[Ashborn-B1] 87. Pressure (Patreon)

LXXXVII

Pressure

Breaths passed by slower as the scene in front of Judith played out: strands of Duke’s hair, plastered to his skin like the rest of his clothes, loosened and fluttered. Droplets scattered from the ends.

The ground broke below him. Even in this slowed down reality, Thorn was merely a blur.

Judith clenched her insides—tried to summon her essence and shape it into a blade. She couldn’t do anything but hurl through the air.

Her back smashed into the earth and she rolled to a stop with a cry. Her hands went to her open wound on reflex—

Don’t touch it! Dorothy screamed.

It took everything not to.

Her back was facing the battle, so she whirled around to see. ‘Duke…what happened to Duke.’

She scanned the field…where was he? Vyke was standing some ways away from her by himself, looking in her direction with a non-amused look.

“I’ve got him, Lady Vire.”

Spinning again hurt, but she did so anyway.

Tirion put the tall boy down and tipped his glasses. “As a rule, I don’t appreciate laying hands on a man.”

“What a coincidence!” Duke chuckled. “I don’t enjoy touching them or being touched by them either.”

Judith let her head fall back. The two of them were good friends—had been since Judith and Duke’s engagement. They were kindred spirits in a sense: both men who had too many girls fawning over them for their own good.

Off to the side, Leila climbed to her feet.

Vyke rose, too, and adopted a relaxed stance. “So this is where you ran off to. I was afraid you wouldn’t return.”

Tirion huffed. “It was a strategic retreat, nothing more.”

Tree trunks groaned and buckled as the holy knight stood as well.

“Holy Blade,” Tirion said. “Please protect our Lady.”

The warrior, which had remained unresponsive to any direct commands until now, rushed to her side.

Wide-eyed, Judith turned on Tirion.

He grinned. “You’re not the only one who learned something new, Lady Vire.”

Unlike her, though, what he gained was not visible. Not on the surface. He looked and felt like the regular, old Tirion to her.

Duke slapped Tirion on the shoulder, making Tirion hide a wince.

“I’m seriously glad you’re here,” Duke released an exaggerated sigh. “Now I can finally relax.”

“I refuse,” Tirion said. “If you don’t fight I’ll just let Vyke steal your soul.”

“Huh?!” Duke shrieked. “Why are you being so mean? Did you forget I just saved your darling princess?”

Tirion pushed up his spectacles. “That’s that. This is this.”

Her former fiancé’s jaw opened wide. “Ungrateful swine!” Despite his outrage, he brought his flute to his lips. “I’m only playing you one song, then I’m pulling back with Judith.”

“That’s fine,” Tirion said. “The knight will be enough to keep him busy until Caelia arrives.”

Vyke, who’d been watching the situation unfold with half a smile on his face, laughed. “You’ve grown confident. Will you manage to take revenge for your Lady this time?”

No one who’d seen Tirion limp into their camp needed a reminder of how badly Vyke had injured him. If Kayle hadn’t been there, he would’ve died.

Perhaps that’s why Tirion didn’t deign the Vile with a response other than drawing his thick dagger.

The action for some reason made Vyke laugh harder. His mirth rippled across them all like a wave from a sea of filth and rotting carcasses. “I suppose I understand a little where she’s coming from now. It’s a bit like romance, isn’t it?”

Duke raised his brow and glanced at the other members of the party. No one looked back at him.

Unperturbed, Vyke spread his arms. “Mortal struggles and ambitions…they cannot be anything but amusing to those above us. I think that’s why she gave me a chance.”

Duke eyed them a second time. “What the heck is he talking about?”

“Does it matter?” Tirion said. The atmosphere around him condensed and twisted. “Start singing, you good for nothing.”

“Ask nicely, you ruffian.”

Tirion flipped him off, and the first of Duke’s notes echoed over the field.

Despite Tirion preparing to attack, Vyke remained standing with his arms spread wide. His shoulders heaved. His face flushed as he inhaled as if he was enjoying.

“It was just for a joke,” the Vile mumbled.

Then the sky overhead darkened.

“What the…” Leila mumbled.

She cut off as a massive tear divided the air, from which a swathe of puckered limbs pushed out.

Judith swallowed her spit. Though it was true that the average Weapon Empire disciple outclassed the average Immortal, there was one element with which their enemies could make up for their shortcomings:

And that was rituals.

I quickly split my root in two and sent the other end to the next powerline.

‘My control is being amplified.’

It was the energy from the leyline. Everything, from my mind to my body, was being empowered. So much power was flowing through me that I was trembling while standing still. I wasn’t even directly tapped into powerline—the root was wrapped around the end of the line, not dipped inside it.

I wasn’t changing that either. If I was getting this much without a direct connection, then dipping that root inside the column would kill me.

