Runebound Reverse Tower of The Dead

Chapter 261: Cargo

"Don’t stop if you die we lose our supplies!!" the skinny guy shouted as he speared the group.

The words didn’t just cut through the night, they shoved everyone forward like a hand on the back. The oasis was already shrinking behind them, swallowed by dark and distance, and the comfort it had offered felt like a cruel joke now that Garron’s corpse was cooling under a palm tree. The sand had that dry, whispering sound underfoot, the kind that made every step feel like it was being erased the moment it was made.

"Worry about yourself," the Old man said as he rushed up ahead.

He pushed himself into the lead like he could outrun consequence. His silhouette was a crooked spearpoint against the dim horizon, shoulders jerking with every breath. He kept glancing back, and every time his head snapped around, Kael saw the flicker of panic in the movement, the way fear made his spine stiff and his gait ugly.

The man with his face covered was neither last nor first, and kept a steady fast pace in the middle.

He moved like someone who had decided on a rhythm and refused to let anything break it, not the wind, not the sand, not the fact that one wrong stumble could mean death. His covered face never turned too much. His steps were efficient, tight, conserving energy like it was coin.

Kale on the other hand was trying his best to keep up with the group without running past Christy who was struggling to run with an injured leg.

Christy’s limp wasn’t subtle anymore. It had that uneven hitch where her body tried to pretend it was fine and failed every third step. Her cane was gone now, left behind in the scramble to flee. She relied on grit and spite, and both were burning out fast.

Kael matched her pace on purpose, even though every part of him could have surged ahead. He could feel the storm behind them on his skin, sand beginning to sting, wind turning sharper, a low roar building like something alive.

She cursed under her breath, "Fuck, fuck!" and looked back, the storm will catch up to them in no time.

The horizon behind them wasn’t a horizon anymore. It was a wall. A moving smear of darkness and grit that swallowed sunlight and spat it back out as murk. The wind carried a taste of dust so thick it felt like chewing dry cloth.

The beacon was still far away.

Not "far" in the abstract sense. Far in the way that made your calves burn and your throat tighten when you tried to swallow spit that wasn’t there. Far in the way that made your brain start offering stupid bargains, maybe the storm won’t be so bad, maybe we can hide, maybe we can, and then punishing you for even thinking it.

Kael sighed, he could easily make it to the beacon, actually he could get there without much worry if he were to rush forward.

Using momentum and Second Breath along with presence to lower the exhaustion, he’ll get there in less than a couple of minutes.

While these guys would take hours.

And the thought came with a bitter aftertaste, because the same calculation carried its own ugly conclusion.

It would probably mean that these guys will die.

Not "maybe." Not "if they get unlucky." The storm would chew through them first, and whatever lived in the sand would finish what the wind started.

And he’ll have to redo the trial, he couldn’t risk them dying, if not for the storm then maybe the monsters laying in ambush along the direction of the beacon.

If they dropped here, the bag became a curse. Supplies reset. Water lost. Their one advantage, the only advantage they’d stolen from the oasis, would vanish. The trial would drag on, and the desert didn’t care who deserved to live.

He grabbed Christy and placed her over one of his shoulders.

The motion was smooth, practiced. Not a rescue, not a romantic gesture, just logistics. Her weight settled against him like a pack.

"Oi what are we doing man! It’s not time to be a knight in shining armor!"

The skinny guy’s voice cracked on the last word, half accusation, half disbelief, like kindness offended him more than danger did.

"This is faster," Kael said as he ran up forward.

He didn’t bother selling it. He simply did it. Sand sprayed from his heels as he widened his stride, closing the gap to the others with Christy slung over his shoulder like she belonged there.

Once he got to the rest of the group, he turned to the man with his face covered, he was keeping up pace, steady and strong.

Kael watched him for half a second longer than necessary, not out of suspicion, but evaluation. That pace wasn’t panic. That pace was discipline.

The old man was already heaving, about to die from the exertion, and every time he looked back at the incoming sandstorm, fracture would keep rising above his head.

Even without seeing the numbers, Kael could read it in the man’s posture. The shoulders tightening. The breath turning shallow. The way he started to run with his head forward as if trying to outrun his own fear. A man like that didn’t die because he lacked strength. He died because his mind ate him first.

"How much do you weigh?" Kael asked the man with his face covered.

He didn’t slow. He asked it like a battlefield question, quick, sharp, expecting an answer.

He frowned.

The man’s steps didn’t change, but the hesitation was visible in the angle of his head, like the question itself annoyed him.

"Speak god damn it, man."

The sandstorm surged closer behind them, and Kael had no patience left for silence. Not tonight.

"Seventy-eight, why?"

"You?" he asked Christy as they ran.

Christy’s fingers tightened on his collar like she wanted to choke him for even asking.

"Are you fucking serious? Asking a girl her weight, and in this situation?"

"Just tell me for Christ sake." Kael shouted.

He didn’t look at her when he said it. He was watching the space ahead, the line of movement, counting seconds and distance.

"Fifty five..." she said her expression a bit sour.

Kael raised his shoulder and lowered it. "Close, good enough, he looked at the old man and the skinny guy, "Good, it’s within range..."

"What the fuck are you doing?" The skinny guy said as he looked at Kael who was removing something from under his gauntlet.

