Lu Mingfei held Erii and ran upward.
Upward, upward, higher still.
Behind him, the white monster let out chilling hisses as it flicked its forked tongue.
The Sumeru Platform swayed amid the enormous waves. The wet deck beneath his feet was as slippery as an oil-slicked slope, and every step threatened to send him sliding. Lu Mingfei felt that he had never run this fast in his life.
He suddenly felt a little fortunate.
Fortunate that he had practiced all those tactical maneuvers at Kassel. Every kind of terrain, every kind of posture—crawling through mud pits, crossing obstacles, scaling high walls. Back then, the instructors had cursed him bloody for it. Now, every bit of it was coming in handy.
If he had been the person he was when he first entered Kassel, let alone sprinting like the wind while carrying a girl at a time like this, he probably would not even have been able to lift her.
Back then, he had truly been a useless loser.
Now—
Now, he did not seem all that much stronger either. On a battlefield like this, he still could not be of much help.
But at least he could run.
The Nine-Headed Serpent's pursuit looked unhurried. In reality, it was unhurried—not because it was not anxious, but because it simply could not move any faster.
Eight Split Heads and one Main Brain, nine heads with nine separate minds—one wanted to go left, another wanted to go right; some wanted to circle around and ambush them, while others wanted to pounce straight ahead.
The Sumeru Platform was covered in load-bearing pillars, packed densely together like a forest. They had originally been meant to support the upper structures, but now they had become the nine-headed serpent's nightmare.
Often, while it was chasing them, one