Falling from the sky had been nowhere on my bucket list. Neither had getting attacked by a small army of Bakurean. We’d been lucky that none of them were at the Rulers’ power level, but there had still been more than enough troublesome picks among them.

  My plans had been simple, and they certainly did not include crashing through a canopy, bending my spine as I smashed into a thick branch and broke it. Phoenix wings were useful and all, but only when they didn’t disappear mid-fall.

  The Elemental Phoenix’s wings flapped twice as the ground neared, but the bond failed both of us and terminated the Soulfusion. Still more than a hundred meters in the air, I plummeted toward the ground once more, greeting the trees beneath me with screams.

  Getting hit in the face by dozens of smaller branches or tumbling to the ground had been far from perfect. Especially when I landed in a thorny bush in the middle of… honestly, I had no idea where I was. The wilderness, somewhere, supposedly only a few days away from my Bastion.

  Make that weeks, I corrected myself.

  It would have been three to four days with the flying ship soaring through the sky day and night. I… had no flying ship in the onyx ring. Ruler Kazriel hadn’t needed one. Unfortunately, he hadn’t needed a cruiser either. That would have been a great boon, but that would have been too easy, wouldn’t it?

  Snickering at my fortune, I tried to sit upright. My arms creaked and groaned as I moved, pressing my palms into the shrub, thorns digging into my hand. Ether seeped into my palm and my hand went numb. The rest of my arm followed, and I crashed back onto the shrub. Something pierced my back, which went numb next.

  The sensation spread rapidly. I lost control of my eyes. My sight blurred and the world darkened even as I called upon the Major Fire Aspect with the last of my ether reserves.

  Flames ignited within me. My body’s temperature skyrocketed as I flooded it with as much heat as needed to destroy the toxin or whatever devious substance had entered my body.

  My mind was muddled, but whether tainted ether or poison had invaded me hardly mattered. I reached out to the liquefied fire-attuned ether in the Blazing Gates and retrieved as much as I could muster in my condition.

  No more than a trace of liquefied ether answered my call, and I struggled even with that. My mind resisted my efforts to remain awake, pulling me deeper into the folds of whatever the shrub’s thorns had done to me, but the liquefied ether flowed into the Major Fire Aspect, unleashing an inferno through my body.

  I regained control slowly as the poison broke down, yet I failed to open my eyes. The adrenaline keeping me going faded, leaving me unable to lift a finger. Even my mind was unwilling to keep working once it was clear the poison no longer threatened to kill me.

  Darkness consumed me again. This time, I was not in immediate danger. I was merely in an unknown region filled with dangerous ether plants such as the shrub beneath me and beasts of unknown danger rating.

  How bad could it be?

  ***

  The smell of blood and wet cat swirled around me, mingling with smoke and ash. I jerked upright, or tried to, but my body wouldn’t budge.

  My eyes fluttered open with some difficulty, meeting a charred tree. My back was pressed against the warm ground, ash swirling in the air as the muffled sound of paws pressed through the layers around me.

  The first thing I noticed were bulky, yet graceful bodies covered in brownish-green fur. They were felines, possibly camouflaging panthers or tigers, long fangs jutting from their upper jaws.

  A dozen skulked around me, their noses pressed to the ground, only to cough when they breathed in warm ash.

  Watching the beasts, their two-meter-tall frames passing beside me, my body tensed. I tried to move, to leap to my feet and defend myself, yet I couldn’t move a finger. Instead, I held my breath as one of the felines walked past, nearly brushing my fingers as it stepped through the shrub’s remains.

  Why aren’t they–? My eyes narrowed as I tried to understand.

  The beasts had yet to attack me. Hope bloomed in my chest, thinking they might be like some of the peaceful beasts I’d encountered before. However, it wasn’t that they didn’t want to attack me. They were searching for something – for me. They simply couldn’t find me. I was right beside them, but they failed to see me.

  Glancing down with effort, I understood why.

  I was invisible.

  My bond with the Mirage Serpent shone brilliantly. It was active and strained. The bond had suffered as much as the others after I overextended Soulfusion with each of them but that was the problem. Resh’s connection to me was not strong yet. My bond with the Mirage Serpent hadn’t even reached the 1st Stage.

  Nonetheless, Resh had taken over, forcefully triggering his natural ability within me, straining bond and beast alike. And once the Mirage Serpent realized I was awake, it fell asleep, its power fading slowly.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Exhaustion flooded the bond even as I hoped the Mirage Serpent would maintain its invisibility for a few more minutes. Or at least until the feline beasts left. Alas, Resh had already surpassed his limits to protect me.

  Thanks a bunch, Resh. Don’t worry about food after this. I’ll make sure you never feel hungry again. I promised the Mirage Serpent, grateful to have survived this long. At least I was awake now and my chances of survival were a thousandfold higher than they’d been minutes ago.

  I tried to move again, but I managed only a groan. My muscles were as stiff as steel bars, my tendons frozen solid. The felines perked up and jerked around, their eyes seeking the source of the sound but finding nothing.

  To my great misery, the beasts did not seem as stupid as the average beast. While instincts guided them, seeds of intelligence had blossomed in their minds, pushing them slightly ahead of Nox in that regard.

  The Ferronox Mantis did not agree, his displeasure reverberated through me, though that didn’t change the truth. Several beasts closed in on my location, and it wasn’t long before one began clawing the air. Another dug into the ground, searching for tunnels beneath the ash, while the others listened intently, their senses fully unleashed, ready to find me.

