The Grey Ghost: Book Two of the Archaic Ring Series

by Reed R. Stevens

  “They weren’t able to harm me, but I’m exhausted.” Her face was slightly pale, her gaze somber. “I think we should leave.”

  “You read my mind. Still, I don’t think these guys will just let us run away.”

  The brown-haired young man and the other inner court disciple were standing around eighty metres away from them, exchanging terse mutterings as they glared in their direction. Both of them held a spirit stone in each hand, similarly replenishing their energy.

  “It’s frustrating how persistent they are,” said Nyla. “It’s almost hard to believe that they’ve followed us all the way here.”

  “I know what you mean. I feel like every disciple that I’ve come across has been some murderous psychopath, and it’s been bothering me for a while now. I mean, how can they all be evil? Like exaggeratedly evil, too.”

  “I agree that it’s strange, but we have other things to think about right now.”

  “You’re right.” Nolan took out one of the large bottles filled with water from the Divine Spirit Fountain and unsealed it. This was no time to be stingy, so he drenched his shirt with the energizing water, which gradually began to dim the pain of his injured ribs. “Hate to say it, but they’ll probably gang up on you. How long can you use your movement skill for?”

  “Twenty seconds is probably my limit.”

  That was a lot of time in a fight where every strike was capable of killing or crippling you. Nolan planned to utilize the Tranquil Void Step to finish these guys off as quickly as possible. This time he would give it everything he had right from the start.

  A loud crash sounded from far off, another carriage crumbling amidst the battle within the camp which had started to spill out into the surrounding fields. Dozens of mercenaries lay dead or disabled throughout the encampment and all around it, along with good deal of disciples. Two wagons had caught fire, casting the immediate area in a fiery glow.

  “If I block the stronger one, you think you’ll be able to hold off the other guy for a minute or so?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I should be fine. Just don’t take too long, okay?”

  “I won’t.”

  Their opponents still hadn’t moved. They were clearly trying to bait him away from Nyla so that they could create an opportunity to take her out. Only, they underestimated Nolan.

  At least when his movement skill was active, Nolan was even faster than their leader. It was time to see what would happen when he went all out.

  He activated the Tranquil Void Step and sprang forward with explosive, almost disorienting speed. He relied on his training and employed his spiritual sense in full, so that he was completely aware of his surroundings. Seconds later, he appeared in front of the weaker disciple with a snarl and drew his arm back as if he were about to punch him. Instead, he took a quick step to the side and avoided an agile kick from the stronger of the two, who stood just a metre away. Arm still cocked, Nolan hammered his fist into the brown-haired man’s shoulder, but was caught off-guard when his opponent braced himself to take the hit instead of fleeing. The young man grimaced as his shoulder dipped inward, a foreboding thud betraying that the damage wasn’t light.

  As expected, the other disciple made a beeline for Nyla.

  At that same instant, a hazy red light shot out of the injured man’s right sleeve and made directly for Nolan’s neck. He jerked to the right and avoided the sudden attack, immediately lashing out against his attacker’s injured shoulder with a swift side kick. As if it were alive, the strange red light changed direction mid-air and nearly made contact with Nolan’s left arm, but he eluded it by jumping about ten metres backward.

  Nearby, Nyla had quickly switched out her spirit stone with the evernight bow and had begun firing arrows at the oncoming disciple. Nolan prayed that she would be okay.

  Focusing on his own fight, he analyzed the red light that had retreated back into the young man’s sleeve and noticed that it had yet to dissipate. That’s clearly inner essence, so he has to be using some type of martial skill. Hadn’t Uncle Grey said that only body enhancement martial skills could be used by people below the Integration stage? Technically, the energy never lost contact with his arm.

  The young man dipped a hand into his robes and then quickly tossed something into his mouth. Narrowing his eyes, he stared at Nolan with a look of malicious frustration. A second red light cloaked his left arm, a faint glow spreading out from both of his sleeves. This energy slowly solidified, and gave off a more dangerous feeling with each passing second.

