NOVGO.NET Chapter 317: Another one (3)
Chapter 317: Another one (3)
He breathed.
Not to live. To move.
The mana surged through him—not wild, not raging. It flowed like blood newly remembered. His body accepted it as if it had always known how. No resistance. No barriers. Just a connection that had waited for the right moment to open.
And now that it had?
He felt the difference.
First in his lungs—each breath deep and clean, no longer ragged. Then his legs—burning before, now suddenly ready. The muscles snapped into place, tension easing into power. The ache in his bones didn’t vanish, but it no longer mattered.
His pulse steadied.
His vision cleared.
And when he pushed off the ground—
He launched.
The terrain blurred past, each footfall sharper, more decisive. His speed had doubled, maybe tripled, but more than that—it felt natural. He wasn’t burning fuel anymore. He was being fed by it. Every motion took in mana. Every breath filtered more into his core.
The rumbling behind him hadn’t stopped. The crack still widened. The lava still surged.
But it didn’t matter.
Because now he was faster than it.
The wind no longer felt like resistance. It wrapped around him, cutting past his ears as he accelerated. Debris in his path didn’t trip him—they barely registered. His senses extended farther than his body, feeding him information a heartbeat before he needed it.
His mind quieted.
No panic.
No fear.
Just movement.
His body moved like a beast freed from a broken cage, and with every stride, he understood more.
This wasn’t just strength. It wasn’t just survival.
It was control.
He could feel the mana coursing through his limbs like a second bloodstream—like the veins had been built for it all along. It wasn’t random. It wasn’t chaotic. It had a route. A rhythm. And every pass reinforced him—tightened his steps, lightened the burn, stabilized his core.
’So this… this is [Mana Circulation],’ he realized.
He had no name for it before, no technique. But the feeling—that resonant hum flowing across his chest, his shoulders, his legs—it was unmistakable. It aligned with what the Awakened talked about in passing, like it was reserved for prodigies or savants.
Most learned it after cultivating mana pools. After forming cores. After months, sometimes years, of delicate training.
Damien?
He skipped the line.
’This is backwards…’ he thought, brow furrowed even as his feet kept flying. ’No pool. No core. Just… instinct.’
It should have worried him. But right now?
He didn’t have the luxury.
The ground behind him was falling away faster than ever, the heat biting at his heels like molten breath. The quakes hadn’t stopped, and now new fractures began to spider across even the stable ground ahead.
He kept running—until suddenly, the ground just… ended.
Damien stumbled to a halt, breath ragged. “Haaah…”
He looked down.
A cliff. No. A goddamn abyss.
Clouds churned far, far below, blanketing the unseen base of the world. Wind howled upward from the rift like it was alive. Across the gap—maybe thirty meters or more—another ridge jutted from the void. Solid, steep, stable.
Too far for a normal leap.
He took a step back.
Looked down again.
“I was this high up… the entire time?” he muttered, voice thin from exertion and disbelief.
“Haaah… Haaah…”
Damien muttered under his breath, his voice carrying only to the wind that whipped around him, “This is… insane.”
Such massive monsters—those colossi, those impossible, world-warping things—they had been fighting atop this? This spire in the clouds? This isolated slab of dying stone balanced over an endless void?
The sheer absurdity of it stole what little air he had left.
“Crazy,” he said again, quieter. “Fucking crazy.”
He turned his gaze back, and what he saw snapped the haze of disbelief from his face.
The crack.
It was there.
It was here.
It was everywhere.
A jagged, advancing mouth of stone and flame, splitting the plateau like a loaf torn by god’s hands. The heat made the air shimmer. The pressure bent it. And it was surging forward.
Toward him.
His eyes dropped to the edge.
Then to the clouds below.
And in that instant—
His stomach dropped.
Because if this place was the edge… and if he was at the edge…
Then there was only one direction left for the rest of this world to go.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
It would fall.
The entire section of earth he stood on would break. Plummet. Get swallowed by the abyss.
