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A damn desert.

Not that it was all sand dunes and shit, but the flat terrain and minimal vegetation gave the impression that this place didn’t see a lot of precipitation. What trees we did pass, were either dead and withering or more like cactus. Small tuffs of grass dotted the hard packed earth in random patterns, the earth itself more resembling red clay.

That reminded me of the arena.

But at the rate we were going, I wondered if I’d ever see an arena again.

We’d travelled only three or four miles to my estimation. Less than a quarter of the way and had burned close to an hour already. I was jogging at a slow trot to keep the pace up and with three people on my back, plus my weapons the exertion was intense. If I were back on Earth this would have been a breeze and it had me wonder if there was more than just gravity at play here.

Regardless, I was appreciative of the workout and was actively cultivated all the Frenzy I had generated fighting the Takrids to heighten my Muscle Strengthening and Boby Hardening. I was already at Stage X in both, but clearly there were a lot tougher things in the universe than me, and those Takrids had proved it.

I would need to get much tougher at a base level to survive this place and beyond.

I wasn’t sure if I needed to get to the next breakthrough and ascent to the Sacred Soul Realm in order to gain new stages of Body Refinement or not, but I didn’t care. I was doing it anyway. As Threja had taught me, even the Shuras were but a guide. My Flame was telling me I was too weak for this new world and I was adjusting myself accordingly.

I turned about briefly to see the tail of our caravan extended into the distance.

Shit… I cursed. Some of them lagging back near a quarter mile.

But I couldn’t fault them.

If I was struggling under this heavy world I could only imagine what they were feeling. I waited until I found a bit of shade under a copse of dead trees before halting and lowering Su Ren and the other two Tributes from my back. Kou Ren and his sons who had kept pace with me staggered to the dead trees like shipwrecked men seeing an island. They collapsed in heaps panting heavily, but even sitting seemed to give them little relief.

“Master Iron Bull,” Su Ren said softly, drawing my attention to her and she frailly pointed to the two tributes I’d laid down next to her. “I… I don’t think either of them are breathing anymore.”

Before I could even confirm, Lo Ren let out a scoff. “See? A waste of time bringing them. And to have my mother tethered to a couple of corpse!”

“Silent, Lo Ren,” his mother chided him. “You shame us!”

“Shame?” he shouted. “What does shame matter here? We are all dead already!”

A resounding smack filled the air as Chu Ren slapped his younger brother across the face.

“Stop it!” Chu Ren. “Always complaining. You see anyone else—?”

His words cut short as Lo Ren pounced on top of him and the two brothers fell to the ground in a scuffle. Kou Ren rushed to break them up while Su Ren shouted for them to stop. I was just about to intervein myself, when the ground rumbled beneath us.

In less than a second, the tan colored carapace of a Takrid emerged from the ground in a burst of earth and sand not more than twenty feet away. Kou Ren and his family screamed but yelled above them.

“Everyone shut up and don’t move!”

Silence fell as the towering monster pulled itself free from its burrow. I held my breath and prayed my handler instincts would prove right. The Takrid edged forward on its spindle legs towards where Su Ren was laying with two corpses. It lowered its insectoid head towards them, turning it from side to side.

But it didn’t attack.

It was confused.

But perhaps it wouldn’t be for long.

Reaching for my Glaive, I cycled my Frenzy and then ran in a sprint across the Takrid. The monster swiveled it head towards me and immediately gave chase. I poured on the speed to increase the distance between myself and Kou Ren’s family and then pulled a quick reversal to face the creature head on.

With its lumbering momentum it had no time to stop and used the opportunity leap from the ground with [Lightning] charged upward slash. I cut through both its front legs, causing the insect to crash into the ground and then followed up with a spinning chop to its head to quickly put it down.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

My ploy had indeed worked.

Thank goodness some rules of the universe were truly universal.

I stowed my blade and headed back to Kou Ren. All of them were staring at me with wide eyed in silence as if traumatized. The lemonade they exuded expressed their appreciation well enough though and I welcomed it to replenish my reserves.

“I suggest no more fighting,” I said.

“It was his damn fault,” Lo Ren hisses in a whisper at his older brother.

Chu Ren glared back at him but didn’t say anything.

“Enough of that,” Kou Ren said. “The Iron Bull has spared this family yet again. We should be grateful.” He then turned to me with a bow. “Forgive my sons, master.”

“Yes, forgive them please, master Iron Bull,” Su Ren said lowering her head to the ground.

I sighed. “Yeah, no worries.”

I glanced up at the sun. It was already starting to turn from yellow to orange. Most of the true cultivators had perhaps already long arrived at the academy. If we didn’t up our speed fast it wouldn’t matter if we stayed quiet enough to prevent another Takrid attack.

The Bloodmoon was on the way.

“We need to switch up the game plan,” I said. “I still carry three of you, but one of you will need to run with me.”

“I say he should run,” Chu Ren said jerking a thumb at his brother.