Kael’s hands moved with urgency now. Not frantic, precise. He peeled back the edge of his sleeve and reached under the gauntlet’s seat. The mechanisms Andre had adjusted sat clean over his wrists... and beneath that, the thing the others hadn’t really registered until now.

Two large black rings, that looked like they were used to cage prisoners.

They weren’t decorative. They had presence. They looked like they belonged on something that should never have been free.

He placed them in his inventory. One blink and the metal that had been biting his skin for a year was gone, leaving pale grooves in the flesh that didn’t even have time to rise into welts.

He then removed two more from his ankles.

His boots shifted as the weight left them. For a fraction of a second, his balance adjusted, his body recalibrating. It wasn’t relief, it was danger. Like loosening a leash on a beast and hoping it didn’t decide to bite.

"What are you doing? What are those?" Christy asked.

Her voice was sharper than the wind. Even on his shoulder she could feel the change in him, the way his movement became... lighter. Too light.

"No need to know."

"Come here," Kael said as he grabbed the old man by the waist.

The old man’s eyes went wide instantly, terror overriding exhaustion.

"Stop! Don’t kill me! Fuck!"

"I’m not killing you, dumbass," Kael said as he sprinted with both of them one on a shoulder and the other grabbed underneath his armpit.

The old man flailed once, then realized flailing was useless when the arm holding him felt like steel cables. His feet left the sand, and he hung there like a sack, sputtering curses he couldn’t finish because breathing was already hard.

Kael’s stride lengthened again, and the distance to the beacon suddenly looked less impossible. Not close. Not easy. But less impossible.

He looked at the face covered guy, "Go up, left shoulder."

"Are you serious."

"We’re not going to survive if we don’t do this, go up."

The man’s eyes narrowed behind the cloth, but his feet didn’t hesitate long. He surged forward, planted a foot, and climbed Kael like a structure, fast, controlled, using Kael’s back as leverage. In a second he was there, sitting on Sitting on Kael’s shoulder.

The skinny guy looked at them confused.

He stared like his brain had shorted out. Like logic had abandoned him and left a note saying good luck.

"On my back right now, and hang tight."

"What the hell are we doing man? The sandstorm is approaching."

The wind was already chewing at their ankles. Sand hissed along the ground and started to blur the edges of everything. The storm wasn’t behind anymore. It was here, close enough to taste.

"Don’t argue, hurry up," Kael said, seeing the look on Kael’s face, it seemed more merciful to go against the storm than him right now.

The skinny guy swallowed whatever pride he had left and jumped. His arms locked around Kael’s neck, his weight awkward and clumsy compared to the covered man’s grip, but it was enough to cling.

"The fuck are we doing now?" The Old man said.

He sounded half-dead already, but fear made him loud.

"You see my belt," Kael said to the old man.

He turned his head, "Yeah."

"Press the middle section there is something there. Also, everyone hang tight, like your life depend on it, and I’m not joking it will."

Kael’s voice dropped into something cold and flat. Not a threat. A fact.

The sandstorm began reaching, the sand began blowing and started covering their vision.

It crawled into their mouths and eyes, a stinging grit that made the world feel like it was being erased.

"Hurry!"

The old man shouted, "Fine!" He pressed it.

A surge of runic energy enabled Kael’s belt and Momentum activated.

The shift was immediate. Not like adrenaline. Not like sprinting. More like reality itself tilting forward.

One step, two, three, four, and then Kael began sprinting.

At first, it was just fast. Fast enough that the others’ grips tightened reflexively, nails digging into cloth, breath catching in their throats.

But then, it just became absurd.

The world smeared. Sand became a blur, the ground a rushing conveyor belt. The beacon’s silhouette jumped closer with every heartbeat.

The speed at which he began sprinting at became so fast that not only were they not just hanging for dear life, if they let go they’d be squashed like debris fallen from a truck on a highway.

Their bodies weren’t passengers anymore, they were cargo. One slip and the desert wouldn’t even need monsters to kill them. freewebnøvel.coɱ

Kael flew forward into the sand. Each footfall hit like a small detonation. Sand geysered up behind him, and the storm that had been about to swallow them suddenly struggled to keep pace.

Momentum was taxing on one’s body and muscles, last year Kael would have broken down after ten seconds.

He remembered that kind of failure intimately, the tearing ache in tendons, the body screaming stop and then simply collapsing.

Current Kael could run with this speed for up to a minute.

A minute was a lifetime in the tower. A minute was the difference between reaching shelter and becoming bone dust.

The only issue was that he couldn’t do that without the weights limiting him, if he sprinted without them, he’ll tear apart his muscles.

He could feel it even now, every fiber in his legs taut, every joint under stress. The rings had been a cage, yes, but they’d also been a brace. Without them, he was running on a blade’s edge.

He after all has yet to fully train in the Wanderlusting Demon movement art.

The thought flashed and disappeared under the roar of wind.

Soon, the storm which was about to engulf them whole seemed so far away, and the beacon got closer.

The beacon wasn’t a hope anymore. It was a target. A solid point in a world trying to grind them down.

Looking at the mini-map however, there was an issue.

Kael’s eyes flicked to it, quick, practiced, even as sand hammered his helmet and shoulders.

Several red dots lay in wait.

Not behind. Not to the side. Directly ahead.

Worms, in his direct path, and at this speed, Kael can’t move to the sides.

Momentum didn’t turn. It committed.

He can only rush forward.