Chapter 286: Three Months

Three months after Jack and his companions went into hiding,

Artus Emberheart stepped through space. When he appeared in the Hand of God starship, he was already bowing.

“You failed,” Eva Solvig told him. She was not emitting her aura, but an air of purity still suffused the starship, suffocating him. Artus didn’t need to look up to know that three C-Grade captains were watching him from different points of the room.

“We tried our best,” was all he could reply. “Either they’re deep into hiding, or they left the planet long ago.”

“I’m inclined to believe the latter,” Eva said calmly. “Thanks to the inattentiveness of your patrols, I have wasted three months of my time.”

The accusation was heavy, and not without a threat. The Hand of God, much like the Animal Kingdom, hated taking losses.

“We apologize deeply,” Artus responded. His neck was itchy—his proud head was not used to bowing. “I promise you, we did our best. Every D-Grade on the planet has spent the entire three months searching. We’ve set ourselves back to be of assistance.”

“Are you trying to say that we should reward you for failure?”

“I would never!” He feigned shock. “We simply plead for your mercy, commander.”

Eva did not reply for a long time. Artus waited patiently, not even daring to breathe. If she killed him on the spot, the Animal Kingdom could do nothing about it.

Fortunately, today was a good day.

“I have spent all the time I could here,” the B-Grade Elder of the Hand of God informed him. “Urgent matters call me back, so I cannot delay. I will depart immediately. As punishment for your negligence, you are responsible for tracking down Jack Rust across the galaxy and capturing him alive. Remember, Artus: Alive. Do you understand?”

“Yes, commander.”

“Additionally, as further punishment, you are forbidden from seeking compensation from the Exploding Sun for your slain D-Grades. You are to swallow the loss.”

A knot rose in Artus’s throat, but he pushed it down. “Yes, commander,” he replied after a moment’s delay—the greatest protest he dared show.

“Two of my captains will remain in Hell for a year, just in case Jack Rust reappears. I expect them to be accommodated as they deserve.”

“Naturally. We will treat them like our own Elders.”

“As you should. Dismissed.”

Artus did not lose a beat before teleporting away, reappearing a few dozen miles outside the starship. The two captains arrived beside him—one man and one woman, both grim-faced, wearing long white robes. They did not speak much.

“Please follow me,” he told them, flying towards the planet.

In his heart, he felt relief—and anger. Anger towards the Hand of God, who treated them like servants, and towards Jack Rust, who’d brought such trouble onto them.

Jack Rust had publicly defeated and killed Rufus Emberheart, had slain a hundred D-Grades right under Artus’s nose, and had caused the Hand of God’s ire to fall on him. Each of those actions was worthy of the Warden’s fury. Together, they almost manifested as hatred.

When I catch that man, Artus thought, with darkness in his heart, I will make him regret the day he was born.

But where could he be?

***

Deep under the waters of an ocean on Hell, four men were sitting in a dark cave. They were silent. All were meditating, diving deep into their respective Daos.

Well, three of them were meditating. The fourth was sleeping.

It was this fourth man that suddenly awoke, revealing a lazy smile on his face. “It’s time,” he said. “The Hand of God is gone.”

Jack Rust opened his eyes slowly. As he did, a simple, honest, and violent aura spread across the cave, weighing the rock down. His eyes seemed full of stars; his body so heavy it drew in the surrounding light and sound. It wasn’t just his physicality, either—even his soul seemed to have new gravity, demanding everyone’s respect.

Just by existing, he dominated the world.

“Is that so?” he said, breaking the illusion. Suddenly, he was just a normal man without any aura of the Dao whatsoever. He smiled lightly. “Then, we should head out.”

Dordok chuckled. “Oh, I can’t wait to see this,” he said. “They won’t know what hit them.”

“Do you even need us?” Shol asked proudly.

“Of course. Who knows how many deacons will show up this time,” Jack replied. He stood slowly, his purple robes sliding across the stone. “Besides, how could I go anywhere without my brothers?”

Dordok laughed out loud. “Well said!”

“As expected from my disciple!” Shol added, beaming with pride.

“What disciple? That’s my crew member we’re talking about!”

“Hmph. With only one eye, it’s natural that you cannot see the truth.”

“Says the guy with bushes for eyebrows.”