He had a minute—maybe less.
Damien turned his gaze across the void. Thirty meters, maybe more. The other ledge was wide, flat, safe. It shimmered faintly with green and gold—mana pooling naturally there, like a harbor welcoming him. It wasn’t an illusion.
It was where he needed to be.
His jaw tightened.
“No options,” he muttered. “No time.”
He looked down at his legs—his still-burning calves, the trembling tension in his quads, the way mana buzzed beneath his skin like a silent engine waiting to fire again.
He backed up slow at first, measuring the distance, the ground already trembling beneath his boots.
Then he ran.
Fast. Hard.
Each step thundered across the crumbling stone.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
His heart wasn’t just racing—it was a war drum, hammering against his ribs in frantic rhythm. Blood surged. Mana surged. The pressure behind him grew louder, closer—molten wind licking at his back like a beast breathing down his neck.
If he was going to jump…
He had one shot.
One.
He exhaled.
“Huuuuuuuu…”
Breathe out the panic.
He sucked air back in—sharp, deep—filling his lungs not just with oxygen, but with presence. With mana.
And he pulled.
He didn’t command it—he wasn’t trained for that. But he could feel it. Feel the way it moved when he needed it, the way it surged when he begged for more. It crashed into his limbs, pooled into his legs.
Dizziness hit him like a wave—just for a second. A hot flush behind his eyes. His vision shimmered.
But there was no time.
No fear.
Just now.
His feet hit the last meter.
And then—he launched.
He tore across the ground like a storm given form—legs pumping, burning with the strain of every ounce of mana he could pour into them. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t refined. It was raw. It was desperate.
But it worked.
The air blurred around him.
His vision tunneled, edges graying as the rest of the world failed to keep up. His heartbeat filled his ears, pounding loud enough to drown out the roaring collapse behind him.
And then—
He saw the edge.
One heartbeat away.
Two.
He didn’t think.
He didn’t calculate.
He willed.
Poured every last drip of mana into his legs—screamed it through his bones, through the muscle and tendon already threatening to snap. He didn’t know how. He didn’t care.
He just did it.
CRACK!
The ground split beneath his foot—stone exploding under the pressure—and Damien shot upward like he’d been launched from the gods’ own bow.
The wind roared past his ears.
The sky opened above him.
And for one long, impossible moment—he flew.
He soared.
The air whipped past him, cold and thin despite the firestorm below. His body cut through the wind like a thrown blade—joints screaming, vision flickering. And yet, as he reached the peak of his arc, the world slowed.
It wasn’t real.
Just sensation.
That frozen breath before the fall.
He couldn’t see the bottom. Only clouds far beneath, stretched endlessly like a pale, shifting sea. If he missed—if he fell—it would be over. That knowledge lodged deep in his chest, cold and sharp.
But then—
There it was.
The far edge.
So close now.
His arms shot out—
CLACK!
Fingers caught stone. Cracked, hot stone, but solid. He grunted, muscles tightening as momentum yanked his body downward. His feet swung out over nothing. His chest slammed the ledge. But he held.
Teeth grit. Biceps burning. He hauled himself upward, dragging over the jagged edge with a sound like metal over gravel.
Then—
He looked back.
And for the first time in hours—maybe days—he shivered.
The entire plateau behind him was collapsing.
Massive shelves of land breaking off and tumbling into the abyss. Chunks of ancient ruin, entire stone monoliths, twisting pylons—everything—disappearing into molten oblivion. Rivers of lava poured in cascading sheets, tumbling from the fractured terrain like the earth itself was bleeding.
Waterfalls.
Not of water.
But flame.
Red-orange veins spilling endlessly into the void, glowing brighter than the sun behind thick columns of smoke.
The world groaned as it fell apart.
And Damien just lay there for a moment—half-sprawled on the ledge, fingers still curled into stone—watching the place that had nearly consumed him vanish into heat and ash.
He breathed.
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