[Level 20 Scenario]

  [Objective: Survive]

  [Heaven’s Crest will fall; the city will be unmade, but the sect of the Bent Peak will survive. Retreat from the wall and survive within the keep of Heaven’s Crest. You are the leader of a team of Outer Disciple cultivators assigned to hold the West Wall. The wall will fall. You must survive.]

  [Warning: This scenario has been altered by a grade 0 authority object. Local time has been accelerated to dangerous levels. Spacial warping detected.]

  [Anti-Light Scepter Detected; Additional Information Authorized]

  [Time since start of scenario: 26 hours]

  [Time Remaining: 46 hours]

  [Listen to me well Feng Sai. This challenge, localized to the Ludus Arbor, has been hidden away by that petty soul fragment that maintains this place. The scenario is expensive. And it killed a handful of scions some centuries ago. Pah! They were unworthy to inherit the mantle of the Anti-Light Order. And that very cost is why this one scenario has proven as a breakthrough moment for dozens of cultivators! Look where their pampering brought us; this world fell like so many others. Tear the Light from the spiritbeast horde that slayed this city and turn it into Levels and qi. Advance. Conquer. Kill.]

  The city was burning. Corpses piled around me; men and spiritbeasts left to rot atop the wall. The corpses of men and beast alike had been chewed to pieces by the advancing horde. My hair stood on end as I gazed into the city.

  Spiritbeast hordes occured when a single spiritbeast broke through into the Third Realm; the Spiritbeast would go on a ramage, attempting to claim and dominate the territory around it. Lesser beasts would fall in line or perish as the horde snowballed in size. Human cities were seen as equally valid competition for a spiritbeast’s control of its dominion. Breaking into the Fourth Realm often gave rise to an intelligence, even if it was mostly bestial and rudimentary.

  I could see ongoing fighting in the distance. Around a walled sect atop the curved mountain range, an unroly mob of thousands pressed close to the gates. Beyond them, burning barricades held back spiritbeasts that lazily pecked at cornered prey.

  “The local sect isn’t descending to stop the horde…” I said.

  I had a bad feeling about that. The local sect should know the spiritbeast horde wouldn’t dissipate on its own. That meant they thought something else would kill the beast. Or perhaps their strongest cultivators were absent or injured.

  Pausing, I took stock of my equipment. In the previous scenario, I had the core and the weapons of the cultivator who created the memory that built the room. This time, the rules were different. I had an Anti-Light core and a sword without a spear. I suspected Old Ghost had meddled with the Scenario in many ways, and this was one of them. I frowned.

  He seemed to be intent on preparing me to wield an Anti-Light core.

  At least it explained why he had so little power left to alter the golem scenario.

  One by one, I inspected the bodies on the wall. The Scenario likely would have started Poppy and I in the same place, so if she wasn’t among the bodies here, it made reasonable sense to assume she escaped the wall.

  I didn’t know if Poppy was already on the other side of the flaming barricade or trapped somewhere in the city. My spirit-sense was completely useless here; the tiny ability to read fluctuations in power was absolutely blinded by the chaotic maelstrom raining over the city.

  The monsters had long since cleared the walll. I descended into the city.

  Against the walls edges, undermanaged slums had sprawled out. They were empty now, dead quiet except for the wind and rain and occasional dripping. The roar of distant fires and the soft crackling of burned out sections of the slums were the only noises here. Leather canvases flapped in quiet wind. It felt like I was crossing a battlefield. No part had been spared from the destruction.

  When the slums roads widened into proper streets, I met my first spiritbeast. A lanky monkey half again as tall as I was ate something that was alive once. It was more likely to be the corpse of another beast than it was to be a person; even a first realm spiritbeast provided more nutrition than dozens of mortals. Spiritbeasts cultivated largely through eating in the early realms, their own natural physiques trading intelligence for slow accumulation of power.

