Chapter 19

A\N This ones kinda a lil snack
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I left the town a full coin purse lighter with a leather bag slung over one shoulder. They didn’t have spirit rings, though they did have spatial storage cubes. I wasn’t sure they were worth the price. They could only store things once, then you had to break them permanently to release the contents. And they didn’t hold much.

But silver meant nothing to me, so I filled my bag with them, along with rations and water, before trekking out into the wild.

The land around Spearpoint had changed. A half built wall was growing around the western edge of the city, encapsulating farmland. Even through the clouds, the sunlight was piercing over the fields of churned dirt. The air hung with the scent of manure.

A giant stable had sprung up on this side of the wall full of even stranger beasts of burden than the ones that made the trek to Sandgrave, though many were horses. With more colonization stretching deeper into the Savage Expanse, it seemed it was becoming necessary to expand their transportation.

I had no interest in renting an animal I would have to care for. Instead, I headed into the treeline until I was out of view of the guards atop the wall.

My core was filled to the brim with power, circling through each of my meridians. I began to shape the Anti-Light technique I had acquired in the Precursor Legacy.

Star Falling Through The Void had expended an ordinate amount of the Dark-Qi I had wielded. But I no longer cultivated Dark-Qi. Instead, Void-Qi filled core like an ocean of dark power. The world overflowed with power, and I needed only to reach out and grasp it. With my Dantian formed, I held much more power within me than I ever had before.

I bent it into complex shapes within my leg meridians. With my enhanced Willpower and power that obeyed my spirit-roots so easily, it was as easy as moving my own limbs.

The technique was more efficient when I shaped it this time, first taking one step, then another. It didn’t demand that I run. Each stride I took crossed a greater distance even at the same speed. I felt the after image trail behind me like a physical weight. The world seemed to bend unnaturally as I carved a path through it.

The Wind-Qi movement technique built into the path of the Darkwind Scion accelerated the air around me to propel me forward with motion, but the Anti-Light movement technique instead seemed to shrink and expand space, pushing me forward like a gigantic worm being burrowed through reality. With the ease of a single step, I crossed three meters, then five meters, then ten meters, then a hundred meters, and the jungle dissolved into a blur.

I staggered to a stop as I stepped into a tree at the bend in the path. The bark cracked, but I wasn’t even moving at a jog. There was a crack like thunder as the after-image behind me caught up. Resting against the tree, I estimated how much of my power I had consumed.

Probably only five percent from my core.

The city was lost behind me in the treeline. I had crossed through the burnt forest and deep into the woods, maybe a thousand meters over the course of minutes.

I tossed my head back and laughed, already pulling in new qi to refill what I lost. The technique was incredible! Completely unsuited for combat, it took minutes to accelerate to full speed, and was almost uncontrollable. Once it reached full speed, the technique’s power consumption was incredibly reduced. It felt like I was walking above and outside of the world, sliding over it from the outside.

I loved it. It was a technique completely free of the Feng clan, free of the memories of teachers and struggling to advance. It was a technique I could call my own.

Even the altered cultivation path, Herald of the Last Storm, brought with it memories of my youth. But this technique fit to cross continents? It was all mine. A true vehicle of my freedom. I shaped the technique again, turning north toward the first camp of goblins I had set out to kill. Then I accelerated.

Signs of their activity littered the roads, including damaged goblin corpses in piles. My movement technique carried me up and over them as if I was standing on ice. I pulled back on the technique as I spotted the goblin village in the distance.

Village might have been the wrong word. Built around a mountain rising out of the forest, the sprawling complex of ramshackle buildings was more like a goblin city.

And it was already on fire.

The technique didn’t stop instantly as I pulled back on it, the qi outside of me and affecting the world dissipating slowly before it stopped. Instead of stopping at the base of the mountain, I found myself standing inside of the goblin city.

Two rows of goblins screamed at each other as they fought. Slings of stones fell down on the lines of goblins clobbering each other with stolen or makeshift weapons. Goblins with gnarled sticks of wood released [Fireballs] and [Acid Streams] that killed friendly and enemy goblins alike.

The city around them was ruined, buildings alight and any goblin that wasn’t fighting or dead running through the street. Several of them were much taller than regular goblins, revealing themselves to my [Identify] as Hobgoblins. A crude palisade of sharpened logs functioned as the city’s wall, but the front gate had been battered down and trampled over.

I had stumbled into a goblin war.

The goblins around me noticed me half a second after I arrived, screaming incoherently.

I was already swinging at the closest of the goblins.

[Hobgoblin Shaman Chieftan, Level 11]

When my sword neared the Chieftan, [One Cut, One kill] activated. The blade cut into the monster’s side, and then the cut widened, as if the Chieftan had been hit by a great sword. He screamed and stumbled back, wound smoking as a dozen goblins charged at me with slings and staffs.

I started cutting them apart as the Chieftan retreated behind his own men, screaming all the while. The goblins fighting in the front line of their little war hadn’t noticed me yet and with the exception of the Chieften the rest of the lesser monsters died with a single swing.

[One Cut, One Kill reached level 2!]

I snapped the half shaped formation of the Anti-Light movement technique that was still channeled in my legs as goblins piled in around me from all sides. A dozen of the monsters tried to stop me from reaching their Chieftan.

 The movement technique of the Herald of the Last Storm took over instead. I kicked forward, leaping over the entire circle of mages and landing behind the Chieftan.

Then I cut its head off.