Chapter 121: Running

“Ugh… Aaaahhhhhhh!”

A face composed of scaled fissures and jointed limbs cast a fleeting glance, releasing an invisible yet tangible mental pressure; the clustered, spined appendages radiated a desperate craving to seize something from him.

Intuitively, William experienced centuries ahead of his time what it felt like to be tossed inside a washing machine—plus several extra spoons of bitter, irritating detergent. Especially since this washing machine was in freefall through the air, while nightmarish visions slammed against his eyeballs—uniquely brutal.

The surrounding environment existed in a superposition, shifting from its original cave form toward cracked, widened states; changes in the present world were projected here, as if the ink of “the upper sheet” had been pressed into “the lower sheet,” resembling a process of peeling and reshaping—strikingly similar, yet never fully aligned.

The worst part was, he couldn’t pass out again. His chaotic consciousness had fully endured the entire uncontrolled descent, ending in a mad, violent stop that felt like his soul had been shaken loose.

The hand on his shoulder released him, letting him stumble a few steps through the darkness to regain balance, then frantically lit a flame.

The oily, fuel-soaked flame offered negligible comfort, illuminating their two figures; beyond the circle of light, darkness lay utterly still, with no sign of anything emerging.

“Kraft…” William had meant to ask if the thing above had passed, but his companion’s silence alerted him to something odd. “Are you alright?”

Kraft offered no explanation for the uncontrolled descent, nor did he light his torch first. He simply stood still, slowly raising his hand to wipe the underside of his jaw—the side beyond the firelight—as if trying to wipe away sweat from exertion.

Yet his face remained dry as ever; the cave’s temperature made sweating nearly impossible.

Kraft brought his hand into the firelight: bright red fluid slicked his back, dripping from his fingertips. The collar along the side of his neck glowed crimson.

“Not bad.” His lower jawbone was intact; speaking inevitably pulled the other side, so he limited its movement, forcing out a muffled, guttural tone. “But not good either. Check my wound.”

He turned toward William, who finally saw the wound—a horizontal slash below his left ear, nearly severing the earlobe, slanting downward and forward along the right branch of the jawbone, its momentum clearly still extending toward the neck.

But the vast expanse of red made the injury impossible to assess; even when the torch was brought close enough to scorch a few golden hairs, all visible was a slow-moving film of blood gliding over the skin.

“Maybe it hit a neck vessel,” William hastily tore off a piece of unknown fabric, trying to wipe the blood and examine the wound.

His dusty hand was blocked. Kraft tilted his head, didn’t even look, but seized William’s wrist, pulling it and the dubious cloth away from his face. “Not that bad. If it had, blood would’ve sprayed to the ceiling, then I’d collapse right away.”

After saying this, he paused a few seconds, wresting speech back from the agony. “There’s a small package under the torch. Get it out.”

The neck’s condition was unclear; deep pressure was too risky, and compression offered only limited hemostasis—but the bleeding had indeed lessened, whether from clotting or pressure alone, he couldn’t tell.

From William’s opened bundle, he selected a small bottle of strong liquor, poured it over the wound, then wrapped himself in clean cotton cloth into a ridiculous shape. Fortunately, his old teacher had taught facial bandaging with real care.

“I never imagined I’d end up using this on myself!”

Thanks to his spiritual senses, he gained not just the ability to pierce darkness, but an enhanced sense of spatial distance through a unique perspective. His perception of space no longer came from indirect visual translation—it leapt directly into an intuitive grasp of three-dimensional space.

This allowed him to guide his movements with precise, timely, and all-around spatial awareness, accurately timing his strikes, tracking every twitch of the limbs and face, creating the illusion of brief precognition.

Of course, it was purely an illusion—he couldn’t predict the outcome of reckless actions, only detect the trajectories of sudden limb movements, giving his mind enough data to conceive and execute countermeasures in moments.

Failing to escape unscathed was unsurprising—or rather, surviving even a single moment of dodging multiple simultaneous, chaotic limb strikes was already elite-level performance; not dying was the surprise.

Under haste and injury, the dimensional shift was disrupted, nearly slipping out of control, plummeting downward far faster than expected—he nearly thought he’d plunge straight into the second layer.

“Ready?”

No time to wait. Kraft gripped William’s shoulder; the environment was stabilizing, indicating the thing had left.

“Aren’t you going to rest?” William stared wide-eyed. This situation was like a coachman on a mountain road, driving his cart at cavalry speed, hammering two nails into a cracked axle, then inviting him aboard for another ride.

“I think you could wait a bit longer…”

Heaven and earth reversed; a sensation of upward fall surged through his senses. He realized this wasn’t a request—it was a polite heads-up before departure.

Kraft had his own plan: he had to return to the present world before his spiritual senses expired, exit the mine, or else endure half an hour of negative side effects trapped in the depths.

If another sound of jointed limbs walking rang out during that time—another race—his mind would truly shatter.

He pulled William toward the present world.

Simultaneously, his consciousness deliberately sensed the speed, comparing the time of each dimensional transit with his subjective experience.

Kraft tasted a certain habit.

A habit as natural as walking on two feet—accumulated through repeated transits, seeping into his body. During the sudden high-speed fall, he’d stabilized the process, like a reflexive balance adjustment when tripping—muscles reacting automatically.

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But balance reflexes are innate to humans; yet when he activated his spiritual organ to use this mysterious geometric prism, a similar phenomenon emerged.

He tried accelerating. William screamed in a disoriented rollercoaster fashion, while Kraft felt like a toddler learning to walk, struggling to swing his legs faster.

The limit had not been reached. The habit of this motion caused him no discomfort; his spiritual senses faithfully relayed depth changes.

He was running—moving between layers at an unprecedented speed. The wound sent sensations of both searing heat and chilling cold, seeping into his body, deeper still. That habit sank deeply into his spirit, like a neural reflex maturing with growth.

A transformation had clearly occurred: quantitative change had become qualitative, triggered and catalyzed by injury and forced descent, manifesting as a habit toward the depths and transit—but he still couldn’t comprehend what it meant.

To his subjective consciousness, it only knew it was running: like a toddler who, one day, was pushed forward and, through balance reflex, instinctively leaned and took running strides—realizing he had already learned “walking” through practice.

A thin, cool ray of light appeared before him, cooling his retinas, battered all night by firelight and shadow.

Kraft released the prism, savoring this hard-won moonlight. It poured unimpeded through the exit, spreading across the ground of crystals into a magnificent path of emerald and silver, leading toward the sky of the present world.