Chapter 187 - Poison Bait

Eric kept a careful eye out for the cultivators who were no doubt heading in the same direction he was, racing for the massive Spirit Boar Eric sensed was the guardian of this entire domain, and the massive peach tree soaring so high above the forest canopy that gazing up at it was like looking at a true natural wonder. Eric dared waste only a second gazing up at the Magnificent white-gold peaches shimmering like warm golden suns from branches so high Eric could actually see clouds caressing them like seas of mist, before being burned away by the brilliant Fire Qi trapped within each one.

It was a true wonder that had filled him with such awe to finally see, as Unified perception blossomed along with Meridian Channels now as pristine and ready for evolution as any Rank 12 cultivator could hope to achieve. Only now were his eyes truly open to all the wonders that had been hidden from him for so long.

Secrets revealed only now, at the moment that everything was in absolute flux.

The future of an entire realm was about to be shaped by the actions of competing cultivators, and Eric sensed not only his own future, but the fate of this entire fragile realm, somehow resting on what would unfold this day.

But that was a burden he refused to bear or think about, focusing on the only thing that mattered.

Reaching the divine spirit fruit in time.

Of course he refused to let desperation have him play the fool. He wasn’t so arrogant as to dare think he could take on a band of highly trained and no doubt ruthlessly focused cultivators with his blade alone.

But if what he and Sam had cooked up actually worked, then maybe they could use their enemies’ own dirty tricks against them.

But there was only one way to know for sure.

And when Eric finally broke through the clearing into the massive forest glade where a single massive tree alone held sway, Eric froze with sudden apprehension at the sight before him, guts twisting with dismay.

At that moment he knew without a doubt that he was in way, way over his head as he gazed upon a band of five cultivators equipped in deadly mithril just as Pavel’s band had been. Only these five radiated a deadly killing intent beyond even the quartet he had encountered so many weeks ago.

All save one were armed with deadly mithril blades radiating Wind Qi, the fifth nervously clenching the hilt of a dachi pristinely aligned with flame. And all five of them were focused on a barrier so mighty, so fearsome, that the quintet’s palpable spiritual pressure paled almost to insignificance before it.

It was the sentinel boar Eric had spotted so many weeks ago, accepting the challenge offered in the mighty beast’s gaze. A challenge deferred only because Eric had begun to truly embrace the righteous path of cultivation, finally achieving a pristine foundation. At the time he had thought the tree only half a mile off, the boar’s challenge only somewhat beyond his capabilities to accept. But now he realized it been many many miles away. The magnificent trunk behind the boar and the many odd properties of this realm had utterly thrown off Eric’s sense of scale, having clearly failed his Perception check for the first time in who knew how long.

He couldn’t quite choke down a groan, realizing that in addition to five homicidal cultivators, he’d be facing nothing less than a Bronze tier Spirit Beast, so far beyond his powers it that even thinking of bringing it down before being gored to oblivion was a laughable joke.

The very fact that he hadn’t burst into flame approaching this close was thanks to his Pristine Meridian Channels alone. And how humbling it was to realize that even the toughest, highest leveled adventurers back home would have perished for even daring to get as close as he now was.

Somehow Eric wasn’t surprised to find himself falling to his knees in silent awe of the beast before him, even as he bathed in intense spiritual energy that kissed at the eternal and filled him with a sudden sense of joy.

Before regaining his senses and focusing instead on the peril at hand as he trembled at the forest’s edge, knowing that the only reason why his presence hadn’t already been noted and acted upon was because the titanic spirit boar who could only be Bronze tier if not greater, commanded every iota of the invader’s attention.

Eric, refusing to play the pool with a quick mad dash, instead carefully spent long moments racing to the opposite end of the magnificent glade, stomach tying in knots as the air was suddenly permeated with a sickly sweet scent he recognized all too well.

But neither his absurd Finesse nor his much more modest Stealth skill was enough.

Not with the System itself announcing his presence for all the world to hear.

Contender Eric Silver has entered Sphere of the Divine Boar!

Pocket Realm: Remnants of A Fallen Sect is now in play.

Realm cannot be seized until competing party has fled or perished, and all Divine Prizes are claimed!

