Chapter 312 Searching The Battlefield (1/2)

Arran ran through the night, every step he took bringing him closer to the heart of the battlefield

Even in the dark, the treacherous terrain posed no real problees in a single leap, and his powerful body could easily endure hours of running

The thickening Essence that surrounded hiic was strong, but it wasn't limitless And as dawn approached, he felt that the violent Essence was beginning to cause hih perhaps not quite as soon Days earlier, he'd already realized that the battlefield held farhe had encountered in Uvar And as he neared the heart of the battlefield, it would only get worse

While the pressure of unbound Essence grew stronger, the landscape grew less chaotic The land here had been eroded by the violent h the earth still bore scars of battle, un to fade

Yet even as the terrain grew less hostile, Arran's progress slowed to a crawl By now, the pressure of Essence eighing down on both histo blister

When he saw this, he groaned in frustration Not at the pain, but at what it o before he reached the heart of the battlefield And if he was struggling even now, then his body would give out long before he reached his destination

That his destination lay at the center of the battlefield, he knew for certain If Elder Nikias's belongings had not been looted already, then they would be where the Elder had fallen And that could only be at the very heart of the cataclysled onward for severalhis body to endure the ever-increasing assault from the unbound Essence around hio on Already, his skin was covered in burns and blisters And while his injuries healed faster than Negin's, he kneasn't enough

Not with days of travel still ahead

If he continued, the burns would groorse with each passing hour, draining his strength as his body expended energy to heal And as he greeaker, he would heal roeaker still

It was a siainst

As it was, he was already nearing his limit If he continued, he had no doubt that he would suffer the sain sooner rather than later Except he had no companion to carry him back to safety

He could not help but curse in frustration at the setback Of all the obstacles he could have encountered, he had not expected unbound Essence to be the one that ruined his plans

His resistance to ths, and it was the one thing he hadn't expected to fail him But now, it did just that

Arran briefly considered his options, and found thely few He lacked the ti to turn back e onould cost him his life

That only left one choice: to use the recruits' pills And he already knew those wouldn't be enough to get him to his destination

At most, the pills would buy him a few more hours A day, if he was lucky — and only if he didn't travel much farther into the battlefield Which meant he wouldn't be able to find the treasure he was after

Yet disappointed though he was, he knew that all was not lost Not yet

Elder Nikias wasn't the only e who had died on the battlefield His students, too, had fallen to the Hunters' trap, killed in the same battle that had taken their teachers' life

The Ninth Valley had been robbed of Elder Nikias's teachings in one fell swoop, with only a single e of the Forms — Anthea's teacher, who had been a edy presented an opportunity While he lacked the strength to reach the site of Elder Nikias's deht have fallen in other places And if they had, their belongings , hopefully, any notes they had on the Forms

Arran kneas a distant hope, but not an unreasonable one And, more importantly, it was his only hope Because whatever lay at the center of the battlefield was firmly out of his reach