Foots of the Cleaved Mountain

Travel to the split mountain turned out to be surprisingly far. It was something that Yumi already sort of knew, but now that she had a clue to find Yuki, potentially, she expected to get there immediately. Yet that turned out to be further from the truth than she wished to admit. She had always seen the strange mountain, but had no real sense of the distance about it. In fact, it never really was something other than a landmark for her. It served no other interest for her.

Yumi flew over the plains and forests toward it and ran when she couldn’t fly. Walking when she could not run, she refused to stop for a break. Even time failed to have any real sense of meaning to her. So focused on the mountain, none of the other things around her did anything.

But eventually, the mountain had to give into the chase and allow her to reach the foothills. She didn’t know when it finally gave up the game, but it was the closest to her that she had even known. However, that came with its own problems for her.

“Demons…” she muttered, staring for the first time in a while at something that wasn’t the landscape. They had her completely surrounded and well armed for a fight. “Trap it is then…”

Chapter 402 – Foots of the Cleaved Mountain

Slightly bruised and cut, Yumi managed to come out of the ambush with all of the demons dead around her. It left her a little short of breath. ‘I shouldn’t be feeling this tired from just fighting a bunch of nameless demons…’ She began resuming her march towards the mountain. Though it looked like it was going to turn into a gauntlet for her as she found another band of demons only minutes from the last.

“You’re dead, Hunter!” roared a demon before an axe split it down the middle. The other demons turned away from Yumi in a little surprise not knowing her reputation for even using an axe let alone a weapon as big as the one that she threw.

Two more were dead before they split up to try to attack her individually. From her flanks two tried to catch her unable to defend against the well timed attack. But one was pinned to a tree that was nearly split in two by the four meter long spear and the other dropped its head at her feet as a massive bastard sword swept through the air.

It took three more before the smarter ones figured it out. All of the chaos of the fighting left them unfocused and unable to evaluate the situation. “She’s using our weapons against us!”

One wolf demon looked up in the air to see the array of weapons floating still unused and waiting. “She’s holding them all at the same time!”

“I’ve no energy to waste on you weaklings,” she boasted as several more demons dropped to their own weapons. Every weapon wielded by the past band and those she had killed now became her weapons.

Cutting a lethal arc of swings through the remaining demons, they all fell to pieces without being able to do anything to prove themselves or show off their strength. Yumi continued her hike towards the mountain and the gauntlet of demons trying to stop her.

After the fourth set that she slaughtered, she looked back the way that she came. ‘What’s the point of all of this? They can’t beat me. Given the reputation I hold among the demons in the area, I would think that they all know this. So why die?’ Yumi paused in the questions trying to figure out what was happening. ‘I still don’t even know if Yuki’s actually here or not…’

Little of it mattered at the moment, since her fight wasn’t over. Something she had to snap out of quickly as a fireball nearly scorched her face. She turned to find what demon that she somehow forgot to kill, but they weren’t present. “Fire doesn’t come out of nowhere…” Yet another did come from nowhere.

She dodged away from the attack and jumped again from the follow up. Wherever the attacks came from, it wasn’t letting her have a moment to breathe. They kept her moving around, unable to pause or be struck.

Yumi tried to figure out the direction that the demon shot at her from, but they came from different directions. “Damn, they’re able to snipe me from out of my sight. And I can’t even tell the direction. It’s like they’ve got me surrounded…”

The attacks continued with her doing everything to try to get any sort of clue to the location of the demon. “Even the origins of the attacks are different. Could there really be different demons?” She leapt into the air trying to get the better vantage on the land, but caught a massive storm of fireballs coming down at her.

They forced her back down to the ground without a moment’s thought. She deflected away some of the attacks with her barrier, but found it oddly lacked in strength. Yumi took cover in a part of the cratered ground left over from her previous fight. It gave her a focused point to throw up her barrier with a thicker wall. It was enough, for now.

“What the hell is going on here? This is completely different from all of the other groups that they sent after me. They were just dumb and blindly charging me. Yet now, there’s actual tactics.” She tried to get her breathing under control, but still found herself worked up.

Blasts of red light flashed over her barrier as she stared out into the falling sun. It was going to be night soon and the fight would only get worse for her. “I’m not going to be able to find the demons if they’re keeping still. I need to make a move before I lose my light. But how?” Yumi tried to go over everything that she knew about the attacks. But she still kept hitting walls.

As the ground shook from the attacks, her mind wasn’t getting anywhere with her information. “I don’t know if it is one or many. They attack from all sides, so it’s more likely to be a group. But if it was group I feel like they would have attacked me already. But if it was only one they’d have to be able to use their power over a wide area to make it look like there were multiple demons. But which is it? I don’t even know where they are. If it’s one they could be anywhere and if it’s multiples I have so many to kill. Any sort of advantage I try to take, they see through and stop me.”

