This time, Jake actually did as he’d intended when he called it a speedrun. An hour after leaving the tower, he was already within another, a new Mark of Blood in hand. Well, in his Hunter Insignia. Whatever.He stormed up the tower, noticing many others already within it. There didn’t seem to be a singular faction that dominated, but just many smaller forces and parties, which was perfect. This was one of the towers still not consumed by mist, and it would contain a Count, from the looks of it.When he made it to the upper floors, he saw a great number of people grouped up before the gate. There were around thirty in total, and Jake saw that their levels ranged from 109 to 116. There were two people Jake couldn’t Identify without squinting a bit and penetrating whatever they used to hide their levels. Needless to say, their puny skills were nothing before the might of the mega-Perception build.Jake’s appearance wasn’t exactly unknown at this point, and everyone turned to him when he

Miranda felt a moment of distress as the vampire rose, spreading its aura out the gate and into the hallway. Sylphie didn’t seem to be that on edge, but the same couldn’t be said about the people behind Sven. Sven himself didn’t display anything, but just drew his weapon and yelled for his party to get ready.She also took this yell as her wake-up call and waved her hand, summoning magic circles around her. She doubted she could do much direct damage to the Count of Blood, as the Viscounts already outmatched her, but she would do her best nevertheless.Carmen threw a glance towards Sylphie, and without further ado, the two made their move. Sven followed, wielding a large, two-handed sword, with his four party members also doing their own thing. One summoned runic lines that appeared on the armor of Sven and Carmen; another began summoning root spears; the third charged with Sven, wielding a sword and shield; while the last one was the most impressive, at least visually. He roared as h

Jake burned through the sides of the gate to get it free from the wall, simultaneously keeping Eron trapped. However, it ended up taking him nearly ten minutes to get the door off, as he had to split his focus, and he felt Eron attack his arcane barrier with more and more power.Once Jake got the gate off, he grasped hold of it and pulled. The moment it stopped touching anything, he put it in his inventory and saw the barrier behind where the door had been. The people there, surprisingly enough, didn’t look alarmed, but just kept channeling their mana.Jake walked up to the magic barrier and placed his hand on it. Touch of the Malefic Viper pulsed out from his palm and began corroding the entire barrier. It had only been there to make sure the gate stayed in place, making it far from durable.With a final punch, the entire barrier shattered like glass, and Jake made it through. The moment he did so, all the casters and healers formerly channeling their power into the barrier just disa

Jake had, in usual Jake-fashion, returned late to the center of the Mistless Plains. As there was no mist in the Mistless Plains—hence the name—it was easy to see everything, far and wide. He saw several basecamps scattered about, some of them even having tall walls and magical barriers.Finding Miranda and company would have been difficult if he didn’t have a living GPS locator in the form of Sylphie. Jake made his way over, feeling many gazes upon him as he did so. Scouts from the myriad factions kept an eye on his casual stroll, none of them approaching him or making him aware they had even seen him.Oh, but someone did come to meet him.A fluffy green ball of feathers soared through the plains right towards him with incredible speed, kicking up a cloud of dust in her wake. Jake opened his eyes as the small hawk barrelled into his chest, and he hugged the cute little bugger."You got faster!" Jake commented as he cuddled the bird nuzzling up to him. He kept walking towards the plac

Casper flew towards the island with the Vault, the curse energy revolving around him as he soared through the unstable space. The cause of the disturbance in the natural balance of space was naturally the world having been partly broken by the curse, but also due to the battles that had taken place within.Many high-level beings, including A-grades and possibly even S-grades, had fought within the world known as Yalsten, and such battles rarely left the area unbroken. Yet space also had a natural inclination to always stabilize itself. It wanted to be as solid and as stable as possible while returning to its original form. This was why space could so often be shattered—or its worlds borderline torn apart—only to nearly always find a way to stabilize once more. Of course, if large parts had been broken for good… those parts remained broken, and space simply had to find an equilibrium to avoid a chain reaction.In these unstable places where space had been shattered, the physical realm