Chapter 363: Trapped in a Barrier

Spilling the blood all over Ned's clothing made him the target for the hole worm. Ned used the Detect skill but it seemed that he was trapped inside an invisible barrier forbidding him from getting out in a radius of 30 meters. He was in a confined space together with the magical beast.

Ned used another Detect skill(for the third time) but wasn't able to find Tailor or his six puppets.

It has been his fifth day, going six in the next few hours. In that five days, almost everything and unexpected happened to Ned. But he was no way near on giving up.

Ned has a lot of happenings inside his head: the Marks, Tiathe, the Hunter Exam, and now the Order of Seven Genesys. And a lot more, like what was happening to Katolin, Toni, and the rest of the family in O'rriadt.

Ned latched from trees to trees as the magical beast was attempting to strike behind him. Even the beast wasn't able to leave the invisible barrier.

As Ned latched and glide from trees to trees, he was leaving a trail of Firelances to, at least, distract, if not, damage the beast covered in shell, and now much thicker.

After the Tailor injected its Mana to the Core, it now has a much stronger presence, thicker body, and more cunning as it relentlessly trailed Ned.

If Mana was the fuel to the Core, then all Ned needed to do was to expend all of it until nothing was left of it and die. But Ned wouldn't wait for that, and he got one thing in mind, to destroy the barrier. With the barrier destroyed, Ned will have a lot of space to move and do battle with the worm—perhaps kill it.

If only Ned got the element of surprise, he might be able to kill the beast once again. Buti it seemed that all luck wasn't on his side anymore as the beast was now locking onto him.

Ned reached the end of the battlefield. Although invisible, Ned could feel a thick Mana blocking his way. It was the barrier, and all Ned needed to do was to find its weakest spot and destroy it, releasing him of the barrier. But this was the fourth time that Ned was able to reach both ends of the barrier to find the weakest spot. But no matter how he tried, he couldn't find it. It was near impossible for a barrier to have zero weak spots. Since the weakest spot was where the barrier was created, and it should also end from there.

Ned frowned, the light under his wrist, where the Zephyr skill was being activated, dimmed lightly. Indicating that Ned's Mana was at his limit.

A thousand Mana was too much for spells for Ned to conjure. But with the Zephyr spell continuously absorbing it, along with the Silk Road, Ned must manage well his mana consumption.

Hearing the rampaging hole worm behind him, Ned dashed to find another tree to latch onto. Ned could see dimming light from the horizon, where a sharp hill was placed, adorned with trees. But Ned must exert effort in order to make it there.

"Entertain me more," the Tailor had said to Ned a few hours ago.

If that is what he meant, then, perhaps, he was here somewhere, Ned thought. His eyes scanning the trees over the horizon, where he might find the Tailor or his puppets.

If he wanted Ned to entertain him, then he must be somewhere. With that, Ned tried to focus once more.

As though the beast knows what Ned was about to do, it doubled its speed as it bore underground to follow Ned.

With the speed nearly as fast as Twali, Ned must cancel his focus and increase his own speed to outspeed the beast.

Ned had seen it before, the Mana manipulated into a fine thread. But the more fine and pure the mana was the more focus it is needed to sense it. And he doesn't have the luxury of both time and focuses to sense the Mana, he won't with the beast trailing him. All he needed was seconds to look for the Mana.

If only I got to use the Overlock, Ned thought.

Although he used Overlock and rested for days, his body was still begging not to. Since he used Overlock to the maximum, the recoil was too much for him to bear. For him to use Overlock again, he needed at least a day more of rest. Obviously he can't with the deadline of phase one coming to an end for a day, and he needed to be there when the gong to end the phase one has sounded.

Since Ned wasn't able to defeat the beast, he needed to come up with a plan. A plan to at least give him time, enough for him to find the weak spots of the barrier or the puppet's fine thread that controls them.

Ned shook his head after he evaded an acid attack. He jumped from tree to tree with the chains under his wrists now dimming, he checked his mana, it has now plummeted 800, his energy at 60%.

Ned hissed with a scowl, unintended. To hurt the beast, he needed his strongest attack, the Egneous. But if he wanted to hurt the beast so badly, he also needed to put more into it.

500 is more than enough, Ned thought and after a couple of minutes of running away from the tree to tree, Ned decided it would be time to retaliate after he was forced to stop by the invisible barrier.

Ned gracefully spun over a branch of a tree and faced the hole worm. He then put the Krisalix on its scabbard and guided 500 of his mana to the tip of his finger. He flicked himself backward after he felt a distortion happening at the tip of his fingers.

Seeing the vulnerability of Ned when he leaped midair, the hole worm put all its strength into its body and shifted it immediately to perform a coiled attack.

Unbeknownst to the beast, Egneous was already swirling at the tip of Ned's finger until it formed an orb the size of a regular person's head.

Ned held his breath and threw the Egneous with all his might.

To increase the speed at which the Egneous orb travels mid-air, Ned injected wind elements into it.

Before the beast reacts or changes its trajectory, the Egneous was already at its face.

The explosion the Egneous caused made the nearby tree danced against the unrhythmic wind that scattered in different directions. For a moment, the sky, and the hill over the horizon seemed to blur. But the barrier held on its own even with the massive explosion.

Ned felt the muscle fibers of his hands twitched, but he got to hold the pain. He landed and focused.

Three seconds passed, Ned noticed a very fine thread wrapped around the nearby tree hat reached above. It was bluish under his vision.

And so Ned dashed, climbed the tree, and pulled the Krisalix off its scabbard, and pointed the tip to a blank space before him.

The blank space distorted, and Ned was received by a knife stabbing toward him.

But before the knife was able to reach him, Ned pushed the sword to the chest of the puppet.

Caught off guard, the puppet did nothing but let out a weak growl until his hands hung freely to both his sides, letting go of the knife in the process.

The puppet's chest made a crunching sound under its black cloak and died as the Krisalix was stabbed further down.