Chapter 863

Kat wasn’t sure if she was making good time or not. The scenery was rather samey and when that is added together with the continual increase in the viscosity of the sludge she had to walk through... well it just made things very hard to put into perspective. It was only just recently Kat felt she’d passed ‘the centre’ or as close as they were going to get. She could feel the muck getting easier to run through with every step. Or that’s what Kat was telling herself anyway.

She was using her tail and wings a lot more then she’d imaged as well. They helped in a surprisingly large number of ways when she was running through what couldn’t really be called ‘water’ unless you were really stretching it. Her wings and tail both provided a good deal of balance, and her tail was able to slap against the poison to give her a further boost with every step, while her wings helped mitigate some of the weight she was carrying and sink a bit less.

Up top things were... well not great but they were getting by for now. Xiang was really struggling with only the one arm and Yang wasn’t doing much better. Xiang had taken to just laying on the same side his free arm was while dealing with the awkward position of his feet. Yang on the other hand was trying to sit up somewhat and paying the price for it. Her wrists were starting to really hurt from knocking into the ice frequently and her ankles weren’t much better. Lily... Lily was doing the best out of the group of riders but she wasn’t able to sleep and her neck was a bit sore from tilting her head. She needed to ensure Xiang didn’t get impaled after all.

Kat’s reserves were... not doing the best. She’d been running for about an hour and they were reaching about fifty percent. She’d burned a lot of extra energy right at the start, so she probably had another full hour of running, if not more on account of it now finally starting to get easier again but... it still wasn’t particularly good efficiency. Then again, she was using her demonic energy to boost her body and keep the damned ice raft together while carrying it around. Perhaps she deserved a bit more credit considering she didn’t believe she was any slower than the cultivators even while carrying them both and dealing with worse terrain. Still. It wasn’t the time or place to complain, so she just kept running.

It was half an hour after that though... that she noticed something in the corner of her eye. Which considering her peripheral vision meant something was moving behind her. Kat took in the relatively straight line of sticks ahead of her and the fact it was free of debris and turned around to look for the movement but she couldn’t see anything. A quick review of her memories proved otherwise though.

*Hmm...* “We might have incoming!” shouted Kat over the rushing air.

“What do you mean?!” shouted Xiang in response.

.....

“Well I saw something. Not sure what it was, it blended in too well for me to know for sure... I’m just not sure what you may or may not want to do about it...” said Kat.

Xiang frowned and looked down at Lily who returned his gaze, not really sure what he was searching for in her face. Yang didn’t look too happy at the news and asked, “Well can’t you just blast it with your fire again?”

Kat shrugged, paused and realised she’d manage to shrug while carrying so much weight, and shrugged again, pretending not to hear the hissing coming from Yang at the abrupt rise and fall of the ice not quite in sync with her footfalls. Still, all Kat could offer as an answer was, “Maybe?”

After a few moments of silence Yang said, “Maybe? That’s it? Why the heck is this suddenly a maybe? Didn’t you manage to take out all of those fish before with just a bit of fire?”

“Yes I did but there’s quite a few problems with repeating that feat. The first, and most important is that I’m using a good deal of concentration to keep this ice from melting. I can, at best, shoot vaguely in the direction of whatever is chasing us. The problem with that is despite my vision I almost missed it. I’d need to let it get close... and as good as my demonic fire is... it’d probably get in some death throws...

“On top of that... I’m down to about 35% of my energy. It’s probably enough to take the thing out... but I’ll need to rest shortly afterwards and I don’t think we’d want to be in close proximity when whatever else starts to smell the dead meat. Of course on the other hand, I don’t really know how safe it is for y-”

Kat jumped with all of her might. She wasn’t quite sure why she did, but her instincts were screaming at her. Maybe she noticed the ripples in the water, maybe it was just a gut feeling. Whatever it was, Kat praised it for the help. With the extra weight and the unstable ground Kat didn’t get very high, barely past her double her height. It was just barely enough.

A massive snake, jaws open wide enough to swallow her whole. It was the same blackish purple as the muck with scales so tightly packed it made a tin of sardines look roomy. It’s eyes glowed a bright green and it had fangs larger then Kat’s leg. Only her well timed jump stopped her from being crunched by the thing. Kat wasn’t sure how deadly it was just yet... but she was leaning towards very.

The beast was massive, this meant that despite its exceptional speed, something that easily eclipsed Kat’s on the unfavourable terrain, it just seemed to keep going. It was like a bullet train, whizzing past but remaining in view because of its length. Even as Kat jumped over it, the rest of the snake continued to flow through the spot Kat had been like some kind of endless meat waterfall. Not a pretty thing to imagine, but Kat didn’t really find the situation pleasant either.

It felt like time resumed the moment her feet hit the water and it took a fair bit of effort on her tail’s behalf to prevent her tripping as she stumbled through the mud. It wasn’t the nicest footing and she hadn’t properly planned for a landing, let alone one into unstable mud carrying an unbalanced chunk of ice and two people and a Memphis. Kat just barely had enough extra concentration to let out a jet of fire springing from her tail directed mostly towards the snake.

Kat couldn’t help but glance back towards the snake to see the results and was immensely disappointed. The snake seemed to have the ability to control water, or more accurately, the poisonous muck they were wading through. Her fire simply froze the floating bits of poison. As Kat wasn’t consciously controlling it, the fire didn’t try to get through to the snake. *SHIT.* Kat’s mental complain was reinforced by Xiang’s next words. “THAT’S A RANK 3 SPIRIT BEAST!”

Now. Kat knew she wasn’t necessarily outclassed by something like that snake. In a straight fight, she was pretty confident in her ability to come out on top. The problem was, this could not be considered a straight fight. Not only did the beast have the terrain advantage, it didn’t have to protect three weaker party members. Kat was all but certain Xiang and Yang could do nothing against it, and Lily hadn’t even managed her first spell yet!

The easy answer of just blasting away at it with demonic energy wasn’t available, and her reserves were down by another two percent from that blast. So, just a bit more than 30% of her demonic energy reserves, a snake that was probably a couple of tonnes above her weight class, three people to protect and a heck of a lot of poison around. Part of Kat wanted to just hurl the ice and riders as far away as possible. Sadly, Kat doubted she could throw it far enough considering the snake was able to out-speed her in the water. It managed to negate two of her largest advantages rather well.

The first was of course her flight. That was decidedly not an option here. The danger didn’t suddenly allow her the ability to carry more than one person in flight, and she wasn’t going to just leave someone for dead, no matter how annoying or angry they may be. Her second biggest advantage was her demonic fire. A nice ‘kill it with fire’ option that worked shockingly well against many many things. Sadly, this beast seemed to be smart enough to avoid it, and powerful enough to call up a shield. It didn’t need to dodge if it could throw water in the way.

*How the heck am I getting out of this one...*