Chapter 126: Don’t Get in my way
"A favor? What’s that?" Ren asked, wanting to know how he could get Silas back as fast as possible.
"Seems you really care for this wolf. Well, one favor I need from you is simple. I’m sure you have met Ophelia," the figure said.
"Tch, do you have something to do with her?" Ren asked, ready to go all out and take this figure down right now.
"No, not really. Well, kinda. But the issue is her endeavors that she is carrying out now will bring a lot of attention to this forest, and that will cause a lot of issues for me, and I do not want that."
"So what are you asking me to do?" Ren asked in an impatient tone.
"Arghh, so impatient. Well, help me cause her plans to stop. Throw a wrench in them so you can make her plans stop. I’ll hand over your little wolf to you," the figure explained.
"That’s not going to work," Ren said immediately after.
"What?"
"You want me to leave Silas with you for so long while I try to stop someone I am not sure I can stop.
I can smell a lie from a distance, and I know damn well you have no plan of handing Silas back and simply want to use me like an idiot," Ren stated and then looked up, eyes burning with rage.
"Hahaha, seems you cannot be tricked so easily. Tch, that’s not nice," the figure said.
"But since it seems you have no interest in the deal, I best be on my w..."
"BOOM!"
The gravity attack came from above like a missile and slammed into the back of the figure, sending him to the ground, and in an instant, Ren looked right at him as he struggled on the ground there and then spoke.
"You are going to release my wolf even if I have to crush every single bone in your body." His voice came out with a deep growl that caused the ground to tremble.
[Quest Update: Defeat the cloaked figure and save Silas]
[Reward: Primordial Skill]
[Penalty: 50 percent cut in all stats for a month]
’I can’t even afford to lose at this point.’
The figure groaned and started pushing himself up, fighting against the gravity.
"You stupid lizard, do you think I’ll allow you to have your way and cause ruin to my plan? I have people that try to get in the way of my plan, and you, you are getting out of hand!"
The figure pushed himself up from the ground, fighting against the gravity with visible effort, the pressure Ren was maintaining from above keeping him from rising cleanly.
Then he shattered it.
The shockwave that came off his body when he broke the gravity field was not directional. It went everywhere at once, and Ren had to bring both arms up to take it across the chest, his feet sliding back across the mountain surface before he caught himself.
The figure straightened up.
Ren was already moving.
He pulled the Soul Eater and drove his hand into the mountain beneath him simultaneously, gravity manipulation ripping three massive chunks of rock free of the surface and launching them forward in a tight cluster as he closed the distance behind them.
The figure raised one finger.
The red beam that came off it was narrow and dense and moved faster than the rocks, punching through the first one and continuing through the second before the third blocked it and detonated on impact, the explosion scattering debris in every direction.
Ren came through the debris cloud with the Soul Eater extended, the blade catching the light as he swung.
The figure stepped sideways.
Fast. Not the speed of someone who had trained to move quickly, but the speed of something that simply covered distance differently, present in one place and then present in another with very little visible connection between the two states. The swing caught air, and Ren redirected immediately, pulling the blade back and driving a gravity blast forward from his free hand.
The invisible barrier materialized between them, and the blast hit it, spread across its surface, and dissipated without breaking through.
"Not bad," the figure said.
He pointed two fingers this time.
The twin beams came in rapid succession, one after the other, angled to cut off the obvious evasion routes, and Ren pulled two slabs of mountain free and positioned them in the beams’ paths. The first beam punched through its slab, and he rolled under the resulting debris. The second beam hit the second slab and detonated close enough that the force of it clipped his shoulder and spun him sideways.
He corrected mid-spin and came back around, Soul Eater swinging in a wide horizontal arc that extended its reach outward, the blade’s drain energy following the arc like a second edge.
The barrier absorbed it.
Ren landed and immediately pulled more rock from the mountain, not throwing it this time but holding it, four large slabs suspended around him in a rotating formation that he kept moving as he advanced, using them as both cover and ammunition simultaneously.
The figure opened all five fingers.
Five beams came out in a spread pattern that forced Ren to break the formation, the rocks taking the hits, three of them detonating while he used the remaining two to block the last beams and pushed through the smoke behind them.
He closed the distance.
The Soul Eater came down overhead, and the figure brought his arm up, the barrier forming along his forearm this time rather than in the space between them, personal scale, and the blade hit it and the drain energy ran across its surface and found no purchase.
Their faces were a meter apart.
The figure pushed.
The barrier expanded outward from his forearm in a single explosive burst, and Ren went backward off the mountain entirely, his wings catching him before he dropped too far, and he pulled himself up and hovered above the mountain, looking down at the figure standing on its surface.
He was breathing harder than he had been at the start.
The figure looked up at him.
He raised one hand, not pointing yet, just holding it up, and the red energy gathered around it slowly with the particular patience of someone who was not yet ready to use what they were building.
Ren looked at the barrier that had shrugged off every long-range attack he had thrown. Looked at the speed that had kept the figure out of reach every time he closed in. Looked at the beam output that had forced him to spend his gravity manipulation defensively rather than offensively.
’This figure,’ he thought, ’is not simple.’