The sun had set just a few moments before Nolan sensed the auras up ahead, but he belatedly realized that these were carefully imprinted masses of projected inner essence.

“Nolan!”

“I know!”

A condensed beam of grey energy shot out from the surroundings just as Nolan became aware of the two auras off in the distance. Without time to instigate the teleportation function of the Millennial Ring he was forced to kick Sean out of the path of the oncoming attack as he simultaneously grabbed the hem of Esteban’s collar and hurled him after the startled man.

While he sent his friends to safety Ian turned on the spot, his great sword suddenly in-hand as he unleashed a volatile crescent of golden energy. His martial skill cancelled out the unexpected attack in an explosive collision that created a gale of violent winds that forced him backward over three metres.

“Bastard!”

Ian hacked at Keplin, who’d emerged from the resultant dust cloud wielding a golden sickle in his remaining hand. Using the force behind the attack, the elder angled his weapon and flung the sword off into the forest, though Ian didn’t miss a beat as he closed in on the man, grabbed the stump of his wounded arm and hurled him into a nearby tree with a thunder-like crack that caused much of the trunk to implode in a shower of fractured wood. Seemingly uninjured, Keplin left a human imprint behind as he kicked off of the tree with enough force to throw much of the splintered wood up into the air, though Nolan didn’t have the luxury to pay attention to Ian’s fight.

Hal, the disciple that Nolan had bested in the royal challenge back in Ridgerock, had sprung forth from a roadside thicket with a silver longsword in hand, two swords of ashen energy flying ahead of him.

Fuck your talismans! Nolan leapt skyward at a speed that slightly outstripped that of his assailant, whose eyes widened in disbelief as he watched his target slip through his fingers. Before he could pursue Nolan a barrel flew towards him, exploding just before he made to slice it in two. Fifty metres away, Esteban had already pulled out another and hurled it into the massive plume of smoke that his last projectile created, another boom shaking the soil and reverberating throughout the air.

“Impossible!” he heard Keplin snarl as Ian fended off his attacks with a lightshow of sparks, his friend wielding a new great sword.

Nolan created a platform of spiritual energy to kick off of and launched himself toward where he estimated Hal was headed, the young man emerging from the smoke only to face a barrage of sword strikes from Sean. The young man dodged each strike and landed a forceful kick that sent Sean sailing through the air while leaving a sprinkling of bile in his wake, though the distraction bought Nolan enough time to crash into the ancient highway with a savage punch that crushed remnant cobblestones and caused the earth to sink waist-deep for a dozen metres in all directions.

He dodged it?

Though the young man was at the fifth level of Integration, Nolan should have been slightly faster than him.

“They’re masking their auras somehow!”

Ian flew off the road and into the forest a moment after he yelled out to the others, his blond hair stained with blood as a steady stream trickled down his face. If Commander Hueler hadn’t cut off Keplin’s right hand then Ian would most likely have died by now.

A dark silhouette appeared behind Nolan like a ghost in the night with such speed that even Ian would have had a difficult time avoiding the strike, which confirmed that the young man had made use of an unknown movement skill.

You’re not the only one!

Nolan activated the Tranquil Void Step, dodged Hal's strike and tackled Keplin before he could bury the tip of his sickle in Ian’s heart, the two of them tumbling down the road with dizzying momentum. Rather than attack the shocked old man, Nolan leapt backward with all his speed and rushed toward Hal, who turned his head mid-pursuit of the others with a disbelieving expression.

Keplin had mentioned that they had associates from their sect in the area. In the event that it wasn’t a bluff they couldn’t afford a prolonged engagement.

An ear-rending clang of metal told him that Ian had covered his back from a cold-faced Keplin, which afforded him a moment to make the split-second decision to unleash everything he had upon the young man that had turned to face him.

Thanks to the superiority of his movement skill over the beady-eyed youth’s he gained an edge almost immediately in the head to head confrontation that ensued. Six needles of demonic beast bone appeared around him as he hacked and slashed at his opponent with the bone sword, which he infused with as much inner essence as the Essence Fusion object could hold. The petulant aura that poured forth from his weapon brought fear to the young man’s glare, though try as he might Nolan was unable to land a significant hit. He’d never fought someone with such a perceptive spiritual sense, not to mention that this was the first time that someone so strong had faced him seriously.

Intensified sounds of combat and a general decline in the strength of Ian’s aura told him that he didn’t have much time before the tides of the fight would turn one-sidedly in favour of their enemies. Focusing to capacity he noted that while the young man was able to perceive the trajectories of his projectiles, their existence still drastically limited his movements. Six more needles joined the assault as he forced Hal to retreat toward a towering tree.

