Soverick watched wide-eyed as the rock projectiles blanketed the sky. These projectiles outclassed the ones he faces in training by orders of magnitude. There’s no way he can knock these aside with a stick.
He looked down at his trusty buckler and shook his head. His trusty buckler is totally out of its depth and so is he. An idea came to his mind. Jump up to meet the rocks and escape my predicament by jumping from rock to rock.
“It is crazy. But it just might work.” He laughed and prepared to face his doom.
He operated the coiling dragon technique within the muscles of his legs. He had to stop running to do it. He crouched down and waited for the rocks. Either the rocks will get him first or the bugs. He couldn’t face the two of them at once. Thankfully the rocks didn’t disappoint. They entered the range of his jump so even though the bugs were much closer, they were not a threat anymore.
“Here goes nothing.” He said and jumped.
He had to time his moment of contact carefully. He was currently speeding up while the rocks are speeding down to meet him. It was not going to be easy for him to avoid a collision. What’s worse is that he must not avoid the collision completely. He has to grab onto the rock and then use it as a stand to jump higher. Then he has to repeat the entire sequence again and again. It needed accurate perception, quick reaction, and very precise muscle control.
“Like a frog. Envision the frog.” He muttered as he grabbed onto the first rock and initiated the jumping sequence. His feet found purchase quickly and he flexed his thigh muscles, then he jumped. He grabbed onto the next rock and began to ascend, slowly but surely.
“I’m doing it. I’m doing it.” He shouted to the world.
The blood wasps weren’t so lucky. They were squashed like the bugs they are. The thought of their demise filled him with happiness. He was on a euphoric high, that was until there were no more rocks to grab onto.
“What now?” He looked around while levitating in the air.
“I didn’t think this through.” He said as he began to descend.
He shrugged and decided to start collecting more information for his next run. So he jumped really high. His current height granted him a very good vantage point. His eyes scanned his environment and what he saw made his mouth drop. The commotion created by the rock projectiles had woken up the other rock people. The mountains were shaking as they woke from their slumber. Even worse is that the first rock person to wake up was already preparing another salvo. So even if he survived his landing, which is highly unlikely, he would have to face another round of rocks again.
If he survives even that, then the other rock people will also target him. He tried to look even farther to see where the mountains end but he could only see them for kilometers. He was tempted to use the divine ability of his eyes but he opted out of that.
His mind was still working on finding a feasible plan even though he had already given up on survival. He thought about using the striking viper technique to absorb the rebound force of hitting the ground but it wouldn’t work. He was too far up so his body will not be able to hold that much force. Plus the striking viper technique needed him to release the force but there was no feasible outlet.
He shrugged. “There’s no harm in trying. If it works, then that will be golden.”
He was going to smash into the ground anyway. It was better to pull more information out of it. It will be better if it worked. So he braced his legs and hit the ground ready to stand up. He didn’t stand back up. He returned to the second safe zone instead.
“Looks like I failed.” He smiled wryly. He thought about what he encountered and started to review the information he had about the rock tribe.
They are another race that occupies the Virut plane with the battle sage monkeys. They all descended from the mountain progenitor, a rock that gained sentience and continued to grow strong until it became a Transcendent. The people of the rock tribe are peaceful, it is why they have been able to co-exist with the battle sage monkeys. They love to sleep and will sleep their entire lives until they become Transcendents. Only then do they mingle with other races.
Their life cycle is weird because only Transcendents of their race can produce offspring. In other races, the ability to procreate is something that is easily done by the weak and it becomes difficult to procreate the stronger an individual is. So their primogenitor had to become a transcendent before it could reproduce. Their entire race would not exist if their primogenitor had been killed before it matured. But their primogenitor was content with simply sleeping, it ignored strife and racial discord as it grew from a small rock into a mountain.
Rock people aren’t classified as earth elementals because when they are born, they are born with fleshy bodies. They are called rock eaters at that stage. The rocks they eat will transform their bodies into stone. They become a rock person when the transformation is complete.
Their mental capacity reduces drastically with the transformation which encourages them to sleep. They don’t become stupid, just slow. This transformation reverts and they become fleshy when they become transcendents. The good thing about their life is that they surely will become transcendent as long as they don’t die. They also engage in self-division for reproduction, so they don’t need another member of their race to procreate.
They might not need another one of them to reproduce but the requirement to become Transcendent before being able to reproduce has limited their population to within the tens of thousands even after millions of years.
The race of the rock people is protected by the racial council for many reasons. One of the reasons is because the rock people sided with the battle sage monkeys and helped them out during the war for their survival. So the racial council is protecting them because they are allies.
The major reason they are being protected is that their primogenitor is still alive and it is a world god to boot. The primogenitor can sense each of its descendants because they all came from its flesh, so it can easily track the murderers of his kin.
But it doesn’t need to. The racial council helps him to preserve the precious lives of his offspring very strictly. The racial council is usually benevolent, kind and behind the scenes, so people might have forgotten about them. Their inaction in recent times within the plane has also made people forget the racial council is made up of the strongest people of the plane. Some of them were pioneers on the path of refinement, but most of them are shrewd, intelligent killers. They have walked over the corpse of those that are part of their race and other races to reach where they are today.
The fact that they chose to do good with their power is because their intelligence made them decide to band together for a common goal, instead of splitting the power of the race. It was a very efficient course of action. They can be efficient slaughterers too if they want to.
Soverick had learned most of what he knew about the Virut plane before coming to the battle academy from Hadrick. Hadrick likes to talk a lot and Soverick used to listen to him as a baby. He would seat by the window while Hadrick will drone on and on. Hadrick can also be considered ancient but he is nowhere close to how old the primogenitor of the rock people is. Hadrick suspected that the primogenitor was alive even before the realm of high heaven was split into planes.
“That’s a very long time to sleep for.” He whistled appreciatively.
“Well, the answer is obvious. Don’t wake up the rock people. That means I have to sneak past them. Which means I have to get rid of the blood wasps.”
The rock people will continue to sleep as long as they are not disturbed. But he will disturb them as long as he is being chased by the blood wasps. The vibration caused by his feet as he moves at his top speed to avoid the blood wasps will cause them to wake up. He cannot survive the attacks of the rock people and he cannot run silently while being chased by the blood wasps. The chase requires his top speed, so he has to get rid of his pursuers.
“How to kill the wasps?” He asked himself.