I huffed out a laugh. “You both will. In turns. Run as fast as you can until you tire and then I’ll swap you out.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Kou Ren said. “You both could cultivate while you ride on Master Iron Bull’s back to regain your stamina.”

“The world’s Qi is strange,” Lo Ren said. “It’s dense, but sparse. Hard to find. Like nothing is even here.”

“Yes, I sense that too,” Su Ren said with a nod. “Do you sense the same as well, Master Iron Bull?”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I couldn’t sense jack shit when it came to Qi, but I couldn’t let them know that.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’ll get there regardless.”

“Are we going to wait for the others to catch up?” Kou Ren asked.

Lo Ren immediately let out a frustrated sigh.

“Hush, Lo Ren,” his father snapped.

I looked back and saw that the next closest group still hadn’t gotten any further, perhaps resting as we were. I then looked down at the bodies of the two dead tributes I’d been carrying. As much as the Struggler wanted to protect, the facts were staring me dead in the face.

Literally.

“No,” I said. “Lo Ren is right. We can’t save everyone. But I did promise to save your family.” I grabbed Su Ren from the ground and hoisted her onto my back, along with Kou Ren and Chu Ren. I then looked to Lo Ren. “Run as hard and fast as you can. And if one of those things pops out, just run even faster.”

To my surprise he gave me a nod and even a little lemonade.

We then got underway and left the rest of the tributes behind to die.

* * *

More evidence of death emerged the further we progressed.

Patches of blood.

Holes in the earth where a Takrid must have emerged and snatched a tribute away.

They became more and more frequent after we passed the halfway mark, where some of the weaker tributes had perhaps run out of steam. By that time both Chu Ran and Lo Ren were running on fumes themselves, each one only able to last five minutes before needing a break.

“Water…” Chu Ren rested his hands on his knees panting. “We need water.”

I myself was parched as hell, but was running [Death’s Door] to bypass my bodily needs to keep running at a steady speed.

“The bastards left us here to die,” Lo Ren said. “How do we even know this is the right direction?”

“What other direction can we go?” Su Ren said, who was now taking a break from the constant jostling on my back by sitting on the ground as well. “It’s where the woman pointed.”

“I was hoping we would at least be able to see it by now,” Kou Ren said peering into fading blood-orange sun that was rapidly sinking towards the horizon.

I gauged the time.

We had perhaps less than an hour left.

“It’s all part of the test,” I said with [Struggler’s Resolve]. “Don’t lose hope now. We’ve come this far. Less than a quarter of the way left to go. We can make it if we push hard now.”

That got their spirits up and after a few more precious minutes of rest we set off again.

We passed by more grisly sites of carnage as we pressed on, some with body parts and tribute uniforms strewn across the ground. A few times we even caused the earth to open up behind us as a Takrid surfaced, but at the speed we were moving we were long gone before it could fully emerge.

It was working.

I was actually going to save these people.

The hope in my heart spurred me on as I swapped out Chu Ren and Lo Ren for what I hoped was the last time. I could just about see a towering structure in the distance when Kou Ren suddenly called out from my back.

“Iron Bull, stop!”

I did so, even though I had no idea why. “What’s wrong?”

I realized then that I was at the bottom of a small rise that Kou Ren could see over due to being on my back. As I climbed the hill for myself my heart dropped at what I saw. No less than a dozen Takrids were spilling out of a hole and feasting on a group of twenty or so corpses.

“By the heavens,” Su Ren said. “How do we get by?”

“Trust the bug guts,” I said as I sensed for the direction of the wind. It was headed straight at us, coming from the direction we need to go. “We’ll bank to the right of them, moving slow. They shouldn’t be able to smell us until we’re already past.”

“So long as it’s walking,” Lo Ren said already out of breath. “I don’t think I can run much more.”

“Let me run then,” Kou Ren said. “I’m not as fast but I’m at least well rested. Son, climb on here.”

Before I could say anything, Kou Ren and Lo Ren traded places on my back.

No matter, I thought. We were on the home stretch now.

I started making the wide arc around the scene of carnage while Kou Ren walked by my side. I glanced up at the darkening sky at the same time. I could make it to that tower if I had a clean run for it, assuming Kou Ren could keep up.

But we needed to get past the swarm of feasting Takrids first.

The sounds of ripping flesh and snapping bone were impossible to ignore and more than once I could hear muffled gasps come from Su Ren as she quivered on my back. We got just about halfway when a new sound emerged.

A slow hiss filled the air, and then grew in volume like a truck tire being rapidly deflated. I paused and looked in the direction of the sound that was coming from somewhere behind us and then froze as a creature the size of a jumbo jet lifted it massive reptilian head into the air.

It was a couple hundred feet away and looked like a monitor lizard, or a Komoda Dragon perhaps, only a thousand times the size. The thing dwarfed any creature I’d ever seen before, expect maybe those giant demons I’d seen on the Hell planes of the moon. But this wasn’t even a demon.

It was a normal ass monster.

But it had to be this world’s equivalent of an S class at least.

