Chapter 1144: Desperate Pursuit (1)
Chapter 1144: Desperate Pursuit (1)
A rumble shook the heavens and a star fell from the sky, covered by golden and white flames that shredded through the surrounding space like a hot blade through snow. Behind it were thousands of dark cloudy beings with various ethereal lights emerging from their bodies as they chased the falling star, their cries of rage were like thunder.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om
The falling star slammed into the black ocean below and raised a wave that was a mile high, and the impact did not decrease its speed a bit, but the falling star did not descend to the bottom of the ocean like any other heavenly body, instead, it rotated in place in a mystical fashion, leaving millions of bright glowing white runes imprinted in the ocean, before it vanished.
These runes transformed into millions of golden and white stars that were the same as the falling star and they scattered in all directions, shooting out with great force and speed, matching, and then exceeding the speed of a lightning bolt.
The falling golden and white star was Lost and the golden giant who were being pursued by thousands of Ascendants who had survived the devastation Lost had unleashed on their ships. They were coming for blood and more were on their way from all corners of the Upper Continents, they had truly stirred the pot of calamity with their stunt and the suspicion that they were partly responsible for the demise of an Ascendant Sun.
The response from the descending Ascendants was swift when they saw the many scattering lights. They unleashed a volley of devastation down on the scattering lights, destroying a majority of them, but hundreds were still able to escape the field of destruction, fleeing in all directions, including deep into the ocean. For beings of their level, the ocean could as well be air for all the differences it made to them.
There were thousands of Ascendants here, these hundred golden lights were decoys, but with their number, they could easily fish out their prey.
With the numbers of golden light whittled down, the Ascendants scattered to pursue, unexpectedly the area that had been devastated by their firepower just a moments ago and had resulted in a massive gaping hole in the ocean hundreds of miles wide and so deep you could about see the bottom of the ocean pulsed with a bright white flame that would have blinded a god, and then billions of golden and white star erupted from the crater.
Loud curses escaped from the Ascendants as the variable in the chase had just unexpectedly multiplied, and it did not help that every single golden light was an exact match to the target they were chasing, making it impossible to quickly figure out what was real or fake.
A hundred Ascendants were a force that could devastate everything in all directions, there were thousands here, and despite this challenge, they did not give up hope, no orders were given, they simply divided the task before them, sectioning their targets into quadrants and focusing on eliminating all of them as quickly as possible in order to locate their primary target.
Each Ascendant here could easily tackle millions of these fleeing lights, and they pursued their task with a relentless frenzy.
With their previous experience clashing with this elusive target they had quickly discovered that their prey was an energy sponge. Everything they threw at them was simply absorbed and used as a power for their technique, and as their last collective attacks had demonstrated, the capability of their prey to process energy was boundless.
No Ascendant here could boldly claim that they could swallow all kinds of energy, and these were not benign energies but ones that were charged with the purpose of destruction and then used as fuel to channel their technique, not even adding to the fact that this enemy did not seem to be bound by any known limits.
It did not take a genius to figure out after their last failed attack that instead of giving out energy, they needed to deprive their enemy of it. It might just be the only thing that could work.
As the Ascendants scattered after all the golden lights, they did not shoot out any beams of energy or force, instead, they began to draw out the energy around the golden lights they were targeting, as they attempted to starve it of energy.
Soon, a great number of curses began to arise from the Ascendants when they realized that even their act of drawing out energy created a minor kinetic pull that this enemy was also using as an energy source, and in a weird application of energy transference that defied logic, this enemy was able to perfectly balance out gaining energy from the act of losing energy! The weird childish laughter that was emerging from the golden light did not help to calm the mood of the Ascendant as some of the most short-tempered among them went crazy with anger and began to indiscriminately attack the golden light, leading to an eruption of more golden light and a burst of increasingly louder laughter.
R
Lost had only one strategy going into this fight which was to battle at a distance. He even had a presentation set up that he displayed in front of the golden giant.
He knew that this was his only advantage in this encounter because he had no access to Will, and therefore he could easily fall under the trap of Time manipulation.
Below the level of Will, as the First flame to be born in all of reality, Lost could be considered invincible, except he was paired against certain monsters like Rowan or Telmus in his prime. He needed to buy time, and the only way he could do so was by pestering the Ascendants at a distance because every Will-based manipulation suffered a distance limit. They could easily stop him with an application of Time, but he needed to be at a close enough distance, and it did not help that in higher-level worlds like this one, it was very expensive to employ the power of Will, due to the strength of the surrounding space that would reduce the efficacy of such a heretical power over its nature.
The golden giant beside him sighed, "This was not how I imagined my first battle."
Lost tapped him on his shoulder, "You are moving a little too fast, don't spoil our hand with a moment of inattention, we are nothing but a glass cannon, one shot and we are down, and there are thousands of sharpshooters behind us," he paused then continued, "and why do you think every battle has to be about a direct clash of arms?"
Shrugging, the golden giant fractionally reduced his speed to balance with the rest of the golden light shooting alongside them, "If I am to tell the truth, then I don't necessarily know the reason, there is just this feeling in my heart that I should never run."
Lost looked at him with a deep look in his eyes, before he patiently asked, "And how did that feeling work out for you a moment ago when you were stuck in the midst of your enemies unable to move?"
The golden giant became silent before he later whispered, "It did not feel good. I should have gathered more data about my powers and the abilities of the enemy before I joined the
battle."