himself until he was literally just feet away from Eric.

Then Eric flashed a fierce smile, gazing at the bolt he still held in his hand before closing his eyes and doing his best to sense the connection between sweat, trembling fingers, and the memory of blood. Blood pounding in his own heart as he sensed an odd red mist of a connection, opening his eyes and exchanging Windblade for javelin as he took a deep, shuddering breath…

And forced himself to look straight up.

His exquisitely high Perception at last made out the blurred trio of killers who had actually managed to gain the height advantage over a tree twice as high as any other, with a full football field’s length separating it from it’s closest neighbors by methods unexpected, and worthy of any ancient ninja. Even those following paths so crooked that they dare not approach any fire peaches, lest the twisted corrosion of countless lies and betrayals rupture even their oddly knotted cultivation bases in purifying flame.

An actual hot air balloon, perfectly positioned to force Eric to peer right into the sun, even if he could get past their spirit-cloaking abilities.

Eric hissed and darted back as fresh crossbow bolts slammed into the planks where he had been standing, hissing with a poison so potent that the slightest Perception enhanced whiff caused his interface to scream with alarm. And the notification blaring across his mind made even him freeze in momentary horror. The one thing he most definitely could not afford to do.

Now that they thought they had sighted him in perfectly, those bastards had switched to using actual Bronze-Tier poisons on the tips of their bolts. Far worse than any one-time use spirit-beast poison carefully sealed and contained within a masterwork single-use trap, or his own bluffing of cultivators cowed by nothing worse than foul-smelling swamp dung weeds.

The assassins above were shooting multiple crossbow bolts dipped with toxins that should never have been permitted anywhere near Earth, according to his Interface now blaring with countless breach-of-accord messages. Accords that he somehow sensed meant very little to System-using cultivators following crooked paths.

Eric snarled in helpless frustration, his enemies having maneuvered themselves so well that regardless of his phenomenally improved stats, not even he could hurl a javelin with any power at such a steep angle as they were sniping at him from.

The fuckers had positioned themselves brilliantly for an ambush, no doubt exactly as they were trained to.

Eric flashed a hard smile then as he did the only thing he could against assassins who had mastered their playbook.

Embrace the unorthodox.

With that thought in mind, his massive cultivation platform disappeared in the blink of an eye, Eric bracing himself for a backlash from his still fragile cultivation base that thankfully never came, thanks to Flesh Sculpture skill now being in odd harmony with his cultivation, so long as he only used materials native to this miniature realm.

“There he is! Get the wild cultivator that dared to steal my fruit! He is vulnerable! Shoot him now, now!” Screamed the Qi-enhanced youthful voice of the young master who must have sat there in the clearing, glaring in desperate fury Eric’s way for what might have been days on end.

How the assassins arrived, or whether they had always been there, a hidden ace of the Feng Ren Sect, Eric neither knew nor cared. What mattered to Eric was that the original handful of invading cultivators clearly hadn’t left the field, as far as the interface was concerned, because even with the Alpha beast defeated and twelve Epic tier spirit fruit claimed by himself, the territory was still in play.

Which meant that there were multiple trained Wind cultivators on the ground, and assassins eager to kill him overhead, and Eric had been forced out of his trance before he could embrace the Qi Powers that all but called out to him.

Eric gave a bitter shake of his head, knowing he shouldn’t expect anything else in a world where power was everything and this Feng Ren Sect had already wiped out the original inhabited that had previously claimed this pocket realm countless years ago, in a ruthless bid to claim their mystic fruit as its own.

A realm that, whether due to fate, System interference, or the final dying curse of a fallen clan, had torn itself completely free of the realm it had once been linked to, before forging fresh gateways to Earth. Gateways that the sect trying so desperately hard to kill Eric had somehow managed to find in less than a year, regardless of the sheer impossibility of pinpointing an anomaly in a galaxy containing upwards of 40 billion potentially habitable Earth-type planets.

“You’re dead. Do you here me, thief? Dead! You think I’ll let you cultivate my clan’s fruit? Ha! How about I let you cultivate for eternity as a howling spirit in the River of Souls!?”

Eric peered down at the young cultivator, hawk-like vision clearly making out flawless features twisted into an ugly sneer.

Eric paid the youth’s hate no more mind, instead doing his best to quickly make out the three hard-eyed guardians dressed much as Pavel had been, with mithril mail, helms, and blades at their hip glowing with fearsome spiritual energy.

Eric could feel their killing auras even from here, and he couldn’t help but smile in response. Before happily giving them all the finger as he reformed a gazebo like structure with stout flooring, and most importantly, a very thick, sloped roof. Yet the sides he left bare, save for a handful of reinforced beams of bone and hide so infused with the potency of their origins that Eric knew they would be to be as strong as the stoutest wooden support beams ever to support any wooden structure on Earth.

Eric then gazed down, pleased to see that line of sight had been completely blocked from his enemies below… and above. At least at the angle they had been firing at.

Instead, Eric crouched into position and waited.

Waited with a predator’s patience as bolts enhanced with poisons that could kill even the sentinel of this entire miniature realm, Bronze tier toxins that had no place in this world whatsoever, and that Eric dared not fuck with, skittered off the curved dome covered in multiple layers of overlapping tusker bone and hide before spinning down into the clearing below.

