The Grey Ghost: Book Two of the Archaic Ring Series

by Reed R. Stevens

  He pushed himself to the limit and retreated into the mostly destroyed camp, calmly acknowledging that he only had a handful of seconds before the last of his energy was exhausted. If he didn’t deactivate the Tranquil Void Step before then, he’d most likely suffer a fatal backlash.

  Ten mercenaries were making an admirable last stand near the opening through which all non-combatants had made a bid at escape, each with an excessive collection of injuries. Only seventeen disciples remained, though only a handful engaged their heavily armoured opponents. The others had set about gathering all of the survivors and laying them down along the edge of the camp.

  Mercenaries, merchants, whole families, even several outer court disciples with wounds too grievous to come back from, at least eighty people had been gathered in the centre of the destroyed camp. The scent of blood was stronger here than anywhere else in the area.

  Nolan made straight for the dwindling battle, intending to take out one of the stronger disciples in a drive-by style as soon as he noticed that his pursuer had lagged behind for some odd reason. Red and his remaining men had no chances of survival, but he could at least give them a glimmer of hope.

  He appeared before a disciple at the seventh level of the Profound Entry stage and punched out at his head with lightning speed. Just as his fist was about to connect, a tingle of alarm slithered down his back and he aimlessly dove to the side. Dozens of metres sped by in a blur until he smashed right through a far-off carriage and tumbled into the field for at least fifteen metres, a tremendous sound of impact simultaneously resounding throughout the field. A strong gust of wind blew outward from the battleground.

  The blond-haired disciple had appeared above him so quickly that Nolan had caught sight of his deranged appearance before detecting the sudden movements with his spiritual sense. A large mass of crimson energy had illuminated the man’s tattered silhouette, having taken on the vague form of a giant red hand that hovered ten metres above the mercenaries’ last-ditch battle. The hand simply swatted downward, but the damage was immense.

  Nolan was convinced that he would have certainly died if he hadn’t immediately jumped to safety. Despite the giant hand having been translucent like a flickering flame, it had clearly possessed a heavy mass and irrefutable solidity. This one had been larger than the last, a fact made evident by the massive handprint that had been stamped into the ground in the space between the carriages that had been parted at the onset of the conflict.

  At least ten metres long and half as wide, the imprint sunk a metre into the ground, where eleven crushed bodies stained the dirt with gross amounts of bloody flesh and broken bones. Five of these corpses were the inner court disciples that had just been locked in combat with the remaining mercenaries, interspersed with several limp piles of warped armour.

  Was that really a martial skill? A strong torrent of calming energy quelled a series of shivers that had inadvertently seized Nolan’s limbs. He retracted his spiritual sense in order to increase his awareness within a limited range, in order to increase its effectiveness. At the exact instant that his perceptions grew more distinct, a bone-white blade pierced straight toward his back. He summersaulted out of harm’s way and then dashed back into the camp.

  The blond disciple was right behind him, and a near-invisible slash of his sword barely fell short of Nolan’s spinal cord as he avoided it with a minimal, last-second movement. I don’t have much time! The white edge of his opponent’s blade nearly sliced into his neck, though he anticipated the attack and jumped to the opposite side of the camp.

  “If I weren’t seeing it for myself, I’d never believe that someone with your cultivation could elude me to such an extent. I must admit, you’ve impressed me!”

  Nolan ignored the disciple’s words as he continued to evade the never-ending series of deadly strikes.

  Frustration warped the blond-haired young man’s handsome face into a devilish look of rage and impatience. “You can’t keep this up for much longer!” He unfolded combination of several well-timed strikes, though they hit nothing but air. His many wounds shed blood with every step, and the seal of inner essence that covered the stump of his left arm was slowly beginning to let out a scarlet leak. “You’ve brought me a great deal of inconvenience. Don’t blame me for being ruthless when I refine you.”

  “You like to talk, eh?” Nolan yelled back.

