Too Stubborn to Die

Traveling across the sky at great speed, they slowed, spotting several figures on the horizon ahead. Aaron glanced across at Zero and nodded. Within seconds, they were close enough to Inspect them.

Huh, so he came to greet us?

The big man threw his hands up in celebration as they touched down a couple of meters away.

“I thought I sensed something powerful coming!” Terry shouted. “I’m glad it was you, brother! You finally came to see my great oasis, did you? But,” he added, brows dancing as his eyes washed over them. “Why didn’t you bring the two lasses?”

“Hey, Terry. How’ve you been?” Aaron said, ignoring the question.

There were several Desert Pythons standing with Terry, including a couple of heavily tattooed women who just kind of stood there, stroking his arms.

“GREAT, brother! Although my people left quite a few problems to fix. If you want something done right, gotta do it yourself. But it’s fine. At least they kept it safe.”

“Good to hear. We’ve been having trouble with the undead ourselves,” Aaron said.

“Undead? Now that you mention it, bro. We have fought some small groups off. They were weak though and not many of them.”

“Really? Just a few, huh? Must be probing squads.”

“Whatever they were, they were nothing Terry couldn’t handle!”

Aaron nodded. That was some good news. Knowing that Darius’ corruption hadn’t gone this far likely meant that other settlements were safe too. Fewer people to save meant less running around.

“I actually came about the beast you mentioned during the dungeon. I figured that if I help you deal with it, you might be up for crushing some undead skulls?”

“Bro, say no more! I’d love to. Haha! Just point Terry in their direction, and Des and Troy will get to work,” Terry said, kissing his biceps. “But first, let me give you a tour.”

There really wasn’t much to tour. Most homes were just old trailers, making one big it a trailer park town. Apparently the System dropped a bunch in the desert, and since there was a nice oasis with perfectly clear water in the middle of them, Terry and his Desert Pythons had claimed it.

There were a handful of buildings, almost all of which were System-purchased. But it was pretty bare considering their numbers. Although they had a lot of motorbikes, which oddly enough appeared in good condition.

“Nice bikes,” Aaron said. “Haven’t driven one since the accident, and it's bringing up old memories.”

“You wanna go for a spin?”

“Nah, not right now. But I might take you up on that another time.”

“You give me a date and a time, bro, and I’ll sort you out.”

“Thanks, mate. Where’d the bikes come from, though?”

“Crafters! Most of our crafters are busy building materials for the engineers to build into bikes. They look cool, huh? But they’re so much more. You should see them in action.”

Aaron could just nod. If they had utility, he supposed it wasn’t so bad. But putting all of their resources into building bikes still seemed an odd choice, and one that he struggled to wrap his head around.

“Alright. Well, now that we’re done seeing the pad, wanna go smash some beast skulls, bro?”

Terry led Aaron and Zero to a cave entrance not far from their camp. A bunch of Desert Pythons followed. When they reached it, a small man wearing glasses took over the explanation.

“Down there is where we first discovered them,” he said wheezily. “By my calculations, there’s at least a dozen smaller, D-grade beasts in the first chamber. Here’s where it gets difficult, though. Just beyond that chamber is the C-grade beast, and it seems to roam into the adjoining chambers. If I were you, I’d take my time trying to lure out the smaller beasts, and then focus my firepower on the big one once they’re dealt with. Since none of them seem to leave the cave, you should be able to watch them from afar, and wait for the C-grade to distance itself.”

“Blah blah blah,” Terry said. “Leave the fighting to the men, nerd.”

“Oh I, heheh,” the little man said, fixing his glasses. “I think I’ve got a capacitor to fix onto a bike I forgot about!”

“Thanks for your help,” Aaron said as the man ran off. “A friend of yours?”

“Chief engineer. But he doesn’t know a damn thing about fighting.”

“He’s just trying to help, Terry. Try to be a little nicer if you can,” Aaron said, but he was already planning their next move, looking down into the cave.

He thumbed the parasite ring. The beast sounded pretty serious, but he didn’t want to take it off. Besides, if he could handle such a threat without removing it, it would go a long way to proving he was ready for whatever Darius could throw at them.

“Okay, should we do this then?” Aaron said. He took the other man’s warning seriously, but he felt confident.

“BAHAHA! Yeah, bro! I’ve been waiting for this! That little dork kept telling me I wasn’t ready. What does he know? Nobody can stand in Terry’s way!”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Alright, just stick behind me, though. I can take a hit. That said, I think we should enter with a bang. Your friend is right about not wanting to fight them all at once. So no holding back. We enter the chamber fast, and blast the minions away quickly, and then we can combine our forces against the big one.”

“Sounds like a plan, brother.”

They climbed down into the tunnel, and it didn’t take long to find the beasts. They seemed to hug the inner chambers of the cave, like an imaginary line was keeping them from straying too far.

But that wasn’t all. The underground passage felt oddly familiar to Aaron. He had been through so much, and couldn’t place where exactly. But he could have sworn he had seen something similar. Strange metal wrapped around sections of the cave, like supports built into a tunnel. And he even noticed what looked like some strange alien markings on the walls.

What is all this?

Closing his eyes and [ Gorgon’s Soul Vortex ], he could also tell that there was something of incredible power deeper within. But something was shielding it.

