“Then why did you kill him?” asked the startled village head.

“Because I’ve got a good guess at what’s going on.”

“The south entrance…” Ian’s head snapped up with a start. “Nolan, they’re trying to distract us so that they can take the village. Is that it?”

He nodded. “Benn, lead your people just south of Talen. We’ll head there first.”

The two of them were the first to arrive at the village’s southern entrance, where Nolan was able to detect several hundred auras on the other side of a large hill a little over a kilometre away.

“I sense two groups,” said Ian. “You?”

“Three. There’s another one to the west, but I only sense a few dozen of them. There’re probably more out of my range, but let’s assume they broke their army up into three. Wherever that last group is, it’s probably the biggest.”

“This is perfect,” said Ian. “It’s such a nice day, I think we should go visit the area beyond that hill.”

Nolan took out the large stack of talismans that he had obtained from Elder Sanae as a part of the reward that they bestowed upon him for his contributions during the conflict with the Towering Eaves clan. One of these could create a sword of hardened spiritual energy that could fatally impale someone at the first level of the Integration stage, and he had several dozen left after teaching himself how to use them back in the glade.

“I’ll use these babies to start, and then I’ll dash in and mess with them a bit. I won’t be in there long though, since I’m not trying to get mobbed.” Nolan strapped on his treasured vambraces, gauntlets and greaves, which he favoured over the armour that made up the body of the valuable set of jade equipment. “The moment I jump in there you lay into their lines with your strongest attacks, just dish them out one after the other and then retreat when you’ve used up about half your energy. We’ll regroup and recharge, then head back in there to keep stirring the pot.”

“I like the way you think, my friend.” Ian rolled his shoulders. “When my clan hears of our exploits they’ll rue the day that they cast me from their halls.”

Nolan laughed, nodded at his friend and then took off toward the distant hill, which ran on for at least two hundred metres. Focusing his spiritual sense on the body of neatly arranged life signals beyond it, he honed in on the two most powerful auras. First level of Integration, and two of them. Suddenly Nolan wasn’t so confident. I can’t go too far in. It was one thing to battle someone of that level in a one-on-one fight, but to engage against two of them along with over three hundred trained soldiers in the later levels of the Profound Entry stage was an entirely different concept.

A couple of hushed shouts reached his ears as he closed in on the crest of the hill, seemingly desolate but dangerously deceptive. It had only taken him five quick jumps to reach this point from Talen, where he could see Ian standing patiently just outside the southern gates while a tide of people rushed out from the dusty streets beyond.

Nolan stopped atop the hill and came face to face with a small army of darkly armoured soldiers arranged in tight array, at which point he empowered his voice as much as he was capable and addressed them with his most confident and assured voice.

“My name’s Nolan and I’m from an organization called the Earth Sect. You guys are up to no good in this valley, so it’s about time somebody gave you the boot—”

He caught a large dagger that a man had sent whistling toward him from the front ranks of the small army below, a soldier whose helmet was decorated with silver trimmings. He hurled it back with much more force than necessary, the blade punching through the man’s breastplate and then shattering into countless fragments as it collided with the shield of the man behind him.

“Remember, I’m from the Earth Sect. I’m totally justified in doing what I’m about to do, so you can just blame yourselves for being pond scum!”

Standing there before hundreds of hardened eyes, Nolan ignored the handful of surprised or otherwise reactionary exclamations and instead took note that the soothing properties of the Millennial Ring had yet to trigger. That mysterious energy would surely make an appearance in the coming moments, and yet its absence in this moment awakened him to the realization that he had long since adapted to the precarious new lifestyle that he had adopted in this crazy and absurd world.

Only a couple of moments after he finished speaking he completed a certain circulation of inner essence before dashing forward as fast as his body could move without the aid of his amazing movement skill. The Bone Sword appeared in his hand a moment before a dozen or so warriors dashed forward to meet him, though he bypassed them in a near instantaneous series of dashes and appeared before the shielded front ranks with a keen and focused glare.

A massive amount of inner essence surged forth from his sword and manifested in the form of eighty materialized thorns that each spanned nearly thirty centimetres in length with a third of the width. Even as he watched the martial skill that Uncle Grey had dismissed as being of low quality cause several dozen men to collapse, he remarked at how quickly they raised their large black shields in response, at how neat and impeccable the alignment of their shield wall. He managed to penetrate their defense by aiming specifically for their heads and legs, his projectiles punching into their armour but not through it after following perfectly calculated trajectories. He avoided seven arrows from just as many directions as he leapt skyward, now a perfect target for the eighty or so archers located in the enemy’s rear formations.

