[NR] A Rank Away From Stone - Chapter 428 (Patreon)

A couple weeks in and Jason was certain the earth elementals were cheating somehow. They would pop up right on the edge of the wasteland he dare not view. Sure, it was more likely that since they don’t actually see and instead used tremorsense it didn’t affect them. Whatever it was though, it felt like cheating.

That was over, though. Jason just needed to get off of the sheer cliff and he would be into a new area. Well, mostly new.

Instead of a swamp it was more of a half scrubland, half wetlands sort of area. A lot of pools of water and overly damp soil, but also enough dry land your socks would have a chance to dry out before getting soaked again.

That was for later, though. First was getting down there. Not the hardest thing, Jason had even considered jumping off the cliff proper. Three stories is a little high up, but he has methods to tank the damage.

Instead, he plans to take the elementals head on. Jason had not wanted to do this all the way back when he was getting on top of the cliff because the elementals were a bit of a surprise. Now, he knows what to expect and can plan accordingly.

Not that any plan ever survives actual combat. A classic sentiment that proves itself true once again when an earth elemental popped up before he even reached the rocky area. This wasn’t the first time, but only because it had happened one other time.

Still, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. There was just one and by the size it hadn’t managed to absorb as much power as some of the other’s. Because the elementals certainly cheat when it comes to levels. Those that are summoned in have an averaged power for their level.

The ones just hanging around NeoRealm proper? A level ten could have enough stored power to last days of non-stop combat. Good thing they couldn’t release the power all at once, but that meant most of it was used to prop up their HP.

That meant a long, grindy fight where Jason would have to dodge almost everything. Worse yet, his arm wasn’t fully healed yet. The wound had filled in well enough, but it was more solid blood than flesh.

Jason didn’t let this stop him though and went about pounding on the elemental while hopping around like a kid hyped up on sugar. It worked, though. His movement technique allows him some control while in air practically turns him into a classic video game character. Sure, he already was in a video game, but despite the magic and myth made real, it tends to keep close to normal physics.

That makes enough sense considering both the goal of a world that seems fine to the players and the fact it was a real world. Not that a world couldn’t have completely game-like physics. It isn’t like HP is the “realest” of things going by Jason’s current and past sensibilities.

Not that HP is quite the end all, be all sort of thing as some like to think. Jason had been pondering on the subject and the deeper he digs, the less consistent it seems to get. Elementals, however, are an exception.

Their HP is basically just their power pool and so unless you’re dealing with the smarter variety where you can just burst their core, you’re stuck grinding away. A thing Jason has now been doing for ten minutes.

Though so far Jason has held back on using his stamina based war stomp. It worked amazingly way back when he climbed the first rock fall, but this time he wanted to test himself. To grind himself down, just as much as he is grinding the earth elemental down.

This grind is more real than most would be able to handle. Both his hands, even the one on the injured arm, look like they’ve been in cases in red amber. Which honestly isn’t too far from the truth.

Jason’s body is tougher because of his cultivation technique, but only to the degree of being like wood. Next rank should elevate the toughness to match normal rocks, but even that wouldn’t be enough for this fight. The elementals started out with normal rock and their power has only hardened it further.

Still, the fact he can punch a rock with all his might and not have his bones reduced to dust is quite impressive. This is especially true when you remember that he doesn’t actually have any gloves to protect his hands. Though at this point, even with the pain, Jason has begun to think of other things.

There is no challenge or excitement in the fight. Jason is honest enough to realize that is probably the best kind of fight. Excitement means there is the possibility for things to go wrong.

That doesn’t mean he has to like it. Yet with each strike, he feels himself being broken down. Like forging iron, he can feel what in his old life would be called impurities.

From a biological standpoint, that is of course nonsense. If you have toxins in your body, your kidneys and liver will work on clearing it out. Any nastiness that is sticking around after a bodies natural systems are done with things isn’t going to be so easily removed.

Not that cultivators actually believed what was being removed was literal impurities, either. Even back in the misty past, which compared to his current life is quite a long time ago. After all, history is easier to keep when you have people around who live for thousands of years.

The reason it was known so long in his last life is easy enough to understand. Those thousand year old cultivators can use various eye techniques to see things that are microscopic. So yeah, germ theory is a lot easier to come up with when someone can literally observe them doing their thing.

Not that this resulted in what people from his new life would call advanced medical knowledge. Cultivators that powerful can just brute force a solution. Why try to figure out a medicine for a specific disease when the cultivator can just kill all the bacteria or an alchemist can simply whip up a powder for every strain of the common cold all at once?