14:7 Mages and 1 Psychic

Falton blazing through the now empty tunnel seemed to almost have lit a bonfire under the feet of everyone else because as soon as the violet blessing dissapeared, the hundreds of survivors immediately ran, trampling those unlucky few who couldnt get up in time.

The hundreds of corpses left behind for the creatures to feast instantly forgotten by the minds of the surviving mercenaries with the only thought in their heads being to escape from the tunnel.

Not that any of that mattered to Zephyr he was long gone! His stomach and sides were hurting from running so hard but simply remembering the army of creatures behind him was all the motivation he needed!

huff huff

Zephyr's quantum energy reserves were dropping down quickly, with every small bit that he recovered instantly gone.

At this rate he was gonna run out in like three minutes! The tunnel stretched out deep and took Zephyr and the rest of the mercenaries around 2 hours by walking.

'Wait. I can't sense any of those weird ant looking creatures near me anywhere. Why am I running?'

Stopping to catch his breath, he turned off his quantum energy and say down against the wall to rest and recover as much quantum energy as he could.

Looking into his quantum energy reserves. Zephyr felt like fainting. He used maybe about 1% of his quantum energy while running about every 20 seconds meaning he had about 2000 seconds or 33 minutes. Unfortunately, the fiasco in the tunnels lead to Zephyr expending a lot of quantum energy on trying to keep the creatures back and unfortunately again, the violet blessing recovered mental and soul energy. It didn't help Zephyr recover any quantum.

Which basically meant he had tons of mental and soul energy but no quantum energy! It was like having tons of pens but no paper to write with!

Right now Zephyr had maybe 17% of his quantum energy compared to when it was full and it was recovering about 0.2% every minute?

That's was way too slow!

Quickly corsding his legs, he closed his eyes and started to cultivate to recover as much quantum energy as he could.

...

His body was regenerating quantum energy faster now that he was actively cultivating except his body was still automatically transforming some of it into mental and soul energy! The two energies that he didn't need in this situation!

'Dammit is there a way to convert it back? Or to stop my body from converting it?'

Zephyr made a mental reminder to ask Nathan and Falton on how to do it once he escaped the tunnel.

Engaging into active cultivation again, he tried to funnel as much quantum energy away from his forehead and heart area where mental and soul energy resided to no avail. His body was still transforming it regardless of Zephyr's intentions.

While cultivating,he sensed several others running through the tunnel.All of them had roughly the same amount of quantum energy but the one behind them had at least several dozen times the others! Opening his eyes, he spotted a group of 8 mages all running with another mage behind them unconscious being dragged by magic.

Recognising the one who was unconscious as the mage who had cleared the tunnels to say he was shocked would be an understatement!

As far as Zephyr could remember, the strongest person in their group was Falton who was the only super at the letter D at D+.Right now the mage who was unconscious had almost the same amount as Falton did! Meaning he had broken through to D-!

No wonder he was so strong! In the several hour lecture he had gotten from Dr Luseno, he had mentioned that supers who stepped into the next letter grade would experience a massive surge of strength. Several orders of magnitude stronger then what they normally should have been able to do.

Apparently Zephyr also had that same surge of strength but honestly he couldn't remember it.

"Hey! There's a guy over there! "

The mage at the front informed the rest of his group he was running with. Soon, they all stopped running and like Zephyr was,some started to engage in active cultivation. While the one who had saw Zephyr and also had the largest quantum energy pool behind the unconscious guy started to talk with Zephyr.

"Hey"

Huff

"We're a group of mages"

Huff

"Gathering together"

Huff

In between several moments of panting, he slowly revealed that the group was originally just him carrying the magical guy but he managed to catch up to others who had started running earlier and were now running together.

"I'm a fire mage"

Huff

"He's a white mage"

Huff

"The rest are still uncoloured"

A fire mage, a healer/buffer and 5 newbie mages. At least the team composition was kinda balanced. It reminded Zephyr of an ancient poem actually, something along the lines of one fish two fish red fish...

His ancient poem pondering time could come later.Right now this was more important.

"And you?"

"I'm a psychic,I can use telekinesis, mental and soul energy"

The fire mage collapsed into the floor. Panting heavily, Zephyr could still see traces of quantum energy on his feet and looking at him with his energy senses he could see that he had five mana circles. Two of them were the same colour as quantum energy,one had a bright red and another had an extremely dark red hue to it.

The five uncoloured mages only had about two each and they were all the same quantum energy mana circles. The white mage had six mana circles surprisingly, two quantum energy mana circles and four of a brilliant shining white.

