Chapter 139 - Reaching The External Ring

After Rohan had jumped inside the river, the Advanced Warrior stood there, his eyes glued on the water as he was lost in thought.

He could simply run along with the rapid. There was no way for this young warrior to be faster than him, but he only stayed up, without the urge to follow behind.

A short time later, the group of Intermediate Warriors came across the forest and met up with the middle-aged man. They instantly knew that the young man had successfully fled away.

Before they could say anything, he spoke with a stern voice, his back facing them. He had chosen.

"I tried to catch him, but he was too slippery and crafty. In the end, he was smart enough to play with me and get away by plunging inside this river. There is nothing I could do. Right?"

The warriors instantly understood the meaning of these words. They all wanted to catch this young man to interrogate him about the Kolmos mountain, but it wasn't possible. Even if they had successfully caught this man, they would have to give him to this person.

They were from the Barren Lands. And the Advanced Warrior had already decided he wasn't going to bow his head in front of this person coming from the other side.

Rohan was jogging under the sun setting down as a cloud of dust hovered behind him. He has been running for more than ten hours, but he was only mildly tired. He even thought that he could run this way again for ten hours before needing to take a pause, but the night was already descending.

His gray robe was full of scratches, but the fair skin behind was without any marks. A sharp rock wasn't enough to cut his body, and this discovery was a pleasant one for Rohan.

He didn't know to which extent his body was reinforced, and charging through the Intermediate Warriors inside the city because he believed he was strong enough was quite reckless, but the result was incredible.

He looked around him as he continued to run. There was only the same rocks and sand he wasn't happy to see once again, and nothing more. Although he could maintain his running speed, Rohan decided to make a pause to sleep.

It had needed almost a month to come here from the external ring, and even with his speed, it would take one or two weeks at least before reaching the frontier.

He came to a stop while the sun left the place for the moon to showcase itself. He had no food, nor did he have any comfortable place to sleep. The worst would be for a fire snake to bite him during the night.

He eyed the rocky ground with a devastating look. His bed started to miss him.

*Sigh*

He could only do with it anyway. Rohan began to move the rocks to put them in an oval form to make a small rampart. Or a coffin.

Then, he sat down in the middle of this small wall reaching his waist and lit by the moon. He closed his eyes and started to meditate.

Before moving his mana, Rohan first took a look at his body. Since he was excited when he appeared inside the mountain and had kept running since then, he didn't have the time to carefully size his body and only looked briefly. Now, he took his time to check everything.

As he had expected, his body was a bit damaged here and there. The strange red threads were simply beyond words for the strength they give, but he wouldn't be able to do it again unless he wanted to permanently cripple himself.

He couldn't use this method anymore before his body fully healed, but he could still meditate normally without any problem. Without wasting more time, Rohan willed his mana.

It rushed down his first meridian before reaching the end of it. This part was much more enlarged as countless deep stripes were engraved against the wall of the meridian. Rohan made his mana spin, following the stripes as perfectly as the first time, but soon, he frowned. A few minutes later, his mana dried up.

He knew that without his collection of mana cores, it would take a long time before ranking up and finally becoming an Intermediate Warrior. But he didn't expect that with this speed and the small amount of mana he had, he would need at least a few weeks now.

The worst thing was that now his body was strengthened up from the red threads, his meridians were also tougher. That was undeniably a perfect hidden consequence, but he would now need to put more effort and more mana to construct a vortex.

He shifted his attention to draw another stroke for his rune. The pattern on the blue-purple stone was now red, and the white rune hovering in the middle was also showing signs of being tainted by the red mana. Rohan didn't know if it was a good thing or not, but the increase of power it gave him was enough to make him overjoyed.

After his seance of meditation that didn't even take him more than thirty minutes, Rohan lay on the not really comfortable floor and began to sleep one of the longest nights he had since a long time.

The next few days came without any issue. Rohan ran in the direction of the north. Sometimes he had the chance to pass through a small forest. During those times, he would sharpen a piece of wood to hunt with it.

He was beginning to be more proficient with the reading of footprints, and along with his godly strength, anything could be used as a weapon. That was why he didn't have any difficulties eating some food during his trip back home.

He was even familiarizing himself with the way of making a fire. Although he required more than half an hour to make one, it was better than before.

There were only so few patches of forest on the way, and most of the time, the only surroundings he was passing through was the hot desert full of rocks of various sizes.

Then one day, the environment on the horizon changed as Rohan attained a small cliff closing this region. The frontier between the external and internal rings.

The Barren Lands were huge, and there was no way for Rohan to be at the same place as before. There wasn't any opening inside the cliff allowing him to cross the cliff. Instead of following along it hoping to find a path, the young man decided to climb it.

He had successfully climbed up the highest mountain in the world after all. A small cliff a few tens of meters tall was nothing to him.

He even believed that if he used Charge to leap in the air, he would be able to jump over the cliff. The landing wouldn't be funny though, so Rohan didn't try it.

In no time, his feet stood at the top of the cliff. It was a large platform stretching for several hundred meters and surrounding the while internal ring.. It was obvious that the name of the ring came from those strange cliffs.