F-ranker Sword Saint: My Soulbound Sword is Secretly SSS-tier!-Chapter 321: Humbled Prodigies

Daru decisively turned west, running along the edges of whatever it was that he was stepping on with gritted teeth.

This forced route gave the Verdant Runebark and the other spawns behind it a chance to effectively close the distance, wasting a few minutes of effort.

"These things are persistent..." he muttered cursingly, glancing at his pursuers from time to time.

Thankfully, aside from the Verdant Runebark occasionally making problems for Daru through roots that always failed to capture him every time, his concern was mostly on the stamina side.

Would he run out before shaking the hostile evergreens off his trail?

Naturally, Daru was determined not to allow this to happen, as it would mean losing a second life.

He couldn’t help but wonder how the other representatives — both his kin and those from other races — were faring.

’Probably not much better than me...’

The chase went on for another few minutes, and at this point, Daru had acquainted himself with a few elements of Yggdrasil’s lethal environment.

Tree-like Swordspawns who can uproot themselves; trees that are immobile but can use roots and vines to catch and wither prey, Sap Traps, flowers that spit sticky and corrosive enzymes, harmless trees that bleed golden sap protected by swarms of Sabre Aphids, and the possibility that he was standing on the branch of an impossibly colossal tree.

He had learned a lot, and this knowledge would allow him to navigate the deadly environment better.

Covering distance, a massive brown spire? growth? protruding from the sides of the strange land he was running on came into view, disappearing into the distant clouds above.

Daru noticed that there was no flora there, making the relatively less spacious, inclined land far safer than this one.

He decided to make a turn there.

Who knows? Perhaps the Swordspawns behind him would give up the chase once he got there?

Daru stepped on the pedal, running full speed to increase the distance between him and his pursuers, even if only slightly.

Then, without hesitation, he stepped on the spire-like, inclined growth...only to feel that he had somehow "slipped" and was now falling.

Daru’s heart fell with him, bewildered at what was happening.

Only a second into the fall, when his back hit the sloping land, and he was already sliding down, did he get his wits about him.

His eyes widened as he instinctively looked up.

The spire-like growth was still there...so how did he fall?

’A mirage?’

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the luxury to ponder, as he was sliding to his death. Daru quickly turned, stabbing his tachi on the mildly bouncy ground surface to slow and eventually stop his descent.

...But the ground wasn’t providing much resistance.

The outer layer was soft.

The inner layer, on the other hand, was so hard that Daru’s desperate stab didn’t pierce through, resulting in his descent remaining more or less the same speed, even accelerating towards the end.

"Kuhh..."

Daru’s muscles bulged, and he stabbed harder, though to little purchase. He eventually disappeared beneath the clouds.

He felt that he was about to reach the part where a vertical drop was inevitable, frustration welling in his chest.

Would he lose two lives just like that?

But then, before he fell, his momentum completely stopped. Onimaru Kunitsuna had pierced deeper and deeper, eventually having enough depth to stop his fall.

Cold sweat ran down Daru’s spine as his heart pounded wildly.

He instinctively looked down, seeing nothing but more clouds. He would definitely not survive such a fall.

Daru took a few deep breaths and assessed the situation.

He was running low on mana, plus he had no foothold he could use to launch himself up through Sword Skills.

"Ahh, if only I had mastered those aerial steps Skylar used..."

Daru had been trying to learn it, but unfortunately, there were still elements he couldn’t comprehend, and the situation where it was needed already arose before he could.

He would have to think of another way for now.

Fortunately, his brain didn’t fail him, giving him one, though the issue was, again, whether his stamina would last or not.

"Well, hesitating wouldn’t help."

Daru immediately got to it.

Mountainsplitter was the only skill he learned from a Sword Skill Scroll, so using it wasn’t as restrictive as the ones he learned using his Sword Passive, Divine Comprehension.

He could use it with a mere thought.

A thick black aura crawled from Onimaru Kunitsuna’s handle, veiling the entire blade.

In the next moment, Daru took another deep breath, pulled out his tachi as he pulled himself up, and stabbed at a higher point. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

His heart skipped a beat as the decisive moment slowed time to a crawl.

A smooth shinging sound echoed as Onimaru Kunitsuna’s tip pierced smoothly, and then a bit more before Daru couldn’t push it in further.

"It worked..." he sighed in relief.

This was how he planned to climb his way back up.

Daru would wait for Mountainsplitter to go off cooldown, then he would latch himself to a higher point.

He had a few consumables to aid him.

Hopefully, it will be enough.

***

Meanwhile, a close east to where a blonde young man barely hung by his blade to stay alive, a Veshari with strawberry hair stood still, eyes empty as pollen she didn’t detect sprouted in her lungs.

Her body was but a mere flower pot a few minutes later.

To the far south, a tall Aetherborn was locked in a hopeless battle against a Verdant Runebark, too prideful to retreat.

There was also a gray-scaled Vyrrkan struggling violently northwest of where Daru was, but hulking Bladeborn was hit with more sap balls, pinning him firmly to one of the trees and making escape possible.

He would’ve been killed by a humanoid tree, had the tree not collapsed from the inside as hundreds of dark-brown beetles emerged from its holes and started nibbling at him.

Lastly, to the southeast, a silver-haired human breathed heavily, her legs failing her as she was finally caught by a crawling root.

More caught up, constricting her entire figure and pulling her closer as her eyes slowly lost focus.

She felt what little remained of her stamina leaving her, alongside her life force. She was but a half-withered husk by the time the predatory evergreen pulled her to its maw-like hollow, devouring her.

A lot of prodigies were humbled that day.