My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

Chapter 761: Through The Portal

The four pale beings moved without a sound.

Swish!

Two charged straight across the stones to pin Clone One from the front, their curved daggers slicing up toward his throat and chest. The other two blurred and swung wide across the canyon floor to come at him from behind.

Clone One kept his hands loose at his sides and stayed planted on the cracked ground. He had only let a little of his power slip out, because he wanted to see how they would react first.

With the stone beast, reading the rhythm had been easy. Its giant heart had pounded through the earth, and its stone plates had ground together with every breath. These four had no heartbeat. They were like undead. All he had to go on was the scrape of their boots on the rock and the way their weight shifted as they closed in.

Clang!

Clone One flicked his left hand and formed a short blade of Primordial Essence to knock the first dagger aside. The impact sent a sharp jolt through his wrist. The strike had the force of a battering ram behind it.

Before he could turn, the second attacker dropped low and swept a dagger at his right knee. Clone One jumped back and landed on a flat boulder.

The other two were already waiting for him.

They dropped from the air above the boulder like hawks, driving their daggers down toward his collarbones. Clone One leaned back, and the black steel passed so close it brushed his hair.

He brought his right arm up to block the follow-through, but the leader was already there. He stepped in close with frightening precision before Clone One could get his balance back.

A curved blade slipped past his arm, cut through his torn sleeve, and opened a shallow red line across his upper arm.

Clone One spun away and landed twenty feet back in the gravel. Bright red blood welled from the cut and dripped down his forearm onto the gray stones.

The pale warrior who had cut him stopped. He lifted the blade to his lips and ran his tongue across the fresh smear of blood.

Then he froze.

His crimson eyes went wide, and a shiver ran through his whole body. His lips pulled back from his fangs, and he stared at Clone One with a hunger he didn’t try to hide.

The leader stepped up beside him with his dagger held low. He spoke in the common tongue of the magic universe with a flat, cold voice.

"The beast is dead," he said, glancing back at the huge body of the stone beast in the dust. "The crossing stayed safe all this time because nothing ever came into this canyon. Now the guardian is broken, and this one is standing in our way."

"He saw the door open," the warrior on the right said quietly, his eyes fixed on Clone One.

"The door has to stay hidden," the leader said. "If the mages of this land find out where it is, they’ll close it. He’s seen it. He doesn’t leave this canyon."

Clone One stood in the dust and listened to every word.

Now it made sense. The stone beast had kept everyone out of this canyon. It had frightened even the master mages into marking the whole valley as forbidden. With nobody coming near, these pale beings had been using it as a hidden road between their world and this one.

And now their secret was out.

Clone One touched the cut on his arm. It was already closing, and the blood was drying into thin flakes. An easy grin crossed his face.

"A hidden door," Clone One said. "So that’s why I’ve seen this portal twice."

The leader didn’t answer. He raised his dagger and pointed it at Clone One’s throat. "Take his head."

All four surged forward together.

Clone One took one breath and let go of everything he had been holding back.

Boom!

The air in the canyon turned cold in an instant. The rest of his Primordial Essence burst out of him like an invisible hammer and blasted outward in a ring of force.

The gravel on the ground crumbled into dust. The wave hit the four attackers mid-stride, and their speed fell apart. Their boots skidded on the rock, and their bodies strained under the crushing weight that settled over the canyon floor. Shock flashed across their pale faces as the pressure pushed their shoulders down toward the dirt.

"My turn," Clone One said.

He stepped forward and locked onto the rhythm of their steps and the small dip of their hips before every lunge. The Law of Universal Consonance settled over his mind like a clear lens, and he could see their timing before they moved.

The first attacker forced his way through the pressure and drove his dagger straight at Clone One’s heart.

Clone One swayed to the left, matching the angle of the blade, and caught the attacker’s wrist. He pulled with the creature’s own momentum and threw him off balance.

With his free hand, he formed a thin blade of Primordial Essence.

Swish!

The blade went through the center of the attacker’s chest. The pale warrior stumbled back with black blood spilling over his dark armor. Before his knees hit the ground, the flesh inside the wound was already knitting back together.

’Just like the ones in the cave,’ Clone One thought. ’Normal wounds mean nothing to them.’

Before the wound could close, Clone One stepped inside his reach and swung his hand in a sharp, flat arc.

Swish!

A thin edge of essence took the creature’s head off. It rolled away across the stones, and the body dropped to its knees, twitched once, and crumbled into a pile of gray ash.

The second and third attackers lunged at him the same time from both sides, trying to catch him while his arm was still out.

Clone One dropped into a crouch. He felt the rhythm of their joined attack and knew the left blade would arrive a split second before the right. He let the left dagger whistle past his ear, then drove both palms up into their ribs at the exact moment their weight came down onto their front feet.

Thrum!

The vibration went straight through their armor and shattered their spines from the inside. Both of them arched backward, their fangs bared in silent screams.

Swish! Swish!

Two flicks of his fingers sent two blades through the air, and both heads came off before the bodies hit the ground. Two more heaps of gray ash scattered in the wind.

The leader, who had been closing in from behind, stopped dead.

He looked at the three piles of ash blowing across the canyon floor, then up at Clone One. The cold pride in his crimson eyes broke, and for a moment there was nothing in them but fear.

Without a word, the leader spun around and sprinted back toward the center of the valley.

He was fast, faster than any hunting cat, and gravel sprayed behind him as he threw everything he had into his legs. His eyes were fixed on the crimson portal hovering over the basin floor.

Clone One turned his head toward it.

The portal was already starting to shrink. From two meters across to barely more than one, and its surface had turned thin and unstable. Faint blood-scented air puffed from its edges, exactly the way the one in the Eldwood dungeon had behaved right before it collapsed.

The leader reached the basin and dove headfirst into the red light.

Splash!

The crimson surface swallowed him whole, and the portal shrank again until it was less than a meter wide. Its edges began to fray and break apart.

Clone One had a split second to choose.

For months, he had wondered what was on the other side of that first portal in Eldwood. He had stood there and watched it vanish, and all he got was an empty cave and questions with no answers. Now the same kind of door was closing right in front of him.

’Not this time,’ Clone One thought.

He dropped his weight and kicked off the canyon floor.

Boom!

The bedrock under his feet shattered as he shot forward like a cannon shell. The wind roared in his ears and tore the dust from his robes, and he crossed the basin in a single breath.

The portal shrank to the size of a wagon wheel.

Clone One tucked his shoulders, stretched his hands out in front of him, and threw himself through the closing ring of crimson light.

Whoosh!

The burning heat of the portal vanished in an instant.

A blast of freezing air hit him in the face, cold enough to frost his lips. His boots hit solid ground, and he slid ten yards across smooth, glassy stone before he came to a stop.

Behind him, the red light snapped shut with a hollow pop. When he turned, the portal was gone, and so was the canyon with its gray sky.

Clone One straightened up and looked around.

He stood on a huge, flat plain of black rock that stretched as far as he could see, smooth and cold as glass. The air was thin and smelled of old blood and rusted iron. Once the blast from the portal faded, there was no wind at all, only a dead stillness that pressed on his ears.

The pale leader was nowhere to be seen. The plain around him was empty.

Clone One raised his chin and looked up.

Above him, the sky was a solid sheet of black without a single star. And hanging silent in that darkness were four huge, pale moons, pouring cold silver light over the empty rock.