Eric’s faint hope that non Interface-enhanced cultivators might not have heard the System message were dashed when both sect warriors and boar turned to stare his way.

Eric’s gut clenched under the weight of multiple killing auras. Strangely, not from the boar, whom Eric could sense radiating such Bronze Tier power that he knew he’d be lucky to escape with just his life, but from the five cultivators fixating upon him with their hate-filled glares.

Instantly rendering pointless all Eric’s efforts to avoid detection by circling around the massive clearing.

But Eric’s attempted maneuvering around glade did mean that at least he had some distance from his foes, the sacred tree and the guardian as close to him as the dark elves themselves.

The largest among the five cultivators then placed with cold deliberation a prize that sent chills racing down Eric’s spine, before all five quickly stepped back.

“It’s done. Now kill that wild cultivator!” Roared none other than the youthful-looking dark elf in armor tinted the color of darkest flame, earning four cold nods. In the eyeblink it took for Eric to register that a kid looking younger than himself had just ordered his death with the same cavalier arrogance as any spoiled young master in every single xianxia book he had ever read was more than enough time for the quartet so ordered to dart around the massive boar, hands on the hilts of their blades as they raced towards Eric’s position.

Eric’s heart lurched in his chest as hate-filled eyes met his own, his foes seeking to crush his will with their killing intent alone.

Mental Resistance skill check successful!

Yet Eric refused to waste another instant in horrified disbelief, instead dashing for the trunk as fast as his powerful build and inhuman quickness could take him.

Which was plenty damned fast.

But no match for 30th level movement techniques, Eric suddenly finding himself face to face with a snarling dark elf spitting his contempt as he drew and lashed out with his mithril blade in a single smooth motion, the killer’s fierce smile making it clear he knew Eric’s death was all but written in the stars.

Or so he thought.

Unified Perception Check made: You sense the flow of Qi through your foe!

Yet in the heartbeat his foe sought Eric’s death, he sensed the possibility of sudden connection.

Absolute affinity with the weapon sheathed at his hip.

Even if there would be a price to pay.

The air sung with the hiss of snapping Qi, the snarling elf blinking in surprise as Eric drew and struck so fast that it was as if his blade has always been there, his foe’s Windblade attack shattered as Eric simultaneously twisted and lunged, his winding blade slicing effortlessly past his foe’s desperate parry, and how surprised the older cultivator looked to feel the taste of white-hot mithril plunging under his throat to clang against the back of the dark elf’s near indestructible mithril helm.

Before collapsing with a faint pop as eyeballs ruptured and steaming brain exploded from a skull that now erupted with flame, as Eric felt three more years of his life slip free into Oblivion’s maw.

He lurched for one perilous moment, ignoring the flood of messages blaring across an interface he knew better than to pull up now, relying on instinct alone as the body disappeared into his ES Space in the blink of an eye, claiming his kill.

Claiming his due.

And refusing to think too deeply about the blade that glowed with a fearsome white heat he instantly flipped into his storage space as he caught sight of a roaring boar goring a racing cultivator with an audible crunch as a body was sent windmilling through the air.

“Fall back, Gels! Let the damned boar take him!” Screamed a voice too young for such bloodthirsty intent, and Eric didn’t waste the heartbeat needed, processing the strange look of fear flickering across the faces of the pair of ebony-skinned elves that immediately sprinted back the way they came, desperate to reach the thick forest beyond the glade before it was too late.

And Eric was too Perceptive not to feel the ground vibrating under the massive crush of hooves.

He knew he had to MOVE! As fast as he damn well could, and he did so, rolling and springing for the thankfully thick, knotted bark as a trumpeting roar shook through his soul.

It was all he could do to choke down the desperate holler of terror his lungs begged to utter as he scurried up the absolutely massive trunk in the heart of the glade, not even gazing down into eyes that he knew would freeze him in terror as he shouted for all he was worth.

“Don’t eat the prize those assholes left you! It’s poison!”

Eric hissed, desperate fingers locking into thick bark crevices as he suddenly felt the weight of a Bronze psyche effortlessly piercing his soul.

It was as if the realm guardian’s squeals and roars and gentle goring of before had been but play. Now? It radiating a deadly seriousness. An absolutely crushing killing intent.

