The sphere rune activated first, encasing the ice of [Grand Aegis] with a thick layer of lightning that crackled menacingly, adding a defensive layer to his shield.
The tower rune followed, sprouting spiked armaments that proactively targeted the incoming day-elemental rays, launching retaliating thunderbolts, either dispersing them or absorbing them under the rune’s pre-programmed influence.
The Endless Sun Sect cultivators realized that they were losing momentum as the others were getting away. They pressed forward more fiercely with a new strategy.
The woman with the scimitars split the air with her blades, sending arcs of fiery, white/yellow energy toward Lassim, while the warhammer wielder charged, aiming to shatter the defensive runes of his shield with brute force.
Lassim responded with a powerful upward sweep of his halberd, cleaving through the fiery arcs as he sidestepped the warhammer’s downward strike.
The ground shook under the impact, but Lassim was already moving, his figure a blur as he engaged all three opponents at once, using the rain to obscure his movements, the lightning to keep them off balance and finally using the constantly adjusting defensive barrier when blocking.
Despite the overwhelming odds, Lassim held his ground, his halberd spinning in his hands as he parried, countered, and struck with unrelenting force. The battlefield was chaotic.
Now a good twenty minutes away already, Kaelin, Lara, and Aerin were mere blurs as they streaked through the dense forest, each of them pushing their movement techniques to the limit. They knew the stakes; Lassim was risking everything to buy them time, and they couldn’t afford to waste a single moment.
The echoes of the battle behind them urged them on, yet the weight of guilt was palpable. Lassim’s earlier shout had snapped them out of their hesitation, and now they flew with singular focus, hoping against hope that he would make it out alive.
Finally, back at the battlefield, Lassim saw an opportunity to unleash another [Hydroburst], this time directing the explosive energy more towards the warhammer-wielder’s chest that had just smashed open a hole in his electrified, glacial barrier.
The impact sent him crashing through a line of trees, the explosion obliterating everything in its path. With that momentary advantage, Lassim disengaged and leaped back, his body surging with mana as he prepared to retreat.
His eyes and spirit sense was locked on each member of the Sun Sect trio, calculating their next moves even as his team had finally retreated to outside of his spirit sense’s range into the distance.
Each of them was a seasoned warrior in their own right, and together, they were proving to be a formidable force.
Despite his best efforts, Lassim was struggling to maintain the upper hand.
The woman with the scimitars was the first to recover from the earlier explosion. With a snarl, she unleashed another flurry of fiery slashes, each one imbued with day-elemental energy.
Lassim barely managed to deflect them, the force of the blows pushing him back. He could feel the heat from her attacks searing through his defenses, his [Lifestream] technique was trying to keep up but slowly losing pace as his mastery over the skill wasn’t great yet. He’d barely practiced it at all and learning in the middle of battle wasn’t exactly the best way to go about it.
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"Do you really think you can hold us off alone?" she taunted, her voice dripping with contempt. "We’ll tear you apart and plant the remnants of your body back on the walls of your sect once we finally take over your headquarters. You’re outmatched!"
Lassim gritted his teeth, refusing to be goaded. He had no time for her threats.
Instead, he focused on the rhythm of battle, letting the storm around him consume him and use it to his advantage.
With a swift twist of his body, he spun his halberd, the blade glowing with the volatile energy of [Hydroburst]. He swung with precision, aiming directly at the woman’s midsection.
But she was fast this time—too fast. She dodged to the side, the blade narrowly missing her as it cleaved through the air. Yet, to not be outdone, Lassim triggered the effect manually this time.
The explosion that followed sent her skidding across the ground, her scimitars and hastily summoned yellow shield barely managing to absorb the shockwave. Her internal organs shook.
Her comrades were quick to recover now that she’d bought them a few seconds, the warhammer-wielding brute launched forward to engage Lassim once more.
"Don’t let up!" the man with the spear barked, his voice commanding. "He’s strong, but we’ve got three of us! He’ll die soon regardless."
The warhammer wielder charged forward, his weapon glowing bright white with an intense heat that made the skin on Lassim’s face feel like it was being singed off. He swung with a titanic force only Spirit Transcendents were capable of, aiming to crush and burn Lassim beneath his attack.
Lassim sidestepped, narrowly avoiding the devastating blow, but the ground beneath him cracked from the impact.
Using the momentum from his dodge, Lassim twirled around and countered with a sweeping strike of his halberd. The blade, still glowing with the unstable energy of [Hydroburst], met the warhammer in a violent clash.
The resulting explosion sent shockwaves through the air, but the brute only staggered, flew backwards a mere 20 meters this time thanks to his sheer physicality allowing him to withstand the blast.
Lassim pushed on, the storm intensifying all around him. The rain fell harder, turning the battlefield below into slick, muddy terrain. They fought sometimes in the air and sometimes landing on the ground with Lassim trying to bait them with [Lightning Lash]es that could buy him enough time to take out at least one of them.