“Don’t move,” I whispered and felt my Flame rising to the challenge.

The Demon had to be out of his damn mind, but luckily the Struggler still had a mission to accomplish. I had to get Kou Ren and his family to Du Gok Bhong and tackling this monster probably wouldn’t be conducive for that. I wondered how the thing even snuck up on us. And then as if to answer my question it demonstrated its stealth by moving silently and slowly towards the feasting Takrids.

But although it moved slowly, with its immense size it covered a couple hundred feet in only two or three steps. The fear seeping from Kou Ren and his family was spiking through the roof. Then in a sudden violent motion the giant lizard let out another loud hiss and charged forward.

The ground shook like an earthquake as the monster landed in the midst of the Takrids. It snapped up one of them in its massive jaws and the crunched its shell open before lifting its head to swallow it down its flexing gullet.

“Move now,” I said. “Quickly.”

I picked up the pace and dragged Kou Ren with me.

The monster was busy feeding on what was perhaps its natural prey and we needed to use that time to get the hell out of Dodge.

“Run Kou Ren, run!”

I pushed on the speed to get as far away as possible and to Kou Ren’s credit he managed to keep up for about a quarter mile. Then he slowed and finally dragged to a halt.

“I need to rest,” he said. “I don’t how you are doing this. This world is brutal.”

“Let me trade places with you, father,” Chu Ren said.

“No, you stay there. I’ll be alright. Just need a moment.”

“The fates are with us,” Su Ren said after a while. “That monster is far behind us now and I can see the tower ahead. There are lights.”

I could see them too, perhaps just a couple miles away.

It had to be the perimeter of the barrier.

And it was just in time too.

Already I could feel the first tingles of Dark Frenzy filling the air.

“You almost ready?” I asked Kou Ren after another minute.

He nodded. “Yes. I can manage now, I think.”

I turned about to check on the giant lizard as Kou Ren lifted himself from the ground. It was nearly through the last of the Takrids, leaving none of them to escape. As it downed what appeared to be the last of them, it then began rooting in the ground and digging at the hole they had emerged from. Then it stopped abruptly and lifted its head high into the air. Its huge, forked tongue licked the air, as if sensing something. Then its head turned in our direction and it licked the air again.

It lowered its head and began to charge.

Oh shit!

“It’s seen us!” Kou Ren said with a startled cry.

But I knew better.

It hadn’t seen us.

It had smelled us from downwind.

And the Takrid juice I had smeared on us was to blame.

“You all need to run!” I shouted as I cycled my Frenzy and prepared to take on the beast. The monster could probably kill me, but I was about to turn full demon soon anyway. Maybe I had a chance. I was just about to dump Kou Ren’s family from my back when he raised a hand to me.

“Don’t!” Kou Ren shouted. “They’ll never make it without you! That beast is too fast!”

He paused as the ground trembled beneath us, the giant lizard already having covered half the distance to us in just a few seconds.

“Please keep your promise,” Kou Ren said. “Protect my family, Iron Bull.”

Before I could do anything else, Kou Ren turned and ran in the direction of the giant lizard.

His wife screamed in hysterics. “Kou Ren! No!”

“Father!” Lo Ren cried. “Father!”

They all bucked and jostled to climb from my back, but the [Struggler’s Resolve] kept them in place as my eyes suddenly welled. I watched beside myself as Kou Ren changed direction, running parallel to the beast to buy us even more time.

My heart ached at what I was witnessing.

The demon wanted to pounce.

To try and save him.

To try and kill that monster.

But that would simply kill us all.

The Struggler’s embrace shrouded my Flame as the giant lizard quickly reached Kou Ren and with a single snap of its jaws, plucked him from the ground and swallowed him whole.

My stomach lurched.

It fell straight through the ground as Kou Ren’s family cried out in shock and horror and the helplessness of losing my own family flashed through my eyes.

He was gone.

I stood frozen in place, my mind still trying to comprehend his sacrifice.

Save them, I could still hear Kou Ren’s voice pleading in my mind.

Run!

I turned about and sprinted at full speed. Kou Ren’s family pounded on my back in anguish and protest, urging me to turn back to save him. Their cries tore through my soul as they called out for him again and again.

They didn’t stop and neither did I.

In the darkness I poured on [Mark of the Beast] as the first hints of the Bloodmoon began to rise. I shieled my Flame with [Soul Shield] and gritted my sharpening teeth as the effects took hold. Glancing over my shoulder, I could finally see that I was leaving the giant lizard far behind. The lights in the distance grew rapidly ahead of me as I closed in on them, becoming towering, flaming beacons in the darkness.

As I finally ran past them, I felt the relief of the Bloodmoon’s pressure subside.

I didn’t stop until I saw the towering structure of Du Bok Ghong looming above me—a citadel of grey stone and steel. Only then did I finally slide to a halt and release Kou Ren’s family to fall by my side.

As I dropped to my knees their wails of anguish and loss tugged at my heart.

But all I could do…was weep.