Looking at the unconscious mage. Zephyr felt shocked again. This guy had 13 mana circles! Two of them were quantum energy as usual, but then Zephyr could see he had one red, one blue, one brown and one silver colour followed up by 7 mana circles that looked to be made out of symbols instead of just being pure circles of mana.

'Since this guy is D- and the two coloured mages are E with the five uncoloured mages being F+ like me... is the gap between E and D really that big?'

Zephyr knew that the gaps between grades was huge. An E grade could kill a dozen F grades, an D grade could kill a dozen E grades and so on. So disaster grades were so much stronger that comparing them would be like comparing the damage of an ant to an elephant!

Using that metaphor, Zephyr would be the ant and the disaster grade would be the elephant! Even Nathan would only be a bee and Falton would be a small mammal like a rat roughly?

That was still miles away!

"You wanna join us? According to scans from HQ it's gonna take about 7 minutes until some of the creatures that they're now calling Scorant to arrive"

Zephyr had lost his headpiece while running so Zephyr had no idea of what was happening to the others.

'New mental note, I'll ask Falton is he can make me a headpiece that won't fall off'

After making sure to remember the mental note, he answered the fire mage.

"Sure, although if they're coming in seven minutes then we should probably go now"

"Yeah okay, let's go now. "

Groaning ensued as the mages each slowly picked themselves off the ground. After casting a spell to levitate the unconscious mage. The now group of 8 started sprinting.

While Zephyr was sprinting, he couldn't help but notice that his utilization of quantum energy was way too bad! When Zephyr enhanced his speed with quantum energy he had what looked to be blue flames spilling everywhere out of his legs whereas the mages each only had a bare layer of blue, as if it was merely another layer of skin.

Luckily Zephyr had telekinesis to push himself to make him run faster but that also drained quantum energy quickly. Although it wasn't much considering the others also seemed to be capable of doing the same.

The uncoloured mages had some sort of spell they casted to make theier legs have a stronger push force, the white mage casted a buffing spell and the fire mage looked as if he had a massive jet engine strapped onto his back!

Fire spewed out in a cone behind the fire mage bending the air around it and almost burning Zephyr a few times.

Zephyr had to admit. It looked awesome!

...

Crkucrucruk

The disgusting clicking noises from the Scorant echoed behind the group. All of them had been running for several minutes now and hadn't stopped to recover quantum energy leading to all of them having close to none.

Except for Zephyr, he still had copious amounts if mental and soul energy with no quantum energy and as such, it became his job to blast away any creatures.

Stopping for a moment, Zephyr turned to face the Scorant and blasted it straight in the face with several blasts in succession.once it died and Zephyr could no longer sense it he turned back to catch up with the rest of them.

The white mage also had quite a lot of mana and quantum energy left. Unfortunately as a mage who mainly specialized in heals he was basically useless in combat.

The fire mage whose fire had dimmed significantly, pulled out some dust from his robes and threw some into his own eye.

"Reveal to me every living creature in my area!"

Whoosh

Fire started burning from the eye he threw the dust in. According to him, it was a spell that showed the heat of living creatures even through walls. Kind of like a thermal goggle with x-ray vision.

"Nothing around us, let's rest now!"

Soon all 8 of them were lying down on the floor. Becoming a super made Zephyr way more athletic and yet all of it felt like it was for nothing because Zephyr flet like he would puke if he ran anymore!

The white mage, panting. Pulled out a flag and stabbed it into the ground.

"Recover"

A faint invigorating force entered Zephyr's body. Slowly his breathing became more even and less laboured and his sides stopped hurting as much.

Zephyr felt glad he had joined this group in escaping the tunnels. If he had to run by himself he would have died of exhaustion long ago!

Sitting up, he grabbed his knife that Nathan gave him and scraped off a few bits of Scorants on him.

Nathan truly had an amazing ability, despite the knife being made out of some random creatures bone, it had served Zephyr well so far.

Although the appearance was... weird to say the least.

It was simply a bayonet knife that Nathan created for Zephyr because according to him. It was the easiest knife to learn and use. Featuring a choil for extra grip, a slightly larger guard and a small spike on the but of the knife so he could slam the handle into his opponents head instead.

The whole thing was a milky white colour, with the handle being wrapped in... leather?

Zephyr actually didn't know what the handle was wrapped in. Nathan had refused to answer him when he had asked.

It was about twice the length of his wrists to his finger tips and it had a small part of the knife just above the guard cut out for his index finger for extra grip and dexterity.

It was a bit on the larger side unfortunately. Apparently it was Nathan's old weapon before he switched to using spears since he felt they were more comfortable. Which Zephyr couldn't understand, why learn how to use knives, axes and swords if you prefer using spears?