He had just launched the 2nd strike of the Elusive Heavenly sword at close range to deal the damage with great precision.
Once again, his sword glowed green, but suddenly he noticed the gorilla form two sharp icicles and smash it towards him. Alex disappeared once again, but the gorilla seemed to be prepared this time.
It searched for him and attacked him within a second after he reappeared. 'Sh*t,' he thought and disappeared again.
Thankfully, after the mortal cleansing, his movement of Qi had become very quick with almost zero resistance. Thanks to that, he could continuously disappear right after he reappeared as much as he wanted.
However, his mind was a different problem. After the 3rd instant teleport, he was starting to lose information about where he was and which direction he was turning towards.
The gorilla slammed again and he disappeared once again. On the 4th reappearance, he threw his sword outside of the gorilla's area of attack.
He then disappeared again. When he reappeared, he was about 8 meters away from the gorilla and held his sword in his hand. It took him a second to get his head together and he stepped back once more.
HUFF HUFF
He breathed heavily. The blue gorilla suddenly threw one of its icicles towards him. Alex easily dodged it, but in that time the gorilla had blown the ground with the cold air from it's lungs.
Almost magically, ice formed on the surface of the ground and so did an ice armor form on its body once more. There was so much reflection between the two that the amount of shadows had been reduced by nearly 2 thirds.
Alex could no longer use the same techniques as before.
'Screw it, you want long ranged attacks? You will get it,' he thought and put wood Qi into his blade once more.
With a single slash, he sent out the 2nd strike of the Elusive Heavenly sword once more. The gorilla knew it couldn't dodge, so it tried to block the attack with its icicles and armors.
The green slash easily cut through the two, but has in turn lost a lot of its energy and was thus so weak that it only left a slight cut on the skin. The ice armor grew back and so did the icicles. The gorilla could fight again.
However, Alex wasn't dejected. He instead smiled and said, "Let's see if your Qi will last longer or mine." Once again, he threw out the 2nd strike which the gorilla blocked.
He threw it once again, and again, and again. The gorilla blocked the first few, but as it started losing its Qi, the ice wasn't as strong as before.
Suddenly, Alex put it more Qi into the sword and made the sword glow even greener. He was using the 3rd strike. The 3rd strike was truly useful for people that had superior wood roots, but it slightly increased the damage of attacks on people with inferior roots like Alex as well.
With one last breath remaining on the gorilla, he wanted to finish it off with the strongest attack he could use against it right now.
He raised his sword diagonal to the right and slashed.
A very green slash of energy flew towards the now bloody gorilla. It tried to move a little out of the way, but it was too wounded to do so.
The slash directly landed on its chest and cut in deep enough to damage its internals. Within seconds, the gorilla died.
"Hoooo," Alex took a deep breath and walked towards the corpse. The robe around the gorilla's waist glowed a little and it fell off.
He went ahead and grabbed it. Suddenly, the feeling that had been with him since the foggy area increased a little. It wasn't enough to make him really think anything of it, but was just enough that he noticed the increase.
He didn't know what it was, so he decided to ignore what it was and keep going with the competition. He was about to fly when he noticed something.
The many beasts that were in a trance earlier suddenly got out of their trance and looked at him. "Wh— What?" he tried to slowly back away, but their eyes never left him. They even started to move forward.
The further Alex moved, the more the beasts came closer to him. "What's happening?" he shouted out loud. The beasts heard the shout and ran towards him in a rush.
Just then, an aura erupted from the sky and a few staff members in the True realm got down. Their aura suppressed the beasts and one of them said, "You can leave to the other side."
Alex nodded and flew up and away. He didn't want to do anything with these beasts so he stayed very high in the sky. "What was that?" he wondered.
He suddenly looked at his hands and realized what he was holding. "Oh right, I nearly forgot," he said and dropped down near the maze walls.
-The Final Maze; Choose wisely-
That was all it said. 'The final maze, so if I cross it, the run is over, right?' Alex thought. The final maze was actually made up of solid wooden walls instead of the bushes like most of the other ones.
"Let's check what's inside here first," he said as he pulled the box up along with the rope. The rope seemed to be attacked to the top of the box, while the box itself was totally without any design, aside from the single seam running across it that seemed to be where it opened from.
"Let's see what is inside of you," Alex thought and pushed the lid open. It didn't open.
"Huh?" he put more force into it, but it wouldn't open at all. 'What is this box made up of?' he wondered and tried some more, but it didn't work.
He even used spiritual sense to check what was inside, but for some reason, there was a seal on the box itself that stopped him from seeing it.
He was extremely befuddled as what exactly to do next.