Yumi continued to question herself on the situation. Her mind had trouble trying to piece everything together. Nothing was coming together for her clearly. There were just too many unknowns for her. “I don’t know what to do. They’ve always been so upfront that I just charge through and kill them as they come for me. But now they’re hiding. I can’t find them and they can easily hit me… What should I do in this situation? What would Yuki do?”

She hoped taking it from a different perspective would help. “He’s always got a plan and knows what to do in every situation.” Not even that helped her. She couldn’t put herself in his spot. He would have already finished the job.

Dropping the barrier and running out of the cover, she took the next best thing that she could think to do. Which was possibly the worst thing to do. She wasn’t entirely certain yet if it was smart. But she charged forward at the first orb of fire that she saw. “I’ll just find one of the sources! That’s all I can do!”

However, the attacks became stronger and increased in number as she moved. They tried to push through, but they forced her to evade away from the way that she wanted. She stubbornly tried to go further than she should have and ended up with a new cut across her forehead for the effort. Yumi fell on her back in the forced dodge she made.

She stared up at the sky, suddenly seeing even more fireballs coming at her. “Damn it!” Throwing a blast into the ground, she shot herself away from the incoming attacks just in time. It did mean that she slid roughly through the earth from the poor dodge. Dirt rubbed over her face from the fall. Yumi ripped her head out of the earth jumping immediately needing to stay ahead of the attacks.

It continued to only get worse for her as she could only dodge. “The closer I try to get the more they press the attack. They’re really afraid of me getting close. If I can find them, I can end this immediately! They can’t be very strong if they’re attacking so cowardly like this.”

Yet that still meant finding a way to get close enough, something that she still lacked. “I tried charging forward and that failed…” She leapt through the air evading attacks and watching for the next. Even cornered, she could at least keep up with the attacks. It wasn’t the end. “When I try to think it through I fail as well… What am I left with? Thinking doesn’t work and not thinking doesn’t work…”

Yumi cursed her situation that she was in. The endless running did nothing to improve her dilemma. She was completely out of her element. Though none of it really felt like something that she belonged in. She merely adapted to the way things were.

“They’ve got me playing exactly to their own beat. I need to do something to change the pace!” As she tried to think of something, she got struck in the back by another attack. Blasted to the earth, Yumi groaned in annoyance and jumped into the air, flying up. “I’ve had it with these attacks!” As the quick counterattack came to her ascent, she formed her swords splitting the fire in half and letting it detonate now unstable behind her.

She left her barrier to deflect the rest as they shattered under the attack. But it gave her enough time to charge towards the location of one of the attacks. As she expected another one of the counters came up, but she threw out of her barrier ahead of her to dampen the damage as she charged through raining particles and embers.

Straight through the fires Yumi broke the line that the demons created. “Now where the hell are you hiding?!” she screamed, launching arcs of energy through the entire area in front of her. She tried to listen for any signs of a demon scrambling, but none came. “Is it dead?” A bit of disappointment came in her voice.

However, that didn’t last for long as more attacks continued to come from all around her. “They’re still out there!” As she charged for the next location, the attacks continued unabated from her pressure. Whoever it was that attacked her from the shadows tried to keep up the line around her. But she brute forced her way through the attacks, no longer caring anymore.

More wounds came out of the careless charge as Yumi sought the enemy. She couldn’t find them no matter how many times she searched. “They’re nowhere! Come out, coward!”

Panting a little, Yumi blindly charged forward with no regard for the field anymore. She just followed the red glow wherever she went. It continued to follow her leaving burns and wounds appearing on her skin the longer that she went. Yet she still continued despite the injuries.

“Stop hiding!”

Nothing was helping her.

Yumi stopped for a moment trying to catch her breath as all of the running around started to catch up to her. “Damnit! Wherever I go it’s never close enough.” She split another fireball coming with ease, exploding on the ground to her left side. “I’ve got the timing down, but I’m not finding the demon. It’s got to be only one.” The more she ran around she became convinced of it. What she found or didn’t find, made it more likely that it was only one and not a group. “I would have seen something or someone by now. I just need to find that one damn demon!”

Unfortunately, that was harder than she thought. Running around blindly gave her nothing but less energy and more injuries. Her annoyance continued to rise. “It’s like they’re following me! Always behind me!” The ranting of her frustrations suddenly made her pause in thought. “Can’t be…always tracking me with ease…”

A white glow covered Yumi’s body suddenly as the pressure in the air rapidly spiked. Distortions appeared around her as the energy build up grew towards critical mass. An explosion of energy ripped through the earth and all the surrounding area destroying everything it touched.

Her head turned sharply at the sound of something different in the noise of destruction. She disappeared and appeared at the sound swinging down her sword at the air, hitting something. Out of the shadows popped the demon hunting her. “This game is over.”