  They’re forming into snakes? It would be a bad idea to let his opponent completely activate his technique.

  “Why are you so strong?”

  As if he would talk to him.

  “Because I fucked your mom!”

  He dashed forward at his fastest speed and then leapt feet first so that he was parallel with the ground, making use of the tremendous momentum to deliver a powerful two-legged kick to the man’s gut. The attack bent him in a ‘V’ shape and sent him flying through the surrounding flowerbeds for nearly sixty metres.

  Why did people bother talking during fights? Usually it was to stall for time. This guy had clearly just taken a medicinal pellet and then his aura had begun to surge almost immediately afterward. Had he really thought that Nolan would let him power up over the course of a drawn-out chat so that he could unleash some ultimate move on him?

  The young man tried to flee, but Nolan kept track of his movements and cut off his route of escape, appearing in front of him like an enraged reaper come to harvest his detestable soul. Painfully aware that he could only maintain the Tranquil Void Step for less than half a minute more, he withdrew the essence fusion dagger from his spatial bag, something he’d held off on doing since he was much more comfortable fighting with his fists.

  A pair of red vipers with transparent bodies shot out of the young man’s sleeves as soon as he caught sight of Nolan, though his black eyes had clouded over, his bloodstained face lax as if he were in a stupor. Is he concussed? Nolan didn’t let his guard down and slipped past the scarlet snakes, which were each a bit thicker than his arms and around four times the length. They moved much faster than the young man, and as if on instinct.

  His aura might have gotten stronger, but I think that pill’s messing with his head.

  The young man’s aura continued to grow stronger. Thick veins began to bulge over his neck and along his forehead, and the snakes became more agile by the second. Despite his sudden surge in power, he didn’t seem too intent on sticking around to face off against Nolan. He turned tail and fled once more, but was kicked into the air yet again. He landed with another heavy thud about twenty metres from where he’d been standing and then continuing to tumble through a thick patch of red flowers.

  Nolan had rushed ahead while the young man was airborne, so when the latter rolled to a stop, he fell just shy of Nolan’s feet.

  “You trying to learn how to fly or something?”

  He dove away and tried to run off into the fields, but Nolan moved several times faster and intercepted him with a light kick. The disciple stumbled back as Nolan swatted his phantasmal snakes aside with his dagger, which was coated with several thin but dense layers of inner essence.

  “Wait… I am—”

  Nolan stabbed the dagger into his neck with lightning speed, the jagged edge biting into his skin like a predator’s teeth. “Looks like you won’t get the chance.”

  He didn’t stay to watch him bleed out. After snatching the man’s spatial bag and tossing it into his own, he immediately sought out Nyla, who was too far away for him to see in the darkness. Although he didn’t sense the other disciple’s life signal, he still rushed over at his fastest pace.

  He caught up with her just as she finished cleaning the tip of an arrow on a torn piece of scarlet fabric. As soon as he saw that she was safe, he deactivated the Tranquil Void Step and pulled out the spirit stone from before, devouring the ener
gy within like a voracious animal. He’d kept the movement skill activated for too long, and it had cost him most of the inner essence reserves within his dantian.

  “Lucky shot?” After emptying the first one, he produced two enriched spirit stones and handed one to Nyla.

  “Why does it have to be lucky?” She didn’t put the arrow away after cleaning it, holding it in her right hand, the sleek ebony bow in her left. “I’m surprised that the Red is still alive.”

  Nolan grew distant as he sensed the last thirty or so mercenaries struggling against an equal number of disciples.

  Both the camp and the area immediately around it were strewn about with nearly a hundred dead or dying, not to mention the countless others lying unseen to the south of the ring of ruined carriages. Screams of rage and cries of anguish still echoed into the night, though the clangs of clashing weapons had become much scarcer, at least for the footmen of both sides. As for the two heavyweights, the sound of their weapons hammering into each other was still audible from nearly a kilometre away.

