The Sect Leader System-Chapter 242: The First Goal

Benton snorted. He was growing overconfident. Just because the battle had started out going his way didn’t mean it would finish that way, not against two Nascent Soul cultivators. If he wanted to win, it was up to him to make the victory happen.

His most important objective was to cut the number of his adversaries in half, meaning he needed to get one of them into the trap. The man, the Fire cultivator, was farther away from the hidden formation, so by simple expedience of the woman, the Water cultivator, being closer to the trap, Benton chose her.

The array would trigger as soon as anyone besides him who possessed a cultivation base entered a circle with a radius of about fifty yards from its center, an area that extended above the ground pretty much all the way to space. Once triggered, the trap would latch onto its target and hold them until either they gathered enough power to break free or the formation was broken. Since the schematic came from System, though, not even a cultivator in the Nascent Soul realm would be able to break it.

Unfortunately, Benton hadn’t been able to afford the necessary materials from the Shop to make the formation indestructible. That failure meant that the formation itself was vulnerable. To counter that weakness, he’d camouflaged it both physically and with anti-detection formations. He’d also buried it deep and kept the channels thin and isolated from their surroundings, not to mention adding multiple redundancies. His final countermeasure was the creation of multiple fake trap arrays that were easier to detect.

Still, he was dealing with Nascent Souls. He was positive the target would be able to quickly either find the trap or send out enough destructive force in such a wide area that locating it precisely didn’t matter.

Its destruction was inevitable, but that was okay. He only needed it to hold for the tiniest fraction of a second. The towers’ real main weapons were linked to the trap triggering, and the qi from that System-designed beam traveled at the speed of light, faster even than a Nascent Soul.

Getting the cultivator into the trap was the same as killing the cultivator.

That summed up Benton’s first goal in the fight. Or second goal. The first was to not die. Not dying was important.

The female cultivator was only about twenty-five yards from the trap’s trigger point, but she was staying completely stationary, relying on ranged attacks as she searched for Benton.

He had two possible avenues to move her into range—trickery or brute force. Neither were slam dunk solutions, though. His best idea to trick her was to appear on the opposite side of the trigger area and try to taunt her into moving straight toward him. The instant she passed within the trap’s range, she would be done for.

The issue there was that she seemed content to remain stationary. There was no guarantee that anything he could do would entice her to move. Worse, his actions might cause both Nascent Souls to suspect the trap’s presence.

Brute force was equally problematic. He would need to produce enough raw power to physically push her back the necessary twenty-five yards. Against someone in his realm or lower, the exercise would be trivial, but he was dealing with someone almost an entire major realm higher than him. Not only was she stronger than him, but that aura of hers would make moving her an inch, much less more than a score of yards, a pure pain in the buttocks.

Of course, there was a third option. Since she was stationary, why not simply fire the main weapon at her where she was?

The problem with that approach was twofold. One, while the beam moved at the speed of light, the firing process was not instantaneous. Which was why he needed her to be stuck in the trap, motionless, for that tiny fraction of a second. Though the necessary qi buildup was quicker than almost anyone could detect, he would be an idiot to underestimate someone at her level.

Two, once the main weapon fired once and the cultivators were able to evaluate the threat, they would surely stop at nothing to destroy the towers. Basically, it was a one use solution. Once it fired and missed, he’d have to defeat two Nascent Souls on his own, and if he’d felt comfortable with his chances for doing that, he wouldn’t have spent so much to purchase the main weapon schematic in the first place.

That left Benton right back with his original decision—trickery or brute force?

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Though the former had been somewhat successful for him since coming to this world, he couldn’t think of anything he could either say or do that would make the woman enter into melee range against him. He had a lot of options to create massive force, though.

Thus, the latter gave him better odds given the particular situation. Brute force it was.

Step one, teleport to the appropriate clone. Step two, with the exception of just enough to teleport him to one of the bunkers, expend literally every bit of qi he possessed to create a Wind Slash weighted with his new projectile enhancement technique, increasing its Momentum, Poison, and Force. Step three, get the heck out of Dodge, retreating to replenish his reserves while hoping his attack had worked.

“Here goes nothing,” he said internally.

