Chapter 233: Falling (1/2)

Zac sighed and looked over at Thea who already held her Token ready in hand. Their gambit had failed, and now it looked like they had thoroughly pissed off their enemy. Leaving seemed to be their only solution.

However, inside Zac’s heart there was a staunch unwillingness to crush the token, even if things looked extremely bleak. It was as though he felt that something would change inside him if he fled like this. He was trying to gain enough power to protect Port Atwood and all his family, and the title from the hunt was one of the few available upgrades for him at the moment.

“Shit, it hurts,” Inevitability growled as torrential amounts of energy gathered above it. “I wasn’t going to kill you, but I’ll just have to apologize to that guy. Fulcrums can be changed.”

The next moment they were beset by hundreds of chains shooting toward them like homing missiles, each of them carrying enough power to seriously wound them. Zac quickly erected his upgraded [Nature’s Barrier] and placed them as far from his body as possible to intercept the incoming attacks as he placed himself in front of Thea.

“I’ll figure something out, I’ll help delay if you want to crush the token,” Zac quickly muttered as he faced Inevitability.

But he was shaken when he saw the first chain simply rip straight through the emerald leaf without being impeded overly much. It contained a new force that the chains didn’t have before, and it felt extremely powerful.

Zac couldn’t be sure, but he had a feeling that it was an upgraded or fused Dao Seed that empowered the chains to this degree. He had only been thinking of the huge attribute bonuses such a thing would bring, but the battle power it provided was nothing short of horrifying as well.

The closest chain flew straight toward Zac who only had time to lift his arm in defense. A loud crack could be heard and Zac felt a blinding pain as his arm was broken from the tremendous impact.

Zac felt some hopelessness when he saw the innumerable chains following close behind. There was no way he could survive long enough for him to crush the token and last the seconds until he was teleported. He didn’t even have any way to help Thea out for long enough for her to escape.

But the next moment he was lifted from his feet, and his eyes widened as he was suddenly falling down the chasm. Thea was right next to him, holding his robe by the neck with a determined expression.

However, Inevitability’s attack didn’t stop there as the incoming chains followed them down the chasm, descending even faster than they were falling. Zac prayed this gambit would be enough as he took out his Token.

But the next moment an intense mental shock slammed into his mind, and [Mental Fortress] wasn’t enough to completely stop it. It felt like his soul was getting shredded to pieces, making him spasm and drop the token.

“No reprieve for you,” he heard echoing down from above, and Zac looked up to see the sneering face of Inevitability standing up at the ledge.

He did what he could with his defenses, but his desperation grew as he was getting pelted by one attack after another as they kept falling. His vision started to get blurry, but suddenly a blinding light lit up next to him as a similarily wounded Thea shone like a goddess.

But Zac didn’t have a chance to see what she did as a fractal chain slammed straight into his head knocking him unconscious.

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Zac woke up with a cough, and it took quite a while to orient himself. At first, he thought Darkness had descended once again while he was out, but to his relief he found that wasn’t the case as he saw the sun far up in the sky.

He was at the bottom of the chasm in a crater he suspected was of his own making. The area was almost completely shrouded in darkness because even if the Sun shone up in the sky, most of the light didn’t reach the bottom of the extremely deep crack he found himself in.

Every part of him hurt, and he even had a couple of broken bones. But the clearest indicator he’d barely survived the fall was that he’d turned into his Draugr form.

He guessed that the fall had essentially killed him, and his Core turned him into an undead once again. The first thing he did after orienting himself, even before taking a pill, was to open up the ladders. He scoured them over and to his relief saw that Thea’s name was still there.

He knew she hadn’t tried to kill him when she had grabbed him and jumped down the cliff. He knew he was all out of options in that battle. He had already used everything he got but it wasn’t enough.

That thing was truly a monster. Zac couldn’t even kill it when it went easy on them, but after it imbued its attack with an evolved Dao he was almost helpless against it. Perhaps he would need such a Dao of his own before he could compete with it.

Jumping down was a last-ditch attempt to survive, but he didn’t really understand what happened afterward. That final attack had knocked him unconscious, and the last thing he remembered was Thea lighting up like a beacon.

At first, he thought she had used some defensive treasure to survive, but after looking around he couldn’t find her anywhere, not even any hint of her having fallen down. The fact that she was still on the ladder meant that she hadn’t teleported out though, leaving him even more confused.

Since he couldn’t find her he sat down and took out one of the top tier healing pills and a couple of miasma stones to absorb. He didn’t move for a full hour, fully focusing on recuperating his body. The fall wasn’t the only thing that had hurt him, the fight that preceded it had taken a toll as well.