I Can Only Cultivate In A Game-Chapter 380: Holding The Forte

Each creature was no larer than a human head with malformed and insectoid bodies. They also had eight spiky like limbs and glowing red pinprick eyes.

They flew...

Crawled...

Skittered across the air itself as though gravity meant nothing.

Eirene’s expression hardened.

"...So many."

She shifted Victor’s body securely to one arm and raised the other.

Darkness exploded outward.

A wave of black energy tore through the swarm, erasing hundreds instantly and causing their bodies to collapse into ash mid-air.

But the swarm didn’t slow.

They replaced the dead without pause with numbers so vast they seemed endless.

Eirene lashed out again and again.

Dark lances.

Shadow blades.

Compressed void spheres.

Each attack annihilated dozens, sometimes hundreds.

Still, they came.

The wind howled as gravity dragged them closer to the yawning abyss below. The massive crack was only a couple hundred feet beneath them and its depths swallowed light itself.

Closer...

Closer...

Eirene felt the pull...

If they fell in...

She didn’t know what lay at the bottom and with Victor’s current state, they’d be too vulnerable.

Meanwhile, a thunderous scream ripped through the chaos.

The massive frost raptor twisted through the air despite the grievous wound carved into his side. Blood streamed from torn flesh, freezing into crimson ice crystals before they could fall.

The creature that ambushed them lunged again.

Gojo met it head-on.

Frost erupted from his maw as he unleashed a deafening blast, freezing the air itself into spiky shards that slammed into the beast. The impact sent shockwaves rippling across the battlefield, cracking the ground far below.

The beast reeled.

Gojo didn’t give it time to recover.

He charged.

Massive talons tore into the creature’s armored hide as they collided mid-air.

Boom!

The clash produced a sonic boom that echoed for miles.

The sky shook.

While their battle was ongoing, Eirene barely glanced at them... she had no time.

The swarm closed in.

"...You will not take him," she hissed while dark spikes shot out of her body, piercing through the storm of mini creatures.

On the other hand, Gojo rammed into the massive beast again, sending it crashing towards a mountain side by the left.

The moment he disengaged from fight, he dove toward Eirene and Victor desperately, beating its wings with immense force.

Just as they were about to fall into the abyss below, Gojo reached them.

It hooked them with one massive talon and twisted hard, using his momentum to hurl them away from the crack just when they were only a few feet away.

They flew and Gojo himself slammed into the ground near the edge due to them being so close to falling in.

Bam!

His enormous body plowed through blackened earth and rocks as the force sent all three of them tumbling violently across the terrain.

Victor’s body and Eirene rolled across the ground a couple of times before smashing into a rough rocky outcrop.

Stone exploded as they crashed through it.

Eirene’s body twisted unnaturally as they hit. Her bones bent at angles no human body should endure. Her limbs folded, snapped, dislocated but she didn’t scream.

She was used to pain.

After the crash, she rose and her joints twisted back into place with sickening cracks with shadows flowing along her limbs as her body corrected itself.

Her eyes snapped to Victor. He lay motionless just like before.

She turned towards him but before she could reach him—

The sky darkened again.

The swarm was back.

Chittering...

Shrieking...

And descending like a living storm.

Eirene spun around, placing herself between Victor’s body and the approaching creatures.

"Annoying..."

Darkness surged from her body, thicker than before, pooling around her feet and rising like smoke.

Her silhouette blurred as power poured out unchecked.

She attacked.

Again...

And again...

Bodies burst apart mid-air, shredded by shadow and force but the swarm adapted, weaving between attacks, closing the distance.

At the same time...

The ground shook violently.

The massive beast from before, lunged again.

Gojo barely had time to breathe before it was upon him once more.

Claws clashed.

Teeth tore.

Blood and frost stained the battlefield.

Gojo roared defiantly, but his movements were slowing.

His wound was too deel and Eirene felt it through the bond.

Felt his pain but she couldn’t do anything about it.

She was busy trying to protect Victor’s unconscious body.

Noticing that she couldn’t go all out like she needed to, Eirene extended one hand.

Darkness unfolded, condensing and folding inward upon itself.

Shadows bent, twisted, and sealed, forming a perfectly smooth sphere around Victor’s body.

A cocoon of darkness had formed and it closed with a muted sound, as if reality itself had been zipped shut.

Victor’s body was gently pulled inside, suspended in the center of the sphere, untouched and unmoving.

The cocoon hovered just above the fractured ground, unmoved even as debris and wind battered against it.

Only then did Eirene turn to properly face the creatures.

Minutes later, the battlefield lost any sense of scale.

What began as scattered black forms spilling out of the abyss had become a living tide an endless, churning mass that swallowed the cracked earth, climbed over itself, and erased the horizon beneath sheer numbers alone.

The sky above was blotted out not by clouds, but by wings, chitin, and warped silhouettes moving in frantic, predatory patterns.

At the center of it all, the sphere of absolute darkness hovered just above the ground.

Victor lay within it, suspended, unconscious, completely still.

Around it, death accumulated.

Eirene moved without urgency and without hesitation.

Her form blurred through the air as she descended upon the swarm again and again, every motion was fluid and every strike lethal. Darkness did not merely follow her... it answered her. It wrapped around her limbs, condensed along her fingers, erupted from her back in spiky arcs when she leapt skyward.

Black bodies were ripped open midair and their glowing green eyes extinguished before they could even register her presence.

Others were crushed as dense waves of darkness swept across the ground, collapsing entire clusters into pulp.