The Martial Master - 21 Light in Darkness...

Staring into the dark abyss outside, Su Min heard numerous cries echo around the world with a raspy momentum; it was eery beyond belief. They seemed enraged at something; like somebody had insulted them!

The voices shuddered unlike anything he had heard before, and they rammed right towards him! It seemed that because of him, the whole world had locked onto his base with the intent to kill!

“Agh… This is annoying.”

Su Min’s eyes narrowed when he felt the overwhelming killing intent lock onto him and the inhabitants within the room; he didn’t realise that killing one of those sick beasts would rouse the whole colony!

Yi Zan and the twins seemed to have the same vague premonition as beads of sweat dripped down their faces with an unbridled nature. They tried to say something, but the fear they felt seemed to surmount any sort of rational thinking they could muster.

Sensing the enclosing beast stampede, Su Min guessed that he had around a minute of time to waste before the base would get surrounded!

His expressionless face remained unchanged as he muttered under his breath with a vague battle intent that reached to the stars.

“Well, let’s see how far I can go…”

Yi Zan seemed to hear him as her bloodshot eyes went wide, yet before she could speak him out of it Su Min turned around and stepped into the foreboding darkness outside.

“Ah…”

…

…

*Thud*

“I wonder how the old man at the shop is doing…”

A slow, desolate string of footsteps crackled on darkened dirt; echoing and echoing with a listlessness of a man who’s facing death. His fists crackled with an intense vitality that thrummed and hummed with a weird, noble aura.

His biceps and his widened shoulders seemed to pierce through the darkness with an inhuman stature that jostled an inexhaustible potential. In addition to this, those legs of his thrashed onto the ground with every breath, holding a momentum that seemed unstoppable.

Eyes that were as placid as a lake shone in such a darkness; containing a will tempered by the flames of anguish.

*Thud*

*Thud…*

*Thu-*

“Ah. They’re finally here…”

Those placid eyes of his seemed to brighten as they locked onto something far, far into the distance. There, a cloud of blackness penetrated the already pitch black darkness; shooting right at him.

A foul odour of resentment and death wafted out from this cloud; sweeping an uncanny stream of murkiness that would make one gag with disgust.

Streams of dust billowed around his two legs; cleaving with circular shockwaves that, as silent, as his eyes were placid, swept through the dirt for a few meters.

His legs began to wriggle with an intense strength; kneeling down a bit as tufts of dust fluttered and waved in the wind around him.

Those two tightened fists of his sprung next to both sides of his ribs as his body pivoted towards the piercing cloud with a swift motion that ripped the earth off the ground; tearing it into the dark air above him.

His feet clenched and burrowed right into the dirt, generating numerous popping crackles that split through the ground with an unruly drive. Those two eyes glistened with a beast-like urge as numerous screeching sounds roared around him.

He was surrounded.

…

“Fucking hell! These things never fucking end!! FUCK!!”

A crazed roar that chilled the darkened night sprout out from a thin man drenched in black blood. An odour that could induce mass vomiting spewed out of the black blood without restraint, but the man didn’t seem to care as he ran with a maddened gait.

“I’m sorry that I killed on~uh~some of you!!”

The man held a dagger in his left hand which would occasionally sweep in the air; causing an anguished screech to bellow out. He couldn’t actually see what he was killing, but he had acute senses that had somehow allowed him to survive.

Minutes passed without stop as he ran for an unknown distance, but the cloud of black behind him didn’t seem to care as it continued to chase right after him.

The man’s face was pale and his breath was coarse, but he continued with the same madness as before. His eyes surveyed the bleak darkness in the hope to find something, anything!

“Ah! Someones over there!”

His eyes shuddered as he saw an immense black cloud that surpasses the one behind him frothing with rage toward someone. He licked his lips as he thrashed his feet onto the ground and shot towards the massive culmination.

“Hahaha!”

A velocity that made him appear like a blur piercing forward, carrying a surreal silence that made it seem like he wasn’t even running. Wisps of a chilled light strung around him that swept with a frigid nature; covering the dirt below him in a layer of frost.

