The Rise of the Unbound Sovereign Sect Chapter 5: Chapter 5

Read chapter 5 of The Rise of the Unbound Sovereign Sect by Magic on NovelPedia.

"A rusted blade is ignored by the king, but it still cuts the flesh of the careless." Without another word, the massive titan backed up into the cliff face, melting into the stone until the wall looked exactly as it had before. Something about that old monster made me sick to my stomach. I knew I had a part to play here, but if my earlier performance was any indication, I was not going to win any Oscars. And why should I? I was a scholar, not a spy. I dealt in deciphered texts, old scripts, and bronze tablets. But I was here now, so far out of my depth that I had to cackle internally just to keep from hyperventilating, not daring to move a muscle as Karg and Vora finished their staring match. Luckily, Karg broke the deadlock. He turned away, raising a massive hand to wave us off. It was the clear dismissal of a man who knew he had no place in what was coming next. "Rabbit, come." I barely had time to register the guttural words before I was hoisted back into the air by the scruff of my torn lab coat. I let out a sharp oof , but before I could complain about the rough handling, I felt Vora bend her knees. No. There is no way. Before my brain could properly compute the physics of the sheer vertical drop, my stomach migrated into my shoes, and every ounce of oxygen was forcefully evicted from my lungs. Vora’s legs exploded upward. The G-force made the blood pool in my feet and hands until they throbbed, the world blurring into a dizzying smear of green forest and gray rock. In the next instant, the crushing weight vanished, leaving me floating in a split second of terrifying zero-gravity before I slammed back down onto her heavily scarred shoulder. Vora didn’t even pause to catch her breath, carrying her momentum straight into the mouth of a massive, hexagonal cave bored into the cliff. The Weaver must have commanded absolute, terrifying authority for her to follow orders so faithfully. Just what kind of monstrous planet had that old bastard dropped me on? And he wanted me to give these walking mountains cultivation? Did he think the drive-thru diet of my past life had rotted my brain? Teaching them to use Qi would be like handing a loaded machine gun to a silverback gorilla while actively trying to negotiate terms of surrender. I closed my eyes, pressing my fingers hard against the bridge of my glasses. Bitching about the situation never helped. If I didn’t want to end up as a slave or a chew toy, I needed to use the only tool I had spent my lifetime sharpening to a razor's edge. I needed to weaponize my knowledge. I had to be undeniably useful, but entirely non-threatening. Once I figured a way out of this immediate mess, I could try to cultivate in secret to bridge the physical gap, or at least make myself slippery enough to survive. This pathetic, neglected excuse for a body would have to become my foundation. But right now, I was a single ant trapped in a room full of elephants. Vora stopped abruptly. She grabbed my belt and dropped me. My boots hit solid stone, not my body this time. A small blessing, but it was progress. The cave smelled like ozone, crushed rock, and the heavy, metallic tang of old blood. The cavern was lit by veins of raw, uncut quartz that pulsed with a dim, sickly green light. The Weaver was already there, fused halfway into the back wall of the cavern. Below the Elder, resting on two massive slabs of flat stone, were two giant hunters. They were in bad shape. One had a leg that looked like it had been crushed in a hydraulic press, the flesh swollen and black with necrotic pooling. The other was shivering violently, sweating thick, tar-like grease, his chest heaving with a wet, rattling wheeze. Between the two slabs lay a pile of mangled flora—roots, broad leaves, and crushed stems, all ripped from the earth with zero care and dumped in a heap. "The hunters rot from the inside," the Weaver's voice ground out from the stone, echoing in my teeth. "The forest took their strength, and the mud took their bl