Tarkos knew that his punch practically dealt little to no damage and the beast would be back up in no time and he was right.
The beast pushed itself up in the next instant, relatively unharmed.
It began chasing after them again but fortunately, the group had managed put a little distance between themselves and it.
However, this didn't help much because it started wildly attacking again from behind.
Victor turned back and saw Brin dragging Juno with one arm while deflecting debris with the other.
A qi blast hit the wall near them. It wasn't a normal attack. The beast had released a pulse of energy that shattered everything it touched.
"Down!" Victor yelled.
He tackled Xuan Qing to the side just as a burst of energy carved through the spot they'd just been standing.
"This thing is rlentless!" Aeri Fan yelled while barely dodging another pulse.
The tunnel ahead began to quake. The centipede was burrowing through the wall itself, bypassing the entrance and coming at them from above.
Tarkos suddenly turned. "I'll hold it back—"
"No!" Victor shouted. "We are all leaving together!"
However, Tarkos slowed down and turned around before slamming his hand on the floor.
His Inky tattoos spread out from his arm, activating a massive barrier of swirling runes. "Go! That barrier will buy us twenty seconds!"
Victor cursed but nodded. He grabbed Brin and helped him with Juno while Aeri and Mirael guarded their rear.
They ran through collapsing tunnels, past shrieking humanoids that had begun to flee as well, through flaming chambers and tight crevices.
The very world behind them collapsed as the beast relentlessly slammed its body against the barrier.
The group finally burst into daylight or what passed for daylight in this strange dimension, where the sky was painted with violet mist and multiple moons glowed above.
Victor panted hard in relief. The rest of the group staggered out after him.
And then the barrier exploded behind them, a blast of light and stone as the Worldbreaker Centipede slammed into it one final time.
Victor turned to see Tarkos standing there, dusted in debris with most of his tattoos gone.. "Told you it would buy us time," he stated and then coughed.
Victor grinned. "Remind me never to doubt your ink again."
They had made it out—but just barely.
Xuan Qing leaned against Victor while wiping blood from his brow. "So... now what?"
Victor looked around at the battered team, the glowing thistle in his storage, and the twisted sky above.
"Now?" he said. "We get the hell out of this nightmare."
Victor had barely finished speaking when the ground trembled beneath their feet.
A thunderous quake sent debris cascading from the craggy floating ridge above.
The team turned around with widened eyes as Worldbreaker Centipede broke through the collapsed tunnelway, pushing out into the open world.
However, it didn't just appear... it began to transform.
The scales of the Titanic horror turned red in rage.
It screeched and shook the realm with its fury.
"Okay we gotta go! Like right now!" Juno yelled with an expression of terror as the group began fleeing again.
"How the hell do we get out of this world?!" Brin shouted as he narrowly avoided a razor-sharp stone hurled loose by the beast's seismic charge.
Victor turned around. "Tarkos?!"
"I don't know," Tarkos growled with a tone of exertion. "But if my theory is right, we need to get back to the exact point where we first emerged—where the waterfall spit us into this damned realm."
Xuan Qing hissed in pain beside him as she wrapped one arm around her ribs. The bond she shared with her serpent beast had left her weakened, but she kept running without complaint.
Behind them, the Worldbreaker Centipede shrieked again and then came the impossible.
Great, chitinous, blade-like wings erupted from its sides. They shimmered with purple-gold qi, shredding the air itself. The very act of its emergence split a floating mountain in two as stones fell like divine hammers, cracking through the ground.
It took to the sky as its segmented form undulated in mid-air like some unholy fusion of dragon and insect.
"And of course, it can fly now," Aeri Fan muttered bitterly.
Perched atop its back was the gray-skinned humanoid leader. His hands glowed with eerie violet sigils as it prepared another command.
A loud screech echoed and then a blast of qi thundered down from above.
The creature's wing strike hit the group's surroundings, ripping apart a portion of the cliff. The shockwave sent Mirael and Vortex flying backward. Victor caught Mirael mid-air with Shadow Blink and landed beside Brin.
