The Dawn of the New World

The glaive flew through the air in a criss-cross pattern, leaving a weave of burning flame in its wake which kept most of the smaller creatures at bay while Hao Xuan dealt with the Koala beast.

He caught its scent but still couldn't pinpoint its exact location even though there weren't that many places it could be hiding in. ​​

It was able to strike directly at Hao Xuan's body ignoring the Chaos flame completely, or rather bypassing it with its strange ability. Its claws would come out of any shadow that was cast near Hao Xuan, even his own.

When he realized it was attacking from the shadows Hao Xuan left himself open and waited for an attack, which came without delay aiming directly for his ankles. From the beginning, it had only attacked either his weak points or other non-lethal areas.

Hao Xuan sidestepped just in the nick and twirled the glaive without even looking. He felt the blade slice through flesh and knew it was a success. A shrill scream came a moment later confirming it.

The source of the scream was more than 20 meters away from, well out of the range of his attacks yet the claw had come out from right behind him. Hao Xuan briefly sniffed the air around the spot where the severed claw's charred remains were and almost puked.

'Law! It smells very similar to what I remember Nidhora smelling like. Only this one is extremely revolting on the senses like it has many other things mixed in. It doesn't smell...pure?'

'Regardless, now I know for sure the beast is using a law. If I wasn't paying attention it could have been a little dangerous...'

He wasn't able to sense the power level of that beast, most probably because it was much higher than him. Thankfully though it didn't seem very strong when it came to combat.

But Hao Xuan couldn't keep using the Chaos Flames to ward off its attacks either since they consumed way too much Chaos Qi. This was a good moment to off-load some of the more menial tasks.

'Baracus! Help me keep track of things. Set up a perimeter in a radius of 4 meters around me and show me all the creatures in that area. Can you do it?'

*Beep*

'Affirmative.'

'Monitoring energy signatures.'

'Creating live visual feed.'

'Intersecting optical nerve.'

'Connection established.'

Millions of nanites gathered in large clusters and created bundles of artificial sensory organs on the back of Hao Xuan's neck, temples, and forehead. They appeared as dim blue lights under his skin.

On the other end, they directly connected with his optical nerves and projected a live feed in a full 360 degrees circle. This feed showed up in the shape of a small map that showed a top-down view of Hao Xuan's surroundings and then showing each energy signature in 3D by overlapping red dots over the actual creatures.

This way he wouldn't have to pay as much attention to the surroundings and could focus more on killing the red dots in front of him.

Hao Xuan chuckled seeing that. It was both more and less information at the same time, but somehow that worked out perfectly. He glanced towards the warders and gave them the notification.

"Oi, stay close, we're gone keep increasing the speed!"

Upon hearing the orders the warders didn't waste a single moment and all four of them linked hands in a hurry. A dome of translucent white psychic energy materialized around them before abruptly expanding to over 40 meters in size without a warning.

Everything other than Hao Xuan that even touched the dome was simply liquified in its entirety, giving them a much-needed short breather and enough space to mount their next wave.

**

1492 meters above the crater a small space was dug out on the side of the mountain, just above the sea of clouds.

The only entrance was blocked by a shimmering yellow barrier with three people on the other side. There was a small table in the center and each of them was around it. The center of the table held a bowl that was filled with a black liquid.

Currently, the liquid was showing the various scenes of Hao Xuan fighting below. There was no sound and the liquid only showed static images taken every other second but it was enough to know what was going on.

Two of the people wore long hoods that covered everything but their inked hands. They were sitting on the left and right side while the third man sat facing the entrance. He had on a clean white shirt, shoulder-length hair along with a pair of round gold-rimmed glasses hanging from the bridge of his nose.

One of the hooded men turned towards him, "Is he the one, Lord Stasa?"