I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 911: Slaughter, Revenge and the Camp

Jack moved fast.

After several enhancements one upon another, his body had gone far beyond anything within the compass of a fifth-level apprentice.

Facing these men in black now, he did not even need to probe carefully as he had before. He wove at speed through the dark woods like some malevolent spirit that might pick out a man and devour him at any moment.

Every time the knife flashed, another man in black went down.

At first they were still roaring and shooting, trying to hem Jack in by weight of numbers.

But the bullets were beaten aside one after another by the short knife, and before their muzzles could even be brought back on target Jack was already in among them, killing without restraint.

Seeing how terrifying Jack’s fighting strength was, their formation soon collapsed.

Some backed away, some turned and fled, and some cried out in terror that he was a monster.

But none of it meant anything in Jack’s eyes. Searching about this evening, he had already come across a great many of the students’ temporary campsites.

Having seen the bodies inside them, Jack felt not the slightest burden of conscience about slaughtering this pack of men in black.

The man in black who had tried to run had gone only a few strides before Jack was at his back.

The edge swept across the back of his neck; the head went flying up, and the headless body ran on a few more steps under its own momentum before it pitched forward onto the ground.

It took only a few minutes, and then everything around him was quiet again.

Jack did not go after the few that had slipped the net and were already far away; instead he quickly found cover nearby and cleared a small patch of ground.

With practised hands he scored the charging symbols and placed every energy crystal he had gathered along the way inside them.

As the array started up, the energy in the crystals was rapidly drained away, and one after another they turned to ashen grey fragments.

“Charging complete.” The System’s voice sounded after it. “Sufficient available energy detected. Simplified charging mode unlocked. For future System charging, it will be enough to bring the medium close to an energy source and issue the charging command in your mind.”

Jack was taken aback for a moment, and then delight showed on his face.

Until now, every charge had meant drawing an array on the spot, which not only wasted time but left traces easily.

With this function he could complete a charge at any time, so long as he could find a suitable energy source; it really was far more convenient.

He picked up an energy bar, bit into it, and gave the command in his mind. “System, keep enhancing my body!”

The warm force spread out from his chest again, and this time it was more pronounced than on any occasion before.

In a matter of moments he could feel a new strength pouring into every limb and bone, and even the faintest stirring in the air became extraordinarily clear.

But before Jack could take in any more of the change in his body, a rhythmic clapping came from not far away.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

A low voice followed it at once.

“I really didn’t expect it. So young, and yet able to do this much. To kill so many of our men in so short a time is a rare thing indeed. A pity…”

There was an undisguised coldness in the voice. “Today you die here!”

Jack showed no sign of surprise.

He had heard someone approaching a good while ago.

The man’s footsteps were steadier than those of the other pursuers and his breathing unusually even; plainly he was no mere underling.

Which was exactly why he had taken the risk of enhancing himself before the man arrived.

Jack raised his head.

Three figures came slowly out from among the trees, dressed in the same black uniforms as the rank and file he had cut down.

But the moment one of them lifted his face, Jack’s pupils contracted sharply, and a murderous intent he could hardly hold down burst out from deep in his chest.

It was him!

That black figure!

The one who had killed his classmates at the foot of the rock face last night, and driven a palm clean through Sia’s chest.

Jack fixed his eyes on him, his knuckles slowly tightening, his breathing growing heavy.

But there was no change at all in the way the man looked at him; he plainly did not recognise Jack in the least.

That was understandable enough; the fellow had never once looked properly at his face from beginning to end.

“Well?” The black figure caught the look on Jack’s face, and an amused smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Have we met? At your age, to have killed so many of our men is remarkable enough already.”

He came forward at an unhurried pace as he spoke. “Tell me, then. Who exactly brought you in here? Tell me, and I can make your death a quicker one.”

Jack did not answer. His fingers closed slowly around the hilt.

The instant the man stepped inside a certain distance, the strength in his legs erupted.

Boom!

He shot forward like an arrow off the string.

The expressions of all three changed together; the speed Jack put out in that instant went far beyond anything they had expected.

The man in the middle drew his blade in haste to meet him.

Clang!

The two blades crashed together, and a heavy force drove up along the steel and into the other man’s arm.

The man in black was flung backwards off his feet on the spot, snapping two full-grown trees in succession before he came down hard on the ground.

Jack, for his part, gave half a step of ground; the web of his hand was slightly numb and his wrist even ached a little, but that was all.

The reason he did not press the attack was that at the instant the blades met, a cold, dank force had come up along the steel and invaded his arm.

Jack’s heart gave a jolt; but before he could do anything about it, his own flesh and blood had ground that force to nothing outright.

Like ice dropped into a furnace, it vanished utterly in a moment.

Jack narrowed his eyes. “So that’s an extraordinary ability?”