  “And you only know how to run away!” The young man hung back for a moment, panting heavily as he glared at Nolan with an evil impatience. “You should try to take after those mercenaries. At least they know how to die with honour.”

  Contrary to the disciple’s words, Red and his few remaining men had withdrawn into the fields as soon as their fight had been interrupted by that mind-blowing martial skill.

  Is he buying time for something, or trying to provoke me? Nolan took advantage of the sudden reprieve and scooped up a big flaming branch from the remnants of a nearby campfire. I’ve only got a few seconds left. I need him to follow me. He withdrew a spirit stone from his spatial bag with his left hand, desperately absorbing as much energy as he could in order to forestall the imminent backlash of maintaining his movement skill.

  “Die with honour, like that blond-haired asshole that I killed in Redfox Village?” spat Nolan. “That’s why you guys won’t leave me alone, right? Now that I think about it, he looked a lot like you. Could you have been related?”

  “Humph, so the mouse knows how to speak.”

  “He started crying like a toddler as soon as he realized I’d poisoned him.” Nolan’s laugh of derision was more than just a bit convincing. “Shit himself too, right on his last breath. That was probably around the time that the piss began to dry. If you call that dying with honour, then I guess you’re about to get a hero’s death!”

  The young man dashed forward, his sword taking on a dim, deathly glow.

  When he missed yet another strike, his empowered voice echoed throughout the night like the toll of an angry bell. “Brothers, let’s put an end to our business here. I want this boy half-dead within the next five breaths!” He lunged at Nolan with growing ferocity. “When I’m done with you, you won’t even remember your own name.”

  “Good one!”

  The remaining disciples had just finished rounding up the last few injured people within the area, though they hadn’t made any moves to refine them. Originally, there had been over fifty disciples. Now, only three from their outer court and nine from the inner court remained.

  These twelve had stood off to the side and observed Nolan’s battle with shrewd gazes, and none of them had showed any inclination to join in on the fight until their leader’s angry command echoed throughout the camp. Heeding his call, the idle disciples immediately activated their red-handed martial skills and pounced toward Nolan as if they were a pack of hungry jackals and he a wounded antelope.

  The leader himself didn’t let up, taking to the fore of the attackers and initiating a powerful strike that would most likely have cleaved Nolan in two had he not managed to slip by it and dash toward Karan’s carriage. It had been tipped over, both wheels on one side smashed to splinters.

  He leapt past four men and was forced to dip his head beneath a swipe from a fifth as soon as he landed. With no mind to engage them, Nolan summersaulted past a strong kick from yet another disciple. No matter how fast he moved, an endless barrage of crimson hands continued to stab at him from out of the darkness. He was living on fractions of seconds, since if he allowed even one strike then he might instantly get mobbed by the rest of his attackers. He focused solely on making his way to the carriage, relying on zigzag movements in an attempt to throw off as many pursuers as possible, all while trying to mask the fact that he was following a plotted course.

  The pale tip of the lead disciple’s sword nearly pierced into one of his eyes as he made a final bid toward his destination, though he evaded the swarm of attackers at a speed that even their leader couldn’t match. The second that he arrived beside th
e carriage, he pushed himself to his absolute limit and jumped up into the air as quickly as possible.

  Three crimson hands and a pale blade found empty space where they would have cut into some of his major arteries had he been a fraction of a second slower. His malevolent enemies didn’t give him any time to breathe. Two disciples at the seventh level of the Profound Entry stage followed him upward with a violent flourish of their bloodstained robes, their hands burning red as they closed in on him with cautious glares. Luckily, they lacked the momentum to catch up.

  Staring downward as he continued to ascend into the empty sky, Nolan gathered Origin Energy from within his body that had yet to be filtered by his dantian, an insignificant amount that he’d collected over the past few minutes solely in anticipation of this moment. He carefully wreathed the small amount of energy in inner essence, which he then guided out of his right hand and along the length of the flaming branch that he’d scooped up seconds ago. He severed contact with his inner essence the moment that it had enveloped branch, leaving a perfect bubble around it that kept the Origin Energy trapped amidst its surface.