His breaths came in steady bursts, each exhale a focused release of mana as he sent forth blades of water with [Slashes], bolts of lightning with [Thrusts], and explosive plasma with [Hydroburst]. His ice dragon soul also occasionally sent out breaths of frost to try and attack as well.
But the trio was relentless. The woman had regained her footing, and now all three of them advanced on Lassim with coordinated precision once more.
Their attacks came in a barrage, a deadly dance of flames, light, and crushing force. Lassim was hard-pressed to deflect and counter each blow, his halberd a blur of motion as he fought to keep them at bay as he started to try and occasionally use [Tempest Steps] to create distance and eventually run away.
"This isn’t going to work… They’re faster than I expected," Lassim thought, his mind racing.
He could hold his own, but only for so long. This trio of Endless Sun Sect cultivators seemed to fight as if they were trained for battles like this, their teamwork honed to perfection. Yet, the reality was that they were all well into their 1500s in age to reach this level of cultivation.
They’d had hundreds of years working as a team, completing missions, to get to this level of synchronized attacking. Each time he found an opening, another one of them would close in, forcing him on the defensive once more.
His thoughts briefly flickered to his team, hoping they had made it far enough away by this point as he guesstimated that he’d been on the defense for over an hour by now.
He knew he couldn’t keep this up indefinitely and the realization that he was most likely going to die if he didn’t come up with something was like a dagger in his gut. But he couldn’t allow despair to take hold. There had to be a way out—a way to escape, regroup, and get revenge.
Lassim disengaged once again, this time with a powerful upward [Slash], creating a momentary gap between him and the trio.
Without wasting a second, he leapt back, his eyes flicking around the battlefield, searching for any potential escape route. But the cultivators were quick to close the distance, their speed just barely outpacing his own.
The lead cultivator, his spear crackling with energy, sneered as he charged at Lassim. "You’re not getting away that easily! We’ll hunt you down wherever you go, so it’s best if you just surrender now!"
The scimitars-wielding woman flanked him on the left, her blades glowing with a dangerous light as she prepared to strike. The warhammer wielder moved to the right, his weapon raised high for another devastating blow. They had him properly surrounded this time.
Lassim’s mind raced, calculating his options. Each exchange was taking its toll, and though his stamina was immense, he couldn’t ignore the reality of the situation. They were just too fast—barely faster than him, but enough to keep him from gaining any real distance.
The warhammer wielder reacted while Lassim stood still, enveloped in his thoughts, and led the charge, bringing his weapon down with a thunderous crash.
Lassim dodged to the side, but the impact sent tremors through the ground, throwing him off balance.
The woman with the scimitars followed up with a lightning-fast series of slashes, forcing Lassim to block with the shaft of his halberd. Sparks flew as their weapons clashed, the sheer force of her attacks pushing Lassim back towards her remaining teammate.
The lead cultivator with the spear saw his chance and lunged forward, aiming for Lassim’s exposed side.
Lassim twisted his body just in time, but the spear grazed his arm, leaving a deep gash. Pain flared through him, but he pushed it aside knowing [Lifestream] would eventually reach the new wound, focusing on the task at hand.
With a powerful roar, Lassim unleashed another [Hydroburst], swinging his halberd in a wide arc. The liquid plasma erupted from the blade, exploding in a massive shockwave that sent the trio stumbling back. But they recovered quickly, their eyes burning with determination.
Lassim knew he couldn’t keep this up. He took a deep breath, centering himself and praying for a way out as he felt a familiar buzz. Yet, this one was coming from deep within, past the little disc of land and clouds of mana that seemed to have transformed into a raging storm, into the very core of his being above the constellation’s presence.
There, within his inner world, he felt the resonance of the spatial void energy that had been seeping into his existence since his ascension to the Spirit Ascension stage.
The energy was foreign yet familiar as he now felt he could observe the energy with the help of the Progenitor’s marks that now pulsed across his entire body. He hadn’t fully understood its power yet, hadn’t dared or had time to realize he could tap into it—until now.
Lassim’s mind honed in on that resonance, letting it guide his thoughts.
He had a crazy idea…
Though the very idea of it was daunting. He had no time to second-guess himself; this was his only shot at a possible escape.
Unknown to Lassim, the trio of cultivators sensed that Lassim was preparing something drastic as his progenitor marks that were previously hidden beneath the Lightning Sect’s initiate disciple martial attire now began to creep up and create a design of root-like patterns across his face. It would be instantly recognizable to Lassim if he was able to see himself in a mirror at this moment.
In a panic, they redoubled their efforts. The woman with the scimitars charged first, her blades aimed directly at Lassim’s heart. The warhammer wielder and the spear-wielding leader flanked her sides, ready to deliver a joint killing blow.