Depthless Hunger

Chapter 96: Beyond the Highest Peaks

No matter how Kai strained, he couldn't stop his legs from moving forward. On some level, he didn't want to. Some of the others didn't seem to even notice, just strolling alongside the strange man as if this was perfectly ordinary.

When he exchanged glances with Zae Zin Nim, she looked downright miserable. He felt her try to use her qi to escape, then surround herself with her corona, but neither had any effect. There wasn't going to be any easy way out of this. If his brief glimpse had been right, the old man was more powerful than anything he'd ever faced before. Likely far more, even stronger than the Frontier elites.

"Now, I don't want to hurt you fine young fishies." The strange man stepped ahead of the group, then turned around, putting his back toward the charging horde of monsters and walking backwards. "Hello there! My name is Koleiman the Magnificent, but you can just call me The Magnificent. It's wonderful that you're going to investigate the center, because so am I."

"Are you with the Frontier elites?" the leader of the southern group asked. Koleiman blinked at her, turned his head to the side, then kept turning until it was fully horizontal.

"Is that a type of fish? I've already forgotten what you said, to be honest. But come along now!"

Strength wouldn't work and Kai didn't want to pit his willpower against this Koleiman either. His only chance of not being marched into the monster horde was to change something within himself. He reached for the island of monsters in his soul and for the first time his essence gained a little leverage. The vision was inside him, he just needed to coax it out...

"Did you know that your world is flat?" Koleiman was standing just beside him, but all he did was stare around with wide-eyed wonder. "I feel like worlds should be curved. Just a big ole ball. But I flew pretty high and it looks flat all the way to the edge."

Having said that, he skipped off. Kai wasn't capable of breathing a sigh of relief, but he focused internally again. If that hunger deep within himself could just become active again...

Suddenly his feet swung freely. Kai nearly stumbled as his momentum became his again abruptly. He looked around to see if the old man had noticed, but Koleiman was currently walking in front of the group and babbling nonsense. So he was free... and it might not matter.

As the horde of monsters drew near, it began to turn toward them. Whole packs of twisted dogs, all of them shivering unnaturally, with worse monsters behind them. It was far too many for any of them to fight and some in the group began to cry out even though they kept walking.

Rainbow light flowed from Koleiman and wrapped around the entire group. Outside it, the monsters seemed to slow to a crawl, their legs moving as if through molasses. Even stranger, they seemed to forget about the group they had been attacking the moment before.

"Don't worry, fishies!" Koleiman danced in front of them and clapped his hands. "I'll get you all to the hole safely. Everything will be clear then. Or maybe it won't be, but that isn't my problem."

Kai grimaced and kept pace with the others. He was free of the strange control, but it didn't do him any good since leaving the rainbow aura would mean his death. If only he had any idea how, he'd free Zae Zin Nim. The most he could do was meet her gaze again and put a finger to his lips. She stared, then frowned, which was honestly a relief compared to her previous agonized expression.

All of the monsters around them continued moving slowly, yet Kai didn't think they were the ones being affected. It was their group that was moving unnaturally quickly. When he looked to the back, he saw the dust the last hunters kicked up suddenly slow to a crawl when it left the rainbow aura behind them. That was enough for a basic theory of what was happening and he had no time for anything else.

Then the sky cracked open and soldiers began falling through. Each one of them wore armor that covered their bodies, but the blood red material and sweeping plates were completely unfamiliar to him. There was something else odd that he only realized as they landed in formation: they fell just as swiftly as their group was walking, not as slowly as the monsters.

The new army began to march, and though they were far ahead of his group, Kai realized that they must be traveling toward the same central point. Worse, they didn't fight the monsters so much as cleared them. The front line of soldiers cut down everything in their path with swords, qi attacks, or bursts of elements. Not because they were threatened, just to move the obstacles out of their path.

Just what were they? At first he hoped they could be some group of elites that he'd never known about, but their armor and skills seemed too undeniably foreign. When he tracked just one soldier, he noted that the man seemed to use different abilities indiscriminately. Was that what real power looked like? Taking hold of every ability in the world at once?

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Then someone stepped through a portal in the air and Kai got a lesson in real power.

A woman floated in the air, so extraordinarily beautiful that physical pain shot through his chest. She wore elaborate silk robes that flowed around her on the strength of her own qi. Behind her, the portal she had passed through was completely unlike the murky shimmering colors he knew. Instead it was a perfect circle offering a window into a beautiful valley of falling blossoms before it snapped closed.

When she saw the crimson army the woman frowned - the expression was also achingly beautiful - and then casually waved a hand.