  With Origin Energy trapped within the bubble-like encasing of inner essence, the flames at the end of the branch quickly spread along the rest of its surface, just like the flames of the campfire back on Nia.

  Nolan spared a glance toward the injured people who had been gathered not far from Karan’s carriage, over eighty of them, all severely injured and dying. It had only been a few seconds since he’d leapt skyward, though during that time he had been struggling with a terrible internal dilemma. He couldn’t alter his trajectory now that he was airborne, so if he stayed his hand then he would surely die when he landed in the coming moments. There was only one path left for him to take if he wanted to survive.

  Nearing a hundred metres above the ground, a strong rush of nighttime wind caused Nolan’s somewhat shaggy hair to wildly flutter, his loose tunic and pants similarly billowing. He sensed something flying toward his head, but he managed to duck beneath it just in time to hear it whistle past him. One of the disciples that’d followed him up had thrown a dagger at him.

  I’m sorry. Even if he held back it wouldn’t change the fate of the unfortunate victims that had been rounded up by the remaining disciples. This…is better than being refined. Once the now-or-never moment arrived, Nolan gritted his teeth and then hurled the flaming staff downward like a tiny bolt of lightning.

  The burning branch sped past the two disciples who’d stagnated to a fall about thirty metres below him, and sailed cleanly through a broken window of the overturned carriage. A thunderous boom tore at Nolan’s ears as both the ground and the air shook violently, a terrible shockwave spreading out from the camp that was several times more powerful than the ones that Nolan had caused in the past. A bright flash accompanied the tremendous blast, lighting up the immediate area for a brief moment as most of the nearby carriages, horse carcasses, and people were blown to bits and scattered all throughout the area.

  A large pillar of smoke climbed up into the sky and brought on a true, sickly darkness that completely engulfed Nolan despite how high he’d jumped. He’d shifted his focus to deactivating the Tranquil Void Step as soon as he released the flaming branch, and was now endlessly grateful that he had been largely unaffected by the blast.

  The moment that he’d stopped using his technique, a draining wave of exhaustion crashed down on him and sapped nearly all of his strength. Suddenly feeble, he suffered a disorienting episode of vertigo. He inspected himself with his mind’s eye and found that the once-golden network of inner essence channels within his body had become withered and lacklustre, the dim, yellow glow drawing a stark contrast to its previous vigour and vibrancy.

  The gloomy world came to a chilling standstill as the last of Nolan’s upward momentum finally died away. His stomach sank as he acknowledged how high up he’d gone, that he only had a spec of energy left to him, that if he survived the imminent fall then he might open his eyes to find a mob of wounded enemies that were very much alive.

  He began to plummet downwards, slow at first but quickly gaining speed. He pulled out a spirit stone and began absorbing its extremely pure energy with urgent care. Although he couldn’t see the ground below him or how fast he approached it, the rush of wind and the choking, poisonous air didn’t mask the rollercoaster-like feeling brought on by the freefall, which had him dreading that this landing would be a rough one.

  Nolan coughed as he covered his eyes with his free hand, his mind whirling. Can I even survive this? Once again, a fit of panic was subdued by soothing white energy from the Millennial Ring. I don’t have enough energy to cover myself in inner essence, at least not enough to make a big difference. Should I land on my legs? No, they’d definitely break, right? Then should I try to land at a roll?

  He extended his limbs and hugged the wind, hoping the spread eagle position would make him even a tiny bit more wind resistant. Since he’d jumped straight upward he would surely land somewhere around where Karan’s carriage had been, which was probably a barren blotch of scorched earth by now.

  I’m not high enough to reach terminal velocity, so I shouldn’t fall any faster than a hundred kilometres per hour. I can run faster than that, and I’d survive if I ran into a wall. I mean, probably… He covered his legs in a thin layer of inner essence and braced himself for impact. Goddamn it, I better not break any—

  A mound of dirt stole his breath as he smacked into it with a heavy thud. He’d tried to fall feet first and transition into a roll, but his left ankle snapped and some bone or other broke in his foreleg, causing him to fall sideways into the dirt and tumble only a few metres away. He lay there stunned and gasping for air, his lungs seemingly unresponsive as if a mountain of anvils had been placed on his chest.