“At least I have two of them.”

“Enough, enough,” Jack said good-heartedly. “Let’s go already. If I have to spend another hour at this cave, I will get sick.”

Shol and Dordok exchanged a glance and smiled. They had only been joking with each other—after spending three months together, they’d discovered they were very similar in some things and had become close friends. “Let’s go,” they agreed, standing up. One grabbed his club from where he’d left it months ago and blew the dust off it. The other pressed his palms together, and after a moment, was ready.

“We should still be careful,” the Sage reminded them. “The greatest danger is gone, but there will still be C-Grades looking out for us. We have to strike hard and fast before teleporting back here.”

“We rely on you, Sage,” Jack told him encouragingly. He smiled. “Worst case, we die…but who here fears death?”

“Certainly not you,” Dordok piped up. “I’ve seen you train.”

They all laughed.

The Sage pressed his hands together and closed his eyes to focus. Soon, the air before them formed into three rectangles, each displaying a quick sequence of scenes. They were like screens. After showing them many natural environments from different angles, the three screens each settled on one group of immortals crossing the sky, viewed from afar.

“I’m still impressed by your range,” Shol said.

“Divination privilege. I can shape my Dao perception as a straight line instead of a sphere. As long as I can divine their location, I can reach across the entire planet,” the Sage explained, his voice strained from concentration. “These are our possible targets. What do you think?”

“Let’s take the middle ones,” Jack decided. “They look the easiest, and we could use some warm-up.”

The left and right screens disappeared, letting the Sage focus on just the one screen showing the group of immortals they would be going after.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”

***

Three figures were crossing the sky. Each was an Animal Kingdom cultivator, two late D-Grades led by a deacon. According to the instructions, each team needed that amount of firepower when looking for that abominable Jack Rust.

“I still can’t believe it’s over,” said one of the late D-Grades, a turtler with an orange shell. “What a pointless three months.”

The deacon leading the team, a giraffe man with yellow, spotted skin and a terribly lock neck, chuckled darkly. “I just wish we’d found him,” he said. “I would tear his limbs out one-by-one for delaying my training.”

“I just want to chew on his ears a little, maybe a thigh as well. Hear him scream,” said the third member, a hyena-like canine. She laughed eerily.

Without warning, space split ahead of them. The three immortals came to an instant halt as a man walked out. He wore purple robes, had long dark hair, and eyes so calm they were piercing. He did not emit any aura they could detect, but his entire countenance was so calm and focused it took them aback. It was like looking at a falling comet.

“Hello,” he said with the faintest smile. “I heard you were looking for me.”

The three were startled. They instantly recognized this man. His face was the same as the picture they’d been shown, and his words confirmed his identity.

“You’re Jack Rust!” the deacon said, pointing at him. “That’s— Why are you here?”

“What’s the matter?” the man replied calmly. “I thought you were going to tear out my limbs and make me scream. Why are you admiring me instead of attacking? Am I that handsome?”

The deacon was instantly enraged. However, no immortal was a simple person—instead of falling for the provocation, he spread out his Dao perception as far as he could manage, finding nothing. His eyes spotted no sign of an ambush either.

Jack Rust was here, and he was alone.

The deacon’s rage mixed with his suppressed hatred and fear. “Who the hell is admiring you, kid!?” he shouted. “Prepare to die!”

Reaching inside his robes, he took out the projection stone and squeezed it. The stone floated mid-air as if anchored to space itself, while a blue light in its center recorded the scene before it. At the same time, it broadcasted its location to all the recipient stones.

The deacon charged, his entire neck glowing yellow. The two late D-Grades followed him a beat later. Facing their assault, Jack Rust only waited there, smiling without a care in the world. He seemed to be almost daydreaming—or was that excitement?

“Let’s check me out,” he said. The giraffe deacon was unfazed. He came within nine feet and smashed his head down like a mallet, his chin enhanced to the durability of solid steel.

“Bell Collapse!” he shouted.

Somehow, he missed. Jack Rust pushed one finger into the fabric of space, rupturing it, then stepped through. Before the deacon could finish his mighty swing, the enemy was behind him. “Earthen shield!” he called out, enhancing his entire body as well, but no attack came. Jack Rust was not aiming for him.