It didn’t take long for him to reach whoever attracted such a large swarm, but when his eyes surveyed the surroundings, they quivered with an intense shock.

“W-wha-?”

A barren wasteland stretched around him as for as far as he could see in the darkness. Scattered corpses twitched and visible craters trounced on the ground in numerous positions as a near ocean of dirty black blood spewed.

He couldn’t hear it then, but a faint rumble shook the ground every now and then. The corpses on the ground vibrated under this rumble; flopping up and down in the air with muffled squeals.

The man had no time to think as he felt the cloud behind him catch up, so he clenched his teeth and dashed towards the rumble!

*Squelch*

His feet sludged through the undulation of rotting corpses that drenched themselves in their own tissue; howling with dismal wails that shot his face with the paleness of anxiety.

“Who the fuck can cause this?!”

His face grew more agitated as he ran through the seemingly endless array of corpses that scattered around him; where it seemed that no matter how far he ran he wouldn’t be able to leave this hellish place.

*Bang* *CRASH*

Minutes went by as that rumble in the distance mutated into a muffled bang to a deafening crash, and before he knew it, he was only a few meters away.

The darkness surrounding him seemed to be shivering, shivering with a fear that is being thrashed right into it. It shook and churned around him; almost dissipating even.

The man gulped as he hesitated for a second, however, he wasn’t given a choice as the beasts chasing him closed in.

“Gah- dammit!!”

He clenched his teeth till they seemed to shake, then with a shaky step, leapt into whatever was beyond the darkness.

*Poof*

*BANG* *BANG*

Just as he stepped in, his vision blurred as sudden daylight struck his eyes; causing his pupils to constrict. He had to rub his eyes to make out the environment, where he saw something he would never forget…

“GUH!”

A lone youth, standing among a blood-drenched wasteland, staggered among corpses stacked so high that they lifted him to the sky. His gaze seemed to bring a dense bloodied intent that pummeled the darkness away from his body.

A string of dense blood red wisps fluttered around his body, emitting a dense killing aura that seemed to be more beastlike then human.

His body was draped in a black jacket, where a book sat in its pocket. Strangely, though, he was spotless in this blood-drenched environment.

“HAHAHAHA!”

His expression was that of utter madness as a continuous stream of wails screeched around him, where groups of black blobs darted towards him in an endless stream.

*THUD*

His fists swung into the air with clumsy strokes that seemed to contain no power, yet as those black blobs entered his range, those two weak fists blurred and thrashed each and every one of the blobs right into the ground.

Squeals cried with agony as beast after beast got thrashed onto the terrain that was made of their flesh and blood; piling them up more and more. Some of them wept on the ground with faint groans as his feet crushed everything beneath him into bloodied pancakes; spurting with cracked organs.

Of course, he couldn’t stop them all as one of those black blobs was able to dodge his fist and stuck to his body; trying to bite his limbs off.

However, it seemed that his skin was tough to the point of being inhuman as those grotesque teeth appeared to strike at metal. The youth’s eyes churned a fierce light as he grabbed the black creature, and with nothing but his grip, squashed it in his grasp.

*SQUELCH*

“GAHHHHHH!”

A shrill scream escaped from the beast as a burst of black blood splattered onto the youth’s body, where a dense killing intent lay. His jacket seemed to seeth with a strange vibration as all the blood on him seeped into it; leaving the world forever.

The endless streams of beasts didn’t seem to faze the youth at all as he continued to swing those rock hard fists at anything living. Streams and streams of withering lifeforce swivelled around like a whirlpool from hell; shuddering into his chest at a constant rate.

The darkness around him had already got pushed back by such a dense killing aura, creating a staggered 10-meter radius area of light that only grew wherever he moved.

The man’s body shook as an even denser killing aura shrouded the entire aura with a crimson; it was as if it had emerged from the purgatory of shrouded despair.

“Monster…”