Shadows dropped from above, impacting against the branch they stood upon with dull, meaty thuds.

"Grab them! Quick!" Sej shouted.

Her gun was in her hands in the blink of an eye, her fingers deftly loading the weapon with red striped, black bullets.

"Quick!" Calli shouted. "Eum, grab Viy and Mach. Gad, you take Tun and Medis. And…"

"It's not going to work! We're missing one more person!" Leon shouted, as he ran the math and reached its unyielding conclusion.

"I'll take one more!" Gad shouted, just as explosions rocked the branches above their heads.

Explosive rounds! Nar realized, glancing at Sej. Looks like we're fucked up enough for her to go all out!

The beasts that had dropped in their midst revealed themselves to be insects rolled up in tight, armored balls of spiked chitin. And as they unfolded, they revealed thick, reddish-brown bodies sporting hundreds of sharp tipped legs and long, double bladed mandibles below triple sets of glowing red eyes.

"Shit!" Jaz shouted, as one of the bugs lunged for the injured.

But a volley of bullets quickly put an end to the four beasts before they could become a threat to the ravaged party.

"Hurry! I'll keep them away, but it won't last for long!" Sej shouted, swapping back to the incendiary bullets.

"Quick!" Gad snapped. "Just tie someone to my back! Hurry!"

"The jungle suits! Quick, toss them at Leon!" Calli told Nar.

Nar leaped forward, tossing a bundle of jungle suits at the paladin, then bent low to grab the closest, unconscious person, which happened to be Cor. He pushed her against Gad's back, who took hold of her legs, and with Calli's help, Nar secured the caster to Gad using the ribbons of the jungle suits that Leon had ripped apart with desperate [Strength].

"I'll take Tun and Raf with me too!" Gad said.

"That's too much! Let me take Raf!" Nar countered.

"Just do it! We're going to need your [Aura Blade] in this!" the tank said. "Tie Tuk to your back instead, and take Jasphaer in your left arm!"

"I agree! Come on! Let's do it!" Calli shouted, as she took charge of the situation once again.

With Sej's incendiary rounds peppering the branches around them with hungry, raging explosions, they just about managed to load everyone up, with Leon and Eum also carrying a third person each.

"Sej! Can you take Jul?" Calli asked, as she held Mul and Cen under her arms.

"On it! Are you all ready?" Sej asked, firing a last volley of incendiary attacks. "We'll be running like crazy now!"

"Yes! Let's go!" Jaz shouted, though it did cause him to burst out in a fit of coughing again.

"Don't speak from now on!" Leta told him and Gad. "Just focus on breathing as we run!"

With Jul hanging over her shoulder, Sej one-handed aimed one last explosive above their heads, and then pointed towards one of the many, identical gaps in the branches. "This way, follow me! Don't get lost! Don't fall behind! The whole jungle's about to come crashing down on our heads!"

And without another word, she leaped down.

"Eum, take point with Sej!" Leon shouted. "Go! Go! Go!"

Just in time! Nar thought, scanning the branches above them and noticing that the bugs had found ways around Sej's explosions. With Jaz jumping in last, he leaped down and pulled out his sword, filling it with aura and ready for anything as the insects gave chase.

"Ugh!" Jaz said, looking back at the glowing red eyes and large mandibles clicking at their heels. The bugs were surprisingly fast.

"Eyes front!" Nar shouted. "I got them!"

"Why are they ignoring the ma'bat?" Calli shouted from up ahead.

"The ma'bat isn't going anywhere," Sej said. "But the rest of the prey is!"

"Fucking great!" Jaz grunted.

The crescendo of clicking and of many legs stampeding after the fleeing delvers drew Nar to look back… And he wished he didn't.

"There's a lot of those things coming!" he said uselessly, as the bug's many legs and segmented bodies translated to eye watering speeds in that maze of twisted brambles.

"Are these t'nothit too?" Calli asked.

"Harrar!" Sej corrected. "But you still don't want to get caught!"

We know that! Nar thought.

They ran and jumped, up and down the twisting, winding branches, having to dodge around the enormous black thorns jutting out of the wood, but also having to go around the sections that were covered in the smaller thorny vines that Nar had earlier pulled from his leg.

