NOVEL NEXT Chapter 211: I Love Storms!
What followed was the most intense, terrifying, and oddly exhilarating chase sequence of Creed's entire life.
The landscape of this alien planet seemed specifically designed to make running for your life as difficult and dangerous as possible, with obstacles and hazards appearing at every turn that would have killed him instantly if not for his flying abilities.
Sharp, jagged rocks jutted up from the ground at irregular intervals, creating a maze of obstacles that required split-second timing to navigate safely.
Creed found himself leaping, rolling, and diving between the stone formations while the Greater Beast Lords behind him simply smashed through them with brute force, sending fragments of rock flying in all directions like deadly projectiles.
Deep crevasses opened up in the ground without warning, some of them so wide that they would have been impossible to cross without the Wings of Freedom.
Creed would reach the edge of a chasm and launch himself into the air without hesitation, gliding across the gap while the creatures behind him had to find alternate routes or simply leap across with their own impressive jumping abilities.
Strange pools of liquid that glowed with unnatural colors appeared scattered across the landscape, and Creed's instincts warned him that touching any of them would probably be a very bad idea.
He wasn't interested in finding out how quickly his bones could turn into liquid.
Swoosh!
With surgical precision, he wove between them with mesmerizing elegance while the Greater Beast Lords seemed to ignore them entirely, either because they were immune to whatever toxic properties the liquids possessed, or because they were too focused on the chase to care about potential hazards.
The two suns in the alien sky beat down with intense heat that made the air shimmer with waves of distortion, turning the already difficult terrain into a furnace that sapped energy and made breathing even more challenging than it already was in the thin atmosphere.
Creed's military uniform was soaked with sweat within minutes, and he could feel his body temperature rising to dangerous levels.
But the most terrifying aspect of the chase wasn't the environmental hazards or even the pack of enormous predators pursuing him; it was the way the number of Greater Beast Lords kept increasing as they ran.
It was truly traumatizing!
Every few minutes, more creatures would burst through the ground ahead of them or emerge from behind rock formations, joining the chase with enthusiastic roars that added to the deafening cacophony of pursuit.
And the worst part was; they were all Greater Beast Lords! Every single one of them!
It was absurd!
What had started as five creatures quickly became ten, then twenty, then fifty!
Creed found himself running not just from a pack of Greater Beast Lords, but from what was beginning to look like an entire migration of the creatures, all of them apparently convinced that he represented the most interesting thing that had happened on their boring planet in centuries.
"This is absolutely insane!" he shouted over the noise of thundering footsteps and roaring voices, his words barely audible even to himself.
"Do these things have some kind of communication network? Are they texting each other about the weird human running around their neighborhood?"
The absurdity of his situation struck him as hilarious even as he ran for his life.
Here he was, being chased across an alien planet by what appeared to be every Greater Beast Lord in existence, and his biggest concern was whether or not they had developed some form of social media to coordinate their hunting activities.
But his amusement was quickly replaced by genuine concern as he crested a small hill and looked back to see the true scope of what was pursuing him.
Oh boy…
The pack of Greater Beast Lords had grown to truly apocalyptic proportions.
There had to be nearly a hundred of the massive creatures thundering across the landscape in his direction, their combined weight creating seismic impacts that made the ground shake like an earthquake.
"Okay," Creed said to himself, his voice taking on a tone of grim determination mixed with disbelief.
His face remained calm and composed, making one assume that he was barely fazed by what was going on around him.
Inwardly though…
"This has officially moved beyond 'tactical retreat' and into 'running away screaming like a small child' territory. And I am surprisingly okay with that!"
He was just beginning to wonder if his seven-hour survival assessment was going to end very prematurely when he noticed something on the horizon ahead of him that made his heart sink with despair.
A massive wall of dark clouds was approaching from the direction he was running, moving with unnatural speed and accompanied by flashes of lightning that seemed to tear holes in the sky itself.
Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!
This wasn't just a normal storm, it was the kind of apocalyptic weather event that looked like it could strip the flesh from your bones and then use your skeleton as a toothpick.
The clouds were black as midnight and seemed to writhe and twist with their own malevolent life, while the lightning that danced between them was colors that regular lightning had no business being; purple, green, silver, and shades that didn't seem to have names.
The wind ahead of the storm was already beginning to reach his position, carrying with it the smell of ozone and something else that made his nose burn and his eyes water.
The temperature was dropping rapidly as the storm approached, creating a stark contrast with the burning heat of the twin suns that made the air itself seem to twist and distort.
Creed found himself facing a choice that was somehow both obvious and impossible at the same time.
Behind him, nearly a hundred Greater Beast Lords were approaching with the kind of determined hunger that suggested they weren't going to give up easily.
Ahead of him, an apocalyptic storm was bearing down on his position with the promise of dangers that he couldn't even begin to imagine.
He was just beginning to think that maybe fighting the pack of creatures might be the better option when something happened that made that choice for him.
Rumble!
The ground behind the approaching wave of Greater Beast Lords suddenly erupted with an explosion that made everything that had come before look like gentle tremors.
Roar!
What emerged from that explosion was something that defied description and made every Greater Beast Lord look like a harmless pet by comparison.
The creature that rose from the shattered earth was so massive that it blocked out one of the suns, casting a shadow across the landscape that seemed to swallow light itself.
Its presence radiated a pressure that hit Creed like a physical blow, making his knees buckle and his vision blur with the sheer overwhelming force of its existence.
Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!
The device on his wrist began screaming with alarms and flashing with warning lights so bright they hurt his eyes.
Looking down, he saw text appearing on the screen that made his blood turn to ice water in his veins:
"THREAT IDENTIFIED: BEAST KING
DANGER LEVEL: APOCALYPTIC
RECOMMENDED ACTION: PRAYER!"
Creed's face went pale as he stared at the screen, then looked back at the creature that towered above the landscape like a living mountain of destruction and malice.
A Beast King. Not just a Greater Beast Lord, but something so far beyond that level of threat that his survival device had apparently given up on offering practical advice and moved straight to suggesting religious intervention.
The Beast King's roar, when it came, was not just a sound but a force of nature that seemed to reshape reality itself.
The air rippled with visible shock waves, the ground cracked and split for miles in every direction, and several of the smaller Greater Beast Lords actually fell over from the sheer power of the vocalization.
Looking at the storm ahead of him, then back at the Beast King that was now beginning to move in his direction with steps that registered on seismic instruments in neighboring solar systems, Creed made what was probably the easiest decision of his entire life.
"You know what?" he said aloud, his voice filled with the kind of determined cheerfulness that people use when they're about to do something incredibly stupid.
"I've always loved storms! Rain, lightning, apocalyptic winds that can strip the flesh from your bones; what's not to enjoy? Stormy weather is definitely my favorite kind of weather!"
With that declaration, and without looking back at the approaching wave of destruction behind him, Creed activated his Wings of Freedom to their maximum extension and dove headfirst into the wall of apocalyptic storm clouds, embracing the chaos ahead as enthusiastically as if he were diving into a refreshing swimming pool on a hot summer day.
The thought of facing the beast king didn't even cross his mind!
Not even once!
In fact, he couldn't wait to dive into the terrifying storm before him!