Second Genesis

Grey felt the winds blasting against him and then suddenly part like the sea as though they had decided to help him instead of hinder him.

He grinned wildly, his toes clutching the very edge of the cliff as he timed his steps perfectly.

His body compressed into a spring and then roared forward, his quads explosively expanding with a great deal of strength.

"WOO!" Grey roared, laughing as his hair whipped against the winds. It felt like he was flying, the feeling more intoxicating than almost any other he had experienced.

In an instant, he had made it to the halfway point and he felt the sparks light the air before the bolts of lightning even finished forming.

BANG.

The black streaks swallowed Grey up whole. It was like because he was much larger than the clothing he had thrown before, whatever hidden formations or mechanisms there were here had reacted in kind.

But it only tickled, and the thing about lightning was that it was completely massless. It did absolutely nothing to stop Grey from reaching the other side.

Grey rolled and then popped up to his feet, hooting and hollering without a care.

"FUCK that was exhilarating."

He almost wanted to do it again, but it was unnecessary. The lightness of his feet was very much still there.

’Damn, did this thing actually make me high?’

Grey laughed to himself, finding a giddy feeling welling up from his chest.

’Forget it, let’s go.’

Grey shot forward. He knew that he was running out of time. If Baron Giyoto got there too fast, he would be screwed, especially since he didn’t have a revive.

After cutting past a few corners, the two halves of his map, once separated by a chasm of black, finally connected into a single seamless whole. After one final turn, he found himself staring at piles upon piles of treasures.

But then there was a flicker in his eyes and almost all of the piles disappeared, almost as though his reality had been overlaid by illusions he was only just now seeing through.

Grey had expected something like this, but the change was still a bit jarring. Still, even with 90% of the piles disappearing, Baron Giyoto was still far too rich.

For a moment, his eyes darted around, his brain racing. Then, making a decision, he shot toward the altar, picked it up, and hurled it toward the entrance he had just come from with all of his strength.

Only when it toppled into the darkness, rolling past and just out of the line of sight, did Grey nod to himself. Then, without missing a beat, Grey raced toward the trap door and slapped a palm onto it.

He dove down beneath it and slammed it after him.

Then he jumped across the sewage and skidded around a corner, pressing his back to it and taking a deep breath. He controlled his gag reflex, covering his mouth and nose with a shirt and then suppressing his need to breathe as much as he could.

Grey wrapped the Russian assassin’s cloak tighter around himself, hoping that would help with the stealth somehow.

The sound of rushing wind made Grey cover his mouth even tighter than before.

Baron Giyoto. He was sure of it.

The instant Grey heard a familiar clicking, he rushed out from around the corner he had been hiding in. He didn’t waste a single moment, pushing his body beyond its limits.

His speed was simply off the charts compared to usual.

He slammed a foot to the ground and leapt over the river of sewage, rounding a corner that had just been to the opposite of him.

Baron Giyoto had come from here. Meaning, this time, he had used the entrance to his office to make it here. The room Grey had for error was very little.

It had taken him quite some time to make it before, but he had only just touched down in Baron Giyoto’s treasury yet the man was already here.

According to his own internal clock, it took Baron Giyoto two minutes to cover a distance it had taken him ten. Even with this new speed, it would take Grey at least five minutes to make it back to Baron Giyoto’s office.

The only good news was that Baron Giyoto shouldn’t have the same detection methods in his office. Otherwise, he would have found Grey far earlier during that loop.

’Come on, come on, come on.’

Grey took a glance at his stamina and he had already lost 40 points of it.

’I can make it. I can make it. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move!’

Grey felt a new burst of wind hit him. He melded into it, his body tapping into a state of something that went beyond a mere buff.

Enlightenment.

—

[You have awakened the Body Enhancement {Wind Glider}]

—

Grey’s eyes sparked with a rain of electricity. He pierced through the veil of Passive Link right to Active Link without missing a single beat.

His speed doubled again, his blood pumping through his body as though it had been stimulated as well.

’It’s not enough.’

Grey’s eyes went bloodshot. It was like he could practically feel Baron Giyoto on his tail.

He hadn’t had the time to hide the altar any better than he had. The moment the Baron found it, he would sniff out that something was wrong.

’Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on.’

[Blood Surge].

Grey tapped into the downloaded skill from the Blood Witch’s Tome. A steamy breath left his lips and his muscles screamed under the pumping lactic acid.

His arms pushed and pushed.

BANG.

Grey leapt into the air, his feet slamming against a wall together to abruptly stop his momentum. Then he leapt to the side, rounding the corner with hardly any slowing.

’There!’

Grey felt the earth shake behind him and his eyes widened as he reached the trap door to Baron Giyoto’s office.

He didn’t hesitate to leap into it.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.