TYPnovel Chapter 129: Escape
Chapter 129: Escape
Raiden ignored the burning pain on his side as he kept running towards the cliff.
’Just a few meters more, then we are through.’
He dragged his broken and limping leg from the back as he made his way and climbed the top of the cliff, his one hand clutching a Woolie whose grey coat had turned black due to blood, his breathing faint, while holding little Neva in the other hand, whose head was hanging limply from the other side.
"Hold on, guys, just a little more, and we are going to get through this!!" His voice was cracking at this point as he forcefully dragged Woolie and Neva towards the top of the hill.
Woolie had fainted from carrying him and Neva across the hill, and the accumulated injuries he had gotten from the brief fight with the dragon. Neva, on the other hand, had pushed herself too hard using the skill she couldn’t fully control yet and fainted due to the aftershock of it.
As soon as he reached the summit, he collapsed on the ground in pain, with darkness threatening to cover the corners of his eyes.
After taking a couple of deep breaths, he tried to hear the sounds from the direction he came from, only to find the roars from the jungle erupting unceasingly, growing closer by every passing second.
"Damnit, they are both hurt really badly. Do I have no other option but to take the jump?" Raiden muttered unwillingly as he rolled onto his back towards the side of the cliff that ended with a steep fall.
He looked down while lying on his front to find a roaring river flowing through the ravine, leading them to God knows where.
The flowing river in the wild looked less like a river and more like a roaring beast to Raiden. With almost 100 m in width and countless m in depth, Raiden had no clue if he would survive falling into it or not.
This was the escape plan he had thought of. All the other paths led to a dead end, or somewhere the black dragon could follow them easily but this was the only path that let them escape safely from it. As for the future dangers, he couldn’t care less about that. Right now, his most important priority was to escape from that big, overgrown lizard.
Gritting his teeth, he took off his pants from the bottom, with it scapping against his broken foot and the foot-long wound on it.
"Hissss~ Fuck that hurts badly!!"
Raiden ignored the pain with determined eyes as he quickly used his pants to tie both of them on his body: Neva on the front and Woolie on his back.
ROARS!!!!
They were getting closer. He needed to escape, now.
"Hey, damned system, what are my chances of escaping successfully from here??" Raiden asked.
{Ding!! Host, the system can not calculate anything like that. It can only answer questions regarding skills and the evolution of the beasts.}
"Aren’t you the most adaptable system, or whatever?? You are supposed to adapt to circumstances and evolve based on my needs, right? Well, I need to survive right now!! Why aren’t you giving me that functionality?!" Raiden asked in anger. He wasn’t angry at the system, just at the circumstances.
{The system detects that the host is in no mortal danger. There is no need for evolution.}
"Well, fuck you too!!" Raiden finished his banter with his system for now, as he gained some energy back while he rested. By now, the beasts tracking them had gotten really closer, just a few hundred meters away, hidden behind the canopy of large trees.
"Well, here goes nothing. Hope you hold on, guys, I will protect you for sure!!"
With that, Raiden took a few steps back before breaking into a run and jumping over the cliff.
"FUUUCCCKKKK!!!! WHY IS THIS DROP SO LOOOO—"
Splash!!
Raiden hit the water in the form of a cannonball; his body was getting rattled by it. But he wasn’t given much more time to think or react as a strong flow of water came and swept him away with both Neva and Woolie, taking them deeper and deeper into the jungle.
He tried to swim, but the flow of the current was way too strong, and with his one foot injured and the other cramped up from the fall, all he could do was move his hands as much as possible, trying to stay afloat.
He tried moving towards the shore, but he kept getting swept away, his body feeling powerless. At this rate, they will be swept deep into the jungle, and all three of them will drown even before they know it.
"No!! I won’t let it end like this!! Don’t give up on me right now, my body!! MOVE DAMNIT!!"
Raiden used every sense and bit of his willpower as he tried to move towards the shore from the centre, and it worked!!
His body, which was functioning on sheer will alone, was moving towards the shore a little bit by little bit, almost on the verge of getting out of the river.
But Raiden forgot one of the most important things when he planned his escape: the Terra Beasts that lived in the river.
BANG!!
"Ouch!! What was that?!" Raiden felt something slam against his side hard as he was thrown back into the middle of the river, with all the progress he had made gone in a second.
Raiden tried to find a culprit in his surroundings, but the water was flowing too fast, with everything looking pitch black on the inside, giving him no chance to identify it.
Crunch!!
"FUC—!!!" Raiden almost failed to stay afloat in the river as he felt something take a bite out of his legs inside the water.
’No, no, no. This won’t do. I need to get out of the water right fucking now, or we will die here!!’
He desperately tried to recall what could help him escape at this point, and suddenly, he recalled the skill description for Seven Star Steps.
[Seven Star Steps: A mythical footstep art that mimics the motion of seven deity stars in the sky. High mastery of this art can let someone walk on water or in the air.]
"Fuck it, let’s do this!!"