Chapter 63 (1/2)

(TL: Here's the chapter, folks. My editor returned just in time to perform his magic. I'll get to TLing the next chapter ASAP, time permitting, of course.)

Kyaaaaaah!!

The pained scream reverberated thunderously throughout the valley. It was so loud, in fact, the creatures busy rus.h.i.+ng towards the fortress walls had to stop their advance and take a look back.

The electricity danced and crackled like a fish meeting water for the first time, causing a spectacular electrocution effect. Electrical sparks arced up from the entire body of the Medusa, scorching the creature black - so much so that its flesh even melted and bodily fluids began leaking out.

The Medusa writhed around in agony. One of the Bugs even forgot to finish chewing on a human that had been bitterly resisting the horde until now, and dropped its jaw open. A corpse with clear fang marks fell to the ground.

Yet another spell ball flew and hit the head of the painfully-shrieking Medusa. Dozens of arrows of light rained down and evenly pounded on the creature's torso. The second scream from this attack caused the ground to quake even further.

Now normally, this monster would've shook off tens of this weak, simple magic attack. However, it was already gravely wounded and then, there was the ‘small' matter of the flames from the electricity burning it up, too.

Kyaaahuuk!! Kyahwuuuuk!!

Enraged beyond control now, the trembling Medusa turned its head in the direction of where that strand of electricity had come from. In that spot, a lone human was taking aim at it with a bow and arrow. The Medusa flinched in surprise and hurriedly raised its hand to point at that offending human.

Kiiiiieeeehh!!

It exploded in fury, and fittingly enough, spat out a huge ball of flames. Seol Ji-Hu hurriedly discarded the bow and reflexively fell down to the ground.

Kaboom!!

The ball of flames missed its target and managed to blow away over half of the strange cliff formation behind him, instead. The falling debris caught on fire and rained down on the valley below like burning hailstones.

‘I'll just throw this, and…. Huh?!'

Seol Ji-Hu was pulling out the last spell ball, but then, he abruptly raised his head.

The air touching his face suddenly felt hot. Black smokes blowing up furiously from almost everywhere blocked his view. And past that….

*SFX for lots of legs running fast*

He could hear the noises of countless legs running on the ground. Not to mention, buzzing noises of furiously beating wings resounded at the same time as well, making him feel dizzy.

Just as he went, Oh, shoot, a certain leg suddenly parted the smoke and popped into his view. Almost instantly after that, dozens of Bugs jumped out of the smoke and flames simultaneously.

”Son of a….”

He didn't have the time to finish the rest of his sentence. Startled silly now, Seol Ji-Hu simply chucked the last spell ball at the rus.h.i.+ng horde and out of pure instinct, he turned around and ran as fast as he could.

He heard a cacophony of explosions and loud roars coming from behind him. He sneaked a glance behind him, but nearly lost his balance and tripped over from the sight.

The fury of the Medusa must've been rather great, because the number of creatures chasing after him was not in the dozens, but had ballooned to several hundreds, the chasing horde managing to blacken the land behind him.

Their direction was, without a doubt, towards him. Having confirmed their speedy and rather energetic pace, Seol Ji-Hu s.h.i.+fted his focus back to his front.

The distance between him and them didn't decrease, but neither did it increase - not even when he was going around a ma.s.sive boulder, or when he was going up a hill. The reason why he was able to prevent his speed from dropping too much was all thanks to his abundant Magic Power.

Just as he began thinking that the plan might succeed with less pain than he expected, the sounds of beating wings scratching at his ears froze up his thought process.

A disgusting odour suddenly wafted in and his neck felt itchy. There was no time for him to think; he just lowered his head as fast as he could.

Swis.h.!.+

A revolting sensation diagonally swept past the back of head. The thing grazing past him didn't crash to the ground below. As if it was performing a drift, it drew a sharp curve in the air and stormed in again.

The flying insectoid creature with three, four pairs of wide beating wings was a c.o.c.kroach.

There was no time to feel horrified. The horde of flying c.o.c.kroaches easily scooted past him, and soared high up in the air – their aerial manoeuvres resembling a person's dishevelled hair somehow.

On top of that, what's in front just so happened to be the middle point of the distance he had to cover, which also happened to be one of the most rugged and rather steep hilly terrain.

As he began running on the rising slope, Seol Ji-Hu had to concede that he had underestimated the enemies' capability to fly. Unfortunately, just because he had recognised the problem, that didn't mean his situation would improve on its own.

Soon enough, the c.o.c.kroaches stopped soaring higher, before descending rapidly – all at the same time.

Seol Ji-Hu had been frantically running up the hill until then; the enemy's organised actions left him utterly breathless. They were like eagles taking aim at their prey. He could definitely sense their strong desire to kill him from the decisive manner they were rus.h.i.+ng at him.

What surprised him even more was the fact that they were not ramming straight into the location of where he was but, while maintaining their frightening rate of descent, they were actually landing on the steep slope at an angle!

Front, rear, left, and to his right - c.o.c.kroaches landed everywhere and rushed towards his position as if they were gliding on smooth surfaces. The distance he thought he could maintain disappeared in an instant.

Growl!!

The sight of these creatures speeding towards him while scattering sparks and pebbles all around was terrifying enough to be mistaken for a nightmare. Their noisy, beastly bellows were more like frenzied declaration of their desire to catch him and rip him to pieces.

Seol Ji-Hu nearly freaked out at their intense suicidal attacks and gritted his teeth. These things had chosen to smash into him, rather than pouncing on him. Each c.o.c.kroach was several times larger than regular Bugs; just their momentum alone would be similar to a giant speeding truck with no brakes. A little graze, and he'd be sent flying or die outright.

