The entire landscape was made of brown and grey rocks, it stretched to the horizon without a single tree in sight,though he could see what appears to be a bush over 3 kilometres away.
This entire place looked like the land of death, it gave him creeps. He took a step forward, landing on the hard grey gravel,then another and another.
10 metres in he stopped, do you think being here is a good idea? He asked Shade. Ofcourse there was not answer. Doesn't matter, since we already here we might as well explore.
They continued forward, their pace a bit faster than before, they were already a few kilometres in but still saw no signs of life. He was contemplating leaving this place.
He was here to grow stronger, without any beast to kill how would grow? Just as he was about to turn East he felt the ground shake. In a hurry he pulled out two of his daggers and held them in a defensive stance.
But he realised how pointless that was when he saw what shook the ground, a wave of beasts were rushing towards him, they looked similar to the bisons he saw but much more muscular.
Their horns were sharper and gleaming like grey spears,their hooves large like hammers that shook the ground with every step. Run run run, he turned around and ran with Shade following behind him.
Before long Shade was already infront so he decided to jump into his back. As if that what he was waiting for he started running faster, they opened up distance with those beasts who were chasing them.
He turned back to look and realised they weren't chasing them, they were running away as well, behind them was a pack of wolves with shorter back legs and dark spots.
The wolves were very ugly and they were, giggling? Why the hell would they be giggling? Those things were large, over two metres tall, though he could tell both he and Shade were stronger, there were still too many of them to fight.
Shade,you better run faster, Shade growled as if telling him to stop complaining or do it himself but still sped up. They ran straight for a forest of tall rock pillars and barren hills.
He noticed they had changed their direction at some point and ran south west while the stampeding beasts continued west. They rested In the forest of hills.
While leaning on a 5 metres tall and two metres wide brown rock pillar he looked at the hill infront of him, it was not extremely tall for a hill, only about 50 metres or so.
He tried to remember where he saw something that looked like this then it came to him, he once found an ant nest that had a hill just like this one, ofcourse he ate the ants because he was starving, that was actually the day his mother died, atleast as far as he knows since he never saw her after.
He could never forget that day, the ants were actually tasty, had a spicy flavour. He was a reminiscing with a sad smile when it dawned on him.
Ants, he knows very well how ferocious those creatures are, even the small ones are relentless and didn't know fear. If this is an ant nest, he couldn't even imagine their size.
Shit, Shade we need to run but he did not need to tell him, Shade had better senses than he did, just as they about to run, the hills started shaking.
He cursed even louder, they were already deep within the hills, a kilometre deep, there was no way they could get out without having to fight their way out.
So they ran, with their speed, they could cover that distance in a few seconds if there's not disturbance, his running speed was already over 50 metres per second.
He could ofcourse move twice as fast in a temporary bust of speed and Shade could move twice as fast as that. The first ants appeared on top of the hills.
They were red in colour with sharp mandibles, standing at over a metre tall. With a shrill they ran towards them. A flood of red like a carpet covering the ground came behind them.
Infront of them was another wave of the abominable ants. They collided in a few seconds, Shade bit the ant infront of him shattering it red exoskeleton.
He rammed into the wave sending ants flying back. He ripped them apart left and right with his claws, he was smart about it, everytime he killed an ant he would consume it core.
This helped regenerate his blood essence faster, mind you he was yet to regenerate it since then. Ashborn really envied that ability, he learnt that humans can't eat cores like beast.
He had to absorb it slowly to regenerate his essence which was extremely slow. He was behind Shade when he clashed with the wave of ants.
Deciding not to be outdone by the cats he jumped metres into the air landing in the middle of the ants, he shattered the ant below his feet and accidentally crushing the blood core as well, he cursed.
Swinging his blades left and right, he sent red heads and legs flying in the air with purple blood raining around him. He felt blood essence enter throught his veins which surprised him since he did not absorb any blood cores.
He looked back and saw red mist rise from where he crushed the blood core and flowing straight to him, he was elated, why didn't he try this before.
He kept crushing more cores as he ran, red mist rose and entered this body through his pores. Purple blood covered his body like paint but he did not care.
A few minutes passed but they had barely advanced two hundred metres, they were surrounded on all sides, although the ants were weak individually there were thousands of them.
Also due to their short forms, fighting them was really ackward for him, he had to bend a little to use his blades. One good thing though,they had not forced either of them to use any of their bloodline abilities so they were full of blood essence,even Shade had fully regenerated his.
He had afterall killed hundreds of them by now, he thought these things would be dangerous but they had just turned into a blood essence farm to them.
He continued dancing in their ranks like a reaper sending their purple blood all over the place.