Why does this seem so familiar? Where have I seen this before?

“You just going to stand there, or are you ready, bro?”

“Yeah, sorry. Let’s do this.”

The D-grade beasts ahead were just mid D-grade, and nothing he hadn’t killed many times before. So Aaron wasn’t too worried, and took the vanguard, rushing forward as they engaged them.

Both Terry and Zero were speedster builds, and Aaron was plenty fast himself, and so when they clashed with the beasts, everything happened so quickly.

The beasts were dropping fast, and even though they were sending tremors through the cave tunnel and making plenty of noise, the fight wasn’t going to last long enough to matter.

They heard a deep groan from somewhere a little deeper within, and Aaron sensed the powerful beast moving toward them.

“Alright, get ready now. The big one is coming.”

“I was born ready, bro!”

“Yes, master.”

Snarling and hissing, a huge, glowing wombat waddled out from deeper within.

Burrowing Monarch Wombat [ Level 210 ]

Titles: [ World Guardian ]

That Title? Does that mean—

Aaron’s thoughts were cut short as the stone cave around them started to explode, shooting daggers of rock at them from all directions.

The attacks weren’t fast enough, or unpredictable enough to hit him. But there were enough of them to force him into dodging and phasing, and to fall back a bit as more earth attacks shattered out along the cave walls.

Apparently, it was a wombat geomancer.

Dodging through the hail of attacks, Aaron pushed through in an attempt to land his own, and the beast swung with massive paws, forcing him back again as he avoided the attacks.

“This guy isn’t messing around!”

“Watch this, bro!”

Terry rushed forward, moving so fast he created a barrier around him, blasting away the incoming spikes, but when they almost reached the wombat, a wave of stone burst out, slamming into him and dazing him. Then, the paw came, smashing into Terry and ragdolling him across the tunnel.

The wombat tried to follow up on its attack, but Aaron intercepted, blocking, dodging, phasing, and striking back with his own attacks that finally landed, and sent the wombat reeling back for a second before it regained its composure and jumped back into the fight.

Terry was badly bloodied up, and Zero grabbed him, ignoring his complaints and rushing him back down the tunnel in the direction they had come.

That was good for Aaron. Without Terry there, he could let loose and did just that, pushing the power of his core to new heights as he empowered his attacks against the wombat.

The wombat was easily stronger than the worm. A true C-grade with a mind of its own, and its energy seemed boundless in comparison. In fact, if not for the alien-like metal supports wrapped around the cave tunnels, the cave almost certainly would have collapsed in the face of the wombat’s destructive powers.

But Aaron stubbornly kept his ring on, even as Zero and Terry were forced to fall back, fleeing to the mouth of the cave.

However, as their exchanges continued, it became painfully clear that his attacks were doing very little. If he was going to keep the ring on, he was going to have to push his power further, pulling more and more energy through his core and into his mana anchors.

Aaron pummeled the beast between dodging and phasing. Slowly, it seemed that he was starting to have an effect. But it was going to take a while if he wanted to kill the creature.

As the exchange went on, he could feel the cracks forming across his soul and was forced to eat his noodle soup, basically pouring it down his throat between engagements.

Aaron phased back and forth, skipping around the chamber as he tried to dodge and drag the fight out, giving his soul some time to recover, as the mending effect of the soup wasn’t instant.

When he clashed against the powerful C-grade again, he found himself lacking and was forced to retreat further back only seconds later. His soul hadn’t fully recovered, and the moment he started to push his core again, the fractures began to spread.

“Damn, you are fucking tough!”

Inspired by his usual stubbornness, Aaron pulled stupid amounts of power into his fists and threw them against the wombat anyway. But it was too much; his fists exploded into gore on contact. Between the stupid amounts of power he was using and the incredibly hardy hide of the wombat, his fists had been ground down to stumps.

And only moments later, he was forced to retreat further back down the tunnel, as the explosive geomancy Skills of the wombat blasted all around him relentlessly.

It was just too much, and his energy levels started to waver as he couldn’t push his core any further without risking his soul exploding.

“I need some recovery time!”

This was bad. Aaron could resurrect if he were killed. But a beast like this could slaughter the entire camp above in no time at all.

But interestingly, the moment he left the main chambers, it stopped chasing and went back down to where it had been. At that moment, there was no doubt in his mind.

It was guarding something.

Aaron remembered the beast’s Title, and his imagination began to whirl. He had come here just to help Terry take out the beast and gain some useful allies against Darius, but now he was truly intrigued about whatever the beast was hiding.

On shaky legs, he reached the mouth of the cave and spotted Zero and Terry. Desert Pythons had gathered around and were already feeding him potions and using healing Skills on him.

“Get that bastard, bro?”

“No, not yet. But this is turning out to be a great exercise,” Aaron said, stretching his arms.

His hands had already regrown, and he could feel his soul quickly healing as he ate another serving of soup.

Whatever was hidden at the end of this cave, he was going to find it. And he had a feeling he would get some good training done in the process of it.

“Give me a minute,” Aaron said, raising a finger. “There we go. I think I’m ready for round two.”

Terry remained silent. Probably trying to hang onto whatever dignity he could.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!