บท 1: Making dumb decisions

"Damn it! Damn it!" Evary Seth cried inwardly as he quickly ran through Dunkel forest.

The forest was known for its tall trees with their long branches and wide leaves which blocked out sunlight making visibility within the forest a nightmare for him and his escape all the more difficult.

As if his problems weren't enough the lady whom he was carrying on his back kept on struggling to get off despite her severe injuries and their current predicament.

He had no idea why he even bothered trying to save her as it drastically reduced his speed and with it his chances of surviving this encounter.

I mean sure I like and admire her, her expansive knowledge and brilliance in human biology are incredible especially when she teaches, her words sound like an angel singing melodies straight to my ear.

I just wished there was a way to make her accept me he thought, but damn it!, he furiously shook his head, this is my life I am risking right now, is it worth it risking my life for a woman who will never accept me, we don't even have much of a relationship other than being work acquaintances.

Growl! The roars of the approaching pack of wolves brought Seth out of his reverie and he desperately tried to increase his pace in vain.

The only reason he was able to stay alive this long was due to his head start and the low grades of the wolves coming after him, grade 0 monsters the lowest of levels of monsters yet he knew that if they caught up to him he was dead meat.

The sounds of the wolves drawing nearer put him in desperation the likes of which he hadn't been in before.

what did he have to live for he began wondering to himself as scenes of his life flashed through his mind, and then just as they were passing by a slope he suddenly stopped, dropped the lady on his back, took out a glass flask from the pouch hanging on his hips and the poured its contents all over her.

She tried to shield herself but with her weakened body, she could barely lift her hand to her face. She shot him one of the coldest looks he had ever seen and would never have expected from such a beautiful face, but he ignored it, after emptying the contents of the bottle, he proceed to pick her up and then threw her down the slope.

Then he turned around and began running away again, all this happening in the span of 10 seconds. As he ran, he looked back, and seeing his plan working he smiled mockingly to himself wondering if he had done the right thing.

..........

Gibson Rose wouldn't in her entire life have ever believed a day like this could be a possibility not to talk of it actually happening.

She had decided to absorb the essence from a grade 4 dungeon as the humans here called it. The fact that she had to thoroughly make preparations against such an insignificant dungeon irritated her and showed how low she had fallen.

She had made calculations and found the location with the weakest space and most potent energy with a link to a grade 4 dungeon and then placed a 6 meters wide rectangular seal on the ground in that location which would be used to summon the dungeon.

She began channeling copious amounts of qi from her body to the seal and 10 minutes later the grade 4 dungeon portal began emerging.

It started with blue sparks appearing in the air, slowly expanding, and then 15 minutes later and a pitch back circle 50 meters in diameter with a blue circumference appeared floating in the air just some 3 meters above ground within the seal. Before the portal could be fully formed, she took out a talisman and threw it at the portal.

The portal lit up in red and then red strands came out of its circumference and attached itself to the seal on the ground and then greenish-like energy began flowing out of the portal climbed on the red strands and moved to the seal on the ground.

The seal on the ground then lit up with green light and then a green beam shot out at the other end of the seal and attached itself to Rose, she had successfully begun to absorb the dungeon's essence.

While qi was the energy that was present in the world and could be absorbed by anyone and used to cultivate, essence was akin to the life energy of an entity and without essence, the entity dies. The essence of a dungeon was extremely special as it contained the essence of the universe.

Rose began to slowly absorb the essence with little to no difficulty but as she progressed, a noticeable strain could be seen on her face.

She continued on and was able to absorb 95% of the portal's essence, which helped her regain about 4% of her original strength.

Everything had been going well so far and she continued on with the absorption when the portal suddenly attacked her.

The portal seemed to come to life as it forcefully cut off the flow of its essence to the seal and then moved towards Rose as if to devour her.

Rose was calm as she had expected this, she took out another talisman and threw it at the portal with a bit of reluctance marring her beautiful face. With her being stuck in this world for an undetermined amount of time, she had to be frugal in the use of her limited resources.

As the talisman flew towards the portal, dark red strands began growing out of it and wrapping around the portal while some attached themselves to the seal on the ground.

At first, it seemed to work as the portal had been completely encapsulated by the red strands in a cocoon when all of a sudden the portal exploded out of the cocoon and then shot out a black beam at Rose.

Rose was shocked but she immediately regained her calm and summoned her qi and with a wave of her hand a large red wall was formed which she then placed between her and the beam.

The black beam collided with the wall and was stalled for a moment before surprisingly piercing through and hitting a stunned Rose. The beam did not cause her any physical damage but when she looked through her body with her soul sense, a horrified look come upon her face for the first time since entering this world.

Dark antimatter energy was known as the most disastrous kind of energy in the universe, its ability to corrode anything it touches and feed on qi to get stronger made it a terror.

It appearing in such an underdeveloped world was unbelievable. Rose had just been able to scan the beam with her soul sense just as it hit her and she discovered traces of dark anti-matter.

The red wall had been able to block out most of the energy in the beam but the traces of dark antimatter had easily passed through and hit her, her clothes the most fragile thing on her had immediately been disintegrated just by its aura, leaving her beautiful body naked for the world to see but unfortunately there was no one around to behold such a sight.

The antimatter moved into her body rapidly approaching the largest source of qi it could find, her heart and dantian contained the largest quantities of qi and she could not afford them getting injured.

