Even if I was happy with the increase of my points, I wasn't in the situation where I could spare any attention to check how many levels did I get after killing about half of the experts that I noticed.

"Who's next?"

The fighting was in fact, a game of shadows. I already used most of my ideas for this conflict, so if I didn't want to resort to betting everything on luck with casting my standard fireballs, I had to make my opponents think that I still had hands full of cards to play.

As I lowered my head a bit while raising my eyes to get a look of mischevious bastard eager to kill some more, I felt first few strands of fear gripping on my heart when I noticed that despite getting rid of so many opponents, their number only increased!

"Don't fall for his tricks! We only need to stall him for so long!"

Probably thinking that he has seen through my act, one of the experts that assumed the position of the leader held his forces back, giving me enough time to regenerate my feet and hands to their perfect state.

The moment I was back at my full capability, I resumed driving the energy floating to me through the vortex while making my way towards the closest enemy.

If they realised that I was happy with the prolonged fact, I would be fucked!

"Come on, you came to hunt me down, yet you are backing down? Is that how you take revenge for all those people who died?"

They didn't need to know that this whole situation weighted on my consciousness. Even if they did, they wouldn't care about it at all. People like them could only live by assuming their enemies to wish for the destruction of the world and order, while completely ignoring the situation that forced my hand!

"You monster!"

Unable to take my taunts, one of the younger experts jumped at me with his sabre brandished to the downward slash.

Instead of killing him right away, I dodged to the side, while banking on my superior speed to spank his weapon to the side.

Thrown out of the balance, my current opponent tripped and was about to fall, when his body was suddenly stopped midair by my hand.

In a second, I appeared behind him, setting a choking hold on his neck and turning the both of us around, to keep the remaining opponents in front of me.

"What do you think you are doing sending someone so young against me?!"

As if enraged by their audacity, I tightened my hold to the point when the poor cultivator's face turned grey, before raising my hands and sending him away with a powerful kick to the butt.

"I don't know nor do I care what do you think about me, but don't try to use me to get rid of people you don't like!"

The fact that they were willing to stall for time meant that either they were trying to trick me into something, they were preparing a powerfull attack somewhere outside of the range of my perception, or some kind of expert of this damned protector calibre was on its way here!

If this situation continues like this, I would have no other choice than breaking through their encirclement and trying to run away!

Even if that would cause the shattering of the barrier that they settled, the immediate area around the city was devoid of any human settlements. While I didn't want to risk even a single zombie reaching unsuspecting villages further away, I couldn't put their safety above mine!

"Don't let him approach you!"

Seeing that even after knocking this young and overeager cultivator away, I didn't stop closing the distance between this evergrowing group of experts, their self-appointed leader shouted his orders again.

Wait, isn't this a chance for me?

Putting a devious smile of some kind of degenerate on my face, I extended my hands like some kind of pervert trying to grab a flatchested loli and started running towards the older cultivators.

The look of disgust on their faces was hilarious!

But what was more important, was that their actually backed away, creating a small opening in their formation for me to use!

Yet I didn't take advantage of it, changing my direction to where they were running away!

I couldn't know if this move wasn't a part of their previous plan, aimed to lead me into some kind of prepared spot with traps or additional formations. I would be hopeless if they lead me to a huge group of still active zombies!

That's why I continued to chase after the cultivators whose grey hair and long beards betrayed their more respectable age.

I didn't even know why I decided to focus on the age, outside of the fact that chasing young cultivators, be it men or women, would be truly distasteful and could later spoil my reputation!

With more and more gaps appearing between their ranks, I decided it was finally time to get the hell out of here.

Amassing the mana in my feet, I changed the target of my chase once again while engraving the hilarious looks on their faces into my memory, before spamming shockwaves under my feet!

Even if most of them failed, the ones that I managed to succeed in casting were more than enough to launch me forward, just slightly above the ground.

In a mere second, I was already way past their lines.

But I couldn't leave just like that!

Redirecting the distribution of weight across my figure, I promptly crashed legs first against the ground, creating a small crater upon my descend. With my face turned back to the group of experts, I could see how many of them was trying to actually catch me!

Sixty? Seventy? More like a damn two hundred!

I had no idea why despite such power, they didn't decide to just gang up on me!

As I realised the severity of my situation, all alarms went off in my head!

There was no way they would just let me run when they had such a numerical advantage!

Who cares about quality and one's strength, when they could simply overwhelm me?!

Even if my body was far more resilient than any of theirs, they could easily sacrifice tens of their people just to tire me down, before being able to deal with any serious damage!

I had to confuse them into thinking I'm not going to run away at all!

Banking on the fact that I was already facing the right direction, I raised my hands to my mouth and condensed pure energy in between them to the point where the air locked inside my loose grip started to vibrate and shine, as if replaced by the mana itself!

My enemies were real experts. Even if they weren't as strong as me, there was nothing bad I could say about their battle wit and experience!

Seeing that I was about to do something unpleasant, they instantly switched from chase to defence mode, probably hoping to nullify my attack before executing their riposte.

Noticing that my plan went through smoothly, I tensed myself, before dropping the control over the mana and allowing it to disperse into the air, while simultaneously twisting my body around and kicking the ground as hard as I could!

Even if the boost in my instant speed wasn't as great as launching myself into the air with shockwaves, I at least had some degree of control over my direction.

Using the distance I gained through the surprise, I made sure to manoeuvre a bit in between the buildings, to break any line of sight they could have on me.

Running through the desolate streets once again, I couldn't care less about the zombies, simply stomping on them with the help of just a few layers of the barrier.

After about five minutes, I was finally far enough from the city to see the edge of the seal locking it all down.

But why the hell there were zombies on its other side?