Spirit Soul

With Selene by his side, he felt much better and more confident.

It took her some time to get over her slight anxiety owing to more than a thousand uncomfortable stares.

But now, Selene seemed to have finally calmed down too.

At that moment, the two rather safe directions with no signs of the giant predators turned chaotic.

The ground slowly began to tremble as mounds of soil, and rock shot up in the air.

It was a sure sign of more heavy armored earthworms surfacing.

Cracks appeared on the ground followed by several dark brown and long bodies.

From a distance, the earthworms just looked like big sacks of earth stitched together to form an unusually long trail.

Though they were far from harmless creatures.

Seeing this, everyone realized that it was time for them to act, the quicker the better.

This made Kyle give Selene another gentle nudge, signaling her to motivate the Lohars.

Unsure of what to say to the crowd staring at her, she simply raised her hand holding the golden seal of chivalry before shouting.

"Let's survive by all means!"

Kyle smiled when he heard her command the others.

The remaining Lohars began to chant Selene's words with fervor.

Thousands of voices overlapped, reverberating through the entire settlement.

The voices grew louder and more confident with every spoken word.

Meanwhile, Selene was struggling to accept the fact that she had become a harbinger of change and the demotivated Lohars' leader.

Seeing her watch the scene in a daze made Johana step beside her.

She had been observing everything with folded hands and amusement.

Though, she couldn't afford to sit idle.

Thus, Johana stepped up beside Selene and pointed in one direction.

"Let's go in this direction. It seems to offer a relatively safe passage to us"

Nodding their heads, the others agreed to her.

"You three go first, I will keep an eye on the heavy armored earthworms and ensure that they don't attack the Lohars.

They're strong enough to defend themselves, but I doubt that their physical strength would allow them to fight against the earthworms that are at the peak of the Vitae stage and Initial Krysal stage...I can at least distract them a little bit!"

Though her words were meant to be confident, her voice betrayed her.

She was not even strong enough to defeat the earthworms on her own.

Nevertheless, Gaby knew that there was no other way for them to escape the settlement right now.

If they wanted to escape this nightmarish hellhole they had to take risks.

They had no other way than sending Selene to the front.

Her status as a noble made the imprisoned Lohars to be hopeful of living freely once again.

And, they were willing to brave the challenges and give their utmost efforts

As such, it was necessary to separate from each other.

They could no longer fight in a group. But, this only made matters worse.

There was no discipline or order in the gigantic group.

All the imprisoned and weak Lohars were just regaining their strength and confidence.

They were in no condition to create battle strategies.

All they could do was simply rush after Kyle, Selene, and Johana.

While Johana was leading the group, Kyle and Selene acted as her lookouts.

Johana focussed on swiftly killing a few Nasgas, and taking them by surprise.

Meanwhile, Kyle and Selene used their heightened senses to observe the situation in front of them, trying to pick the best path to run along.

Despite Johana slicing and hacking through the Nasgas who would suddenly pop up in front of them, a few escaped her attacks.

However, the sheer number of Lohars was more than enough to frighten even the strongest Nasgas at the peak of the Vitae stage.

It looked like a moving sea of living beings that would trample anything and everything in its wake.

The Nasgas found themselves in a tricky situation right now.

Not only were the prisoners escaping but the supposedly hibernating creatures had awoken from the depths of earth.

While they were completely aware that it was impossible to imprison the Lohars right now, the thunderous roars of the earthworms were hard to miss.

Hence, saving themselves was far more important than fighting the Adventurers or blocking the Nasgas' escape.

It was a total chaos of beings just running around and trying to ensure their survival.

This was extremely helpful, but unfortunately enough, the fear of the Nasgas was not unfounded.

Quite literally, the ground slipped under the feet of the last rows of the Lohars.

They could only try to hold onto empty air as the hapless Lohars were suddenly pulled underground. The ground below them split open as they were swallowed into the ground.

Gaby saw this, but she was already too late.

All she could do was barely shoot a few arrows into the pit into which dozens of Lohars fell.

These arrows were enhanced by her ice affinity but they could do little to save the Lohars who met their deaths.

Noticing that something was behind them, everyone hastened up to their pace.

But what astonished Kyle, was the fact that the healthy Lohars picked up the young children and weak Lohars.

He had believed that they would too run for their lives and let the weaklings succumb to their fate.

Despite death encroaching upon them from behind, they kept running ahead.

Every single step could as well be their last one but they didn't abandon the weaklings.

Selene saw this too, but she refrained from commenting.

Instead, she averted her attention to the front once again.

Her gaze clearly avoided the Lohars behind them as she grit her teeth.

Kyle assumed that her mind was in a mess again, but that was unfortunately not something they could pay attention to right now.

Grasping her hand, Kyle dragged Selene before she would freeze on the spot.

She merely looked at him for a second before continuing to run.