  Alas, they failed to find me as I struggled to regain control of my body. I ignored the beasts for as long as they couldn’t find me, and a contingency plan formed. If one could call it such. Being invisible sure was helpful, even if knowing the effect would fade in a few minutes was anything but reassuring. It was a good thing Nox was ready to leap out of the World, scythes brandished to clash with the feline beasts. That was the backup plan, the emergency, and not something I wanted to bet my life on.

  The beasts felt dangerous. Maybe Nox could deal with them, but I couldn’t be sure about that.

  Stabilizing my breathing as the feline beasts closed in on me, I almost sighed in relief when rustling branches diverted their attention. Their heads shot toward a nearby tree in unison, and mine followed, locking onto a bipedal figure covered in long hair. A pair of hairy arms that reached far down below its almost human-like legs stretched out, fingers pointed at a nearby beast.

  A monkey, surely not taller than a pre-teen, cackled and exposed yellow teeth. Its eyes glowed bright violet, and a violet bullet whipped through the air only a moment later. The projectile was nothing like Daniel’s lightning bullet. It almost seemed as if the monkey’s bullet carried a heavy mass as it barreled through the air, distorting space where it passed, piercing the target’s skull easily.

  Its gaze drifted to me and lingered for a moment, but that couldn’t be. Mirage might be wearing off, but it had yet to deactivate. A second bullet formed and tore through yet another skull a moment later before dozens of monkeys emerged from all around us. Unlike the first one, the newcomers were broader and packed with heavy muscles. They leaped at the beasts from all directions and engaged the feline beasts in melee even as the cats tried to flee.

  A massive battle unfolded around me, with one unlikely pair thrashing each other on top of me. Too engaged in their conflict, they failed to sense the oddity in the ground below. The feline beast’s dagger-like fangs dug into the muscular monkey, who head-butted the tiger with enough force to crack something.

  My stomach was trampled upon, but the beasts weren’t heavy enough to cause any lasting damage. Keeping my mouth sealed even as beasts around me died in masses, I was glad when the scuffle ended at last. The monkeys emerged victorious and departed, carrying the corpses of their fallen brethren and the feline beasts behind them, leaving me behind in bloody mud and smaller body parts nobody bothered picking up.

  I… am alive… right? I asked myself, not quite believing it.

  My fingers twitched, and my lips curled into a faint smile. It hurt, which only affirmed my condition. Alive but thrashed. And even that was putting it lightly.

  Closing my eyes to focus on the state within me, I found myself introspecting a bombed battlefield. All bonds were damaged and needed a lot of time to recuperate. My muscles were also overextended from circulating too much ether through them to augment them temporarily. My weave did not look much better either, unfortunately.

  If anything, the weave looked even worse. I’d leaked quite a bit of ether into it, but it wasn’t circulating as it ought to. The Blazing Gates had jump-started a circulation system that helped me replenish all the Gates. The system failed me now that I needed it most, but I should have expected as much.

  After eating three strips of near-perfectly processed Monarch jerky, my body should have been falling apart. Instead, my weave was still intact–if one ignored more than a dozen branches that were only held together by small threads, some as thin as a strand of hair.

  Pushing ether through said branches would tear them apart, permanently damaging the weave. That, as obvious as it was, wasn’t what I wanted. Ignoring the state of my body, I was quite happy. I was alive, and my weave would knit itself together given enough time. The soul-shares would heal too, growing stronger in the aftermath of the events.

  Repairing the soul-shares was simple. It needed some time and a mountain of soul energy, which was already being consumed. The inner World produced a lot of soul energy thanks to the constant refinement, and the first bond should be restored in due time–a day if I was lucky, two if the bond’s damages reached deeper than anticipated.

  As for the weave, it offered more problems. Circulating ether through a damaged weave was painful, but the damaged sections would absorb the ether and heal faster in return. But that was exactly what I couldn’t do here. The damage was too extensive to circulate ether, which only worsened my situation. My Ether Gates never stopped leaking, after all.

  For the time being, I could only make a detour around the severely damaged spots. Avoid them as best as I could and hope they’d recuperate enough to revive the Blazing Gates’ circulation system shortly. Avoiding the severed branches would isolate a few Ether Gates, but that had to suffice.

  Phoenix fire could help… maybe? I wondered, trying to reach the Elemental Phoenix…to no avail.

  Volix had healed the gaping hole in my abdomen. Precisely, the fire had mended the worst damage through phoenix fire. If not for that, I would have never regained consciousness. I’d be dead.

  The Elemental Phoenix was hard to reach at this point, but the same could be said about my other Soulkins. Then again, the Mirage Serpent was asleep, and Aureus had been unavailable for a chat for months. Using Soulfusion with Aureus had only postponed the Earthheart’s return, which was almost as annoying as being unable to move that damn body of mine.

  Nox was the only one accessible to me at this moment. His bond was the least damaged, and it had already started recovering.

  Having another set of scythes to fight alongside me was great, but the Ferronox Mantis was probably not the best companion to have in a forest filled with unknown dangers. His bloodlust far surpassed his intellect, which promised to be problematic.

  At least I’m not alone, I grimaced, my fingers twitching as I sat up.

  At the same time, my stomach growled, and Mirage’s invisibility faltered, depriving me of the last thing that protected me from the wilderness’ threats.