  He cursed the delayed pains that assailed his body once the haze in his mind slowly began to clear. His left pant leg was wet with blood, his ribs on fire and his breathing shallow.

  He tried to move, but couldn’t do much more than squirm. I’m okay. I just need to catch my breath. He didn’t suffer nearly as much damage as he’d anticipated. Honestly, he’d thought the fall would kill him.

  After struggling to pull in a full breath, he couldn’t help but cough from all the smoke, asphyxiation now a fresh worry in his mind. Even so, he was reluctant to withdraw from the smokescreen he’d landed in. He summoned the energy to tear off his shirt with a sluggish yank and then folded it with shaking hands. He placed the wad of cloth over his mouth and then turned onto his right side, grunting as he curled up into the fetal position. Very slowly, he began taking conservative breaths. His pursuers had all been caught directly in the blast radius, so there was a high chance that any survivors would be in a similarly disoriented state.

  He lay there for a couple of minutes, every second dragging by with an alarming air of uncertainty. Terribly dizzy and more than just a bit nauseous, Nolan could only sense about two metres in all directions, though he was still capable of scanning his body. So it was my fibula that broke, eh? He took in a deep breath and winced, a bit scared that the fall had worsened the injury around his ribs. No, it definitely had.

  Feeble and weak as he lay in the dirt, Nolan suddenly felt foolish. With his spiritual sense so restricted, he had no way of knowing whether or not any of the disciples had survived. In his current condition, forget an outer court disciple, even someone at Karan’s level wouldn’t have any trouble slitting his throat.

  I’m not thinking straight. He began crawling toward a small glimmer of light that flickered in and out of his view, the spirit stone he’d been holding moments before. He grabbed hold of it and quickly began channelling the pure energy into his body and filtering it through his dantian, which now looked like the final flame of a dying candle.

  He realized his mistake as soon as he grabbed hold of the stone. I might not be the only one who can see the light!

  He flopped over onto his stomach and covered the stone with his body
, cloaking himself in darkness as he continued to absorb its energy while doing his utmost to suppress his pained whimpers.

  As the discomfort became more apparent, he decided to let go of the stone for a moment and pulled out a bottle of water taken from the Divine Spirit Fountain, emptying half of its contents on the injured parts of his body as well as drenching the cloth that he’d used to cover his mouth. He then resealed it and stowed it away in his spatial bag before he clawed below his belly for the spirit stone he’d released.

  With the nurturing waters absorbed into Nolan’s pant leg, the pain that racked his ankle and foreleg began to ease up by a slight degree, though the change was barely noticeable. As for his torso, most of the water he’d poured over it had spilled across his skin and fallen to the dirt below.

  It’ll be a few more minutes until I can move. Nolan took a deep breath and then lightly pressed his damp breathing cloth over his injured ribs. The smoke had yet to dissipate which made it very difficult for his squinted eyes to penetrate far into the haze no matter how acute his vision.

  “Fuck!” Nolan said quietly, shedding a few involuntary tears. The pain of his left leg was too surreal. Even if he could sit in the Divine Spirit Fountain it would still take quite a while to completely heal his injuries.

  The seconds dragged on as he suffered silently amidst the smoke. None of them were more than a few metres away from the carriage. If any of them survived then they’d have killed me as soon as I’d fallen down. At least that’s what I’d have done.

  With peak levels of anxiety, he fought a hard battle against his groans as his leg continued to gush a steady stream of blood. How the hell did it even break like this? Staring at his wound triggered a memory that prompted Nolan to withdraw a few black medicinal pellets from his spatial bag and quickly swallow them down. A tickling itch spread throughout his body as his blood cells immediately began to repopulate.