novelraw Chapter 1637 - 1636 - Backed into a Corner
Chapter 1637 - 1636 - Backed into a Corner
Lind was covered in sweat and shaking as he collapsed onto the top deck. He had just barely severed the connections from the conjured spear to its maker. She clearly did not fully understand every aspect of her skill but he was hardly any better.
He had used essentially brute force backed by his Art of Defiance and Dao Weapon empowered by all his Mysteries.
Despite his success, it had been by the skin of his teeth. A few more moments, and her spear would have destroyed his entire vessel and likely all inside.
He had felt the power and intent behind that spear. It was pure lethal desire made manifest with Life and Death Mystery energy powering it. How she made it was beyond him but he suspected the Heaven or Earth Mysteries made it possible.
The fact Samsara was not included told him a lot too.
His enemy was not a peak Journeyman Tier and he did not know how she had conjured pure Mystery energy to manifest it in an Art.
Still, he had no capacity for much beyond downing elixirs to recover as he was in very dangerous airspace at the moment.
They had escaped the sure danger of the Broken Tower mercenaries only to exchange it for the random threat of the Ruined Islands. It protected them but it came at a cost.
He slowly regained enough stamina to stand up and get below. He found Karu and Gaia were nearly as covered in sweat as he was.
They had pushed the ship harder by feeding it all the power they had or they would have been struck by the spear.
The main thruster was too much but a quick push off with their personal power was another matter.
It had exhausted all 3 but now they were controlling the ship on its own power while avoiding any sign of distortions.
"They will wait us out. You have to know that from her Art." Karu spoke up and Lind nodded. Mysteries were inherently personal on top of being condensed understandings of the world.
He had heard her called Lady Executioner and that spear had definitely encompassed that intent on a scale he could hardly believe possible.
Compared to his Art of Defiance, she was much farther along. His Dao Weapon was closer to it but only due to the fact it was incorporating his Mysteries almost on its own. Could he make his own Arts with his Mysteries?
He was uncertain how that would work as just using the energy exhausted him.
Making a pure Mystery grade Art seemed too high a hurdle even with his harmony catalyzing it. He had noticed it took her an interval step to make it too so it was not direct for her either.
That first step was what he might need to grasp first before even attempting it in the future.
A rumble made the wood groan and crystal creak but the ship held.
"Master, gravity has vanished but we are still flying?" Lind would have laughed if he had not taken pre-emptive action to keep the ship heading upward in relation to its orientation.
Rather than relying on defying gravity, it simply moved upward based on the ship's position.
It avoided the whole shift in directions by external forces.
At least it had been until the entire space they were in inverted but the ship nose dived up into the sky because it still thought it was upright!
"DAMN IT!" He slammed his fist on a panel and took over manual control. His senses expanded outward and he felt nauseous as the feedback was just chaotic.
He battled the feeling as he kept them flying. He had lost all sight of the 3 artifact platforms but only a suicidal fool would follow them in.
He was committed now and his original plan had to be tossed out as leaving the ship cloaked was not going to work. It consumed too much energy to maintain indefinitely with a bloodhound looking for any target to hit.
Despite that, he smiled. The mercenaries were tied up and likely asking for reinforcements. He had not just drawn their ire but humiliated a Journeymen Tier on top of slaughtering their experts by True Death.
If they did not hunt him to the ends of the Divine Lands, he would have considered his operation a failure.
"Just what are we doing?! This is going to get us killed!" Karu was screaming but Lind did not answer. He had to focus to keep flying alone.
He finally entered clear skies and began to hunt. He needed to do something extraordinarily stupid but would cut off the Broken Tower entirely.
He downed elixirs like candy as he began to let his fingers fly across the panels. His ship could do a lot but he was reversing a lot of the processes for the thruster.
It was going to fry everything but he needed power far beyond anything he could hope to cobble together on his own.
Karu and Gaia both seemed to grasp what he was doing as they went pale but said nothing.
Lind appreciated it as the ship finally was ready. Now, he just needed some luck.
He should have kept that thought to himself. Two pieces of land nearly appeared to crush them before he could swiftly drop them out of the sky.
As if to mock his efforts, gravity inverted to pull them back up too! Yet, it was the energies cascading all around that made him smile like a madman.
"HANG ON!" His body lit up with emerald light once more and he put everything into it as it roared into the ship's main pathways for the thrusters. Instead of launching them forward, it sucked in all the power at the rear!
Sparks flew as many panels began to overload but it did not matter. He had only 1 shot and he had to make it count!
"Why is nothing ever easy?" He mumbled the question but it could not be heard as the control room became explosive chaos.
The thrum of power flowed from the back to the front, shredding the pathways likely as it went but they just barely held.
"How are you–?" Karu tried to ask something but had to duck as her entire panel overloaded. Lind's eyes lit up like 2 pools of liquid emerald as he smiled.
Through all the chaos of energy out there, several pieces of resonance reached out to him. Unique energy to only 1 being, himself!
He slammed his fist down on the thrust control and the whole ship groaned as he made it turn while pure power unleashed across the world.
⬧⬧⬧⬧
Lady Executioner was recovering when instinct screamed at her. She never doubted her instincts and crushed a pendant at her neck. Space tore open and she was pulled in just as the sky shifted from blue to emerald.
When she reappeared she was left desolate as all 3 floating artifact platforms were vaporized by a level of energy she had never even conceived of before.
She was the only survivor on one of the islands they had previously secured. No supplies nor any way to reach out to her reinforcements. It would take years to get there without proper corrections!
Her dark eyes stared at the fading beam of energy. She had no idea what that dragon had done but she knew it was him. She had already planned to kill him but now she had other plans. She was going to skin him alive and use his beating heart to keep him going until every precious part was harvested possible.
She would find his family and rip them to shreds wherever they were. The princess was no longer on her mind. Only that insufferable dragon!
Hate of the ancestors was nothing compared to vendetta of her own! She screamed as there was no escape until help arrived.
Even when it did, there was no telling where her prey would be. She would search the Divine Lands and find him. It would be her sole purpose in life from that moment forward!
Her dantian shifted slightly but she did not notice. Lind had forged a new enemy and only time would tell when that creation would affect him again.
⬧⬧⬧⬧
Klaxons were sounding all over as Lind desperately tried to control the ship. It was a losing battle as he had damaged far more systems than he had planned.
A sense of deja vu washed over him as he always seemed to be crashing his prototypes after doing something exceedingly foolish.
Regardless, he could not let them be falling on something random. There was no telling what would happen in the ensuing aftermath.
He summoned a medallion he had not used in a very long time. The golden disk had the image of a young man on one side and a vial with liquid condensing into it on the other. His blood washed over it and he did something he had not done since he had been a mortal.
He prayed.
"Master, I am here but a little help would not be out of line!" The smoldering vessel was swirling down to the Void Ocean, a tear into the Greater Void, or a random piece of land depending on the whim of the Ruined Islands.
Just as it seemed their fate would be gruesome, silence descended. A beam of pure golden light engulfed the vessel and it vanished from the chaotic skies.
Lind let go as he could do no more and only hoped his request had been heard before the ship slammed into solid ground and darkness closed in.