Chapter 873

Chapter 873: Chapter 873 Leaving the Swamp Behind

Kat ran. Kat ran until the night had long since fallen, but on the insistence of the cultivators she didn’t stop until they reached the edge of the swamp. Though, let’s back up a bit. Yang wasn’t pleased with the new mode of transportation and made this very clear. A good deal of yelling, even as she entered into the snakes mouth from the open neck she continued to complain.

While she was doing this, Xiang had already stepped in and was starting to work out a little trick that would turn this ride from horrendous, into comfortable, much more so then the ice and it turned out to be good enough for him to get some sleep. See, Xiang realised that by sliding his legs under the tongue and pressing himself into the walls he would move with the snake head and limit the amount of bouncing around Yang was experiencing. Every step, most of the movement Xiang might have felt was absorbed either by the walls of the snake’s mouth or its tongue.

Yang however stubbornly insisted against Xiang’s rather brilliant idea for quite some time. Where Xiang and Lily were able to relax and go with the motions, Yang was constantly thrown about. Kat needed to tilt the snake head around quite a bit, and only the fact that Kat rarely needed to tilt it backwards alongside the fact the mouth was closed prevented Yang from falling off. She was slammed into the walls, floor, teeth, Xiang once or twice. Really, the only thing that finally convinced Yang she was being stubborn was a particularly sharp series of jerks that, had her reflexes been worse, would have resulted in her impalement on the snakes teeth. Yang sat under the tongue after that, though she took it even further, using it more like a blanket.

Xiang didn’t have that option because Lily was not keen to be smothered by the entire tongue so he had to put up with just sitting for the rest of the journey. Still, based on the fact they were all able to sleep it clearly wasn’t too bad for them. For Kat... well for Kat it was a different story.

Best

For Kat the run was much harder and she was required to take quite a few breaks. Sinking into the mud an extra few centimetres made it exponentially more difficult to run. It meant she was deeper in the water as well which didn’t help things either. The fact that the head wasn’t completely symmetrical and that her footing couldn’t be guaranteed Kat was constantly having to use her entire body to keep from falling over. Where normally her tail would be used to keep her steady at speed, now Kat had to use everything. She was certain that if she didn’t have regeneration her muscles would have been burning, especially the ones she never usually used.

Kat took frequent breaks as well. Never letting her energy drop below thirty percent again. Sure perhaps it was playing things a little too safe, but after Kat worked out a good system for dropping and raising the snake head by sort of letting it dig sideways into the mud with careful positioning... well it only took her a few minutes of rest to get all her demonic energy back.

Despite that though, Kat found she was feeling tired. Mentally speaking the day had been a challenge. The constant need to keep from falling over, on top of her constant watch for other marine predators. Speaking of those... Kat was annoyed to find that lugging around the giant snake head didn’t reduce the number of encounters, but increased them. Kat wasn’t sure why that was, perhaps they could smell the thing was dead, or they thought it was a younger one that needed to be killed before it grew.

.....

Whatever the case, Kat needed to freeze a whole bunch of the weird croc-fish things, a few other more normal looking fish that might have been piranhas, a few oversized bugs and a half dead monkey that might have just wanted a lift out of the swamp. To keep herself entertained, Kat practiced shooting fire from her eyeballs like lasers. It felt much weirder then using her other body parts and wasn’t something she’d be doing in combat without a good deal of thought... but it was kinda funny. To literally burn things to death by glaring at them.

Kat was quite thankful that as the sun set the attacks got less frequent. Even as the world darkened, Kat continued running. There was a short argument about it, but the whole ‘deadly poison we don’t want anything to do with’ was a really good argument. Yang was luckily asleep for it, and Lily stayed out of it for the most part. So Kat and Xiang argued for a little bit during one of Kat’s later breaks about stopping completely. Normally, Kat would say she didn’t mind. She didn’t need as much sleep as everyone else...

But at the same time everyone else had been able to rest for basically the entire day. She didn’t want to hold it against them but as it got later and later, Kat could actually start to feel a little bit of pain in her limbs. Part of her mind was pretty sure that it was all in her head. That her regeneration made it so she wouldn’t get muscle fatigue. The rest... the rest was too tired to think about it properly. Regardless of the truth though, Kat was still running, but how long she could continue with that was unclear. She’d had her hands above her head for well over twelve hours at this point with only small breaks to offset that.

When Kat finally found the edge of the swamp, she hardly believe her eyes. It was hard, flat ground. Away from the poison, and it even had a few trees that looked like they could withstand a decent storm instead of the brittle rejects inhabiting the swamp. Kat couldn’t really help it as she set the snake head down hard, practically throwing it off to the side and collapsing into the dirt. The water streaked off her legs and into the dirt muddying it a bit, but she was too tired to care.

Xiang stumbled out of the snake, took a look around before kicking the ground a few times just to make sure it was all real. He took in a deep breath, hoping for clean air for the first time in days... and was sorely disappointed. He was still much too close to the poisonous cesspool Kat had barely stumbled out of and it wasn’t any more pleasant then the inside of the snake.

Actually... Xiang paused at that thought, before sniffing himself, wincing and then wandering back inside and sniffing the snake before nodding like he’d just understood something particularly obtuse and settling back in against the wall of the snake, using it as a soft and warm bed. Sure it was a bit wet, but he’d been soaked through by snake juices for the whole day while resting. It wasn’t so hard to do it again.

Lily had a different plan. When Xiang turned back in to the snake she hopped from his arms and wondered over to Kat. Lily cheekily gave Kat’s cheek a few pokes with a claw to no physical reaction. Though her heart warmed at the burst of joy Kat experienced just from knowing Lily was in close proximity. Really, there was no other choice. Lily hopped up on Kat’s back and curled up into a little ball, deciding that regardless of anything else, it was a good end to the day when she was able to sleep with Kat.

Yang couldn’t be bothered getting up at all. Unlike Xiang, she fought against Xiang’s great idea for quite some time... and then couldn’t manage to fall asleep afterwards. Her eyes were bloodshot and she was starving. Honestly, Yang was a few moments away from tacking a bite out of the inside of the snake. The only thing that stopped her was the fact that she was too tired to bother with chewing it. Had she been a bit more awake, Yang would have done something stupid. Not a surprise perhaps, but Yang would be very thankful in the morning when she woke up that her tired mind simply gave up on the idea.

So there everyone was. Exhausted, hungry, and very much sick of the swamp full of poison. There would likely be new problems tomorrow, like where they might want to take the snake head, or how fast they wanted to travel, as it was not yet proven if Kat could run at the same speed as the cultivators while carrying the head. Who were they going to sell it to? Assuming they did want to sell it, could they hand it over before it started to rot? These were all questions for tomorrow though. For now, they’d survived the swamp. Let’s just hope the poison wouldn’t cause too many problems going forward.