‘…unless I kill the conection.’

I could dip the root inside and release it from my grasp. But what would that do? The root would grow, maybe, but I’d have no more way of instructing it.

‘No. That wasn’t true.’

I could mentally control them. It was just difficult, especially if I wanted to control multiple roots. I needed a way to make it easier on myself.

…

The image of a spiderweb entered my head. ‘A network. Can I create a network?’

If I left the root with an instruction to spread out and shape into one, I could tap into it with another root. Since the energy would be spread out over a large area, the feedback would be less intense. Then, I’d be able to tap into the energy.

‘Yeah, that will work.’ So I chose to believe.

Taking a deep breath, I kept the image of what I wanted to form at the forefront of my mind. It took a moment for the roots to respond. But when they did, they nearly burst apart from how quick they moved.

Multiple new heads pierced out the sides of my roots and shaped into an extensive root system.

Within seconds, the entire space underneath the throne had been covered.

That…had worked a lot better than I expected.

‘Now for the tricky part though.’

Constrict, I commanded.

The network shot in the direction of their targets and wrapped around the leylines. I braced myself. Though the system was bigger, the input would increase tenfold. That’s why I’d created some roots that went nowhere. The idea was that the energy would disperse into nothingness.

Though inventive, no amount of preperation could’ve lessened the surge.

Muscles convulsed, and I bit down on my teeth. ‘Bear it! You need to bear it!’

But my body couldn’t keep up. It was too much. I needed to disperse the energy somewhere!

Thinking straight when an airship’s worth of force barrelled through your veins was impossible. Which was why I almost for joy when my shard flared.

Heartbeats before I passed out, the gate to my garden began to spin on its axis. The force created a vortex, which sucked in the energy wreaking havoc within me with glee.

A sharp breath entered my lungs as the pressure vanished, and I sagged to my knees. Inside me, the cindertree, whose bark was normally the soft grey and black of ash, glowed like a bonfire. Embers wafted through the air as if the garden was holding a festival and multiple stubbles budded on its branches.

Wood thickened. The trunk stretched.

‘It’s growing…’

My senses hurled back outside and towards the root in my palm. This time, when I pulled, the other leylines snapped immediately, for I was not so much pulling, but ordering the system to snap.

With the loss of their other paths, the powerlines had only one way forward—my network. My body didn’t start trembling again. All of the energy disappeared within my shard, which slurped up the sustenance like it’d never eaten anything in its entire life.

The cindertree began to grow at visible speed.

“Incredible,” I grunted.

How many kills worth of experience was this feeding it? The cindertree was a sacred tier entity!

Unfortunately, the rest of the world didn’t agree with the free growth. To my rear, Aurille danced through the sky. Near her, a purple, cloying essence coated Gaje’s talons as he cleaved the dreams out of his enemies.

The crane was completely ignoring the duo and opened its massive beak in my direction.

My right hand shaped the barrier before I saw what kind of attack was coming. Energy happy to follow my commands rushed up my network. The circle of wood which sprung up was more than twice my size.

In a repeat fashion from before, the shockwave blast my shield apart on impact.

But the situation was different this time.

I groaned and hung onto the remnants of the barrier. Wood reshaped underneath the assault of frost and wind, and disintegrated as soon as it formed.

Nails dug into the palm of my hand. ‘Hold…!’

The wailing storm ended abruptly.

I collapsed. ‘Fucking hell.’

Now that I knew what the king had used to forge this thing, it wasn’t a wonder why the beast was so powerful.

I wiped my mouth with my sleeve. “Cutting off the king didn’t weaken it.”

Logical, since the beast had already been formed and didn’t use the leylines for power, but I’d hoped.

That said, it may have a similar conenction to the king as I did with my summons. If so, snapping the throne off from the network would work, it’d just take time before the king ran out of energy.

‘We need to outlast him.’ Which meant I needed to help the others and stall.

The thought pursed my lips.’ Think, Ashe, think. What’s the best thing you could do with this much energy?’

A vibration drew my glance down. The underground was trembling.

…

No, not the underground. Something inside it. I frowned. What could possibly—

The vibrations shot to the surface. I broke the connection with the root and jumped away.

‘Another burrower?’

To think it’d managed to escape my notice for that long. My blade entered my hand, and I channelled essence into my arms to power the enchantments on the blade. The ground shattered again. My muscles tensed…and relaxed all at once. No great hole opened up in the earth to reveal a burrower. Instead, a small, defenceless stalk as thin as my pinky greeted me.

I blinked. ‘What?’

An explosion off to the side snatched away my attention. A giant shadow swallowed me as I whirled towards the impact zone. Craning my neck wasn’t enough to get a good view of the creature standing in the centre.

But I didn’t need to see its face to feel the eyes of the giant king piercing through me.

‘I’m dead.’