Seeing that the dark antimatter was in such very little quantity, she calmed down and immediately shot back around 20 paces away from the portal, hurriedly sat down in a crossed-leg position with her eyes closed, and began to expel the energy.

At her original strength, she could have expelled such an insignificant amount of dark antimatter with a thought but now she had to give her utmost best to get rid of it.

Fortunately for her, the portal had become dormant after firing off that beam, and she calculated that she had around 20 minutes before the portal became active again which was more than enough time for her to deal with the dark antimatter energy and then the portal.

She was just 3 minutes in when the was a sudden spike in energy from the portal and a huge wolf 20 meters tall jumped out, roared, and began immediately running toward her.

Sensing it with her soul sense, she rated it as a grade 2 monster, "the portal shouldn't be able to summon monsters higher than grade 0 after losing all that essence, how did this guy get out" she thought to herself.

Not even bothering to stand up or open her eyes she swung her hand towards the wolf as a red sword appeared in it and struck the approaching wolf.

The wolf seeing its opponent's apparent disregard for it, howled out in fury and struck her with its claws.

As both sword and claw collided, Rose's eyes immediately shot open as she found herself being flung backward coughing blood as she flew.

She couldn't believe that she had lost the clash, the attack had sent her qi in turmoil and given the dark antimatter the chance to ravage her insides more making her cough out more blood from her luscious lips.

Before Rose could recover her balance, the wolf had already pounced on her and swiped its claws at her.

She could channel her qi through her body and dodge the attack but that will leave the dark antimatter unchecked which will spell her doom as the energy was already on the brink of penetrating into her heart thanks to the recoil from losing the earlier clash. So she instead turned and received 3 deep claw slashes on her naked back.

Rose was sent airborne again and she then hit the ground in pain, she had underestimated the wolf and now was gravely paying for it.

She couldn't allow this battle to go on as the dark antimatter was still attacking her from within.

After establishing a semblance of balance in her body, Rose diverted what qi she could spare from her dantian and immediately shot off at the wolf. She was so fast the wolf couldn't see her and the next moment a red line magically appeared on its neck, blood began spraying out of it and then the wolf's head fell.

On the other side, Rose appeared on her knees with an intensely glowing red sword in hand which she used to support herself. The sword faded out and she fell down flat on her face, breathing heavily and trying to calm the storm raging within her.

Before she could get herself a breather she saw more wolves coming out of the portal but thankfully they were grade 0 beasts, it seemed higher stage beasts could no longer get through.

Rose had expended a lot of energy keeping the dark antimatter at bay while fighting the grade 2 wolf at the same time and now she was physically exhausted.

Seeing the pack of wolves running towards her she had no other choice but to make the shameful decision of fleeing, no matter how much she wanted to eradicate them, she was just too injured internally and externally and she still had to deal with the dark antimatter.

Gathering what little qi she could spare in her legs, she launched a movement technique and shot off at an extreme speed away from the approaching wolves.

Rose lost awareness of her surroundings and only ran forward till the movement techniques finally ran out qi and she crashed into the ground.

The denseness of her skin protected her naked body from sustaining any more injuries but her already present injuries were aggravated.

In all her 500 years of existence, this was the most disgraceful state she had ever been in, out in the open, naked and covered in filth for the world to see was a massive hit to her pride.

She pushed away such thoughts and continued expelling the little bits of dark antimatter in her when she heard the howls of the wolves approaching her location.

Once again she had been arrogant and believed that her movement technique was more than enough to get her far away but it seemed she was terribly wrong, given how little time had passed since she crashed, it will seem she hadn't gone far.

Now she was filled with despair, the little qi she had was barely enough to protect her heart and dantian and still repel the dark antimatter. She couldn't move her lower body as the dark antimatter had ravaged all the qi there destroying the bones as it moved. Diverting anymore qi was the same as a death sentence for her.

Rose had been in many life and death scenarios and was never afraid of death, but this time, she wanted to live. How could she accept dying in this underdeveloped world, death at the hands of grade 0 monsters Ha! Ha! Ha! She mockingly laughed to herself, after all her struggles and victories over hegemonies who could squash this world with a mere gaze she was going to die here at the hand of mere grade 0 monsters.

No!, this was humiliation beyond imagination for her, she didn't want to die, not like this and for the first time in 400 years she thought in her mind "please anyone save me" she thought to herself.

After thinking of these things she closed her eyes and when she opened them they were filled with resolution.

She had decided to release her qi and let the dark antimatter destroy her, suicide was better than being eaten by grade 0 wolves, but just then she heard heavy footsteps running towards her on her right.

She painfully moved her head to the right wondering how the wolves had appeared so close to her without her being aware as she looked, she could make out the figure of a man approaching.

Seeing another human put her on alert and then slight panic when she remembered her current situation, when the man got closer she could make out his face, and surprisingly it was someone she knew, a colleague of hers at work.

Evary Seth, she had a favorable impression of him at school as she was quite a brilliant guy well the most intelligent guy she had seen so in this world so far, though he hid it.

He was a genius but his disability made him a laughing stock for many people especially those who envied his brilliance and well she did pity him but had never given much thought to him.

But still, a man was going to see her naked while she was covered in dirt and there was nothing she could do about it, with the current crisis she was in, she didn't have the time to wallow in such thoughts.

She watched carefully as he approached her, while she wondered what he was even doing in this forest.

The surprise which appeared on his face clearly showed that he recognized her. He then quickly schooled his features, picked her up without saying a word, placed her on his back, and then immediately began running away from the sounds of the approaching wolves.