Originally, he was planning to use ‘that' once he ran past the summit of this hill, but now that his life was on the line, he was left with no choice.

‘I'll trust him.'

Seol Ji-Hu decided to trust Ian and without hesitation, poured in his Magic Power into the Festina Earring. Immediately, storm winds enveloped him. And right away, he spun on his heels to avoid the large black creatures trying to crash into him from his sides.

Cras.h.!.+

c.o.c.kroaches crashed into one another; their bodies crumpled, momentarily floating up in the air.

Meanwhile, he roused more of his Magic Power and kicked the ground. With barely a hair's breadth, he slipped past the c.o.c.kroaches.

These ma.s.sive creatures never imagined that a human's speed would suddenly increase so greatly. He was able to leave behind some of them with this sudden burst of speed, but he knew he couldn't relax just yet.

A silver lining here was the fact that the enemy failed to change or divert his escape route at all.

Seol Ji-Hu ran like the wind in a zigzag pattern in between the c.o.c.kroaches that were trying to ram him from the front. While displaying a remarkable on-the-limit evasive manoeuvres, he managed to break past the c.o.c.kroaches' attempts to crash into him, but then, his face was drained of all colour.

The summit of the hill was almost there, but he still could see more c.o.c.kroaches flying overhead. Not only that, each of them carrying Bugs, too.

The c.o.c.kroaches trying to take him down with the suicidal attacks had done their jobs by making their human target take several steps more than necessary.

Perhaps these things figured out that he was far quicker than their initial estimates, because they gathered in close proximity to eliminate all visible gaps. And then, they began dropping their loads.

‘G.o.d d*mn it!!!'

Seeing the Bugs raining down from above, Seol Ji-Hu clenched his teeth.

If he wanted to avoid the falling Bugs, then he had to go around them, but that would definitely result in him getting caught. But, for him to run blindly ahead, their descent was just too impeccably timed. It was almost enough to make him blurt out some choice words.

The only remaining option was to increase his speed even further. However, if he were to stack the Boost one more time, he had no confidence of dealing with the potential rate of descent once he got to the downhill part.

Unfortunately, the current situation demanded him to make a quick decision. Preparing himself, Seol Ji-Hu roused up his Magic Power once more.

With one more Boost stacked on top of the initial buff, his entire body suddenly began vibrating. He shuddered like an automobile failing to endure the excessive speeding.

Seol Ji-Hu ran like a cheetah towards the summit in that state. And just as he was close enough to look straight into the eyes of one of the falling Bugs, he leaned his body back.

If he ran upright, he'd have collided with that Bug without a doubt. There was only a gap of less than 80 centimetres between the falling creatures and the ground below, yet Seol Ji-Hu successfully got through by sliding on the ground.

Right after that, his sliding body became airborne; he was then a.s.saulted by the sensation of his lower torso being sucked down towards the ground. He had ‘run' past the summit in this fas.h.i.+on, and as if he was plunging down to earth, he began sliding down the hill almost out of control.

‘Keuuuuuuh!!'

His body parts rubbing hard against the solid rock surface below was burning up.

The danger hadn't ended yet, though. The bottom of this steep hill was getting ever closer. If he continued on this rate of descent, it would not end with just a couple of bones breaking; as for what would happen after that, well, that would be as clear as the midday sun.

‘Please!!'

Even though the pain shooting up from his back was crippling, he still desperately managed to press down on the ground with both of his hands. He somehow forced himself up, but his body tottered unsteadily, and his legs couldn't quickly adopt to the current speed.

Just as his body lost balance again and teetered on the edge, his leg extend out with great difficulty and met the ground.

Bang!

The sensation of his foot almost breaking under the impact nearly made him faint. He stopped breathing for a moment there, and that led to his chest feeling like it was burning up from the lack of oxygen.

However, the sole reason why he didn't tumble down but use the inertia to continue running was because, he had already experienced something like this before. He recalled the days he spent running over and over again on the track, and….

”Keu- kuowaaaahhh!!”

…. He gritted his teeth and finally managed to regain his balance by taking one step, then another, forward.

And then, he began raising his speed again!

From the perspective of the Parasites, such a scene left them utterly dumbfounded. They must've found the human managing to evade their attempts like a slippery eel completely detestable, because they all began emitting loud roars of anguish. c.o.c.kroaches driven mad with rage chased after him like crazy, and the Bugs rolled themselves into a ball and began rolling down the hill.

Seol Ji-Hu could only marvel at their dogged pursuit, but still, he didn't let go of his focus.

Having overcome several close brushes in a very short amount of time, his situation finally changed for the better. The rest of the way was on a piece of land that looked utterly flat and peaceful when compared to the dangerous terrain he had been running on until then.

More importantly, he could see it now - a pair of tall, imposing cliffs facing each other as if something had split them into two. And then, a deep ravine running in between the two.

His goal wasn't far away now.

Sensing that the successful completion of his mission was just around the corner, Seol Ji-Hu activated the final stack of the Boost.

Pang!!

Three stacks of explosive burst of speed.

As fast as the storm winds, Seol Ji-Hu disappeared into the ravine.

”He did it!”

Ian clenched his fists tightly.

The anxiety the Sorcerer felt when the youth broke past the encirclement of Parasites on top of the hill's summit with near-miraculous dexterity, quickly changed to half-belief when the boy slid down the hill, and finally, to joy when Seol Ji-Hu managed to regain his balance and continue running.

If it were up to him, Ian might have broken into a dance routine right there and then. Unfortunately, he had no leeway to do that.