  This spiritbeast hadn’t made it beyond the first realm. Even with the maelstrom of remnant qi hovering above the city, from this close, my senses were clear. It was like trying to see in fog; it cleared up as I neared it.

  Qi circulated in my arms as I raised my blade, practicing perfecting the World Severing Sword art. The monkey cast up a huge arms, longer than I was tall, and hung from the side of the building, screaming in warning at me as it swung back and forth to make itself appear longer. I continued approaching with calm steps. It swung the arm it was holding a corpse in. I dashed beneath it, severing the arm at the elbow.

  Whatever meridians it had reinforced, it hadn’t enhanced bone, skin or even muscle.

  [Long-Arm Steel Grip Screamer Monkey, Lower First Realm]

  The monkey screeched as its arm hit the ground; its cry was almost human.

  I ran my blade through its heart, then down, before stepping out of the way as its body collapsed. My blade made no sound as it parted bone and ripped through flesh, black mist trailing from its edge.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  [You reached level 5!]

  I blinked in surprise, but didn’t spend any time looking at the alert. I waited and listened to see if any other spiritbeasts heard the fight and were rushing over. No matter who lost and who won, a death meant food, and food meant power. Their very instincts drove them forward into fighting. It also meant that the longer a spiritbeast horde lasted, the stronger it grew.

  As expected, after killing the first, more monsters threw themselves at me. The cry for help the first monkey released was answered by a handful of similar cries. The monsters scrambled across the low roof tops of the outer city, squabbling over tiled roofs. I watched as they raced toward me, their footfalls often breaking through the ceilings where the wood was poorly joined or rotten. Some of the spiritbeasts rushed ahead of the rest.

  I raced forward to meet the first of them. If i picked them off before they grouped up, they wouldn’t pose any threat. I leapt the few feet up to the roof top, gliding across the tiles before taking the monkey’s head off directly. Then I jumped off its back to the next. The roof the next monkey landed on crashed inward. My blade sunk into the creature’s skull. It didn’t twitch.

  A smile fell over my face.

  Every one of these spiritbeasts was nothing more than another source of Experience and Levels.

  Each one fell as easily as mortal beasts before my blade. I constantly practiced to pull in more qi as I cut them down.

  The air here was thick with Anti-Light.

  I reoriented toward the center of the city and started moving towards the burning barricades.

  Poppy crept along the shadow of a building. Night had finally fallen again; she had even stolen a few hours of precious sleep while Yan stayed awake and as guard. He propped up their third subordinate, dragging the ailing man along as they crept through the city, hiding behind the wall of squat houses densely packed along the side of a muddy road.

  Her every footfall squelched. Rain had slicked the ground and turned the roads churned earth into mud. They had killed a half dozen more spiritbeasts — this time without accumulating more wounds.

  Poppy held up a hand to delay her subordinate as she rounded another corner.

  A quick use of [Eye of the Silver Hawk,] her family’s appraisal skill, revealed the name of the monsters ahead.

  She had ran into several groups of monsters on her arduous trek; the Screamer Monkey’s were especially dangerous, due to their propensity to move in packs. But what was worse was that one of these monsters was worse than the others.

  Tufts of silver hair grew up its spine and back, and it dragged a sharpened piece of slag-metal. It had carved a path through the road with it in a visible trail.

  [Long-Arm Steel Grip Screamer Monkey, Upper Second Realm]

  “We have to go around.” Poppy whispered to Yan, pointing back toward where they came from; a hole between two houses ducked through an overgrown alleyway.

  They crept back and snuck through, pushing aside plants that grew spindly stems grasping for light. They crossed through the gaps between tightly pressed buildings; they were more stable than the ones in the slums, and hadn’t collapsed in the first wave of the horde, instead built of carefully carved and laid brick.

  Poppy crept low and quietly. She estimated it would be another five houses before they passed where the Second Realm monkey had been.

  Poppy had the thought of how… wrong this place was. Beyond just wrong. The First Realm monsters fought like they had levels, with attributes and ferocity far beyond them. But they didn’t have any. They had something else.

