CHAPTER 47: PREDATORS OF THE GRASSY DESERT (PART 2)

’This is going to be annoying...’

Theo’s opponents revealed themselves the moment the steppe’s tall grass succumbed to the flattening of his broken glyph.

And with just a single look, he could tell the obvious.

There were a total of four of them, three armed with some weirdly looking bows, all of them standing near the edge of the area where the grass was affected.

The fourth and the last one stood a lot closer and was armed with a short spear and a knife as opposed to a bow... Now, however, he lay down, gently pressed into the ground and trying to wiggle his way out of the grassy mud.

All of them, however, were at a level that would make any bodybuilder or muscle-loving girl salivate.

Their bodies were honed to near perfection, with each muscle properly outlined underneath their slightly darker, adding up to their slightly more orange, sun-loved complexity. They had dark, swirling lines tattooed all over their bodies, making them appear much wilder and more ferocious than they would come out as otherwise.

Most notably, however, as Theo’s inner misogynist quickly pointed out, while their craft was of clearly physical nature, two out of the four were women!

’So annoying.’

Their looks said it all. Skimpy clothing, primitive weapons at a physical might that easily challenged Theo’s cultivation-reinforced flesh...

’All they are missing are horned helmets and they could be off to raid some coastal villages,’ Theo thought as he rose up from the ground himself, his body already shrouded in the bubble of a freshly made barrier glyph.

This was the worst matchup a mage could ask for.

A purely physical fighter whose lack of means to externalize their mana meant a much increased resistance to any purely magical techniques Theo could invoke.

That limited his fighting options to manifestation magic, where he would use mana and glyphs to control the parts of the world around him rather than operating directly on the effects and vectors.

To a genius of magic like Theo, it felt like going back from painting pictures with the faintest brush to trying to paint with his finger upon the sands of a kid’s sandbox—an easy thing to do with a man of his talent and experience, but still, it left a bad aftertaste in his mouth.

The fourth of the group finally managed to free himself from the tight embrace of the earth, instantly signaling the rest of his group into action.

And the locals didn’t wait.

Their bodies tensed up before they all jumped into a sprint, with three of them instantly leaping back to where the high grasses still stood, while the spear-wielding one at the front slowly moved backwards while keeping Theo in his line of sight at all times.

Theo, however, just stood still, watching as it all happened.

’And here lies the second reason why it’s going to be so annoying,’ he thought.

It was just a glimpse, but he managed to spot one of the wild locals... or rather, the way in which his movement disturbed the grass. And the speed was pretty much the same as when Theo pushed his body and cultivation to its limits, if not even greater than that!

In other words, those people cultivated their physical strength. And judging by the faint vibrations of the world’s mana around, they did capitalize on spiritual energy in some way, but they did so in a way that was different not only from magic, but from cultivation too!

Swish!

With Theo’s eyes focused on the movement, he easily noticed the next barrage of arrows.

But with his glyph now up and secure, they merely bounced off his barrier, falling down at his feet.

Then came the next one, this time aimed straight at the back of his neck.

"An excellent shot," Theo openly acknowledged the attack.

If not for his barrier, the arrow would lodge itself precisely into his spine, severing his spinal cord and bringing him down too fast for him to even notice what was happening.

Once again, however, the arrow merely bounced off his shield.

In every meaning possible, at least for this moment, the two parties entered a stalemate.

Theo, in order to keep his barrier as stable as possible, couldn’t move from where he stood. By moving, his barrier would have to account for every smallest unevenness in the ground, the resulting fluctuations of mana through its fabric potentially creating weaknesses for the locals to exploit.

The locals, however, weren’t in any better situation.

They had to keep on moving at the same, explosive rate, lest they wanted Theo to track them down, pin them down and then unleash a barrage of spells upon their sorry backsides. Yet, no matter how many arrows they shot, how many stones they threw...

Nothing could penetrate Theo’s defenses.

It only took a few moments for Theo’s surroundings to calm down as his opponents finally came to realize the obvious.

As things stood, neither party could deal a serious blow to the other.

’What are you going to do now?’ Theo thought, perfectly relaxed.

For as long as he remained motionless, his defenses would remain impenetrable. And with every second passing, he continued to develop several ways that would allow him to strike back... all the while making sure none of his counterattacks would turn lethal.

His excursion into the wildlands wasn’t to make an enemy out of the locals, but merely to scout the area.

If anything, rather than killing them off—something he quite quickly found a way to achieve—he had to ensure they would stay alive!

And if that wasn’t enough, he had to think of a way to defeat them without hurting their pride too much, lest he wanted to make the job of making a deal with them all the harder down the line!

’So annoying,’ Theo thought again, gritting his teeth in frustration as he dissolved two more glyphs once he judged them to be too effective at taking down his opponents.

In just the few minutes since the sudden attack, he managed to create a net of mana tendrils throughout the ground, sensing the position of the locals through it... while also creating a way to change the origination point of his following spells.

If he was going for the kill, he could just cast a mage’s bread and butter spell—fireball—beneath their feet and get the whole mess over with...

But again, a bunch of charred corpses wouldn’t make for a good first hand at a negotiating table, would it?

Thankfully, before Theo’s frustration could reach the point at which he would settle on just slaughtering all who would dare to stand in his way... the locals took the initiative.

Even if it was through something as simple as uttering a weird, bird-like call.

The sound of said call lingered in the air for a little bit, scratching the weird part of Theo’s brain he never knew he could scratch.

Next, two more locals joined in on the call, their voices merging and amplifying off each other to create a powerful, piercing sound.

’Is this some sort of a soundwave attack?’ Theo thought, doing his best not to keep his thinking restricted to just what he knew to possibly expect. ’Because if it’s not...’

Theo’s eyes twitched, only for his mana to stir as he instantly accounted for the other, most obvious, possible reason for the locals to utter this weirdly pleasant and now impossibly loud call.

And not sooner than two more glyphs manifested in the air to double and then triple Theo’s defenses...

A flash zigzagged through the distant grasses, approaching at a speed comparable to Theo’s earlier rush.

Then, before Theo could even take notice, it was already by his side, turning into a single, still image of a fiercely-looking girl with her knees heavily bent, her legs in a wide stance and her leading arm stretched out as far back as the ligaments in her perfectly toned body allowed.

And then?

Her hand... her arm... No, her entire body snapped, while a spear of pure mana manifested in her hand right as she struck forth!

Thump!

If that woman’s single image was just how much Theo’s brain managed to process in the moment, then the moment of stillness that followed was real.

For a solid second, the two forces of nature collided, Theo’s triple-layered defense and the raw mass of manifested spiritual energy in the woman’s hand with its strength amplified by the godly momentum of her zigzag charge.

A single second where Theo looked into the woman’s calm eyes, and when she stared right back into Theo’s moderately excited stare.

"Now, this just got interesting," Theo whispered as a smile flowered up on his lips.

BOOM!

The coiling of the different manas finally reached its peak. The world itself concluded its calculations of all the forces involved...

Only to create a localized explosion that threw both Theo and the newly arriving woman several feet away from where they clashed.