Eric’s heart slammed in his chest, spikes of ice cold dread freezing his blood.

Until the Essence of Flame and his own desperation compelled his fingers to MOVE! Clasping fresh bark and scurrying up the tree as fast as he could, though his heart quailed with the knowledge that his strength would mean nothing if that fearsome monster charged the tree, the impact alone sure to jostle the trunk more than enough to send him flying free and crashing down to his death below.

Eric’s life was utterly in the Bronze tier monster’s hands, and they both knew it.

“The sickly sweet smell is an enticement to your kind, and a trap! The other quartet of cultivators left poison that smelled exactly the same, planning on poisoning you and stealing the fruit for their leader’s chosen, I’m sure of it!”

For better or worse, Eric’s desperate shout echoed loud enough for even the most outraged of boar to hear… and the cultivators who had come to claim their due.

“You! Your the reason why I had to come here and get my prizes personally!” Screamed a voice in the distance, effortlessly projected with Qi. “You’re the reason why my precious life, my golden destiny, is being put at risk upon the very first rungs of my glorious ascension! You’ll pay for that, you Terran abomination! Pay for that with your life, and the lives of everyone you hold dear!”

And Eric couldn’t help but laugh. Laugh for the terror of death gazing up at him, porcine features filled with a chilling intelligence, and laughed at the sheer spite-filled arrogance that sounded exactly like what every spoiled young master in every cultivation novel he had ever read sounded like in his head.

It was all Eric could do not to howl for the madness of his situation, the sheer exhilaration of having just survived mortal combat, the threat of death utter and absolute, even if over in seconds, as real life sword duels often were. Nothing like the storybooks. And how damned grateful Eric was to have endured so many being battered and put through his paces by a true master. A cultivator who Eric was damn certain would have ascended long ago, were it not for a Sect determined to crush the potential of anyone not born to the chosen few among their clans.

But what he was absolutely determined not to think about was how naturally his sword had blazed with flame.

A sword he now understood utterly, it’s exquisitely complex weaving of exotic mithril and impossible amounts of Spiritual Energy that had gone into the forging an Epic tier artifact now known as utterly as he did his Mark II Deathblaze. And the price he had been forced to pay had been shocking in its cost, and that he had paid it in the blink of an eye.

Without any strain to his meridians and psyche at all.

You have successfully Soulbound Mithril Windblade!

Blood Tattoos mirroring Wind Qi Cultivation Path allow you to channel your spiritual energy through your blade!

You have taken your first steps in understanding the interplay between Wind and Fire!

Spiritual affinity minimizes meridian strain!

Life force cost has been halved to 3 years!

Level 9 Experience has fallen to zero!

You have successfully defeated a Rank 30 Wind-specialized Cultivator.

You have achieved maximum Level 9 experience! (Excess experience dedicated to Core Saturation!)

Eric shuddered at the thought of casually spending 3 more years of his life like a tip at the bar, filled with a certain amount of horror at how smoothly, how effortlessly, his life-force had flowed into a killing strike.

Most of all, he was terrified by how easy it had been to let it go. To step that much closer to his own death, even as he delivered it to others.

All he could do now was race up the tree with desperate haste, taking advantage of perilous moments as the boar gazed up at him and pray with all his heart that the tales he used to read so avidly held an element of truth when it came to the mystic powers of golden fruit.

Because god knew he needed any boost to his rapidly dwindling life that he could get.

Yet even as he began to feel the flicker of desperate hope as his rapid ascent was unimpeded by the Bronze tier monster below, the painful sigh the creature uttered, that of one accepting his own folly, and the howling laughter of a young master Eric just knew he’d be locked in mortal combat with at some point in the very near future rang through the clearing.

“You’re too late, fool! Did you see nothing? While you scurried like a coward, this stupid beast had already consume two of our prizes! Why the hell did you think I allowed my men to chase you down?”

Eric grit his teeth.

How dare that arrogant bastard act like the master of this dance when one of his men was already dead, another gored by a boar who had been more than capable of movement, whatever the fire-aligned youth said.

But the suddenly painful squeal from below made it clear that his foes would soon be coming for him.

He was living on borrowed time.

Chapter 188 - The First Peach