'There are roughly sixty kiloters between here and the furthest known coordinate. It will take them ten minutes to reach that point, and it will take another several minutes at the very least for Klaus to determine the positions of the seventh and eighth points and another several to activate them.'
At the very least, it would be another thirty minutes before they could make any real progress.
'That ans I will be forced to deal with this wave for that period of ti.'
Atlas sighed to himself. Gone were his dreams of refraining from stressing his ridians. Once again, he was in a situation that forced him to try his best.
'Not that I can complain. This ti, it is a situation entirely of my own doing.'
If he hadn't chosen to enter the secret realm, he would have been fine, but such was the life of a cultivator. With these short-term risks, he could gain himself long-term benefits.
It may not have been an admirable mindset to risk oneself so, but it was the mindset of the world as a whole. Atlas was not unique in this regard.
As his body moved through the forest, he saw through the darkness the appearance of those mangled entities.
They had drooping and rotted skin that only stuck to parts of their body. They were decayed corpses brought back to life by the likes of a necromancer who studied the Dao of Death.
However, in this case, a being with those skills was not present. Only their army remained.
'Tch!'
Atlas kicked off an arm that latched onto his foot. As his montum was halted, he was forced to jump onto the nearest tree and use it as a stepping stone to reach the high ground.
'Perhaps I shouldn't have looked back.'
After all, this was his first ti seeing the number of entities his qi attracted.
'Was this entire space a mass grave? Or…are these the bodies of the cultivators who have fallen to its trials?'
Regardless, there were hundreds.
'This is on an entirely different level when compared to the small interference we perford in the first trial.'
Back then, there were only so extra spiders. They may have delayed the other group by so minutes, but they did not create a desperate situation.
'Can I find a way to locate the end of the qi channel that started this phenonon?'
[Intrinsic Foresight] likely made it possible, but Atlas really didn't have the freedom to try yet. The tree he stood on was on the verge of collapse. Several tens of undead entities stood at its bottom and clawed at its trunk. They piled over each other, creating a Tower of bodies that climbed higher and higher by the second.
'If I…'
[Fla Wheel]
His old martial techniques were easier on his body. [Fla Wheel] still held the sa foundation as before, but it was far stronger.
A wheel of fire roughly twice the size of Atlas' body spun rapidly and charged down the tree.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
It blazed through the undead horde, cutting several of their bodies in half. The tower imdiately collapsed under its own weight and the undead fell over each other.
The issue was elsewhere. Even as they fell, the different parts of their bodies rged into their comrades and healed them. They beca amalgamations of each other with the only commonality being that all of them had fully functional bodies.
'Fighting simply is not a good option.' Atlas thought as he leapt to the next tree, fell to the ground, and started running again.
'I should reserve most of my qi while using it only to provoke the horde.'
Undead beings were not uncommon. The Dao of Death was often the goal of cultivators who wanted to stray from the ordinary path and delve into the realm of darkness.
Even against people who controlled these beings, the strategy for battle was to target the cultivator themself rather than the army they controlled.
Then, what about now?
When it was only an army that couldn't be stopped, the only option was to run and provoke them until the trial reached completion.
Atlas could no longer see Drya or Yari. He could only see undead beings trying to grab him from all sides. Against low-intelligence beings, movent techniques like [Lightning Shadow Steps] were almost inviolable, but Atlas couldn't quite escape.
If he escaped, the horde would return to attack the other life auras in the space, which couldn't be allowed.
Within five minutes, Atlas' ridians were already burning. He felt a stabbing pain throughout his body with every single step.
"Khhh…"
He bit his lip and held in his pain.
'It is far worse than I thought.'
The Demon Heart Pill needed to be forged as fast as possible.
'The other materials are mostly yin-based, so they only grow in certain environnts. As the Devil Fruit is filled with strong yin energy, this realm is rich with such resources.'
For instance, the Midnight Spirit Grass that littered the space was one of the supportive ingredients for the pill.
'The problem is the other main ingredient. I need sothing with a strong balancing effect in order to properly infuse the Devil Fruit.'
As he thought of solutions, the crowd around him only grew. His body was essentially piloting itself, acting on the battle instinct he developed over thousands of years to survive in the undead horde.
This was the true Atlas. This was the Atlas that could appear when he wasn't being sward by enemies far above his strength level.
This was the level of skill that soone could only have if they had spent ten thousand years in the brutal war zone that was the world of cultivation.
Every movent represented the peak of his body's current abilities. Every whip of his hand and burst of qi represented his control. The fact that he was comfortably controlling a crowd of over one hundred undead beings represented his fortitude.
And through it all, he still had the ntal energy to think about solving his more long-term issues.
Atlas stopped paying attention to it. He was focused on his own mind, the undead entities around him, and the communication talisman on his hip. He didn't notice that the moon was changing and light was returning to the dark space.
When he climbed up the tree, it was already a half-moon. As he ran, it beca full once again and started to wane.
And before he realized it, as the number of undead around him increased and increased, Atlas was hearing words from a man who stood far, far away.
"I've found the final two positions! Who should I report them to?!"
Klaus' voice ca through the talisman. Imdiately, Atlas snapped out of his daze of combat and returned to the high ground.
"Stop waiting for instructions and report them. Your leader does not have the peace of mind to give you orders right now," he said.
"You… Tch!"
Klaus was put off by his disrespectful attitude, but a second thought justified it. He was only having to fight the stragglers who did not get caught in the hordes. On the other hand, Atlas, Drya, and Yari were fighting sothing entirely different.
The points were relayed expeditiously, but neither Drya nor Yari gave any kind of response.
Atlas gritted his teeth.
'They are either dead or in serious trouble.'
"Drya, Yari, if you are hearing , then bring your hordes into the center. I will take them while you chase the final two points."
He was already there. The center was the best place to take the horde when the formation points were all on the edges of the trial space.
However, as the minutes passed without any change, Atlas' worries increased.
'If they don't arrive in the next five minutes…'
'...then I have to assu that they have already been slaughtered.'
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