Nolan nearly lost his footing as their attacker was hammered into the ground like a nail into softwood, so violently that she was buried headfirst up to her waist in a flattened mound of soft soil. Her legs shivered as they dangled downward, her robes pulled down by gravity to reveal a childish pair of white panties with a little pink bow on the top.

May was momentarily startled by the unexpected undergarments and lost her chance to deliver a follow-up strike. She was suddenly forced to defend against a large sword of azure energy that preceded a reverberating roar of anger that rose above the sounds of the storm.

“How dare you mess with Little White’s appearance?”

May had protected Ian from the shockwave that had followed her attack on the other woman by covering him in a heavy layer of projected inner essence and spiritual energy. Seeing that another opponent had arrived, she took decisive action and willed Ian to follow her as she dashed back to the others in the blink of an eye. She expanded the energy around him so that it encompassed Nolan and his friends, and then leapt a few hundred metres into the air and began to fly. She fled southward as fast as possible while maintaining a relatively safe distance beneath the energy storm above.

This isn’t good, thought Nolan as he tried to spot the shoreline from his heightened vantage point. A pervasive web of lightning told him that they were still quite a ways from Elmer. Even worse, the energies that the storm brought with it were agitating Nolan’s dantian, which had long-since been filled to capacity.

Nolan could hear Lyra’s anxiety-ridden voice as she repeatedly called out for her brother not to fall asleep. Blood fell from the sky wherever the group happened to pass over, though it was lost in the now torrential downpour that was hampering May’s flight path. As Nyla began to feed blood breeding pellets into Ian’s mouth, the hairs on Nolan’s arms rose up and he noticed a small figure rapidly approaching them in the darkness. Great Elder Tegan was faster than May, and it wouldn’t be long before he caught up to them.

As a rush of energy from the Millennial Ring calmed Nolan’s nerves, he decided to do what he could at the moment, however insignificant. Analyzing the circumstances from a collected standpoint, he willed a globe of Divine Spirit Fountain water to rest around Ian’s stomach, cutting contact with his energy and sealing it in place.

Everybody lurched to the side as May avoided a barrage of azure swords, each one powerful enough to impale her, let alone them. The great elder took advantage of her reduced speed by increasing his own with the help of some sort of technique. He rocketed forward so quickly that the powerful aura that surrounded him was unable to stop his long, snowy beard from whipping about as if it were a living being, his resplendent, raindrop robes similarly affected.

Three hundred metres…two hundred metres…one hundred and fifty…

Nolan forced an Earth Sect pellet into Nyla’s hands and motioned for her to eat it, since she was pale in the face after using up so much energy to teleport them so far from the tower. Her eyes didn’t leave their pursuer as she swallowed the pellet and washed it down with some energized water.

Great Elder Tegan was only about a hundred metres away and in the midst of drawing out an unknown arrayment diagram.

“Tch,” spat May. “The other two will be here in a few moments.” Frustrated and with eyes darting around in all directions, she began to draw out a diagram of her own but it was cancelled out as she coughed up a mouthful of blood.

“Just worry about keeping us moving, I’ll figure something out!”

For the first time since he’d met her, May looked worried. She didn’t seem to have much faith in his ability to forestall the old man, but nevertheless she continued flying as fast as she was able.

Whatever arrayment their pursuer was drawing out, Nolan was positive that it was extremely dangerous purely based upon the fact that it was taking him so long to complete.

I need to interrupt that diagram!

Thinking quickly, Nolan produced twenty barrels of gunpowder and surrounded them all with a large mass of spiritual energy, which he used to drag them along his wake as their enemy maintained a hundred-metre distance. Wasting no time, Nolan trapped large amounts of Origin Energy within each barrel by sealing them in individual, secondary layers of spiritual energy, which he kept linked to his body via tiny threads of the same power.

May had clearly suffered a significant amount of damage from the white-haired woman’s attack, evidently more than a simple throw as Nyla suggested.

Like a puppet master giving a grand demonstration, Nolan willed the barrels to fly toward their oncoming enemy with about four metres of space in between one barrel and the next. The great elder didn’t seem to view these powder-filled containers as anything more than paltry obstacles thrown his way in a desperate attempt to slow him down.

“Don’t force my hand, May!” Great Elder Tegan completed his arrayment diagram just as he passed through the crowd of barrels. “We haven’t always agreed on things, but I don’t want to kill you. Just hand over those kids and surr—”

Nolan caused the barrels to converge on the old man and activated the snapfire beans within them by relying on the thin threads of spiritual energy that connected them to his dantian.

“Go as fast as possible!” he yelled at May. “Now!”

Untampered with, a single barrel could produce a strong enough explosion to mortally wound anyone in the Profound Entry stage and those in the earlier levels of Integration depending on how close the targets were when the container exploded. After many hours of experimentation, Nolan had incorporated the enlightenment that he’d gained after observing the eternally-burning campfire within the glade to vastly increase the strength of his explosives. Everything in this world was composed of Origin Energy on some level or another, even flames, water, and minerals. Simply sealing a large amount of condensed Origin Energy within a single barrel increased the explosive’s potency by a substantial amount. While this wasn’t enough to harm someone at the Genesis stage, it was a different story when there were twenty of them.

Nolan and his friends watched on with hammering hearts as the great elder made to swipe the barrels out of his path but was instead swallowed up by a tremendous explosion, the brief flash lighting up the stormy night in between two thunderous bouts of lightning. The air shook, the sky screamed, and an intimidating shockwave swept out in all directions. The smoke cloud that followed was so massive that it quickly blended in with the dark clouds above, having engulfed Nolan and his friends in an instant.

May had struggled to maintain her course, but was almost instantly flung upwards along with everyone else. The energy that she’d been carrying them with was instantaneously dispersed, leaving them nearly defenseless. With nothing linking them together, Nolan anxiously watched as everyone went flying off in different directions with uncontrollable spins and flails. Thankfully Nyla was able to cloak them all in barriers that, while only forestalling the shockwave for a moment, lessened the force that flooded over them like a giant wave coming down upon a fleet of tiny boats.

Since Nolan had been occupied with carrying out the attack, Nyla’s barrier saved him from a great deal of hurt. Having been hurled a hundred metres away from the spot where the group had initially been dispersed, Nolan followed the ark of the parabola that he was currently drawing and anticipated his trajectory. He caught himself on a platform of spiritual energy and stood still as he heard a terrible boom echo across the land from somewhere nearby.

This is fucked, he thought as he felt his dantian suddenly vibrate. It was the abundance of energy in the air, which was more prominent at his current altitude of several hundred metres. Throughout their flight, some of the environmental energies had seeped into his body and instigated a strange reaction within his inner essence channels. Not now…please, not now!

Trying to suppress the burning feeling that was quickly spreading throughout his chest, Nolan took out his magic sword, stepped off of the platform, and then slipped it beneath his feet a few moments into freefall. Activating its essence fusion effect, he pinpointed Sean and Esteban’s positions and immediately rushed over to the younger of the two.

“Nolan!” The kid was standing upon a precarious platform of spiritual energy, impossible to see within the smoky, cloudy night. “Go after Ian and Lyra! Hurry!”

The two in question were still in freefall, sister clinging to brother as they plummeted to the earth.