Maria was clinging onto my back as I jumped higher and higher, until I reached the plateau. The explosions and crumbling sounds were still going on behind me, all the while.

“The tower is falling!” Maria shouted in awe.

I didn’t have the time to look over my shoulder as Maria’s prison collapsed, but from the noise it created, I could tell that the abyss watcher’s fort was being reduced to rubble at an exceptional pace.

Yet, we weren’t out of the woods yet. The border was kilometers away and we had no hope of reaching it before daybreak, not at the pace we were going. Even worse, it wouldn’t take long before pursuers from the fort caught up to me. While the dry man’s generals could keep the tier 5 classers at bay, the same couldn’t be said for tier 4 and below.

Maria and I continued along the rocky edges of the landscape, jumping from obsidian spire to obsidian spire, until the now destroyed fort disappeared behind the horizon. Unfortunately, using [Aura step] any more than I already had was out of the question, my passenger wouldn’t be able to handle the recoil as I could. Even though that meant that we were traversing the area considerably slower, that also meant that we were quieter.

After almost ten minutes of silence, I was starting to dare hope that we hadn’t been followed. That we would simply be able to cross the border without issue, and that freedom lay ahead. Unfortunately, it was not to be, because a minute later, a golden sheen appeared in the corner of my eye, at the edge of my vision.

It was all I could do to dodge to the right, just barely avoiding the two-handed sword that stood poised to pierce my shoulder. Strangely, nobody was holding the weapon. Instead, one of the guards from earlier, the tier 4 that bordered on tier 5, was swishing his hand around to direct its movement.

With Maria on my back, my movement was limited. Thankfully, my onyx chains quickly formed and were somewhat capable of fighting back against the floating weapon, though it was a losing battle.

The two ethereal weapons clashed in the air, sending sparks of mana flying as they did so. The sword shimmered slightly each time it came into contact with my overloaded mana, which gave me the confidence to continue running toward the border.

“Strange mana you have, stranger! Let’s see how you face overwhelming power, then!” the guard called out, before swishing his hands in strange patterns, causing two more ethereal swords to shimmer into existence. He renewed his assault and this time, even my chains couldn’t hold them back. I used [Relentless orbs] in hopes of distracting him at least, but he simply swatted the black marbles away when they reached him. Somehow, the orbs weren’t blowing up when I wanted them to. That could only mean that this pseudo-tier 5 possessed the ability to control the dark mana of other’s skills!

My suspicions were confirmed as I gradually started to notice the chains becoming less maneuverable. They were becoming slower, clunkier, and inching closer to me with each clash against the blades. It became obvious that this fight was untenable, and I had to find a way out, NOW.

Suddenly, I heard a voice to my right, hidden by the rocks.

“Over here!” it said, though no further explanation came. At first, I was scared it would be a trap, but as my battle with the tier 4 guard escalated further and further, most of my attacks not even affecting him, I became desperate.

“Come over here!” the voice called again. This time, I followed the sound to its source, the golden guard and his ethereal weapons in hit pursuit. I jumped above and around boulders, swerving to dodge sharp edges that jutted out of the ground. I almost slipped several times, but made it to the voice.

When I arrived, however, I couldn’t find anybody! Had I been tricked after all? As the guard approached, I realized that I couldn’t wait around, so I continued running deeper into the rocky territory.

Then, when the golden guard passed the area where the voice had originated, I suddenly heard him scream in agony. I turned around instinctively, Maria still tightly holding onto my back and hiding her face in my robes, only to find the golden guard surrounded by four other classers.

Their armor was white and seemed to be in the shape of bones, while one of them was draped in old tattered black robes. All four of them were undead skeletons, with dull green gems where their eyes should have been.

They were attacking the golden guard from four sides simultaneously, and he was losing ground. The robed caster started muttering some kind of spell, which sent the golden guard flying into the air and crashing back down in the distance, crushing some boulders with his fall.

I hesitantly approached the four classers, hoping them to be the dry man’s subordinates.

“Are you my backup?” I asked.

All four classers turned to me with the same stare, before speaking in sync, their rough voice blending into one another.

“I am your backup, Arthur. Quickly, to the border. That mana controller won’t be stunned for long, and these pieces can’t handle much more of my power.” The voices spoke.

“Hold on... are you... the dry man?” I asked in wonder. Maria perked up when I had said that, and she peeked at the four skeletons over my shoulder, too scared to say anything.

“In the flesh! Or... bone, I suppose. Now stop loitering! I shall guide you to your way across the border. Come, it isn’t far.” The dry man spoke, before his subjects fell silent and took off into the night.

I hurried after them, not willing to be left behind, and we navigated our way over the precarious landscape bit by bit.