He was finally certain that his own System-enhanced body did not belong to the same system as the ordinary run of transcendents.

After all, as he saw it, leaving extraordinary abilities out of account, these three in front of him would take only a few strokes in his hands.

Even so, he did not relax in the slightest on that account.

This was the first time he had truly faced a transcendent head-on. Without the System’s enhancements, once that force reached his heart the consequences would have been nothing so light as this.

On the other side, the three men in black were plainly more shaken than he was.

They had only been following their leader’s orders, coming up in support.

Seeing how young Jack’s face was, they had assumed he had merely killed a group of the outer ranks by some dirty trick.

But that one exchange had made it perfectly clear to them: this youth was no ordinary apprentice!

“No holding back. All of us together.” The black figure’s voice had gone low.

The three of them sprang at once, two closing from left and right while the one in the middle bore straight in; three blades all but sealed off any room Jack had to move.

Boom!

Jack gave a step, parried the attack on his left with his edge, kicked the man in black on his right away at the same moment, and then spun with the momentum, slipping clear of the blade coming down at him from the front.

In that brief crossing of blades, the extraordinary abilities of all three erupted at once.

Three separate forces came at him together, seeking to invade his body.

But landing on Jack, they were like something striking red-hot steel.

The cold, dank force had barely entered his body before it dispersed.

“Just as I thought.” Jack’s mind settled completely.

After enhancement upon enhancement, his body had grown tough to an utterly outrageous degree.

Although they held on after a fashion, helped by the effects of their abilities and by the way their combined assault tied him up between them, the fight still tipped rapidly in Jack’s favour.

After a brief exchange, one of them abruptly changed the line of his attack, forcing Jack to bring his knife across to block.

At the instant the blades crossed, the other two came at him from both sides together.

He did not hesitate. His body drove suddenly forward, and the edge went out with the motion.

Thuck!

The blade ran into the man’s chest; the man in black went rigid, and the light went quickly out of his eyes.

Jack pulled the knife free and turned; another man in black was just gathering himself to lunge when he saw a cold flash sweep across his face.

Thuck!

The whole arm was cut away along with the shoulder, and a scream went up at once.

In that instant, the black figure who remained finally changed colour.

Three against one, and not only had they failed to hold Jack down, they had lost two men in the blink of an eye. This was entirely beyond anything they had reckoned on.

The black figure turned and ran.

There was no chance Jack would let him go. He cut down the man whose arm he had taken with a casual stroke and then set off after him at once.

The two of them swept through the thick woods one behind the other, branches whipping past them constantly, the rotting leaves underfoot kicked up and scattering in every direction.

The black figure was clearly built for speed, but Jack’s was more outrageous still, and the gap between them shrank rapidly.

“Help…”

Seeing that there was no hope of escape, the black figure shouted towards the woods ahead.

But Jack had already caught him a step sooner, and brought the knife down!

Thuck!

A rain of blood came down, and a head with terror still on its face struck the ground beside him.

Looking at the headless corpse before him, Jack wiped the blood from his face without expression. “Dying as easily as that. He got off lightly.”

With that, Jack quickly went over the bodies for spoils, and then edged carefully forward.

Judging by the way the black figure had called ahead for help before he died, there ought to be more of their people up there.

And the reason Jack did not simply flee at speed was that his ears had caught a different kind of sound.

As he crept forward, the trees ahead suddenly thinned, and a bright firelight showed through them.

At the same time, voices and the clash of metal, clearer now but confused, reached his ears.

When he had felt his way to the edge of the woods, the sight before him brought Jack to a halt.

It was, unmistakably, a temporary military camp; only by now it had been reduced entirely to a battlefield.

The tents had collapsed, the armoured vehicles had been overturned, and the ground was covered everywhere with shell craters and blood.

Several soldiers lay sprawled every which way in the mud, their bodies long since cold.

And in the middle of the camp a tall silver-grey mechanical apparatus stood silently, something like an unfinished metal tower, its surface thick with complex circuitry and several flickering power crystals set into its base.

What alarmed Jack more was that all around the camp, dozens of men in black were laying siege to a single old man.

Jack could feel clearly that not one of these men in black was weaker than the black figure he had just faced.

And several of them were strong enough that even Jack felt the danger!

The old man wore a military uniform, his hair already grizzled and his body stained with blood in a number of places; yet there was not the least sluggishness in his movements.

Boom!

One punch went out, and the man in black charging him was sent flying sideways outright, crashing into a wrecked armoured vehicle beside them.

The old man gave them no chance to breathe at all; he stepped forward and brought down another fist.

Bang!

The ground caved in violently, and several of the men in black around him were sent staggering back by the shock wave.

This old man, by his own strength alone, was actually holding off the assault of a whole crowd of transcendents!

Jack drew back two steps without a sound, slipped behind a thick, ancient tree, held his breath, and swiftly took in the whole battlefield.