An arc of qi burned across the landscape with a sound like a clear horn echoing over mountains. It tore through a swath of earth, evaporating hundreds of monsters simply on its way to her real target. When the arc reached the crimson army, some of the soldiers dodged while those who tried to defend dissolved into the power.

Before it could sear through the entire army, one of the soldiers abruptly expanded, becoming taller than any building Kai had ever seen. An enormous crimson shield managed to blunt the rest of the qi, then the massive suit of armor swung toward her.

The gorgeous woman looked only mildly annoyed and flicked a finger. Her next attack moved too swiftly for Kai to see anything more than the aftermath burned on his eyes. Somehow another soldier had also become a giant and deflected it, but there were more coming.

"Is she a cultivator?" Kai asked Zae Zin Nim. She had been staring and shivering, only then managing to recover.

"She is, but... I've never seen anyone like that..."

As they watched, the woman managed to destroy one of the giants with a barrage of qi. The damage opened the armor enough for Kai to see that there was indeed a giant man within: he had dark skin and bright blue eyes unlike anyone Kai had met before. One of his allies raised his hand and released a hail of dark arrows, but the woman gracefully waved her hand again. A shield of qi formed in front of her and the arrows splintered against it.

Every single attack released could have killed him a hundred times over, but Kai realized that there was more strategy than he had expected. The giants weren't trying to kill the woman, they were just slowing her down. Meanwhile the human-sized soldiers had begun sprinting forward, as if they could achieve victory by speed alone. For her part, the cultivator was floating in the same direction and trying to kill the smaller soldiers when she wasn't distracted.

It seemed like she might be winning. Kai had no idea how close they were to the center-point of the wastelands, but if that was the goal, it seemed she would get there first.

That was when he began hearing a rhythmic beating against the earth. He looked to the west and spotted a muscular man with blue skin charging toward the battle. By normal human standards, he was enormous, but he looked small compared to the giants. That proved irrelevant as he reached the monster hordes and stomped his way through them.

Every time he touched the ground, he released more power than Kai possessed in his entire body just to throw himself into the air again, releasing a shockwave that killed monsters who were too close by. The power felt like some cross between mana and chakra... Kai refused to even consider opening his spiritual sight to learn more because the sight might blind him.

When he drew near, the muscular man took an enormous leap that sent him sailing toward the cultivator. For the first time in the fight she actually dodged, an elegant twist through the air that allowed her to strike the muscular man with a burst of qi. This bolt was so intense that it looked as though the blue-skinned man had dissolved into the light.

Yet when Kai could see again, he saw the man skidding back through the earth. The force created a furrow through the ground and sent boulders the size of houses flying, but he was still on his feet. In fact, when he lowered his arms it looked as though he hadn't even been scratched. Kai could only guess that his Physique was so impossibly advanced that even such overpowering attacks slid off his body.

The impact had pushed him at an angle, but he seemed to be even closer to the central goal. Several of the red armored giants began to sprint, the cultivator stopped fighting to fly forward, and the muscular man began leaping again. Their point of convergence must be close, almost within sight...

Then reality twisted, worse than Kai had ever felt before. New monsters flooded out, moving just as swiftly as all the warriors, trampling directly over their slower brethren. The muscular man began tearing them apart with his bare hands, but he wasn't able to ignore them so easily any more. Even the cultivator flying overhead was forced to stop as several flying monsters began to harry her, emitting great bursts of light from their mouths.

More warriors were arriving all around, too many for Kai to keep track of. Every single one of them was more powerful than anyone he'd seen before, but none of them could move through this new wave of monsters easily.

Actually... he realized that only their group was still moving forward. None of the monsters appeared able to see anyone within the rainbow aura. Koleiman walked at the front, directing an invisible orchestra with his hands and occasionally spinning a pirouette.

He seemed mad, but if this was a race to the center, the madman was winning.

The sheer scale of the battle had begun to overwhelm Kai... and then his gaze was captured by what lay before them. As they slipped through the battle, the unbelievable sight unfolded. He knew with absolutely certainty that they had reached the center of the Frontier... and the reason for its existence.

A hole gaped in the earth, larger than the entirety of Monskon city. He could barely see the other side and the edges looked perfectly sheer. As if the world was a thin sheet of cloth that someone had poked through with a needle. Worse, he had the inexplicable feeling that the hole extended upward as well. From the corner of his eyes he could almost see a column of distorted air rising into the heavens. The mere concept of looking over the edge filled him with dread.

"Almost there! Hurry, fishies!" Koleiman gestured for them to follow and the group began to speed up.

All around them, more armies from around the world emerged. Fighting over the depthless pit that Kai was suddenly certain the entire Frontier had been built to contain.

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