Is everything sharp in here? Nar asked to himself in disbelief. Sure, he'd read the reports, which had been inconspicuously devoid of images to accompany the descriptions of every leg of their journey, but the damned Hungry Jungle was revealing itself to be an absolute nightmare. How is any of this what aether naturally wanted to become? This is…

"Watch out!" Sej cried from up ahead.

But it was too late, and a huge, black and red snake, predictably covered in thorns, burst out from the right side of the branches, its huge fanged mouth heading straight for Calli. However, the snake shifted its target from the strategist midway lunge, and targeted Leon instead, colliding uselessly against a sphere of golden light.

"Keep going!" Sej shouted, as the beast fell back, hissing in confusion and shaking its head.

Nar dashed right past the open mandibles of the huge snake, his [Instinct] protesting loudly at such folly, but fortunately, the beast was too stunned by its collision to attack him. Though that wouldn't last long…

Wait… What? He thought, his mouth dropping open.

"The bugs are fighting the snake!" he shouted.

"The predator is the prey, and the prey is the predator," Sej shouted back. "Welcome to the Hungry Jungle!"

And indeed, from all around them, Nar began to pick up on a growing cacophony as the Hungry Jungle awakened. Many more beasts joined in the pursuit, but most of them got embroiled in a growing chaos of in-fighting as beast ran into beast, swarm collided into swarm, and herd crashed into herd.

"Why did it have to be us!" Jaz complained, coughing, as a group of bloodthirsty, sharp fanged baboons went at each other, devouring one another alive in a loud and bile inducing display.

"This place is saturated with hunger aspect!" Sej explained. "It's in the air, the water, the beasts… Everything in here eats something else! Even the plants!"

"Lovely!" Leta shouted, as they left the baboon brawl behind them.

Roars and cries filled the tangled branches surrounding them, and the storm of screeching pain and agony exploded to mind-boggling levels.

"Is there even anything still coming after us anymore?" Calli asked.

"Yes!" Nar, Jaz and Sej all shouted together.

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Nar didn't even need to look back. The flood of harrar was still hot on their heels, hundreds of thousands of limps clicking after them in a mad, hunger filled charge, red eyes glowing voraciously.

"Just keep running!" Sej shouted. "They don't stray too far from their territory, and will turn to fight something else once we're through!"

"And how big is that?" Leon asked.

Their blue skinned guide declined to answer. All they could do was keep running, and hope that the bugs gave up on their pursuit, and that nothing else breached the sphere of fighting beasts to target…

"Everyone be quiet!" Sej suddenly called.

Shadows flitted from above, filtering in through the gaps in that maze of branches and thorns, and the sound of mighty wing beats reached Nar's [Hearing] through the chaos.

"What is that?" Calli asked.

"Nothing we want to get tangled with," Sej replied.

There was a sudden series of crashes behind them, accompanied by the sound of many, huge beasts screeching in voracious violence, and the roars, crashes and crying only grew to even greater levels of insanity behind them.

"Just keep going, but quietly," Sej said. "And pray they don't…"

CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

"Weapons!" the guide shouted.

A sharp, orange beak exploded through the branches right above Nar's head, and a feathered creature of bright oranges and reds squeezed itself down to reach him, its curved beak ready to close around his head.

Nar had no choice but unceremoniously dump Jasphaer, and swatted that beak aside with his glowing blade, pushing as much as he could of his 93 points of [Strength] into the strike. The creature was thankfully not a rare possessed of an insane HP shielding, and a fine crack spread in its beak, through which Nar's [Lingering Aura] pushed through to ravage at the creature.

The bird beast's cry set off a ringing in his ears, and long, sharp talons clawed at the air for him next. That clawed foot was big enough to close around his chest, and the bird was probably strong enough to carry him off.

With a half-growled war cry, Nar drove his sword right into the fleshy part of the beast's talons, but the creature shrieked at the blow and blocked it, closing its talons to protect itself. It flapped its wings clumsy in the tight enclosure, unable to reach Nar, and aimed its other claw at him instead. Then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, it flapped its wings away, leaving him alone with a gust of fluttering red and orange feathers the size of his arms.

