Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG) Chapter 215: Lost in Silence

We ran through endless darkness. The horde pursued us like an unrelenting river, hounding our footsteps as we ran for our lives.

I constantly used alteration essence to activate renewal, keeping everyone’s stamina high. With every single minute, tiny bits of my alteration essence drained away. My keywords, {Duality}, {Ocean}, and {Alteration}, worked to boost my essence regeneration - but even with three of my keywords active, I was losing essence every second.

But that wasn’t without benefits. After a few minutes of nonstop sprinting, I saw that the worldstriders were tiring out. Apparently, the creatures didn’t have very good stamina. It was possible for them to fly as fast as we could sprint away, but they didn’t have any sort of stamina restoration, and they struggled to maintain the sa speed as us for any decent amount of ti.

We also managed to stay out of their attack range. A few of them tried to hurl stone pellets at us, but with how far away they were, their aim was abysmal. I still needed to teleport away a few projectiles, but most of them weren't even close to hitting us.

On the other hand, my essence reserves were starting to bottom out. I had done too many different things with my alteration essence today, and I hadn’t had enough ti to regenerate.

It was thankful that Old Mo seed to have so sort of endurance-type ability, because without Old Mo and Sallia helping carry the slower mbers of the party, we would have been sward by the worldstriders minutes ago.

After the first few minutes of our desperate sprint, I started to believe that we were going to be fine. The worldstriders were falling behind, we were out of attack range, and I could deflect any lucky shots with my portals.

And then, I realized that we were getting close to another spatial crack.

This entire dinsion was littered with spatial cracks, and they were teeming with worldstriders.

I redirected our group away from the new spatial crack. But a few of the flagging worldstriders managed to put on one last burst of speed. They flew to the new spatial crack, and started chittering at the other worldstriders inside of it.

Most of the residents of the new spatial crack ignored us. Only one in ten flew close enough to the talking worldstrider chasing us to even listen to what it had to say. Half of them ignored it right afterwards.

Unfortunately, a new group of about twenty worldstriders joined the group chasing us. They didn't make a big difference in numbers - but the newcors had fresh reserves of essence and stamina.

I hesitated, wondering whether we could turn on the pursuers and wipe them out. If we kept fleeing, they would just keep recruiting more enemies. Maybe we could escape if we found a way to handle the horde?

But then I looked at the much larger group of exhausted worldstriders, and gave up the idea. I was close to running on fus for my alteration essence, and there were too many of them. A fight against them wasn’t winnable.

Luckily, the worldstriders from the new group still struggled to catch up to us. They maintained pressure on us as we ran, but they couldn’t actually reach us. I also saw so of the worldstriders from the original group drop out of the chase. We had exhausted so of our pursuers.

The problem was that there was no path forward in this dinsion that didn’t pass by more spatial cracks. As we kept running, every ti we got near another spatial crack, a few more pursuers would join the chase. The worldstriders hand an unlimited supply of new combatants, while we did not.

So we kept running.

The group of pursuers renewed their manpower again…

And again…

And again…

And again…

By the seventh ti it happened, I was starting to lose my mind. The worldstriders weren’t even attacking us at this point - they were just wearing us out. They only ever attacked if we slowed down. As we continued to run, I started to realize sothing.

We were being herded sowhere.

As we fled, the density of spatial cracks was increasing. The worldstriders weren’t stupid. They weren’t like the monsters we had fought before in other worlds.

They were an intelligent group of communicative creatures. It was normal for them to use tactics and planning against us. They weren’t a threat individually, but they had planning, organization, and teamwork.

We were going to die if we couldn’t find a way to take control of the situation.

I searched for a way out of this - any way at all.

But nothing ca to mind.

My best idea was to try to force open one of the half-open portals using my alteration magic - but given how fragile they were, I felt it was more likely that we would all die than flee back to the real world. I was more likely to turn a broken portal into a blender than a doorway. And most of them were buried under several tis my body weight in boulders.

said Sallia, as I desperately searched for a way to turn the tables.