[MA] 169. Firm Resolve (Patreon)

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[A/N: 3/3 chapters this week. Next one on Tuesday.]

Shen couldn't pay attention to the two thousand D-ranks that suddenly invaded Earth. He had his own issues to deal with.

Five hundred new D-ranks had just appeared nearby, focusing solely on him. He could tell from their armor alone, which felt significantly more challenging to cut through than the ones from the previous gnolls, that these were stronger foes. The hundreds of domes were in place to slow him down if he attempted to escape from such a sight.

Shen didn't plan to. As much as he worried for Earth's troops, he didn't even know if he could deal with the significantly fewer gnolls around him, much less the thousands outside. He would do his best here, then help if he survived.

The over seven hundred gnolls were positioned in three concentric circles inside the magic domes. The first circle had one hundred gnolls thirty yards away from Shen. It consisted primarily of the weaker gnolls he had been fighting against. The next had two hundred gnolls and stood fifty yards further. The last circle had four hundred gnolls and was seventy yards away from the second—one hundred and twenty away from Shen.

Stragglers could be seen here and there, as well as eight gnoll tanks from their defensive line that had ended up inside the domes.

Five gnolls were further than the others, almost touching the closest dome two hundred yards away from Shen. They were equidistant to each other, perfectly surrounding him. When they became visible, they were already running in his direction.

As soon as they got one hundred and fifty yards away from him, Shen felt five auras slam against his.

He finally found out how auras interacted with each other.

Alien willpower assaulted his mind and pushed back his influence on the world. It was similar to what happened when energy met energy, but none of the parties were locked in place. He could simply run away to avoid the enemy's aura.

Shen couldn't do that now, so he had to withstand the mental assault. It gave him an instant headache and forced him to fight those five mentally on top of the physical battle he was already a part of.

He was forced to give up on some of his aura range to focus on the physical battle and was disappointed when it didn't decrease the headache even slightly. Auras were always active. He wasn't trying to retake the area around him or fight the other auras, yet his aura naturally wanted to impose itself on the world. Thus he was locked in a constant state of mental battle—one in which he kept being punched in the metaphorical face.

At least four mental assaults were relatively weak, the willpower behind them too lacking. They still bit into his focus, though, and the fifth aura user had a monstrous will. The gnoll had such a firm resolve that Shen felt he was only half as powerful at best.

So he was forced to accept his limits.

Shen didn't have enough willpower, focus, and awareness to fight both that powerful will and the physical enemies around him. Therefore, he focused on the physical world. He only left a token defense on his aura so he wouldn't instantly lose it, but it would be gone in less than three seconds if nothing changed.

Fortunately, he had a plan.

Shen noticed that the enemy auras couldn't aid each other to combat him; they were fighting each other, too. Each one came from one direction to keep him locked between them and maximize their own area, but it also gave him an obvious strategy to follow: head toward one aura user, kill them, and repeat.

He enacted his plan at once.

Shen would rather kill the aura user with the strongest will first, but they were well-protected. The small and fat gnoll aura user wore armor that looked like a grated metal ball and clearly limited their maneuverability, yet Shen's Path told him it was an effective protective gear. It could defend well, even against his best attacks. He would need time to deal with that—time in which he would be under attack by other gnolls. And there were five strong-looking gnolls near the aura user, probably bodyguards or specialized assassins waiting for Shen to get close.

Shen turned to the one with the weakest willpower instead. The tall, thin gnoll wore thick plate armor and yielded a morning star and shield. He had bodyguards too, but only two, and they looked weaker.

An obvious bait, yet one he would take his chances with. His Path told him it had a higher chance of success than going against the strong aura user and the elites close to it.

Shen shot at the weak aura user at peak speed.

Five yards later, he was glad he hadn't completely given up on his aura.

Its range was already limited to forty yards. Yet, it let him feel an invisible, solid, massive block of metal on the way, right in front of the first gnoll circle. He jumped over it to keep moving and noticed that his mana sense didn't pick up on whichever magic kept the block invisible. It stood to reason that mana sense could be blocked or denied, yet it was his first time seeing it.

The first circle had mainly weaker gnolls who didn't react in time to his passage. Shen kept moving, but the new gnolls wouldn't let him have such an easy time as before.

He had been forced to decrease his speed to Mach 18 because of the focus wasted against the mental assault. No gnoll could move as fast, but ten could reach Mach 15 or close, and at least a hundred others moved between Mach 10 and 15. Not all had D+ agility, then, or good footwork and speed-boosting Concepts.

However, a hundred gnolls with such speed was enough to make them a threat. It let them react and predict his movements better. Spells rained on Shen much more accurately than before.

