[STT] Chapter 69: Ignition Step (Patreon)

AN: My sleep schedule has been beyond fucked. Didn't have it in me to write yesterday. Woke up around 2 pm, drank coffee, fell asleep again right afterward. I don't remember when I made coffee. Or why it was cold when I drank it. I feel like I'm tweaking out. I gotta fix the sleep... :[

Chapter 69

Watching the arrogant nobles vanish into the portal, Ben wanted to roll his eyes. Shaking his head though, he happily waited as the rest of the noble scrambled to follow their leaders.

Ben and others deliberately did not stop them, and let them trickle through first. It was just basic common sense to let the annoying people test the waters for traps.

"Give me a minute to check this thing out. I want to make sure it's actually safe before we jump in."

Nodding at Ethan's entirely reasonable suggestion, Ben dropped onto the floor of the monolith room and crossed his legs as he sat.

Might as well be productive.

Ignoring the magical gateway and Ethan poking at its edges with talismans and skills, Ben turned his attention inward, and pulled on his life mana and started aggressively shoving it straight into his [Healing Mark].

The mark eagerly soaked up the mana until it was completely topped off again. But that wasn't enough for him. So he shifted his focus over to his [Mana Construct] skill, creating thin sharp strands of mana using [Mana Manipulation] to carve out some new stuff in the construct.

Pulling up the internal framework of his healing bomb, Ben started tweaking the construct. He squeezed the structure, duplicated the foundation, and essentially just brute-forced an additional container into existence next to the first one given that he'd learned how to reinforce it to strengthen so it wouldn't blow up.

He didn't care about the complicated magical theory behind it, as it was pretty irrelevant to him. He just jammed the pieces together until they stuck.

So now he had room for two bombs instead of one.

Pouring more life mana into his newly expanded construct, he filled the second bomb up to the absolute brim. And right as the mana clicked into place with, a notification appeared in his head.

[Mana Construct Lvl 7 > Lvl 9]

Nice.

Smiling at the level up, Ben admired his handy work. He now had two fully charged healing bombs ready to use instead of one, and it would be incredibly useful for him and would probably save his life more than he realized.

Waiting some more for Ethan to finish up as he cycled his mana and refined essence, Ben realized he'd tipped over to peak Tier 1 at some point without realizing.

When did it happen?

He was curious. Had it occurred when he climbed the monolith? Or after? He didn't know, but he was peak Tier 1 now, his core was 4/4th of the way there to Tier 2, and all he needed to do now was to advance to Tier 2 after consolidating his gains one last time.

Ben was pretty excited. This rift had been incredibly beneficial, and now it was about to come to an end as he reached the guardian and faced it.

"Looks stable enough. No obvious kill switches, so I think we're good to go?" Ethan told them.

Looking completely bored of waiting around, Cassian stepped through the portal the moment Ethan told them his findings. And Sera naturally trailed right behind him. Turning around right before she disappeared, she waved at Ben and the others with entirely too much enthusiasm.

Sharing a look with Ethan and Alice, the three of them stepped forward and walked into the portal together.

###

Expecting to land in next to his friends, Ben instead stepped out into complete and utter isolation. While he still found himself in a forest, everything around him was darker, colder, and just felt incredibly sinister.

Something is wrong.

Ben realized he was completely alone. He frowned, pushing his mana outward, he flared his [Mana Sonar] to its maximum limit to sweep the immediate area. But it found absolutely no signs of his friends anywhere in range.

It did, however, find a whole bunch of monsters lurking in the shadows nearby.

Crap!

Knowing he was a massive sitting duck on the ground, Ben gathered his mana and blasted himself straight up into the sky. He deliberately triggered [Ignition Step] the old way, treating it exactly like his old [Fire Burst], not quite mentally ready to use its new functionality without experimenting a bit first.

He really didn't want to accidentally blow his own legs off trying to use the weird conceptual version.

Soaring high above the dark forest, he squinted through the gloom to get his bearings. And that was when he easily spotted a beam of light piercing straight through the clouds in the far distance.

That works.

Figuring the others would do the exact same thing, Ben decided the new meet up plan was just to converge on the giant glowing beacon. It was just basic common sense to head toward the obvious landmark anyway.

Though this was kind of convenient now that he thought about it. He could not only test out his new skill, he could also kill some monsters and gain more essence and get closer to Tier 2.

Landing near a hotspot of monsters, Ben kept his eyes peeled for trouble. And it didn't take long for trouble to find him when he noticed some blank spots with his [Mana Sonar].

Immediately feeling a sense of deep déjà vu, he adjusted the frequency of his sonar on the fly, and finally locked onto the actual signatures hiding. They were monkeys, completely invisible and moving ridiculously fast through the twisting branches.

Seeing them rapidly closing in on his position, Ben grinned and gathered mana in his feet. It was time to test out [Ignition Step] exactly the way it was meant to be used.

Detonating the mana beneath his feet, a massive blast of force launched him forward. He stepped on the explosive force, leaving a blazing footprint in the ground. Chaining the explosions together, he ricocheted through the air in a zigzagging blur of flames. And with every single step he took, his momentum multiplied.

Whoa.

Accelerating beyond belief, he blurred through the forest as the shadow monkeys leaped out of invisibility to ambush him.

Dodging their daggers was entirely a matter of instinct, twisting his body in the middle of a "jump" as he blasted off yet another foothold to evade them. But the speed was getting completely out of hand.

Struggling to control his own body, Ben ramped [Focus] all the way up to its maximum limit. His mind immediately fractured into multiple streams just to handle the sheer sensory overload of moving this fast.

Pushing himself, his head throbbed with a splitting migraine. He was still technically slower than the invisible monkeys, but his hyper-accelerated mind could finally track their movements while handling his body at such high speeds.

One thing he realized almost instantly was that his body was not used to such speed. He was already feeling nauseous.

He slammed his hand forward as he blasted past a monkey, grabbing onto its head as a [Mana Cannon] exploded right into its face. The blast utterly vaporized its head, exploding the monster into a shower of pink mist.

[Tier 1 Shadow Monkey slain. Essence gained.]

Ben shot out the other side of the mist cloud, escaping the monkeys as [Lurker] activated to hide him. But even though he lost the monkeys, by the time he did, he he realized a very massive problem.

How do I stop?!

As he'd escaped, he'd obviously continued to accelerate with absolutely zero brakes!

He was too fast!

The giant trunk of a tree rushed to meet him.

He was not going to be able to stop in time!

Panicking, Ben blasted a burst of fire from his palm to try and alter his trajectory and push himself away. But he was going way too fast for it to make a difference. Bracing for the inevitable, he reinforced his entire body with [Warforged] and layered as much mana over his skin using [Mana Manipulation] as he possibly could to dampen the impact.

He slammed into the wood.

The collision instantly knocked the wind right out of his lungs and cancelled all his movement quite violently. He crumpled into a miserable heap on the forest floor as blood spurted form his mouth and he felt a few of his ribs and bones breaking.

Even with [Focus] dampening everything, he cried in pure agony. But even then, a wheezing broken laugh mixed in with his cries bubbled up from his chest as a notification appeared his vision.

[Ignition Step Lvl 1 > Lvl 2]

The system, indeed, did not care about his state, only that it rewarded his reckless behavior.

Ben tore open a [Healing Mark], but found it lacking to heal the damage dealt to his body, so he tore open the other one while flooding his body with [Regeneration] as he lay there on the ground, [Mana Sonar] active despite everything, alert in case anything decided to come for him.

Had it not been for [Warforged] and [Mana Manipulation], he would have split in half!

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