Chương 188: Overclock

The massive bird came down out of the night sky and its talons were longer than my entire arm and curved in a way that made it clear they were designed for one purpose. The spiritual pressure coming off the thing made the air feel physically heavier to breathe, and I didn't even have time to finish a thought before those talons were already descending toward my head. Then something green moved through the edge of my vision.

Yggy came out of my inner world in an instant and its vine-like body expanded as its tendrils coiled around the eagle's wings and talons trying to redirect the momentum of the dive. While Yggy was extraordinarily versatile in most situations, raw stopping power wasn't one of its strengths, trying to stop a Stage 8 beast was like trying to catch a falling mountain with a fishing net, but Yggy only needed to shift the trajectory by a few degrees.

The eagle's strike, instead of taking my head off, drove straight into the Stage 7 wolf that had been in the middle of trying to tear out my throat. The result wasn't clean. The wolf's lightning armor that had been causing me so much difficulty throughout the fight might as well have not existed at all for how much it mattered against a Stage 8 impact. The wolf didn't even have time to make a sound before its spiritual core shattered into fragments across the ground.

"Master," Azure said, "the eagle is a Stormwing Raptor, a variant found in high-altitude mountain ranges. Its spiritual energy is concentrated in the wings and talons which is what allows for that kind of diving power, but at close range their maneuverability drops considerably, and their defensive focus is almost entirely on their forward-facing areas."

I was already moving before Azure finished, Blink Step carrying me directly in front of the beast with my fist already layered in strengthening techniques as I pulled on both the red and blue suns' energy at the same time and felt my spiritual essence spike sharply as their power combined. The blue sun's energy masking the true nature of the strike just as the Shroud rune would have without costing me the twenty percent reduction.

I had been cautious about drawing on the blue sun's power since learning about the entity that might be tracking Life Realm energy signatures, but I hadn't sensed anything during this mission and sometimes the only available choice is a calculated risk. My Titan's Crest enhanced Phantom Strike hit the eagle square in the chest with enough force to crack stone. The impact sent visible ripples through the air and split the ground beneath us, and for a moment I thought the fight was over.

Then the dust cleared and I saw the damage. The eagle's feathers were ruffled and there was a slight dent in its spiritual armor at the point of contact, but that was the full extent of what I had accomplished, the beast looked more irritated than it looked hurt. The gap between Stage 6 and Stage 8 was simply too large to close with raw output alone.

I wasn't particularly worried about surviving the fight because I had enough escape options to stay alive, but actually defeating the eagle was a different question and one without a comfortable answer unless I was willing to make significant sacrifices.

"Master," Azure said, "your cultivation is at the peak of Stage 6 so a breakthrough could occur at any moment, the power increase could change the situation." I acknowledged that without acting on it immediately, because every advancement came with an instant full replenishment of qi reserves and I had deliberately kept my qi consumption low throughout the fight so far by relying primarily on the red sun's energy for most of my techniques.

The breakthrough was worth more if I saved it for the right moment rather than burning it now out of frustration. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Yggy," I said internally, and my companion perked up, "I need you to weave the Overclock Rune in my inner world." The Overclock Rune was a technique you kept behind glass, it pushes energy output far past the limits it was designed to handle for a brief window and then makes you pay for it afterward in exhaustion and potential physical damage, though at least it wouldn't permanently damage my meridians or burn away my life force.

I probably should have prepared it earlier in the evening in anticipation of exactly this type of situation, but Yggy had turned out to be skilled at rune inscription, so better late than not at all. Yggy dissipated back into my inner world to begin the work, and I let myself think for just a moment that once the rune was ready this eagle was going to understand that picking the Stage 6 cultivator as its target had been a poor decision. The eagle didn't give me much time to think.

It came forward fast with its golden eyes carrying clear killing intent and each beat of its wings left trails of cutting qi in the air, actual crescents of force that were carving deep gouges into the ground with every stroke. I burned a Blink Step charge to appear twenty feet to the right just as those crescents cut through the space I had been at. The eagle adjusted immediately and folded its wings and dove toward my new position and I met the charge with Aegis Mark.

The hexagonal barrier caught its talons, but the impact still pushed me backward and I used the momentum to roll into distance rather than fight it.

"The wing joints," Azure said.

"Stormwing Raptors concentrate their defensive reinforcement in the primary feathers, the joints themselves are still vulnerable." Getting to those joints meant pushing through wing beats that were distorting the air at every point of impact and generating enough force to shatter stone, but it was useful to know. I sent out a spread of razor leaves to push the eagle into banking right and buy myself a moment.

The eagle's counter came immediately afterward, both wings sweeping forward in a cross-pattern of cutting force that left no clean angle to dodge from, so I burned another Blink Step charge to avoid being cut apart. I came out above it and used the orbital relationship between the two suns to adjust direction in mid-air and sent my scorpion tail toward one of the wing joints.

The eagle twisted with a speed that was difficult to follow and nearly caught my tail between its beak, only a fast burst of red sun energy pulled it back in time and I landed on the remains of a half-destroyed tree trunk nearby.

"Azure, anything I should know about lethal capabilities?"

"They can compress air into solid projectiles," he said, "usually kept as a trump card when—incoming." I threw myself sideways and the eagle's wings swept forward and instead of cutting qi, they launched what looked like a spread of air bullets, each one punched clean through the tree trunk I had been standing on a half second before like it wasn't there at all.

"Like that," Azure finished. The fight continued like that for what felt longer than it probably actually was, the eagle growing increasingly frustrated as I kept slipping away from the killing strikes while I focused on landing small cumulative hits whenever a real opening appeared. And then without warning, the eagle broke off its attack, and I thought it was retreating for a second before I followed its gaze and saw where it was looking. Yan Ziheng.

He was standing behind the Symphony Shield with his attention on the formation work, focused on keeping the weaker beasts from breaking through, completely unaware of what was looking at him. The eagle's strategy was a simple one, either I abandoned the careful defensive approach I had been using to protect him or I watched him die, and there was no version of that choice that ended well for me.

The eagle crossed the distance to the Symphony Shield faster than I could process it properly and I activated Blink Step the instant it moved, but even as I came out of the teleport, I already knew I wasn't going to arrive in time. The strike hit the formation like a mountain coming down. The Symphony Shield shattered under the concentrated power of a Stage 8 full attack.

Yan Ziheng had just enough time to look up with his eyes going wide before the backlash of the broken formation threw him backward, he hit the ground hard with blood coming from his mouth and his robes torn open across the chest where ugly bruising was already visible. For sure, there were several ribs broken at minimum and the qi fluctuations in his meridians suggested the damage went deeper than that. I came out behind the eagle with my scorpion tail and Phantom Strike launching at the same time.

The beast twisted away from the punch and its spiritual armor absorbed most of it, but my tail got through just far enough to open a cut along its neck and deliver a meaningful dose of neurotoxin before it pulled back. I knew that it wasn't deep enough to kill, but the eagle's movements became slightly less sharp almost immediately as its qi flared trying to burn away the poison, which wasn't going to stop a Stage 8 beast but it was going to slow it down and that was what I needed right now.

"Master," Azure said, "Yggy has completed the rune." I felt the new pattern settle into place in my inner world. It was time to finish this.