I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1318: Licking Wounds

A tall man with squared shoulders and a muscled physique walked through the devastated forest.

The trees had suffered attacks from things that could rip and burn and melt, some trunks shredded to splinters, others charred black, still others warped into shapes that wood should never hold. Whatever had passed through here had left nothing untouched.

He emerged from the treeline, and an enormous wall rose before him. Though calling it a wall understated the thing—it was an outgrowth from the mountain itself, stone veins running down from the peaks into worked fortification. The people of ancient Drywall had found a way to build atop their impossible terrain. They’d turned what could have been their greatest unmaking into their greatest making.

”What an irony...”

The man shook his head slightly, ashen hair flowing in the wind like silk. His grey eyes held a coldness that wasn’t the absence of emotion. For some uncomfortable reason, it was monstrous to behold.

Rughsbourgh stood before the great wall of South Drywall with his hands clasped behind his back. He was in far better shape than he’d been a few weeks ago. Thanks to his butler, he’d healed well after those months of slaying upon slaying without rest.

Now that his body had recovered, it was time to keep moving. He’d come this far, after all. He was not a man without goals, nor one to surrender when the odds stacked against him.

’When are they ever not?’

The odds had been stacked against him for close to a hundred years.

He let his gaze travel up the wall’s face—the sheer height of it, the way it seemed to press down on the land below. Very difficult to penetrate. Before this fortification, Rughsbourgh was like a needle standing beside a column.

He swept his hair back on both sides of his face and tied it with a handful of strands serving as rope. A few rebellious pieces still fell forward, but Rughsbourgh didn’t care. His gaze had already fixed on something else.

He raised his hand, clenched his fist, and released it and clenched it again.

”The fight with that kid took a toll on me,” he murmured. ”Right after the burden and exhaustion of evolving to a Luminary.”

A fragment of the memory surfaced—Northern’s face, the weight of that confrontation—and it made him pity his own pathetic performance. Having to run from a fight. That was not something he had ever considered possible for someone like him.

The boy had been an overwhelming foe. But Rughsbourgh had survived more perilous and peculiar dangers and still lived. Not simply because he was stronger. Because he was smart. Because he always engaged his enemies on his own terms. He believed he had enough knowledge to level any battlefield. Or take the fight wherever it needed to go.

He didn’t look forward to fighting Northern again. But he had to retrieve something from this land that would help him even the odds.

That was a boon, no matter how shameful. But that was not the main reason he was here today.

He stared at the top of the wall. Lights flickered up there—torches, lanterns. Distant murmurs reached him, the sounds of a garrison stirring.

He wasn’t concerned about making them out.

Rughsbourgh raised his hand and let it fall.

”Rip.”

The wall tore.

The tall, imposing, impregnable mountain wall of South Drywall simply came apart—space itself severing the massive structure, stone separating from stone so smoothly, so perfectly, that it looked as if this vertical divide had been designed into the architecture from the beginning. A wound thirty feet wide opening in what had stood for centuries.

People scattered on the ramparts above. Movements multiplied. Many were running.

Rughsbourgh wore a small smile. The night wind slapped cold against his skin.

’Satisfying.’

He walked forward.

Flaming arrows descended in a torrent as he approached the gap—dozens of them, then hundreds, trailing fire through the dark. None touched him. The shafts veered away, caught in currents of twisted space that bent them harmlessly aside.

He continued walking. Explosions rang above him as arrows collided with each other, fire blooming and smoke obscuring his view for a moment. But almost immediately, space swept the debris away as time accelerated their dissolution into ash and memory.

Rughsbourgh passed through the wall—unstoppable, unhurried—and arrived on the other side.

On the other side of the wall, hundreds of Drifters were already gathering. Different weapons raised—swords, spears, a few bows still being strung. The line looked clumsy, hurriedly assembled, but the expressions on their faces were what caught his attention.

They looked relieved.

Rughsbourgh frowned slightly.

’My stars, if it wasn’t that I’m quite busy today...’

He sighed and spoke.

”Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s be civil, okay?”

His voice carried across the space without shouting. The strength of it was fierce, reflecting an enviable control—the kind that came from decades of knowing exactly how much force any situation required.

”I have not come to besiege you or destroy what little scraps you have for a city. I just came to retrieve something. Can’t we just... negotiate?”

”You ripped our wall apart and want to negotiate?! Damn you!”

”He must be with them!”

”To hell with you!”

”Kill him!”

Rughsbourgh was silent for a moment, his gaze traveling across the crowd. Drifter soldiers. Their armor had seen better days. Their weapons too. These were people who had been fighting something else for a long time, and they were tired, and now they had to deal with him.

Almost a pity.

”Oh goodness.” He raised both hands, palms out. ”I apologize for the gate. I’ve been... irritated as of late. I can fix it. Just let me through, okay?”

Murmuring rippled through the ranks. Soldiers glanced at each other, uncertain.

Then someone walked out of the crowd.

A young man with golden-blonde tousled hair that fell across his face. His presence did something to the soldiers around him—shoulders straightened, grips tightened on weapons. The crowd’s uncertainty settled into something more like resolve.

’So he’s the strongest here.’

Aside from the young man, there was a beast. A large, white-furred beast. It grew as Rughsbourgh watched, swelling in size until it towered behind the gathered soldiers, head rising above the crowd like a pale moon.

He wasn’t a fan of things with fur. This beast made no difference.

But the Tamer who had bound such a creature to their arsenal—that one deserved attention. He couldn’t be careless again after all.

Rughsbourgh’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

He hated carelessness.

Carelessness had cost him.