"We won't make it," Juno groaned as a long gash appeared across his thigh.
Victor looked around. The terrain was too fragmented to get a clear path back. They were boxed in from above, surrounded below.
He clenched his fist. "We're not outrunning that thing... not unless we make it *busy*."
"What do you mean?" Tarkos questioned while slashing through a humanoid that had crawled from the shadows.
Victor's eyes tracked something in the distance... a shadow slicing across the clouds with wings so massive, it parted the mist.
It was one of those flying predators they had barely escaped during their early moments in this twisted realm. Only larger. Its body was black with veins of silver qi threading through its wings. Its glowing eyes searched the air as it soared above the ridges.
A smile curled on Victor's lips. "That'll do."
"Victor, what are you—" before Xuan Qing could finish, he was already in motion.
Victor leapt into the air with Qi flaring around him. Shadow energy coiled around his sword, crackling with power. As he rose higher, the laws of reversed movement in this world tugged at him, trying to disorient his trajectory.
He adjusted mid-air, rotating his body.
"Shadow Crescent Strike!"
With a roar, Victor launched the attack.
But as the technique shot forward, he used his Void Qi's manipulation properties to shift the perceived trajectory.
The attack, masked in visual illusion, curved at the last second and struck the massive flying beast from the side... but to it, the blow looked like it had come from below.
Directly from the Worldbreaker Centipede.
The creature shrieked in rage and turned in the sky. It's six glowing eyes narrowed as it spotted the ascending Centipede.
It instantly dove forward.
Massive claws extended as it slammed into the Centipede mid-air with an explosion of mist and energy. The impact was deafening. Their roars echoed across the sky as the two titans began to clash, tearing at each other with unmatched savagery.
The gray-skinned leader atop the Centipede turned in horror just as a massive claw snatched him from the creature's back.
The flying beast bit down once—just once—and the leader's head popped like a grape.
In the next instant, his corpse was hurled into the stormy sky.
The Worldbreaker screamed and twisted, spraying venomous qi that splashed across the floating mountains.
Victor landed hard and turned around to meet up with the others.
"Let's go!" Tarkos yelled. "This is the only window we'll get!"
They sprinted again, this time heading down a narrow chasm that curved toward the waterfall's origin point.
As they ran, their systems pinged with notifications:
> Hidden Objective Completed: "Spark a Battle of Titans"
> Reward: +20,000 Wisps Of Qi, +250 Spirit +1 Mystery Treasure Box
> Note: You have survived an impossible-tier encounter. Your bravery has been logged. Extra Rewards: 50,000 Wisps Of Qi + New Art Unlocked
Brin blinked. "No way... was that really a hidden objective?"
Victor grinned, still panting. "Sometimes you just gotta improvise."
"I thought we were going to *die*!" Mirael wheezed. "We still might!"
Another blast echoed behind them as the two beasts battled overhead, sending burning fragments and pieces of mountain cascading across the sky.
The group finally reached the crumbling ridge that had once been their arrival point.
The waterfall here flowed upward, like gravity itself had lost interest in doing its job. At its base was a faint shimmer... a circular distortion in the air.
"There!" Tarkos pointed. "That's it! That's our way out!"
The team rushed forward.
But just as they approached, a final shockwave from the monsters' battle cracked the ground beneath them.
Victor lunged forward and grabbed Xuan Qing as the ledge split. Brin tossed Juno toward the portal and was pulled through by Vortex and Mirael.
Victor cursed and activated Shadow Blink, appearing just beside the portal.
Tarkos jumped in first.
Then Aeri Fan and Brin.
Victor turned to Xuan Qing. "Come on."
They both dove forward just as a tendril of qi-laced venom from the Centipede struck the air behind them.
The moment Victor and Xuan Qing passed through the barrier, the world behind them cracked and vanished in a haze of light.
Seconds later, they emerged from the swirling currents like ghosts clawing their way back to the realm of the living.