  Taking a moment to process the terrible turn that his evening had taken, Nolan felt a disgusting sense of guilt gnawing at his gut. How many people had died tonight because of him? Even though he and Nyla wouldn’t have been able to fight off this large group of disciples on their own, he still felt that joining the caravan to Ferguson was a shameful mistake. He couldn’t have expected such an outcome, but that didn’t change the fact that his presence here had been the reason for all this bloodshed.

  “Are you okay to move?” Nolan asked.

  “I should be asking you that.”

  A growing number of booming thuds permeated the backdrop, the violent sounds doing well to illustrate the astounding might of the two men that were locked in combat hundreds of metres away from where Nolan and Nyla stood.

  “I’ll be okay. For now, let’s just go.”

  They sprinted off into the fields like criminals fleeing a crime scene. Nolan wished for nothing more than to leave this place far, far behind.

  They hadn’t moved far when an eye-catching glow exploded into the night from off in the distance, quickly followed by an intimidating rumble. Seconds later, a larger and more arresting luminescence replaced the first, this one taking on the vague image of an ethereal hand the size of a pickup truck, with translucent, scarlet skin. The hazy palm descended in a flash, smashing into the ground with heavy thump that echoed throughout the area like a shrill scream within a canyon.

  Silence reigned once the lightshow receded, as Nolan and Nyla continued on with their terror-driven flight without looking back.

  Just when Nolan felt that they might actually escape in one piece, the blond-haired disciple’s aura suddenly veered in their direction at a heart-stopping pace.

  “Nyla, go back to Greenwall. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Nolan?”

  “Seems like things aren’t done here just yet.”

  Her glare was unyielding. “If you stay, I stay.”

  “Nyla, now’s not the time. You’re a great friend, you really are, but you still need to leave.”

  “How can—”

  “Just do it! I swear to God, you’ll be the death of me if you stick around. Stay if you want, but you’ll probably get me killed if you do.”

  Considering the circumstances they were in, he had no choice but to speak harshly.

  Nolan’s knuckles made popping sounds as he skidded to a stop. He spun around and activated the Tranquil Void Step once again, gulping nervously as he sensed his energy draining away faster than an old phone with the flashlight app on. Scanning his spatial bag with his mind, he couldn’t help but wonder what his past self might think were he to catch a glimpse of his current predicament.

  Nyla reluctantly continued on her way, and her absence lifted a heavy weight from his shoulders. Above all else, he had to make sure that she survived.

  The oncoming disciple wielded an eerie white blade as his blurry shadow finally came into view. Sensing an imminent clash, Nolan retrieved a large broadsword from the spatial bag that he’d obtained from Dartan, a fine weapon with a sharp silver blade over a metre long and a stylish white handle wrapped tightly in golden lace.

  He doubted it would hold up against his opponent’s strength, but it was his only option.

  Charging toward the disciple at his fastest speed, Nolan utilized every bit of brainpower that he could muster in an attempt to throw together a plan that would keep him from getting killed or crippled like the many victims lost within the sea of wildflowers, which suddenly weren’t as beautiful as he recalled.

  Chapter Thirty-one: From the Ashes

  Nolan’s quiet evening had become a vivid night terror, one where even the smallest action could mean the difference between life and death. Generally speaking, he’d always been good at thinking on the spot, particularly during fights. That being said, the people he went up against these days weren’t the sort that would be after the spare change in his pocket or the smartphone that he’d dropped half a grand on. In Venara, every fight was a bid for survival.

  No matter what he’d been through or what he’d seen, how could he not be terrified right now? At the end of the day he was only sixteen, possibly seventeen after the time spent on Nia.

  Before he’d ‘migrated’ from Earth, the only dead body he’d seen had been his grandpa’s on the day of his funeral. He’d slipped away during a peaceful sleep, and for the most part looked the same as usual at the time of the service, though his body had possessed a grim pallor that Nolan hadn’t forgotten to this day.

