113 Danger

For what felt like days or weeks, Lucian fought his way up the tallest of the two mountains beneath the blue sky tinged with orange. Every step he took, the spiritual and physical pressure he bore increased, and more strange constructs attacked him.

They were all human-shaped, usually a set of armor or a statue. And every one of them had raw strength greater than the beasts of the first mountain, accompanied by martial techniques and training. His only solace during this time was the lack of adaptability shown by these mid-4th stage constructs.

Every time he slew one, the swirling liquid energies that animated it would fill him, strengthening his body and nourishing his soul. If it hadn't been for that, even the physical pressure would be crippling to his fighting ability now.

But with every victory, he grew stronger, and with every pause, his soul stabilized further beneath the pressure, allowing the formation of yet another anchor, this time in his left eye.

Five down, four to go.

With one handaxe, he managed to control and deflect an opponent's arming sword before delivering a blunt strike to its sculpted stone head with a small hammer in his other hand, breaking it apart.

Two others struck at him from behind as his artificial arms of blood tried to defend, only to be severed from his body.

He was tired and struggling hard to respond in time beneath the incredible weight of the pressure here.

With a roar of might and defiance, he spun. The small hammer denting the steel helmet of one construct while the handaxe dropped to the ground, his right fist delivering a punch to the chest of that same suit of animated armor, cratering it and sending the construct flying backward.

A longsword fell heavily onto his left shoulder, splitting his armor and cutting deeply into flesh, forcing Lucian to his knees, but his eyes shone with ferocity.

His left hand grabbed the bronze statue's hand that gripped the longsword, and pulled, forcing the statue down to the ground where he delivered one fierce punch at a time with his right hand, hammering the bronze head into the stone steps and denting it beyond recognition.

Never-ending impacts rang out as he kept hitting the statue, again, again, and again. Finally, with yet another roar, he punched a hole through the bronze statue, and its energy filled him.

The sound of wind being split sounded to his right, and he threw himself to the other side, rolling on the ground to avoid being beheaded. A scatter of blood crystal projectiles bought him half a second to stand and conjure forth a disproportionately large greatsword which he swung with as much strength as he could muster.

The Heart of Dawn surged a cycle within him, filling him with strength enough to deliver three rapid swings of that dense and heavy weapon, splitting the animated armor in three before he lost his balance and fell to his knees once more.

Panting hard, he supported himself with hands and knees, coughing from the exertion. Even with his enemies defeated, that relentless pressure still bore down on him, and yet another use of the Heart of Dawn had brought incredible stress to his already struggling body.

But he would recover. Some of it at least, he could recover quickly.

Making his way to each of the defeated constructs, suits of armor and statues each, he absorbed the energy that had animated them, nourished his soul and strengthened his body. With that, half of his fatigue had vanished, and he could advance further.

"200 more. Just another 200 steps and I can rest at the peak."

He absorbed the array of dropped weapons back into his body as he advanced further up the stone steps. His usual longsword wasn't well suited to this place, he'd learned early on that bludgeoning force was more effective than cuts or thrusts against these things.

When he reached his limit, he stopped to adapt to the pressure once more, letting his soul stabilize, then he continued, and forced his way through yet more opponents. He continued like that for two hundred steps, until his head reached the clouds that hid the peak above him.

And there he sat, for a long time, adjusting to the pressure, and cultivating.

Whatever lay beyond these clouds, he was not sure he was ready to face it. He needed every advantage he could get, and that meant learning the fundamentals of the Shadowwalker art.

He had to master taking half a step into the world of shadow, that was the crucial first step. Once he could do that, he could learn to manipulate the world of shadow from his place in the material world. He would also be able to hide in cast shadows without truly entering that other world, though he doubted that particular technique would be of much use here.

For an entire month, he sat atop that mountain, the swirling blue sky with streams of orange above him.

When finally he opened his eyes, they seemed somehow different. Not in any way that could be pointed out, just… different. They were eyes that did not fear the dark, the eyes of wolves and owls, of bats and cats.

The pressure here was no longer enough to force his soul to adapt. It was not stable enough to form a sixth anchor, but neither could the pressure of this mountain force it to stabilize faster anymore. Standing, he confirmed that the bodily pressure had grown less intense too.

It seemed that even his physical body could adapt here, though whether it would remain like this when he left, he had no idea.

Stepping into the layer of sensationless clouds, his vision was obscured as with the last time. It took a whole minute of walking to clear them, and when he did, a sigh of resignation escaped his lips.

He was at the foot of a mountain. Again.

Only one mountain, beneath still blue skies that now swirled in a very distinct spiral, like The Maelstrom he had seen outside this place. Where orange streams of light could be found amongst the blue last time, there were also streams of silver now.

Perhaps the only point of relief about this third mountain was the lack of clouds hiding its peak. He could actually see the end of the mountain this time, and with luck, that meant he was nearly done.