"Gad!" he shouted, following the creature's flightpath.

"Behind us!" the tank shouted back. "Deal with that!"

Nar snapped his head back around, knowing though his senses and [Awareness] what he would find there.

Crystal dammit! Thanks to those damned birds, the harrar had managed to close in on them again!

Clenching his jaw as sudden fury took him, he cycled aura into his sword, ready to bring down the whole jungle behind him if need be.

"Careful where you aim!" Sej warned him. "These branches are not like the trees in the Jungle Tops!"

"Will do!"

The sound of his blade of aura and the subsequent explosion drowned out everything else in their surroundings, but Nar's senses warned him that the harrar tide wasn't ready to give up… He wasn't ready to let the bugs reach them either and devour them, and so, ignoring the advice he had thus far obeyed, he cycled for another [Aura Blade] without the needed five second interval of rest.

His [Pathways of the Champion], despite having been upgraded to 15, protested loudly at the sudden influx of such quantities of aura so soon, but he had no choice when faced with a tide of thousands of armored bugs skittering through the dying flames of his aura explosions to tear into their exposed backs.

The others were all occupied fighting the sudden ambush of whatever those bird beasts were, and Leon was off fending some kind of giant lizard, who sniped at him from afar with a sharp, black gleaming tongue. It was up to Nar to keep them protected.

So shut up and heal! He snarled at his crying pathways. Aura's right fucking there!

Was it even possible to heal pathways the same way he healed his body? Tys had made no mention of it, and pathways were technically not physical things… But he pushed the doubts aside. One way or another, he was about to find out.

He swung his blade, and the incoming tide was once again drowned out in brilliant explosions of gray. Yet, he still heard them coming.

He cycled once more, and the pain that suddenly coursed through him was such that he almost dropped his sword, allowing it to clatter down the branch he stood upon and to fall down into the mess of the thorny depths of the Hungry Jungle.

"Nar! You're taking damage!" Leta warned.

"I'm fine!" he retorted. "Almost there!"

Another [Aura Blade] went slicing through the branches, and this time, when it exploded, it was accompanied by a mighty creaking, and followed by the sound of branches snapping and cracking.

One more! Come on, Nar! He rallied himself, as his pathways threatened to melt within him.

His bright, sharp aura edge parted the air with its customary distorted growl, and just as the harrar were about to reach them, his skill exploded amidst the weakened branches and thorns. The thunderous snapping and cracking grew to a cacophony so loud it drowned out everyone else's fighting.

Finally! Nar thought.

He leaned on his sword, forcing his fading in and out vision to focus on the collapsing, burned branches behind the party. His [Hearing], though spotty, caught the frantic clicking of the harrar hordes that had been hot on their heels as they tumbled in the chaos, and the panic soon spread to all the fighting beasts they had left behind.

I did it, Nar thought, grinning.

"Ugh…" he groaned, and raised a hand to his chest. His core was trying to claw its way out from inside him!

Worth it, he thought. But it looks like I can't heal pathways…

He clenched a trembling hand and did his best to ignore the frayed and jagged state he found his pathways in, with aura leaking from across several "wounds" to ravage through whatever parts of his body that it touched.

Yeah, that's no good, he thought, sighing. But what else was I supposed to…

His aura lurched within him once again.

What the…

He grit his teeth to keep from screaming as burning, searing, liquid pain took him from within, raw blades of aura coursing through his pathways and leaching into his body, cauterizing him from the inside.

He was cycling! As though in preparation to shot off another [Aura Blade]! But he wasn't doing it!

What's… Happening? He thought, grunting as he tried to stem the roaring aura.

But the energy would not obey his desperate commands, and instead raged through his already damaged pathways, crashing through like an angry tide, filling up his blade. And his sword? It drank heavily, gulping his aura greedily, as would a sapient dying from thirst. His scarred, purple shimmering blade sucked in his aura, filling its already close to bursting core even as it gathered aura to unleash another [Aura Blade]…

It's you! Nar realized.

His blade was cycling his aura! Stuffing itself with it alongside preparing another [Aura Blade] for him! And in the process, it was dragging him towards the void!

