Chapter 21: Great Fight

I was frightened out of my mind. Where am I? What is this place? Okay, okay, let’s calm down and review what happened.

I was observing the Dragon Seed that was supposed to awaken my Legacy, but instead of doing that, it completely absorbed my Cultivation Energy. It even absorbed my Life Energy from the Root Chakra, which I had cultivated to the level of activating the Chakra Symbol.

Then I was assaulted by a wave of pain that made me lose consciousness, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself here in this never-ending plain. As I pondered the situation, an old memory surfaced in my mind—one from not too long ago.

It was a situation not unlike my current predicament. It involved an experiment I was conducting before I died and transferred to another world. Don’t tell me, was I transferred again? I immediately tried to contact LILY.

“LILY, LILY… LILY… … …”

But no matter what I did or how much I shouted, she didn’t respond. I couldn’t even feel a hint of connection with her, as if she no longer existed within me. This thought made me panic. I had never felt this much panic in either of my lives. Suddenly, a massive noise came from somewhere in the distance to my right. The ground began shaking, and long, deep cracks snaked across the surface.

I looked in the direction of the noise and saw a huge cloud of dust rising into the sky. Even from this distance, it seemed massive, spanning tens of miles. My thoughts connected this massive dust cloud to a large army. An army meant humans, and humans meant information—the one thing I needed the most.

So, I immediately set off in the direction of the noise. I walked for a long time before I realized that the path I was on was sloping upwards. It felt tiring, though strangely, I never felt real exhaustion or hunger.

Upon reaching the end of the slope, I realized that what I thought was a plain was actually a small plateau. And man, was it large. The land below looked like a primordial world, with trees thousands of meters high spanning several thousand miles. But what shocked me was not just that; it was that all the trees were uprooted and scattered as if they were mere twigs.

A massive crater several meters wide had formed in the middle of the forest, and the resulting shockwave had created the dust cloud I had seen from afar. In the center of the crater stood a person holding a massive spear. He was looking into the sky with an angry expression.

I lifted my head and looked in the direction the man with the spear was facing. I saw nine silhouettes flying high in the sky, descending rapidly. They all landed around the man with the spear with a loud thud, causing the crater to expand several meters in all directions.

The man with the spear was shouting something at them, but I could hear nothing. Shortly after, all ten individuals began fighting each other. The scale of the battle was something I had never imagined possible with just ten people.

*Clang* *Clang* *BOOOOMMM* *BBOOOOMMMMM*

With every clash of their weapons, the very face of the land changed. Massive craters and deep fissures formed on the ground. Even a casual swing of their weapons or fists brought whistling winds and cyclones. The clouds roiled in the air, and the sky seemed like it might fall at any moment.

I watched with wide eyes and an agape mouth. This… this is… are they even human? Even an entire platoon of bio-enhanced soldiers back on Earth couldn’t produce even a thousandth of what these ten people were generating. At first, I was afraid I would be killed by the shockwaves, but no matter how powerful the attacks were, when they came near me, they passed through as if I were an apparition.

That was when I realized this was all a projection of an incident—or more likely, a memory. This was probably the memory of whatever soul was present in the Dragon Seed my father gave me. As this realization sank in, my fear dissipated, and my confidence was rekindled. I attentively observed the fight taking place in the air above me.

After what felt like a long time, but was actually only a short while, the devastating fight ended. As the dust settled, I looked down and saw the man with the spear standing, with swords and arrows piercing his body. Despite the wounds, he stood straight like a war god, with the corpses of the nine others scattered around him. But I could see that the condition of the man with the spear was also dire. It was only a matter of time before he too would be on his way to the afterlife.

What I saw next scared the hell out of me. The man with the spear removed the weapons piercing his body as if they were mere thorns. The massive gashes and wounds were deep enough to expose bone. But what was startling was that his bones had a metallic luster, shining with the sunlight. A robot? Maybe an Enhanced Human? But the technology needed for that is no joke. Even in my time on Earth, it took millions to produce one Enhanced Human.

The man with the spear suddenly turned his head in my direction. He leaped into the air and came swooping down with the spear aimed at me, like a meteor falling from cosmic space with the intent to destroy. I was confident it would pass through me like all the other attacks, but the spear pierced my chest, bringing a shock and wave of pain. Red blood splashed onto my feet, and as I looked at the almost apathetic face with dead fish eyes, I slowly succumbed to a thick blanket of darkness…

I woke up again, expecting that whatever was supposed to happen had passed, but it seemed the show was not over yet. The intermission was finished, and the second half was starting. When I regained consciousness, I found myself standing on the edge of a cliff in the middle of a cold night...