The deacon looked back and barely had time to catch a glimpse of what happened. Jack fell on his two subordinates like a storm. An aura of brutality was unleashed from his body, so intense that even the deacon’s heart shook for a moment. The two late immortals were impacted more heavily, their movements slowing down.

Suddenly, Jack Rust was between them. The hyena immortal tried to snap at him, but he accurately slapped the back of her head to send her off-course. He then blocked the turtler’s spiked punch with his shoulder, shrugging it off like it was nothing, and backhanded the hyena so hard it sent her spinning.

The hyena bent reality. From spinning in the distance, she was suddenly next to him again, screaming in his ear and trying to bite his head off. The scream left him completely unfazed. He ducked under her attack, then clenched his hand into a fist. The moment he did, the world solidified. His Dao came into existence. This was no skill, just a reflection of Jack Rust’s understanding, and it was so intense that the giraffe wondered if this was a disguised C-Grade playing a prank on them.

The fist sailed up, striking the hyena’s neck and chin in an uppercut that took her head clean off. He followed the momentum to somersault around the turtler’s spinning shell attack, then smashed his other fist into that shell.

The turtler did not try to defend. His shell was one of the hardest materials in that Grade. Yet, when Jack’s fist crashed down, even that shell revealed a tiny crack, and the turtler went flying down so hard he broke the earth for miles in every direction.

That shell was hard, but it could not protect him from blunt damage.

The deacon had recovered by now. Seeing his two subordinates defeated in the blink of an eye, fear wormed into his heart, but he knew that he could not escape. He could not hope for mercy, either. Being the hardened veteran that he was, he instantly realized that his only course of action was to fight and survive until reinforcements arrived.

“Just two late D-Grades,” he said, snorting. “Fight me if you dare, Jack Rust! I am Geoff Marshon, the strongest gyrofolk alive! My entire body is a weapon, and I refuse to believe I can be defeated by someone fifty levels below me! Take this!”

For a gyrofolk—a giraffe person—attack was the best defense. Not daring to hold back, he channeled the entirety of his Dao, making his entire body as hard as steel, and charged forth. His long neck and limbs rained on Jack Rust like rods. Geoff knew the power of his own strikes. One hit could maim this man.

He was on guard for teleportation, but Jack Rust did not utilize that. Wearing a grin that spooked Geoff more than any grimace could, he danced between the attacks, dodging the deadly limbs and neck by the thinnest of margins. Geoff ramped up in speed, but so did his opponent. They became nothing but blurs in the sky. Not one attack hit. Jack Rust was slippery like an eel.

“Fight me like a man!” Geoff demanded, crossing his limbs to defend his body and stretching his neck as far up as he could. His chin became harder than steel, and his strike locked onto Jack Rust with the effectiveness of metal. No matter how he dodged, this attack would find him—or so Geoff hoped.

This time, however, Jack Rust did not seem about to dodge. His grin widened from excitement. “Very well,” he replied, clenching his fist. Suddenly, the world went mute. Darkness covered everything as all light and sound were sucked into that world-ending fist, burning into the dense outline of a purple meteor. The illusion was so solid that it may as well have been real.

Geoff smashed down his chin with all his strength. He poured everything he had into this strike—from every iota of Dao he could muster to his seven centuries of cultivation. He was Geoff Marshon, the strongest gyrofolk alive. The pride of his people. A hailed deacon of the great Animal Kingdom. He could not fall here. Not against an inferior human!

Geoff’s steel chin met the rising meteor, and his thought about human inferiority was the last he ever had. The world exploded, as did his head. Before Jack’s Meteor Punch, even this mighty defense was null.

As the explosion’s light dispersed, Jack watched the giraffe’s headless body tumble towards the desert below, soon to land beside the lifeless turtler. He looked at the still-floating projection stone.

“I’m coming for you!” he declared in a split-second inspiration, pointing at the stone, then punched and shattered it. He then clenched his fist again, uncaring about the pain and cracked knuckles. He was overcome with joy.

Level-up notifications flashed before his eyes. He couldn’t stop grinning. After three months of waiting and non-stop training, he was finally strong enough.

Level up! You have reached Level 182.

Level up! You have reached Level 183.

…

Level up! You have reached Level 189.

Jack Rust was back, and he was ready to punch the shit out of the Animal Kingdom!