Now!

With extremely careful timing, he cancelled the Tranquil Void Step and activated the Emerald Thorn Piercing Technique. Since this wasn’t the time to pull punches, he invested half of his inner essence into the attack.

An explosion of verdant energy with a radius of thirty metres momentarily illuminated the night as the base of the tree exploded with shrapnel, the entire body crashing to the earth with an immense sound of impact. Nolan’s arm tore open in dozens of places, though he suffered much less than his opponent. Hal’s body was torn to shreds by his violent attack just before the remainder was crushed beneath the weight of the falling tree.

A scream of rage echoed throughout the forest. “You wretches!”

Esteban stood over Sean as the latter sat in a barrel of Divine Spirit Fountain water, both of them observing Ian’s battle with worried eyes.

Nolan popped a blood breeding pellet and then switched the bone sword to his left hand, a cloak of deadly energy extending to its unbelievably sharp tip. He threw caution to the winds as he activated the Tranquil Void Step and rocketed toward his friend, who had fallen back to retreating and countering rather than attempting an offensive.

His attack met empty air as Keplin vanished like a figment of their imagination, no signs of his aura as he appeared behind Nolan with a menacing swipe of his sickle. He’d finally activated his movement skill.

Fuck! Cold steel bit into his back as he leapt clear of a critical hit and jumped over a crescent of golden energy that Ian immediately sent his way. The attack sailed through the spot where Keplin had just been and went on to sever the base of another massive tree, which the elder kicked off of as it fell to the ground with a crash.

“How are you so strong?” he asked, his voice shaking the air.

Since he couldn’t sense Keplin’s aura and it was too dark for any decent visuals, Nolan focused on his spiritual sense to the degree that all of his thoughts completely ceased. The slight fluctuations of the wind warned him of an oncoming strike, so he quickly leapt fifty metres upward and hurled a barrel of gunpowder toward where he’d just been standing.

Keplin avoided the explosion which saw a cloud of dust and debris engulf Nolan’s vantage point, though Nolan was quick to give chase. Their opponent danced around the darting needles that filled the darkness, blocked a slash of the bone sword and ducked beneath stab of Ian’s great sword that seemed to pierce the wind itself, tripping both of them with a sweeping kick before vanishing from the onslaught of projectiles.

I just need to hit him once!

The man appeared a hundred metres away just as a break in the overcast clouds lit up the land with a wash of pale blue ambience. Small craters dotted the ancient highway, Sean and Esteban obscured from view by the great wooden bodies that had fallen to the ground just moments before.

“You…” Keplin narrowed his eyes even more than was typical. Several superficial wounds were visible beneath his tattered robes, though he was otherwise unharmed. “What’s your true cultivation?”

“Ian,” he panted. “Make sure he doesn’t go after the others.”

“Don’t be reckl—”

Nothing was stopping Keplin from appearing before Sean and Esteban and killing them before they knew that they were in immediate danger, so Nolan decided to bite the bullet.

He swapped out the bone needles for the ones made from the sloth’s outer shell and pushed his speed to the limit. He was overly aware that he only had enough inner essence to keep the Tranquil Void Step activated for another minute, and that was if he didn’t use any other martial skills.

Just before he arrived at the place where Keplin stood with a hungry, devious expression, Nolan produced several slips of paper and tossed them into the air without hesitation. These were the remaining talismans that Elder Sanae had rewarded to him for his contributions during the conflict with the Towering Eaves clan. While the boy Hal had been quite the talented arrayment practitioner for his age, Nolan had faintly sensed his life signal on both of the imprinted auras that had originally thrown him off. This told him that Keplin himself wasn’t an arrayment practitioner, which meant that while his range of perception was probably superior to Nolan’s it was more than likely that his spiritual sensitivity was several stages behind.

Which means you can barely sense spiritual energy!

Just as Nolan was about to activate the talismans Keplin leapt high above, which effectively nipped Nolan’s strategy in the bud. He’d intended to force him to a certain location but the man had read his intentions.

“This is where you die!”

Keplin had become a tiny dot far above the upper canopy of the forest when a suppressive aura suddenly exploded downward from above even as dark grey inner essence began to coagulate around the dangerous man until it solidified into a massive charcoal-coloured blade.

With no time for shock or fear Nolan forced the talismans to scatter and hurled three barrels upward in quick succession. The subsequent explosions caused the surface of the offensive martial skill to fracture as if it were made of glass, though the massive sword remained intact as it plummeted downward at an insane speed. Intending to use the massive shadow as cover for his next attack, Nolan’s heart sank as he was almost pulled toward the blade by an odd suction force that seemed to surround the entire mass of energy.