  Although it was dark at the moment, his spiritual sense made him painfully aware of the bodies that lay inanimate beneath the indifferent mass of gently swaying wildflowers, of the severed limbs and decapitated heads that leaked the last of their blood onto the soil beneath them.

  Several carriages and wagons had been set ablaze by scattered remnants of the many campfires that once cackled gently within the encampment, a wicked source of light in the blinding darkness of this hellish night. As for the horses, aside from the few that were lucky enough to escape, the rest lay dead next to whatever objects their owners had tethered them to.

  Complete blackness dominated Nolan’s sight, as helpless whimpers and agonized cries gave the night a voice that filled his ears with constant whispers of dread. Spread out over hundreds of metres, countless pitiful victims bled out one after another. Each death contributed to a growing silence that left his skin course with goosebumps.

  Nolan could only thank the Millennial Ring for enabling him to keep a cool head despite being caught up in the middle of this terrible event. He’d grown to deeply appreciate its calming white energy, for how else could he find the courage to wield a gleaming broadsword and charge forward to meet the crimson-soaked madman was currently closing in on him with a keen bloodlust in his once-handsome blue eyes? Just a rogue punch from this young man could take Nolan’s life, to say nothing of the fact that he was armed with an oddly opaque sword stained red from the tip to its middle.

  Nolan hadn’t even been able to sense the cultivation of the man that this disciple had just defeated, so how could he hope to take him down? Not by meeting him in a head-on confrontation, of that he was certain.

  I’ve got thirty seconds, at most. Nolan dashed toward the disciple with his broadsword held out to the right in a one-handed grip. If he kept the Tranquil Void Step activated for any longer than that, then he’d definitely collapse, and it wasn’t out of the question to literally die of exhaustion. I’ve gotta make it seem like I’m trying to brawl. Whether or not I can even try to take him down, it all depends on my next move!

  Nolan counted down the seconds before he and the oncoming disciple would cross paths.

  Three…

  He finished outlining his body with heavily condensed inner essence, a second skin that reinforced his body to some extent.

  Two…

  Invisible to the eye, a second wave of inner essence flooded down the leng
th of his broadsword, the thick haze of energy rapidly shrinking in size until it fit the sleek dimensions of the blade like a glimmering coat of varnish.

  One…

  No words were exchanged as the two came within earshot of each other. The lead disciple had been grievously wounded, his left arm missing from the elbow down and his chiselled nose snapped to the side and gushing blood. His severed stump had been covered by a thick layer of inner essence that sealed off the wound and prevented it from bleeding. His aura was in disarray, though it contained an oppressive heaviness that made Nolan wary and uncertain.

  As they arrived in front of one another, he made it seem like he was about to smash his sword into the disciple’s blade with a powerful horizontal swipe. He released the hilt just before the clash and his opponent’s sword sent his flying away for hundreds of metres, but only after a metallic whine filled the air like the ding of a crisp homerun.

  The second that he released his grip on the broadsword, Nolan jumped over the disciple with every ounce of his strength. He flew up like a retracting bungee cord and rocketed dozens of metres forwards before he landed at a faltering run and quickly found his balance. After only a few steps he had to hurl himself sideways in order to avoid a sudden stab that would have caught him in the small of his back, the disciple sticking to him like a shadow. He narrowly sidestepped a follow-up kick that would have snapped his knee inward, ducked beneath a near-simultaneous slash and then jumped back another fifteen metres.

  Nolan’s gaze was steadfast as he dodged one strike after another, his erratic heartbeat echoing in his ears like loud screams at the bottom of a towering gorge. The Millennial Ring suppressed an instinctual fear that left his body covered in cold sweat, and the forced focus allowed him to handle each development in as tactfully a manner as possible.

  I’d feel better with a sword in my hand. He could hardly keep up with the disciple’s relentless onslaught let alone rearm himself with a new weapon.