“Kill him! Kill that goddamned fruit steeling bastard!” Lai Wei continued to scream with his magnified voice like the petulant brat that he was, his patience no doubt at an end after perhaps days of being forced to wait for one of his bodyguards to send for yet more unorthodox and, Eric was sure, highly illegal help that violated a dozen System strictures. But Eric had long since accepted that the more power you had, the more back doors would be available for you to get away with pretty much anything. And as these were pure cultivators, they probably gave far less of a fuck about System strictures than most, even on worlds still in their Grace period.

Thoughts that rippled across Eric’s mind before the crystal clear pool of his psyche stilled once more as he slowed his breathing and steadied his focus, waiting for his foes to take the bait, to make the one singular mistake that would allow them line-of-sight on their prey.

Then Eric saw it.

Heart hammering with a staccato beat of excitement and dread as the bamboo balloon basket descended just enough for his enemies to catch sight of him and fire their crossbows once more.

But not before Eric’s blaster rifle ripped open their basket with a single long pull of the trigger, sending all three of his screaming foes crashing to their death as the balloon, now free of a good half ton of weight, immediately shot up towards the heavens. Well worth the expense of irreplaceable charges, he thought, though more aware than ever of the limited utility of a weapon he had sacrificed so much of himself to soul bind, as the charges dipped below 100 with his 5-charge pull.

Charges he feared he might never be able to replace.

You have critically struck Bamboo Basket and the occupants within!

Bamboo basket has been ruptured!

3 Unorthodox Cultivators have fallen to their deaths!

You have critically struck 3 Dark Cultivators with an Outlawed Arcane Weapon!

Note! Dark Vows of an Assassin embraced by your targets circumvent all cultivation restrictions!

Law of Reciprocity in effect.

Just as your foe’s cultivation path allowed them to kill you by any means at their disposal, you are free to do the same.

You receive no experience penalties for Blaster Kills.

Your foundation suffers no strain from use of Arcane Blaster Rifle.

You may claim all artifacts owned by your kills without penalty.

Congratulations! You have successfully slain 3 Level 30 Dark Assassins! Experience Earned!

Maximum Potency to skill rank conversion in effect.

Arcane Blaster Rifle is now Rank 4!

Arcane Blaster Rifle is now Rank 5!

Arcane Blaster Rifle is now Rank 6!

It had been a gamble, of course. Eric’s goal had been to rip open the basket, and allow gravity, not his blaster, to spell the would-be assassins doom. Yet it seemed that the System still pinned the kills on him… and what a boon it was to gain full credit for his act, with absolutely no penalty at all.

Exquisite Perception allowed Eric to perfectly make out Lai Wei’s panicked cry. “Su Lin! The balloon… they’re falling! Flipping through the air! One is screaming! why aren’t they catching themselves?”

“I fear our assassins are lost to us, young master.”

“That one exploded on impact! How is that possible? And that one bounced!”

“The slab of stone and the forest loam both have different properties, my lord.”

“Bloody hell. Those fools were ripped wide open! Look at their entrails! And the third… he looks like he’s trying to say something, but all he does is gulp air like a wild-eyed fish!”

“I believe his neck his broken, young master.”

“Well? What the hell happened? How did he best you? What did he do?”

“Master… he cannot speak. Death will come quickly for him. There is nothing we can do. Unless you were to...”

“NO! You fool! I have only the one! What if that monster comes for me? Give him a lesser potion. I am not unreasonable. Anything but my father’s gift!”

“Of course, young master.”

Eric groaned under the fresh flood of potency, biting his lip so hard it bled as he desperately resumed cultivating, striving to balance the fearsome flood of power saturating his meridians that he was still trying to get into perfect equilibrium… not at all helped by the potency of four fresh high level kills that would have had his Basic Conscript class effortlessly shooting up in rank. But he had already achieved 100% saturation. A monumental feat in itself, and how much he wished he hadn’t achieved it quite yet.

There was nowhere else for that potency to go, save into his second class. Yet as a cultivator, the only peripheral channels he had were those that had followed the blood-linked patterns Eric had scribed into his own flesh, a tattoo-like shortcut that might have saved him years-worth of mundane cultivation, but didn’t make up for the fact that there was a hell of a lot he still had to learn. Peripherals that had already been fully forged and saturated, ascending him all the way to Rank 20 in his desperate bid not to explode under the furious maelstrom of spiritual energies contained within the fruit he had dared to consume in a single sitting, betting everything that he could somehow stabilize meridian gateways he had dared to elevate all at once.

As his enemy’s voices washed over him, Eric had no choice but to embrace the desperate gambit of using his experience in the only way available to him, to speed up his own body’s evolution.

And far from absolutely tearing him apart, the growing harmony between spirit, body, and soul, the flood of swirling Fiery Qi fueled by Wood and Wind, grew ever more harmonious as the minutes became hours, and the work of weeks, perhaps even months, was condensed into a single night’s struggle for perfection.

Until his mind blared with a notification that sent tears to his eyes before he collapsed in an exhausted heap, after promising himself that he wouldn’t be so stupid as to fall asleep with enemies so eager to kill him waiting by the roots of his tree.

Congratulations! Your cultivation base has once more achieved a Pristine State!

You may now safely channel spiritual energy, however you so choose!

His final thoughts as exhaustion at last claimed its due was praying that his taking out those killers would make his foes hesitate, not send out even more men. Because right now, should they find him in his present collapsed stupor, he was as good as dead.