He couldn't find Nil around the clearing at the foot of the mountain, nor any others, and so he decided to continue alone. He had stopped at the top of the stairs for a month before coming here and none had passed him, that meant Nil had surely reached the peak long before him and had already continued on.

'Alright. Let's get this over with.'

When he stepped onto this third mountain, he was met with the two pressures once more, picking up from where the last mountain had stopped. But he was used to this much already, and advanced swiftly as the force increased.

He didn't know how long he'd been within The Maelstrom, and after tackling two mountains already, he had little patience remaining.

To the 300th step, he ran, until the feeling of something gathering ahead of him made him stop. It was always the same, he would need to fight again, absorb what they had to offer, and move on.

'Hurry up, I don't have all…'

His words got caught in his mouth at the sight of his next adversary.

It was a person, a woman in long robes with hair tied in a bun. Her skin was as white as porcelain, but a large crack ran through her face and her eyes were vacant. In her right hand, a long and slender saber.

An aura of power rolled off the woman and Lucian's face turned grim and his breathing heavy.

On the first mountain he was faced with raw strength and physical pressure. In the second mountain, he had to bear through the addition of spiritual pressure and martial technique. Here, in the third mountain, he finally felt what was different.

The pure suppressive might of a higher cultivation. Of a 5th tier expert.

In his vision, it was as if the world began to waver and shake beneath the woman's aura. An illusion he knew, but that didn't stop his legs shaking involuntarily, or his mouth running dry.

A twisted, broken will filled the air, as the woman raised her left hand gently, and Lucian conjured not a weapon, but a shield. For the first time in a long, long time, he opted for complete defense as the world twisted around the woman's slender finger.

She pointed, and the shield dented with a resounding boom, his arms took the shock and his bloodplate armor groaned, buckling in places as he flew back down the stairs, tumbling as he went.

The woman moved gracefully, but with incredible speed, as she leapt forward down the steep stairs, bearing her long and thin saber a graceful arc as she spun, cutting down towards him.

Beneath the three-fold suppression he felt, Lucian had to roar as he raised a blade to meet her assault. The harsh sound of their swords meeting in a head-on collision rang out through the air as was pushed back a few more steps, and the woman gracefully landed with a spin in the opposite direction, shooting back towards him immediately after.

Again and again, the harsh sound of sharp swords clashing rang as Lucian was pushed back step by step. It was not with physical might that the woman repelled him, but something else. A will and an intent that hid within her saber. Her will, and something else, something grander.

Gritting his teeth, Lucian could taste the blood trying to escape his jaw as he continued to resist. His eyes were running bloodshot as he circulated that fierce white light, The Heart of Dawn, within himself, clashing with just enough force to surpass the woman for a few exchanges.

Yet despite her vacant eyes, she did not lack in adaptability like the constructs. When his strength suddenly skyrocketed, she began to fall back with graceful deflections of his blade, gesturing with her left hand for the world around them to suppress him with shockwaves and invisible blasts of qi and will that he could not understand.

Yet as she retreated, Lucian, who had reinforced his shield, stronger than ever, to resist her invisible strikes, finally had enough time to connect with his shadow, and through it, the world beyond.

His will seeped into that lightless place, felt the eyes of things within watching him, and reached out to the woman's own shadow. He tried to grasp at the world of shadow around her, pulled it together, and made it coalesce into something simple. A spear.

Then, from a doorway back to the material, the very shadow she cast, he made that spear emerge. It was a single rapid strike from the ground, a black shadow that was both there and not, rising from below to skewer the woman.

Her vacant eyes never expressed any emotion, but she leapt into the air, spinning as she waved her free hand towards the shadowy spear, and it was severed into a dozen pieces by invisible blades.

'More!' He thought as he forced the world of shadows to bend to his will. He coalesced more spears, and shot them all through the shadows nearby, bringing them into the material realm where they reached for the airborne woman. As he was now, he could not make the spears detach from the world of shadow, they had to be connected to darkness somewhere, but the woman had only jumped so high, and with this, he could reach her.

More invisible blades cut at the many spears, but as she was defending against those, Lucian had already dropped his blade and raised a palm at the airborne woman.

Without warning or anticipation, the world flashed white as the Light of Dusk appeared, a bar of light connecting him and the woman.

At her shoulder, where the light had made contact, everything vanished. Disintegrated at a level Lucian himself could not perceive.

And she fell.

Into the constant array of stabbing spears.

There were no screams or laments, nothing human about her death. Just the robotic struggle to find a path of survival, the invisible blades that cut at everything, and then stillness.

The ground was marred in a thousand cuts, and as Lucian fell to the ground, his armor shattered to reveal a dozen more. His chest ran crimson and blood ejected from his mouth in great quantities.

In that final moment, just a few seconds of fierce, unfocused struggle, he had suffered a dozen deep cuts and lost his connection to the shadow world.

Had she not been fatally wounded, he'd have died half a second later with her next assault.

He had no time to think about that now, however, as his forehead hit the ground, and he groaned under the war waging in his body.

His wounds were not healing.