Despite his aura's rapidly decreasing range, it was still Shen's most crucial asset—together with his soul.

The gnolls' attempts to indirectly affect him were utterly ignored. They couldn't just change the gravity beyond his aura and have it indirectly affect him. His aura denied any such changes to the natural state of Reality. Even if they had a piercing spell that could go through his aura to touch him, it would just get countered by his soul defenses.

They had to get rid of his aura first. Only then would they be able to indirectly affect him.

It was good then that more than twenty-five Concept-filled spells had to simultaneously invade his aura to get rid of it. The number had decreased from thirty because of the mental assault. Yet, paradoxically, reducing his aura range made it harder for the enemy to have that many Concept-filled spells enter it.

For now, his aura would keep assisting him in detecting, deflecting, dodging, and denying enemy attacks.

Three heavily armored gnolls from the second circle moved quickly and got in front of him just in time to block an opening in the ring he was aiming for. Two others in scale armor were flaking him, already close enough for the tip of their halberd and longsword to touch his thirty-nine-yard aura.

The way forward was blocked, but Shen had to get to the aura user. His target was already running away while the four other aura users were approaching. The three other weak ones were much slower than Shen, but the strongest one was one of the gnolls who could move at Mach 15. Shen wouldn't be ditching them any time soon.

As annoyed as he felt, he still attempted to look at the bright side: he had wanted to find out how his Path would fare against enemies of similar strength. Well, this was as close as it would get unless he gave up on his aura.

Time to work harder for Earth's survival.

Shen had been using his level seven Zephyr-Gale Footwork until now, but none of the more advanced techniques. They could be used without qi, but he needed to use some extra at such a high-level fight to make them effective.

Now, he pushed the additional energy into his body and used the most basic of his footwork's advanced techniques.

He Backsteped.

Shen rushed at the rightmost of the three gnolls in front of him, making it look like he would attack, but prepared his muscles to sidestep. The gnoll, wielding two short swords, didn't move to strike at Shen. Instead, they crossed weapons in front of them and looked attentively at his every movement. They wanted to defend, to slow him down; the others would attack him instead.

Shen sidestepped at the last moment and used all his momentum and a precise set of foot movements to increase his speed momentarily and appear right behind the gnoll.

He moved at Mach 19 for an instant. The gnoll, at Mach 14. Their speed difference wasn't so significant, so the enemy saw and started reacting to Shen, moving sideways and slashing with the swords to impede his movements.

It wasn't enough.

The Zephyr-Gale Footwork was a D+ Skill. It didn't just make Shen fast; its moves imbued different Concepts to make his movements more effective and elusive. The gnoll wasn't much slower than Shen, but that didn't mean they could move as effectively as his Path allowed him to. On top of that, they hadn't expected Shen to suddenly change directions. Surprise, clumsiness, and inferior Skills made their movements uncoordinated and awkward.

And so Shen found himself behind the enemy while they were still halfway through rotating their body.

Shen had an opening to attack the gnoll then. He considered what he would gain from it—one less fast gnoll to deal with later—against its cost—wasting time and letting the aura user escape further. He decided it wasn't worth it. The auras were the bigger issue, not the fast enemies.

He completely ignored the five gnolls and kept moving. He had just used the Backstep for the first time, so the gnolls in the very close second ring didn't have time to adapt. Shen used the same move to go past them.

Things got trickier then. Although he had acted fast and could dodge well, the enemy was reacting better now. Spells rained upon him, forcing him to spend a little more qi to activate another advanced move.

The All-Encompassing Pursuit.

He had created it and two other moves when fighting against the Werewolf Rockthrowers back in the Pioneer Tutorial. It was a predictive-dodging and running technique based on his Concept of Zephyr. The logic was that Wind was everywhere and thus could know all there was. It turned his aura more sensitive to the air coming from outside and inside it, making him much better at dodging.

Shen rushed ahead while paying attention to the tiniest details around him, dodging spells without losing momentum. It made him all but immune to the incoming attacks—at the cost of two percent of his qi per second.

Still, things were too easy.

Shen knew he was heading toward a trap, and he could feel the perfect time to spring it was close. His Path let him make good guesses about what was coming based on his fight in the rift. He knew exactly what to do to counter many of his guesses.

He just hoped they did something so unexpected that he wouldn't be able to adapt in time.

Shen's target was running to the dome. Meanwhile, the third gnoll circle was quickly reorganizing itself to intercept him. A line of thirteen heavily-armored gnolls already formed the first line of defense, while twenty gnolls behind them made a tightly packed extra line. Many others from both third and second circles were running at him.

Shen was midway through to the third ring when the gnolls finally revealed their hand.

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