Several more times, a pack of guards would appear near us, but none were strong enough to handle the quartet the dry man had sent, and many died to my own blade and chains in those encounters. They were like a never-ending tide, though most of the guards were low-tier and therefore, unable to stop us for even a moment.

Unfortunately, the skeletons seemed to be getting slower with each encounter, their eyes dimming as they collapsed under the dry man’s power.

Thankfully, the golden guard still hadn’t caught up with us when a myriad of lights appeared on the horizon. Immensely tall towers that reached into the sky were visible from kilometers away, and the lights that shone into the sky reached higher still.

“What is that...?” I asked, unable to keep the wonder out of my voice. It was by far the last thing I expected to see in this hellscape. Something so colorful, alive... in this dead land.

“That... is necropolis.” The dry man spoke through his four voices. “A holy land of death, the jewel of the between lands and a home for everyone that is cast out by the countries around our borders. It’s a place where anybody on the street might walk up to you and shank you, just to get a few copper coins off of your corpse... but too many of us it’s so much more than that...”

“Hold on, isn’t the abyss watcher in the city? He’ll sense me if we attempt to cross the border by entering it!” I asked in a panic.

“Which is why we won’t be entering the city!” the dry man growled in a whisper, frustrated by my lack of patience. “I will be guiding you to a nearby dungeon called [The grey waste]. It’s a tier 3 dungeon, one of the rare few with two entrances. One near here and one, you guessed it, in my territory. Only issue is, the place is always heavily guarded, with it being one of our usual battlefronts and all, and now even moreso. Thankfully, anyone above tier 3 can’t enter, so you won’t be followed inside by anyone too strong for you to handle, capiche?”

I nodded, accepting this turn of events. With this plan, I actually had a decent shot of making it there.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, a strange mineshaft came into view. White ash seemed to spill out of the entrance and litter the otherwise black stone, and wooden defenses had been erected around the entrance, patrolled by various guards carrying the abyss watcher’s sigil.

They looked like they were expecting us, because their weapons had already been drawn by the time we stormed their encampment.

My black chains spread through the air and snatched the archers and casters before they could attack. I hurriedly killed them, before moving the chains to defend me and Maria. More projectiles flew, but my chains swatted them out of the sky, before I launched my overloaded orbs and sent five of the explosive marbles at our adversaries.

The dry man’s minions, meanwhile, were making quick work of the sole tier 4 that stood guard in this outpost. Their strength was dimming further, but it was looking like their target would die first.

Sure enough, once I had mopped up the rest of the nearby guards, the dry man finished off their captain by withering all of his flesh and leaving only a dry skeleton; The death knights had held him in place while the caster had taken care of the ‘withering’ part.

Now, all that stood between me and the forest was a single tier 3 dungeon.

It was then that lady luck put up a last middle finger, a last hail mary telling me to go fuck myself, because the golden guard crashed down from the sky, obstructing my path.

He roared furiously, before targeting the dry man’s death knights with his ethereal swords, which sent them sprawling as their internal mana went haywire under the golden guard’s control.

The caster sent a strange white spell at the guard from behind, but one of his swords blocked it, and the spell seemed to unravel at its touch. The dry man didn’t have a build suitable to deal with... what had he called it? Ah yes, a ‘mana controller’ build, which, thankfully, didn’t seem to work very well on my overloaded mana.

I sent my chains to encircle the guard’s floating weapons, rather than the man himself, which actually worked pretty well. The swords were now grappling with my chains, but I kept supplying them with mana to sustain their efforts. Soon enough, the swords were locked in place, constricted by my snake-like chains.

The death knights and caster had stood up again by this point, their eyes dim and their movement weak. Yet, they were still strong enough to clasp onto the guard with their bodies, holding him down.

Then, the life left their eyes entirely, yet the empty husks continued to hold onto the guard with surprising strength.

Seeing the opportunity to run, I took it. Mere moments later, I stood at the entrance of the dungeon and prepared to enter, when the guard called out to me.

“You fool! You know not what chaos the dry man will visit upon these lands once you return his daughter!”

Taking his words for what they were, a desperate, bitter attempt to have the final word, I ignored him and continued deeper into the mine. Still, the guard continued to shout at me as he was being held down.

“You better say goodbye to the girl now! The dry man only intends to finally finish her off himself! Why do you think the abyss watcher has kept her alive for so long? Once he abandons all attachments, he will advance to tier 7 and no longer have need of you! Whatever he promised you, he lied!” he called out after me, sending a cold shiver down my spine.

At this point, I was sprinting down the tunnel as fast I could, hoping to escape him, no, hoping to escape what he was implying.

Maria, too, was shivering, even though it wasn’t that cold.

Was I really delivering this girl to her death?