The first step went fine. Benton transferred from his position on the ground to one in the air about fifty yards from the woman, with her between him and the trap. He hung in the air for an instant without using any qi to hold him up, giving her no qi signature to latch onto.

That instant went fast, of course, and when it was up, he started falling. But by that point in his career as a cultivator, triggering a technique he’d purchased to Mastery was a trivial and extremely quick exercise.

He sent the Wind Slash at her and, before she could respond, teleported to one of the bunkers. The first ten greater spirit coins were already dissolving in his mouth before his body had fully formed inside the dark, confined space, and he kept gobbling them down in sets of ten about every quarter second until he’d consumed the five hundred sixty-four he needed to fully refill his qi pool.

Unfortunately, consuming the coins was not instantaneous. Fifty-seven sets at a quarter second per still took a little over fourteen seconds. Luckily, he was a cheating cheater who cheats. His Time Manipulation technique consumed less qi than he naturally regenerated, so at a ten to one dilation, he only disappeared for less than two seconds all told.

That time period was barely a metaphorical blink of an eye for a mortal. For a Nascent Soul cultivator, though, two seconds was an eternity. When Benton took the place of one of the clones on the battlefield, he hoped to see the female cultivator dead and the outermost shield still holding off attacks from the man. Instead, the woman was just fine, and she was adding her power to the man’s while they attempted to bring down the Grand Defensive Formation.

Benton switched with one clone to throw a small amount of Earth bullets at the man before switching again to send a trio of Wind Slashes at the woman. Both must have started to grow wary of the power of his attacks because they each took measures not to get hit, taking no damage.

His salvo accomplished what he wanted, though. While they were defending themselves, they weren’t pounding the GDF, and unlike the simpler shields, that formation would regenerate itself given time. The short break did it a world of good.

Benton’s main concern, however, was the woman. She was still in the same spot, and he had no idea how she’d dealt with the massive Wind Slash he’d sent at her. Probably either dodged it or deflected it.

The problem was that he’d been too far away from her, giving her enough time to react to his boosted projectile. His next logical step was to try again from much closer.

Benton switched with a clone less than a dozen yards from her and loosed another charged slash, putting everything he had into it save a small reserve. He wanted to see what happened, though. Which would probably have been fine if he’d chosen another clone to use as a vantage point.

Instead, he figured that the time the slash took to get to her was so short that it wouldn’t be a big deal to remain stationary for an instant.

He was wrong. Very wrong.

The woman tanked the hit. It penetrated her shield, but she parried it aside with a metal band around her wrist that nullified all the Wind qi upon contact.

Of course she’d have defense against Wind qi. Why wouldn’t she? It was her greatest weakness.

He’d underestimated his enemy.

Just as he triggered his teleport to a different bunker, pain flared in the area of his shoulder. A lot of pain.

Between Su’s memories, the System cramming information into his head, and the fight against the cyclops, Benton had experienced more pure hurt on this planet than he had in all his years on Earth combined. Whatever the woman—assuming it was her instead of the man—had hit him with had exceeded his high tolerance.

Greatly exceeded.

Benton was in agony. He could barely breathe. Could barely think.

His mind scarcely recognized what was happening. All he knew was that the upper left part of his body was in excruciating pain, and the space he was in was pitch black.

He needed light to see. No, not light. He needed Light.

His thought triggered qi usage. An orb appeared.

Fearing what he’d see, he looked down at the place where the agony originated.

His left shoulder and arm weren’t there. They were just gone. The only thing remaining was a gaping mass of torn tissue. Blood squirted out in great globs.

If he had been human, he would already have been dead. In fact, given the amount of damage, he was pretty sure the loss of so much tissue and blood would have killed a normal Golden Core cultivator.

If not for advancing his Body Cultivation to the peak of Gold, he might not have survived.

Black spots appeared in front of his eyes. He didn’t know if he would make it out of the bunker alive.

The only thing that kept him fighting for each additional breath was the thought of what would happen to the kids if didn’t survive.

Maybe Yuan Yaozu could save them.

Yes. That was a reasonable hope. If the man passed his trial soon, he might be able to prevent the worst from happening. He had to.

Benton grew more lightheaded by the moment. He’d died once already, and it looked like he was about to repeat the experience.