Dozens more arrows missed their marks as he conjured a small platform of spiritual energy and kicked off of it, his body hurling dozens of metres to the left where he planned to create another foothold. Men screamed as a blinding flash of golden light drew all eyes toward the area that he had initially attacked, over twenty men bisected by a brilliant martial skill just a few metres away from the dead and dying that Nolan had left behind. Only a scant amount of seconds had passed since he’d initiated the attack and he and Ian had already inflicted over fifty casualties.

Attaboy!

He was seized by an adrenaline high as he kicked off of the second platform and avoided another volley of arrows, only to rocket toward a third foothold as a dozen of his largest needles appeared above him in a silently orbiting halo. These had been constructed from materials taken from a demonic beast at the Genesis stage. Considering their immense durability and the fact that they exerted a ridiculous amount of pressure on a single concentrated point, he had no doubt in his mind that they would be able to penetrate through the black armour of the soldiers beneath him.

He leapt a few metres upward and kicked off of another platform, his quality robes whipping around in the wind as he repeated the martial skill from earlier on a slightly lesser scale. He landed amidst a block of fallen bodies, though half of those directly beneath him still remained standing. The needles around him quickly went to work, each one puncturing through a helmeted head the moment that he touched down. With so much of his focus dedicated to the maneuvering of his needles had no choice but to focus on the defensive when it came to his use of the sword. After allowing two shallow cuts that were greatly mitigated by the defensive properties of his clothing, he retreated skyward and stuck to leaping around on small slates of spiritual energy.

Screams of alarm and caution filled Nolan’s ears alongside disbelieving exclamations about his cultivation level, cries warning of him being an arrayment practitioner and stark orders from enemy leaders. He ignored all of these as he carefully monitored his energy reserves, though he did raise his guard by another degree as he noticed two soldiers with red paint on either side of their full helmets suddenly unsheathe their swords. He’d already depleted about twenty percent of his inner essence with his initial attacks, his spiritual energy lessened by a similar percentile.

Subsequent flashes of golden light drew his eye toward the front ranks of the army where Ian was wreaking havoc on those around him, having already used his martial skill three times in less than a minute. The two highest ranking officers suddenly made a move, though Nolan landed by his friend’s side before they could pull off a pincer attack while he was distracted with the soldiers around him. Everywhere his friend had been jumping, dozens had followed. He didn’t have the advantage of spiritual energy to keep him skyward, so Nolan couldn’t leave him to fend for himself in the face of so many enemies.

Ian kept his guard up as Nolan landed beside him, the surrounding soldiers encircling them in a very wide ring.

“Look at these cowards,” Ian panted. “Just the two of us against hundreds and yet they won’t come closer than fifty paces.”

One of the leaders suddenly raised the visor of his helmet, a broad man with a form so hulking that it made one wonder after the endeavour of creating his armour. “We are nephews to the ruler of this county! We also happen to be direct subordinates to the Red Mountain King. I’ve never heard of your Earth Sect, but don’t think that you can do what you want in these parts of the Dragon’s Tail!”

“Considering all the fucked up shit you guys have done to the people ‘in these parts of the Dragon’s Tail,’ that’s rich.”

“Might means right,” said the other leader, who refrained from revealing his face. “That has always been the way of the world. Brother, let’s just kill them. It matters not how many men we lose, we can’t afford to let these two run loose in our lands.”

“This guy gets it!” Nolan raised a hand to reveal a talisman that was stuck to the skin of his palm. It suddenly shone with a brilliant light and then a metre-long sword of bright blue energy flashed forward without a sound. The light had yet to fade when their surroundings broke out into complete disarray, hundreds of soldiers closing in on them from all sides as the man that had just spoken fell to the ground with a jangling of armour. The blade had run straight through his chest and continued on to kill or maim nine of the men that had been clustered behind him.

“That’s Sanae for you!” Ian wore a ferocious smile as he cleaved a man in two from head to groin, his expression unflinching as he ignored a cut to the shoulder and dispersed the soldiers around him with a heavy, one-handed sweep of his broadsword.

Nolan gained a greater appreciation for Elder Sanae’s strength when he recalled the times when she had conjured dozens of similar swords in single instants during the battle against the Towering Eaves clan. His needles kept the area directly around them fairly clear, he and his friend downing anyone that closed enough distance to meet the sting of their swords.

“All together now!” shouted the hulking lord, which stirred his troops into an obedient swarm.

Nolan noted how promptly the soldiers carried out the large man’s orders. Was this a reflection of the authority of his father, the count, or the Red Mountain King that he’d been hearing so much about today? He didn’t have time to think on the matter as he and Ian subconsciously made the same judgement and simultaneously released their offensive martial skills, which mowed down the more eager members of the mob that had just closed in for the kill.

It was at this point that the remaining soldiers began to hesitate, another momentary lull seizing the field of bluegrass that bled into the base of the hill.

“Still think you can win?” Nolan laughed, doing his best not to show the anxiety that permeated throughout his person. “Look around, half of you are already down for the count.”