"Nar?" Gad shouted. "What's going on?"

"My sword!" he managed, panting against the agony. "It's going…"

He tried to store the blade, but perhaps due to all the ranging aura within it, it didn't work… And the blade began to glow so brightly that he didn't have any other choice but to aim in the direction of the collapsing branches, and fire off the attack that had been prepared for him.

The resulting explosion blew hot, searing air against his face, and he stumbled backwards, collapsing atop Jasphaer and Tuk, who sprung loose from his back. Reality vanished in an all-devouring wave of agony, but his blade was not yet satisfied!

It began to cycle out his enormous, endless aura again, drinking it in and preparing another attack! And that dual strain of aura flooding the blade's core and pathways plus also holding enough aura for another massive attack turned his pathways into screaming, begging and trembling, jagged lines, ready to burst at any…

The weapon was yanked from his hands.

"Nar! Are you alright?"

Nar looked up through blurry eyes and found Eum shaking his clawed hand with a growing grimace. "Tygars! That burns! Fuck! Fuck!"

"Shit… Are you…"

"I'm fine! It's just a little burn!" the tygaris said, but even as he said that, he pulled out a potion and downed it one go. Eum tried to compose his expression but failed. "Gods! That [Lingering Aura] triggered!"

He walked away, fanning his hand and holding onto his arm, and Gad took his place besides Nar.

"Are you alright?"

"Eum is…"

"I'm fine!" the tygaris shouted from out of sight. "I'm never doing that again, though! Never! Gods… That hurts!"

"What happened?" Gad asked again, drawing Nar's attention to her.

"I don't know…" Nar said, panting desperately as he took Gad's proffered hand and sat up. "My sword just went crazy!"

"You used too many of those blades!" Leta said, rushing over to him. "Genahu! Your pathways! They look burned…"

"I'll be okay," Nar panted. "I just need to rest."

"Not likely to happen!" Sej shouted. "Pick them up! They're still coming for us!"

"What? How?" Jaz shouted for Nar.

But sure enough, the damned, many legged insects were crawling around the broken branches, and they didn't seem intent on giving up on their quarry. Not even close! Their eyes blazed and their mandibles clicked now in a frenzy of obvious anger at all the casualties they had incurred!

"Don't those things give up?" Jaz shouted, reaching down to grab Teb.

"Nar stopped the vanguard and gave us time, but the swarm will only drop the chase when we leave their territory!" Sej said. "Now pick them up and move!"

"Can you take them?" Gad asked.

She shoved his blade into his chest and Nar touched a finger to it to store it away. He would deal with it later, but it looked as though the challenge his master had mentioned had just begun, and in the worst of all the possible moments too.

"Don't worry!" Nar replied, shoving the blade to the back of his mind.

Tuk had come loose from his back in the confusion, and the trugger was sprawled over Jasphaer. Nar dead lifted the lanky trugger onto his right shoulder, and then scooped up their furry healer under his left, and forced his wobbly legs to run after the others.

The battling beasts renewed their frenzy all around them, and it seemed as though the collapsing branches had merely surprised them. If anything, whatever had died in the collapse had just become an easy meal, and wet crunches and slurps were quick to echo from within that mess of broken, black brambles, thorns, and crushed beasts.

Pile! This place is insane! Nar thought, latching onto any thought he could in order to distract himself from the ravaging pain that threatened to bring him under. Was that Hungry Jungle nothing more than a mess of branches, thorns and Miasma in a nightmarish landscape of never-ending hungry beasts? Of prey and predator, stuck in an endless vicious cycle of kill, respawn, kill, respawn, and kill yet again?

No wonder my sword went crazy… Nar thought. And what in the Pile was it trying to do? It wasn't just preparing [Aura Blades] for me, it was… Eating my aura too!

"Ugh!" he growled under his breath.

I'll deal with you later!

He would have to! If he couldn't use his sword in that maze of hunger and death, then what good was he? Especially given the current state of their domain party.

For the moment, however, he could do nothing but to keep running, and ferry Tuk and Jasphaer to safety. Hopefully.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

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