Close on their heels, the huge crowd of Lohars was slowly charging up to them.

In the end, almost all the weakened Lohars had a higher cultivation base than Kyle and Selene.

But they were unable to use it as the primordial energy in their body was only slowly recuperating.

They had been deprived of their primordial energy and tied up for more than two weeks.

Hence, it was already a wonder that they could keep up with the two young adventurers.

Nevertheless, the situation was both better than Kyle had assumed but worse than what he had hoped for.

The entire settlement looked like a devastated battlefield, and only a few Aldra Adventurers were left behind, with most of them either dead or had already fled from the dangers.

Those left behind had killed their opponents while storing away their corpses as well as their spatial rings.

After that they had decided to form a protective shield around the crowd of Lohars.

Using their weapons and combat prowess, they slashed at the Nasgas who dared attack them.

However, at the same time, the Adventurers were thus indirectly using the large number of targets as a mean to make them less likely to be targeted by the heavy armored earthworms themselves.

Their march through the devastated settlement had almost found its end, but fate had something else in store for them.

Out of nowhere, a huge stream of dark green glimmering light shot passed Kyle, missing him by a few meters.

Quickly activating his Nurture ability, he was able to see the faint hue of a living being that had been at the tip of the dark green beam.

'The Krysal stage Blood Nasga?!' He immediately asked himself in astonishment.

He turned to his left where he perceived the remains of the Blood Nasga's completely crippled body.

This caused him to involuntarily shudder before he took a glance to the right.

What he saw there was none other than Felix, who was holding a weird-looking, dark-green glowing orb.

It was overflowing with the affinity he had used earlier.

The young man had many orbs that could be used to execute a devastating massacre, but at the same time, it seemed to take a huge toll on his body.

When Kyle looked at the orb carefully, he realized that the dark green orb seemed to be completely different from the thunderous snake orb.

But Kyle couldn't care less about that right now.

He was enraged about almost having been killed, as it was obvious that Felix hadn't aimed at a specific target.

Felix was behaving like a madman, ignoring the possibility of accidentally hitting his comrades, or even worse...those he should protect.

However, seeing Felix's condition, Kyle felt that it might have been impossible for Felix to bother about his surroundings.

After all, he had been fighting with his life on the line.

He was bleeding heavily from several deep gashes, and Kyle was even able to see his bones through one of them.

Meanwhile, Felix was putting away the orb, while holding his shoulder that looked as if it had been twisted at an odd angle.

Using his affinity, he was healing himself, but the effects were not as potent as it was when he healed others.

Despite that, he smiled lightly as he rushed past Kyle.

Felix seemed to completely ignore his injuries and pain as greed glimmered in his eyes.

Arriving in front of the Blood Nasga, Felix finished him off, before picking up his spatial ring.

Only a few moments later, the Blood Nasga's corpse was stored away.

This was exactly the time at which its soul was being expelled from the body of the deceased.

This caused Kyle's eyes to widen, as he took one step towards the detached soul.

A moment later he halted in his tracks again.

He was out in the open with a lot of people around him.

For a moment, he was worried about what would happen if someone else were to notice what he was doing.

But upon seeing Felix's condition, Kyle knew that the arrogant young man wouldn't be able to protect himself.

He was bound to succumb to his injuries in a while.

And, with the death of their strongest possible ally, their chances of survival were close to nil.

There were more than 3000 Lohars that had to be transported to safety after all!

Thus, gritting his teeth, Kyle made a split-second decision to rush towards Felix.

He only looked at him suspiciously, only to see him grasp something into the thin air.

Kyle had grasped the soul of the being at the Krysal stage before it could drift higher into the air.

He could feel the sheer energy of it burning through his hand.

It was a searing heat, but Kyle couldn't care less about that right now. As usual, he pushed the soul into his chest, where it dispersed into millions of soul particles.

His entire body bulged, and Selene, who looked at him worriedly, immediately exclaimed,

"Transfer it to this!"

Even though Selene's words didn't make any sense, Kyle clearly understood the meaning.

He had planned the same and without hesitation, Kyle activated his Nurture ability. It began devouring the soul particles that were slowly overflowing inside his body, nearly tearing him apart.

Kyle knew that the soul of a being at the Krysal stage would be extremely powerful.

But never could he have imagined that his body would be close to tearing itself apart in less than just one-tenth of the soul particles that had barely been released.

After the soul particles empowered his ability, Kyle's eyes began to glow in extremely bright light.

But, on the downside, he noticed that he was unable to move.

He had planned to vitalize Felix by giving him back some energy.

Kyle believed that his ability would help in order to hasten up his healing process manifolds.

However, just at that moment, Kyle noticed that he had bit more than he could chew.

The small fraction of soul particles that had already separated from the Krysal stage soul were way too strong.

They were straining his muscles and joints, almost tearing his body apart.

'Fuck! I can't move!'