<Is there any way we can shake them off, and enjoy a bit more time in the Market?> asked Sallia, as we continued to run. She didn't sound very hopeful about the answer - it sounded more like she was grasping at straws.

I raised my head to look at the monsters dashing at us from behind with my one and only working eye. Then, I sighed.

<I don't think so. The monster horde is way too dense, and half of us are badly injured. I feel woozy and I'm out of essence, your factual features are still melty, and Felix and Anise have limited essence reserves too. We don't have a good way to stay here in the Market.>

<That's a shame,> said Sallia.

<At least we're getting what we actually need,> said Felix. <Sure, we miss out on opportunities to gather other useful items, but this will let us actually survive past our next life.>

Sallia dodged out of the way as a massive maw popped out of the shadows in front of us, before she cut a long, bloody furrow into its side as she dashed past it. Felix followed up with a few metal spikes, killing the shadowy beast.

<Did you get anything from killing the worm?> asked Anise.

<I got an assist that was worth 10,000 Achievement,> said Salia. <Huge reward, especially for an assist. I also got a keyword ability that I plan to take. It has one keyword, called 'Hero.' Never seen that keyword before. It gives me a huge boost to my physical abilities and mental processing speed when I fight an enemy who is stronger than me - up to two extra grades. I also get the ability to draw power from a single 'great feat' of helping others or fighting enemies beyond my ability. Each 'great feat' gets stored in the Achievement, and I can choose which one to empower myself with.> Sallia sounded much happier once the topic came to her new keyword ability. <Honestly, it's pretty good. I even get to keep my 'great feat' storage after death. Buying it will take all of the extra Achievement I just got, and it eats 10 glut penalty, but I'm happy with it. I already purchased it.>

The four of us rounded another corner, and a wave of wooden butterflies flapped towards us from their perches on nearby buildings. Anise waved her hands toward the skies, and a wave of magic missiles ripped the wooden butterflies to pieces. We rounded a corner, and saw a five-meter tall eyeball gaze at us.

A ripple of essence tore out of its body, but then my vision spun as Sallia dashed towards it. A moment later, she pierced the giant eye with her sword, before dodging out of the way. Anise followed up with a round of fireballs, and the giant eyeball died.

<I'm starting to run low on essence!> Yelled Anise into our mental conversation.

I furrowed my brows in thought. I was already out of essence, Sallia was injured, and Felix and Anise had sustained some injuries during the fight as well. Everyone was currently one-eyed. Were we going to make it to the pool of reincarnation? If Anise and Felix ran out of essence, I had no idea whether we would survive long enough to reincarnate. There was a very real and worrying chance that we could fall right here and now to the horde of monsters - which would destroy all of our plans, and likely end any hope of long-term survival.

<Does anyone know what kind of reincarnation pool we're even heading towards?> asked Sallia. <If it's a valuable one, we might not be able to break past the guardians protecting it. Especially with how badly injured we already are, and how much travel time we have left. If the reincarnation pool has really powerful defenders, we might get sandwiched between a horde and something we can't beat.>

Our group fell into silence for a moment, as the grim possibility of being trapped and slaughtered flashed through our minds. It was unlikely, since 'generic' pools of reincarnation were the most common type. However, it wasn't impossible. Even with a life-saving tool finally in our hands, we could still lose it all at this last step, instantly falling into a pit we would have no hope of escaping before our deaths.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

<We'll just have to hope that we're lucky,> said Felix.

The four of us rounded another bend, and came face to face with another giant monster.

It looked like a cross between a lynx and a leopard, except for the fact that it was nearly twenty meters tall. Before I could even blink, a wave of essence surged through Sallia's body, and she seemed to vanish into thin air.

The monster's head fell off a moment later.

<I"m low on essence too, now!> yelled Sallia. <We need to reach our destination faster. Felix, Anise, sorry, I'm grabbing you too!> Then, Sallia grabbed Felix and slung him over her other shoulder, then grabbed Anise and slung her on top of me. It was highly uncomfortable, and I had to exert some effort not to slam my head into Felix's as Sallia started to run.

However, on the bright side, Sallia's movements were incredibly fast. Sallia already had the highest physical abilities out of the four of us, due to the enhancements from her runes and her temporary buffs from her manifestation system. With her strength, the weight of the three of us didn't even slow her down. It felt like we had hopped into a slow train as Sallia sprinted along.

This finally put an end to many of our encounters with weaker monsters. Sallia was moving so fast that they didn't catch up to us in the first place - and what few monsters did still manage to intercept us were quickly wiped out by Felix and Anise, allowing us to sprint past them.

I was grateful that Sallia didn't need to breathe while in the Market - if she had, she definitely would have been out of breath by now. Minutes ticked by as Sallia continued to sprint at full speed, while Anise and Felix wiped out the few monsters we still needed to deal with. As time passed, I was able to start helping out again, as my essence started to gradually recover. I didn't bother hitting monsters with extinguishes - extinguish wasn't very essence-efficient, and we had other priorities. Instead, I poured a bit more essence into my friends, in order to heal them up and restore everyone's state to good fighting condition.

Finally, after hours of running, we reached our destination. It was a giant pavilion, with the words 'Standard Pool of Reincarnation' floating above it on a bulletin board. I breathed a sigh of relief.

If it was just a standard pool of reincarnation, the monsters inside shouldn't be very strong. We were going to make it through this.

Sallia set the three of us down, before she unsheathed her blade and rapidly wiped out the first wave of skeletons that came to meet us. I glanced behind us, and confirmed that there were still several waves of monsters chasing us - but they would arrive too late to catch up.

I grinned, and used my fists to dispatch a few more skeletons.

A moment later, five bone Mages dashed out of the innermost sanctum of the pool of reincarnation, backed up by another 30 regular skeletons.

I leapt towards the regular skeletons. I had no weapons, but at this point, I could deal with a regular skeleton just by punching it hard enough. My physical abilities were so far beyond theirs that it wasn't even a real fight - I was basically just cleaning up garbage.

Anise launched a few smaller spells to distract the skeleton mages while Sallia charged at them, while Felix used a few metal spikes to kill the skeletal mage furthest at the back. The moment Sallia reached the skeletal mages, it was like a wolf pouncing into a flock of sheep. Her first sword swing killed two skeletal mages, and only two of the mages even managed to complete their spells. Sallia seemed almost unimpressed by the two fireballs they fired at her. She easily danced out of the way, before beheading the last two skeletons.

With the last major barrier between us and the pool of reincarnation down, I leapt out of the horde of regular skeletons and took one last look behind us.

Less than three hundred meters away from us, I could see a giant, shadowy humanoid dashing towards us. It looked almost like a titan that had come to life. It leered emptily at us, with a tongue hanging out of its mouth and wide, nearly pupil-less eyes that seemed to see us, and also see something else entirely.

Behind it, dozens of what appeared to be giant scorpions were crawling after us, followed by eight essence-wielding rhinos. I couldn't even see what was beyond that - there were so many monsters chasing after us that it was hard to even count them all.

I shivered, and then leapt into the pool of reincarnation with my friends.

My friends followed suit, and we found ourselves back in the ocean of souls, speeding towards our next life.

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