Mystical Journey

As the sky darkened and the clouds grew thicker, the previous sunny weather was nowhere to be seen.

Garen floated over the Colorful Lake, slightly nauseated at the disgusting smell and radiation.

As the sound of the wind grew louder, he lowered the aircraft and headed downwards slowly. As he approached the Colorful Lake, the horrible stench bombarded his sense of smell, making his eyes water.

The dark green lake was like a huge pot of gooey paste with some places bubbling non-stop. The bubbles swelled up and became like balloons; they floated up and left the surface of the lake, but they did not fly high before popping, leaving rancid green droplets behind.

Garen gently landed on a blanket of green algae by the lake and raised his hand to look at his protective clothing. The original black protective clothing had become slightly yellow. The huge amount of radiation had suppressed Garen’s cold energy radiation until it had retreated into the protective clothing before it barely managed to go against it.

“The pollution here is too serious…” he looked around and saw no living things or any plants in the surrounding.

“Firstly, I should look for the site where the White Rainbow Stones are,” he slowly walked along the edge of the lake.

Before long, at a place between the lake and the blanket of algae, he could vaguely see colorful stones of different sizes. There were white, red, green, yellow and even more colors.

Garen went forward, picked up a white stone and shook off the lake water on it.

“It does contain the kind of material that the Peacock’s mucus has and it can provide help to my Peacock’s technique to evolve and train… This place is an uncomfortable and disgusting place for others but for me, it’s a blessed land…”

Garen gently pressed on the white stone. Immediately, the white stone looked as though it was weathered away and turned into powder, which was sprinkled down by Garen into the lake. It melted into the lake and there were no signs of it again.

The sky got darker, and there were only a few lights peeking through the thick dark clouds. Without the light, Colorful Lake appeared an even darker shade of green and the bubbles from the lake had lessened, making the lake appear calmer.

“I need to find a good place, a place with more white stones to concentrate on absorbing…”

He squatted down, enduring the stench, and dipped his hand slightly into the green lake.

Hiss…

A trace of white smoke came out from the fingertip of the protective glove and the smell of something burnt wafted in the air.

The stench was just like a toilet after taking a dump, mixed with the smell of burnt plastics; pungent and disgusting.

Garen held his breath. There was a small hole on the fingertip of his protective glove, which had been corroded by the lake water. At the moment the lake water touched the skin on his finger, it was surrounded by a large number of blue threads.

“Devour!” he retracted his finger and the little bit of lake water surrounded by the blue threads immediately drilled back into his skin.

Putong!

Suddenly, Garen heard a loud heartbeat of his own heart.

The lake water that was wrapped up was decomposed into tiny bits of unknown black materials. These black materials were unable to be used by Peacock technique, as the nutrients and energy contained inside were too little and most of it was poisonous toxins. After being swallowed by the blue threads, it was categorized as impurities and was directly transferred to the ‘tumor’ in his chest.

“Lake water that has no worth… It can only be used for Distorted Seed…” Garen frowned and stood up.

Resuming his walk along the edge of the lake, Garen carefully observed the distribution of the white stones.

After more than two hours when the sky was totally dark, he switched on the radioactive light. The green light illuminated the surroundings not far from him.

“Fortunately, the cold energy radiation surrounds my body, or else the radioactive light might get damaged,” Garen held the lantern-like radioactive light and continued his observation on the distribution.

Before he knew it, time flew by quickly.

“Hai!”

Suddenly, a voice came from the sky. It was a voice that belonged to a man.

“This is our turf, stranger!”

Garen looked up and saw that in the distance, a small group of miniature black Mechs was flying towards him. This kind of Mech was only half the size of a normal Mech. Around two meters tall, it looked like a layer of dark metal armor that was wrapped around a person. Rather than a Mech, calling it a metal coat was more fitting.

The number of members of this small group of Mechs totaled to six units. The sound of the engines billowing flames came from their back. The yellow flames that were spat out were very small and inconspicuous in the night sky.

The other party was wearing night goggles which obviously meant that they could still see without light.

“This Colorful Lake belonged to us, Hornet, get out, get the hell out of here!”

“Super-miniature Mechs?” Garen recognized the other party’s equipment. This kind of super-miniature Mech was one of the most popular armed devices for people without Willpower.

A flexible operation, strong defensive ability, adaptability to many kinds of harsh environment and it could also fly freely. With the addition of various weapon systems, it could even threaten ordinary Mech pilots. Generally, three or four units of super-miniature Mechs could threaten regular Mech pilots if they had plenty of weapons. Their defensive abilities were equivalent to one-fifth up to one-third of the normal Mech’s, but they were much more dexterous. It was just that their cost was very high; the price of two units of normal Mech was equivalent to that of one unit of super-miniature Mech…

“Did you hear me?” the Mech at the front shouted loudly after seeing that Garen gave no response.

“Forget it, kill him and throw into the lake and nobody will ever find out. This is the secret location that we found, no outsiders must know about it.”