  She was almost past the crowd of monkeys when a gigantic, almost human face leaned over between the roofs above her. Two eyes bigger than her fists blinked.

  “Of course.” She said.

  Then the monkey screamed.

  “Yan! We can’t fight here. We need to cross to the street!” Poppy shouted. Without waiting, she dashed forward. She felt the monkey’s arm pass over her and miss, slamming into the brick of one of the houses and causing it to crumble. But she didn’t turn back. She was at a definite disadvantage here.

  Poppy ducked dived and dashed through the alleyways even as more of the howling monkeys closed in on her. She heard them plodding across the roofs, screeching above her. It sounded like there were a dozen. She looked for any kind of escape she could find as they closed in around her. But before she could find one, the dense neighborhood ended. She stood exposed in the street. It was too late to turn back. She activated her [Skill,] turning and punching at the same time.

  She cleaved directly through the head of one of the monkeys, sending the corpse rolling on the ground behind her.

  But eleven more were closing in. They surrounded her from all sides, none of them crossing the distance to attack her, but each howling and jeering, stepping in and out of a circle surrounding her and kettling her out into the open.

  “Yan!” Poppy shouted in a panick. She looked back at the mouth of the alley.

  Yan was pale as a ghost. He dropped her other subordinate, turned around, and ran, abandoning her in the street.

  With a grunt, she charged one of the monkeys surrounding her. But to her surprise, it backed up, not fighting her. The circle of monkeys around her remained, preventing her from moving forward or back.

  “What are you all waiting for?” Poppy shouted. She was exhausted, bone tired, on barely any sleep and having eaten only grain and tack pillaged from the basements of the dead. “Are you going to kill me? Or not?!”

  Poppy saw what they were waiting for.

  The Second Realm monkey lumbered over, still carrying that massive piece of steel.

  Poppy bit back a curse as the monkeys spread out around her. The Second Realm monkey roared an open challenge, lumbering toward her as it lifted that massive steel chunk. When the monkey slammed downward, she punched. The metal actively resisted her [Void Severing Fist] skill, groaning as it refused to break. Black smoked poured from her hand, filling the air between them.

  She didn’t see the monkey’s kick until she was sliding across the muddy earth. Her lungs burned. She pushed herself to her feet, gasping for air. With a curse, she opened her system, dumping the attribute points she had earned from killing spiritbeasts into Constitution and Strength. She had carefully preserved them to plan out how she would level her foundation, but this was no longer the time.

  Raising her constitution restored her health, at least a little, and she raced forward to meet the monkey again. Instead of using the [Void Severing Fist] to meet the attack again, she ducked below its next swing, sliding under the monkey and targetting its knees. She grunted as she heard a horrifying crack. The monkey screamed. Black smoke dissipated around her hand as her touch seemed to simply delete the flesh in its way. At least, that was what happened previously. This time, the [Void Fist] struggled to push through the dense cultivation reinforced muscle bound tightly to the monstrous bones of the spiritbeast.

  The raw force she leveraged was enough to damage the soft joint.

  She ducked through to the other side of the monkey just in time for it to circle around and screech. It crawled aggressively towards her, using its spare arm to assist its walk even as it dragged its broken leg.

  Now injured it fought a dozen times more ferociously. It was stronger and faster than any of the First Realm monsters. And it was clear now that it wasn’t fighting seriously before.

  The gigantic slag of sharpened steel caused the earth beside her to explode, rocks pelting her face. The monkey drew the sharpened metal back, wielding it like an oversized knife. The sound of metal screeching against stone cut through the air before it screamed again, putting spit on Poppy’s face. She was almost near enough to the alleyways to run when the monkeys behind her pushed her forward.

  Poppy stared up as the monkey’s jaw split into a malevolent grin. She had no where left to dodge with the monkeys curtailing her in on either side.

  She looked up at her own death descending on her. She closed her eyes.