Chapter 783: Falling Mountain

After he was fully recovered, he approached the barrier again. This time, when he saw the message, he accepted it and waited to be taken to the fourth floor.

He had expected the fourth floor to be beyond the barrier, but it wasn’t. Instead, he was wrapped up in spatial energy. His willpower and Space Concept noticed first, and they blocked the teleportation without his say-so. It was an automatic defensive measure, and he could tell that he could delay or outright deny the teleportation if he wanted to.

He tilted his head and frowned. He didn’t really understand why it wanted to teleport him, but he ultimately let it happen. His body was squeezed through space, and he felt several powerful bursts of energy during this transportation.

He was a little worried at first, but then the teleportation ended, and he saw himself staring at the same rows of buildings he had just seen. However, unlike the previous floor, one main difference stood out.

He looked up, and his mouth gaped open. All he saw was the darkened sky, as an enormous object blanketed the entire horizon. After a few moments of examination, he realized what it was.

Shit.

It was a literal mountain falling out of the sky.

He let out a soft grunt and scrunched his nose. He had wondered why the rift was called the Graveyard of the Falling Mountain. The graveyard part was self-explanatory. But the falling mountain part wasn’t. On the first floor, he thought it might have been because the rift was inside a mountain or something. But then the second and third floors were out in the open, with the only mountain he could see far off in the distance.

However, it would seem he got his answer on this floor. He didn’t know how or why, but all he saw was an entire mountain falling from the heavens. The snow-covered peak pointed downward, and he saw flashes of fire where it ignited in the atmosphere.

He also spotted what seemed like the edges of a portal all around the mountain.

Was something dragging a mountain through a portal? If so, what person or creature was able to pull something like this off?

Thank goodness it didn’t seem to be falling quickly. At least not fast enough that he had to worry about it impacting the city within the next few hours. Still, seeing something of that size dropping right onto his head was a little scary. Not even he liked his chances of surviving something like that if it hit him.

The other thing that took his breath away was the immense surge of kinetic energy in the atmosphere. It didn’t take him very long to figure out that this excess kinetic energy was coming from the falling mountain.

The longer he stared at the mountain, the more questions he had. It didn't help that his mind started to hurt the longer he stared. Almost like something within the mountain was directly influencing his mind.

He quickly shook his head and turned away from the falling mountain. He soon realized that this rift floor had a time limit. That time limit was probably how long it would take for the mountain to crash into the city. That meant he didn’t have much time before he needed to leave this floor. It also meant he probably wasn’t going to be able to play with his skills as much as he originally planned to.

He internally cursed Leander. It would have been nice if the man had said something about a falling mountain when he explained the rift to him.

He would have complained more if not for the impending disaster waiting to fall on top of him. He didn’t forget why he entered this rift in the first place. He needed a fruit, and since he didn’t grab one on the previous floor, he definitely needed one on this one.

So without wasting any more of his precious time, he reinforced his body with mana and set off. Or rather, he would have, if not for his mana acting funny. He frowned and looked down at his hands. [Lord of the Dying Sun] was running, but he could sense that there were a few issues. For one, his mana wasn’t that efficient. It was draining more from his pool than it should.

It didn’t take long to figure out why. He realized that this immense amount of kinetic energy was actually interfering with his normal mana manipulation. The sheer force and pressure disrupted his mana like nothing he had ever experienced.

It was eerily similar to what a domain did to his mana. He narrowed his eyes, feeling a bit of uneasiness. He slowly activated his anti-domain technique just to see what it would do.

He created a bubble of soul energy and gently massaged it so that gentle ripples of aura spread out and protected him. Sure enough, the technique worked. Perhaps not as well as it normally did against a standard domain. But his mana responded several times better than it did before.

That being said, it was clear that mana wasn’t the solution. In fact, the answer should have been obvious. More kinetic energy charged the air than he had ever experienced. So why shouldn’t he try to use it?

He grabbed hold of a bunch of it and brought it into himself. Though he quickly realized why this might be a little bit of an issue. The kinetic energy wasn’t the only thing he grabbed. The death mana and aura that he had come to associate with this rift was a sticky little bugger. It didn’t want to separate from the kinetic energy, and when he absorbed it, the death energy came along with it.

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Normally this would be an issue. But for him, it was just a slight annoyance. His body broke down the death energy before it was able to actually hurt him. When he grabbed another handful of kinetic energy, he infused his will with his ruinous aura, essentially using the aura as a filter.

It took a few tweaks and adjustments, but after a few minutes, he cobbled something together that resembled a kinetic energy purification filter. It was more than worth the effort too, because he suddenly had more kinetic energy at his disposal than ever before.

It wasn’t even like he was ever lacking it either. For a Tier 4, he had a huge store of it. Not to mention how easily he could convert his mana into more of it if he needed it. There was a reason why his kinetic energy was the most efficient resource he used.