A Mech behind said in a low voice.

Below, Garen scowled.

In this kind of situation, the other party easily said things that meant to silence him by killing. It was clear that the chaos in this region had slightly exceeded what he imagined.

Before he’d finished gathering his thoughts, Garen saw flames being shot at him from the hand of the Mech in front.

Almost at the same time, he moved to the left. The ground he’d stood on originally was now full of small holes the size of bullets.

“Ordinary guns? They’re still using this outdated primitive weapon,” Garen dodged and looked at his original position.

At the fourth level of the Peacock technique, the overall quality of his body had greatly improved. Although there was still quite some distance to the peak of his strength from before, he had some confidence in dealing with any danger. Coincidently, he also wanted to try out the power when he combined the Peacock technique with martial arts.

“This brat is so slippery!” he heard a shout from a Mech above.

Regardless, Garen lightly jumped and incredibly crossed over four or five meters and landed on a stone beside the lake and stomped.

Peng!!

He jumped to a height of seven or eight meters and in the blink of an eye, he abruptly appeared in front of the Mech which had opened fire.

“Single Whip’s Mark!”

His right hand suddenly swelled up to almost twice its original size in mid-air, and like a black metallic fan, it swung down upon the Mech.

Weng!!

The Mech did not even make a sound nor reaction before it crashed downwards into the lake, creating large waves.

“I never thought that the oriental martial arts absorbed from the previous world to be so useful,” Garen slowly landed, stood at his original position and moved his body.

His actual strength was not as terrifying as what it appeared to be. It was because, as a Mech pilot, he was very clear on the weaknesses that Mechs had. Against the super-miniature Mech coat, he could naturally find the flaws they had and proceed to deal a fatal blow to the thruster. It was not so much that the other party was blown downwards by him, it was more of the other party getting crushed by the immense weight of their Mech coat.

However, the people in the sky above did not know this. All they saw was a guy wearing a common protective clothing jumping and slamming down a Mech.

They did not respond for a long time to what had happened. They just remained afloat in mid-air.

“Henry… Henry was knocked down by that guy with a single blow!” a Mech started to turn around, intending to escape.

“What are you afraid of?! It’s just an accident! Henry’s thruster was suddenly out of flames, I saw it clearly!” the first voice that had suggested killing him suddenly sounded and quickly calmed down his companions.

For a time, the remaining five Mechs began to hover in the air, staring at Garen. Soon, they switched to covert communications and began to fly upwards.

“Kill him!!”

Garen was able to sneak attack a Mech just now, in fact, it was just that the angle had coincidentally been in his favor. Now that the other party had become vigilant, it would be more difficult for him.

He only had a body that was twice as good as the general human body. Against the strength of alloy in this era, he was still powerless and unable to penetrate through it.

Looking at the Mechs that got higher and higher above, Garen did not feel anything. He had fought countless battles in his life. Even now that he had to fight Mechs with his physical body in such a harsh environment, he did not waver.

He had seen too many environments that were much worse than this, this little handicap was nothing.

“Except, how do I get rid of the rest of them…?” just as this thought flashed through his mind, he saw bursts of fire and the sky was filled with bullets raining down on him. A large barrage of bullets flew downwards, forcing him to move around quickly to avoid them.

Some of the large stones on the ground were riddled with bullets until countless holes were seen, and the blanket of algae on the ground had been shot into pulp. Clouds of dust-like green gas billowed up.

In the midst of his rapid movements, Garen picked up a few blocks of stones and used them as hidden weapons to fling mercilessly at the Mechs in the sky.

The man who had been hit only shook a few times before continuing to attack without any effect whatsoever.

“Such a tough alloy!” Garen realized, it was unlike the era of Secret Techniques, where a wall that was more than ten centimeters would be directly smashed. Even if it was that tough metallic armor, the shock produced by the high speed would make the pilot inside feel terrible.

But now, it seemed that the Mechs had pretty good shock absorber devices.

“Using the physical body to go against the Mechs, even the most fragile super-miniature Mechs, is so difficult…what a hassle,” Garen moved quickly, picking up a dark green branch by the lake and dipping into the lake.

“Let’s see what this can do.”

He jumped to the left side and borrowed the force from a green tree by the lake to fling the branch in his hand after a backward flip.

The branch flew directly towards the Mech giving out the commands in the sky. The end that was dipped into the lake hit the right side of the head of the Mech.

Pa!

With a crisp sound, the lake water from the branch splashed on the head of the machine.

“Ah!!!” he screamed and fell straight down, and no more sound was heard from him.

The remaining four Mechs were dumbfounded. For a moment, the sound of gunfire stopped.

Pa Pa Pa!

Three more branches covered with lake water was shot up and hit the same places on the Mechs.

The three Mechs also let out screams before falling downwards.

The last Mech was trembling and the gun in its hand was almost dropped. It remained suspended in mid-air, afraid of making any movements.