Chapter 37: Hod

“So what now?” Louisa asked. “Are we just going to ignore the price on our head and continue going, or are we going to go back to one person flying through the floor and the rest of us hiding within the tower?”

“Well I don’t want to go back into the tower yet. I have already made massive steps towards understanding the path of Destruction, and my martial art in general. I’d be a fool to step back now,” Laurence replied, hopping down the path and swinging his arms in esoteric movements as he relaxed into the journey. Step after step he would move his hands before a faded afterimage appeared behind his fingertips. He flicked his fingers in irritation after a few seconds and looked back. “I understand if people don’t agree with me though”.

“I don’t mind,” Yun said, before going back to keeping watch on the path in front of them.their journey was taking them through an artificial forest, one perfectly overgrown and lovingly cared for to make sure that it simply looked wild without intruding on the path. It was something that was relatively common the closer the group got to the centre of the dukedom, but was also something that made the entire group uncomfortable. If there had been a Briar clansman with them then there would have been an even greater outcry as so much life was wasted care-taking the plants to make them look artfully wild.

“Why don’t we just continue as we have been. We know that the charges against us are fake, so we have to wonder who set the price on our heads”. Laurence turned back forward and began focusing like his brother. Despite his words there was something setting his danger sense on high alert and he could not shake it. However he could not give up the chance to progress with his skills. Until he broke through with Creation he had to rely on progressing in other ways or he would simply have to wait for that moment of inspiration that would push him over the edge.

“I’d say it was one of the four godbeast clans if we weren’t named specifically. They’ve put a lot of thought into this,” said Louisa.

“I’d like to stay with Law,” said Cleo before shuffling over to her companion.

“We know,” said Jim, before bursting out laughing. Cleo blushed and stuck out her tongue before hugging Laurence from behind. He smiled and dropped his centre slightly before picking Cleo up and carrying her on his back. “I’ll stick around, but if things go wrong it’s Law’s fault”.

Winoa sighed. “Fine. I’ll agree to keep going together. Not like I would have done anything else”. She began muttering quietly about ungrateful people, but Laurence ignored her. He knew she was just joking with people.

“So the question remains, who put the bounty on us?” Said Louisa, frowning as she held Yun’s arm.

As they continued to discuss the situation with the bounty on their heads Yun stopped, before turning suddenly to look behind them. He growled before instantly trueforming a brick wall in the way of the road, forcing whoever was coming up the road behind them to either climb over the wall or push through the dense, verdant overgrowth.

“What’s wrong?” Said Louisa.

“Enemies. A large group”.

“Are you sure, Yun?” Jim replied, frowning and pulling out a knife from his ring. “I don’t hear anything”.

“I hear it,” said Law. “There’s ten, fifteen of them?”

“Twenty-two,” Yun said. “Let’s move quickly. Someone strong is with them”.

They picked up the pace as they ran through the forest and down the quickly descending path. The treeline broke and they looked out to see a massive bowl full of the same rich plant life, but artfully patterned a symmetrical garden of sorts. It could have been called a maze if there was not a straight line through the middle that made the winding paths that stretched out throughout either side of the valley worthless incursions into the greenery. The setting sun bathed the entire area in a rich red, with flecks of green pushing through to make the entire valley seem like it was autumn incarnate.

As Laurence looked at the scene, all he could hope was that the setting sun would cause problems for the group chasing them, while the light itself lasted for long enough for the group to get to the giant wall that cordoned off the valley from the rest of the world.

“I’d just once... Just once like to start a journey in this damned tower where we are not being chased by something ridiculous and trying to kill us. That would be nice,” Jim shouted as he ran.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Laurence said, laughing. “I’ve been chased by oriks, flying snakes, even a damn storm cloud in the time I’ve been climbing this tower. Everything wants to kill me, but I keep proving them wrong”.

“Now you’re just taunting fate,” Cleo replied.

He took a second to glance back behind him and look at the group chasing them before swearing and flicking his hands out behind himself. “It’s the Lupe! It’s the damn Lupe chasing after us”. As the mana trained through his fingertips the ground beneath the approaching squad of Lupe clansmen seemed to become a quagmire, sucking them in and slowing their progress considerably. Bubbles of mud and gas popped out into the air as five or six meters of path became nearly untraversable.

“Nice,” Yun said, nodding at Laurence’s action.

“I thought so too,” Laurence replied. “It’s just hard to pull off while moving. It needs more precise aim to be as effective as I’d like”.

“Seems good enough to me,” said Jim. “It’s given us more seconds than I have. Do we want to go back into the tower yet?”

“We can’t,” Yun replied immediately, before leaping into the air. As he jumped there was a collision before the group realised that there had been someone else coming in to fight them from above. “I’ll fight him. Run!”

Without further ado, the group ran at an even faster pace than before, desperately trying to reach the other side of the valley before the group of Lupe clansmen swarmed over them and beat them down with pure numbers. The group of Lupes moved in unison as they unstuck themselves from the quagmire. As the first four Lupe stepped out, they grouped up and ran towards Laurence and his friends. The next four did the same, and the third, the fourth and the fifth. Soon there were five groups of four Lupe apiece storming ahead, dipping and dodging as Laurence set up blockades of stone in his wake. Cleo fired jets of flame behind them, and Winoa shot blades of wind in concert, but their barrages did not stop the Lupe squads continued approach. It was obvious at this point that approaching group did not have a single Earth ranked Challenger amongst them. They were all Saints, and there appeared to be a Heaven ranked Challenger holding Yun off from helping out everyone else, leaving the five of them fighting four against one.

After almost three minutes of running at maximum speed Laurence arrived at the choke that cut the valley off from the rest of the world. It was a thin path that stretched up through the great wall, a perfectly straight line lined with hundreds of steps to the outside world. Laurence took four steps up the stairs and began making quagmires, stone blockades and irregular flooring to trip the approaching squads, but with every blockade he made, the squads would sacrifice the hunter in front to let the rest pass at increased speed, and made the last person help the first out of their predicament. Because of this, no matter what Laurence tried, the groups quickly approaching him basically never lost speed.

He stepped back and swung his arm out, continuing to raise the walls, but the Lupe men kept coming. Twenty steps up, the Lupe reached the first step of the stairway. They were getting closer and closer, and nothing Laurence, nor anyone else did could stop them. He growled as he looked back up the stairs. “There’s no way we're going to make it up these stairs...” he said, raising his hammer in the third form of his Kabballah. “Hod,” he said quietly as the Lupe came close.

Hand over hand he began spinning his hammer, feeling the pulse of mana spread out as the rotating mass solidified into a shield almost the width of the entire stairway. A spiral followed the path that the hammerhead was taking behind the shield, flowing from the middle out to the edge of Laurence’s quickly thickening defence. “Run!” he shouted as he began taking steps back down the stairs.


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