He did realize, though, that most people who arrived on this floor probably wouldn’t be able to do what he just did. Unless they had a mix of kinetic energy and death mana as the undead did. If not then they would likely kill themselves before they actually managed to use any of the collected kinetic energy.

It was so polluted with death energy that the risk wasn’t worth it. And the number of people who could actually filter out the death energy with aura would be even less than those with kinetic energy and death mana.

He glanced up and noticed even more of the mountain had exited the portal above and was still falling from the sky.

Okay, enough dilly dallying. I need to go find a fruit, he reminded himself.

With an explosive amount of kinetic energy running through his body, he launched himself forward, down the road of this sect/school. If he had to guess, he’d expect to find a fruit tree somewhere deeper on this floor.

However, as he was running, he quickly came across a few oddities. For one, he sensed several signatures converging on his location. However, they weren’t like the undead he had faced before.

These ones were very different. When he saw them, he realized why.

A group of four people stood before him. Three men and a single woman with a bow strapped over her back. They certainly didn’t seem like undead or monsters of any kind. They wore white robes with that same vortex symbol on their backs. What made him think they weren’t completely human were the small black veins crawling beneath their skin, moving as if they were alive. That and the flat, lifeless eyes staring back at him.

The death mana coming from them wasn’t quite as intense as the other monsters he had come across in the rift. But he got the impression that they were between life and death.

More importantly, they felt strong. Really strong…

He had a feeling that this strength came from the intense influx of kinetic energy. It would also explain the feeling of death he felt coming from them. If they were absorbing kinetic energy as he had, but without filtering it, they would be infected by the death energy as well. That being said, even that didn't quite explain the feeling he got from them.

It was like something else was enhancing them. Something very powerful.

They appeared only as Tier 4s, but he got the same impression he got from the undead troll. Perhaps even more, which was already alarming. That troll had been pushing the pinnacle of what he thought a Tier 4 monster could break through.

Seeing four people, all humans, radiating a level of strength he didn’t even sense from some of the Tier 5s he’d come across was both worrying and intriguing. It meant that there should be other Tier 4s out there that could challenge him.

His heart began to race with excitement as the first person in the group brandished a sword. Powerful and chaotic waves of kinetic energy rippled off the blade in such a dangerous way that he shivered with glee.

He didn’t even bother to hold back. He had a feeling that he didn’t need to. His body, fueled with kinetic energy, exploded a fraction of a second behind theirs. Wind tore through the streets when he crashed into the swordsman. His forearm, covered with void energy, parried the deceptively slow sword strike. It might have looked slow, but it was anything but that. Not to mention the force accumulated behind its edge. His arm shuddered from the mere deflection, and he slipped the fist of another.

He felt their wills trying to siphon his momentum, but he held strong and kept them at bay with his willpower. Without looking behind him, he detonated a charge of kinetic energy, snapping his head to the side, injuring his own neck and spine in the process.

An arrow, surrounded with so much kinetic energy that he didn't know how the arrow was still intact, narrowly missed his skull. His fractured vertebrae healed in a second, and while he sidestepped another blow at his side, he grabbed a nearby wrist.

They tried to pull away, but he clamped down on it like a hydraulic press, and before the swordsman cut off his own hand, he yanked them close and drove a knee full of void energy into their stomach. The void energy sank deep into their flesh, and while their overwhelming kinetic energy saved them, it still shot them far off into the distance, crashing into a building.

He felt his danger senses explode, though, and he turned just in time to see a fist full of kinetic and death energy a foot away from his face. Time slowed down as he examined the lethal technique, and he managed to slip a bit of ruinous aura into the skill structure. It didn’t collapse completely, but it weakened enough that he could reinforce his forehead and slam the crown of his head directly into the fist.

The hexagonal barrier of void energy shattered under the immense force, and he felt his head bleeding slightly. But the person’s fist was in much worse condition. His senses detected fractures in several places.

Still, the man showed no sign of pain. If the blowback from the punch hurt, he certainly didn’t show it. Julius wanted to test a few things, but the other three people trying to kill him weren’t kind enough to give him time.

He threw himself aside when a sword clad in kinetic energy almost bisected him. Black energy flickered over its edge, and he could feel the powerful Authority wrapped around the steel.

He got back to his feet and smiled as those four people stared at him with empty eyes. This rift was continuing to surprise him. These Tier 4s were extremely dangerous and skilled in their respective weapons.

He sidestepped as a blast of kinetic energy almost crushed his sternum; the force of the attack tore holes in the cobblestone streets. He threw up his own shield of kinetic energy to siphon another attack coming from his blind spot.

He then noticed the woman archer in the distance charging another arrow, and he chuckled softly before sliding his right foot back into his stance, kinetic energy ripping through his flesh with so much force that the ground shook.

Well, let’s see what you all got, huh? He thought, grinning eagerly before crashing towards his opponents.