Eli is just settling into a satisfied smirk, ready to play the gracious winner and keep his backup admirer dangling, when the words die in his mouth.
A thunderous roar splits the distance, and by the sound of it, whatever it is, it's charging straight toward us.
Vera's expression shifts instantly. She stares into the distance, and then her pupils slam tight. She shouts, "High tier spirit beast. Run."
Two legs against four. There's no contest. In the blink of an eye, the beast is right on top of us.
Eli immediately dives behind the crowd, scrambling in blind panic. "Vera, what do we do? That thing looks terrifying."
Vera stays surprisingly calm. She issues the order without hesitation. "Ash, you lure the beast away. I'll get the others out."
I stare at her like she's lost her mind. How thick is this woman's skin? Or is cannon fodder literally stamped on my forehead, making her think she can use me as a sacrifice anytime she wants?
"Vera, you love your disciples so much. Why don't you go lure it yourself?"
Called out in front of everyone, Vera's face goes red, but she holds her ground and scrambles for an excuse. "The others are too weak. They need my protection. You're better at drawing the beast's attention anyway."
"Oh, so you get to be the hero. Fine. You go lure the beast and I'll stay back and protect everyone while they escape."
"Ash, this is not the time to be petty."
If I were the one pulling this, I'd at least be more generous about it, and a whole lot louder.
Vera can't believe I'm completely immune. With the beast closing in fast, Eli suddenly lights up. "I have my spirit crane. It can fly everyone out."
The spirit crane was a gift from the master himself. Powerful enough to carry passengers high into the air. Vera finally exhales.
The tiny spirit crane expands in an instant. The pale-faced disciples don't hesitate. They scramble onto its back on all fours.
Eli sweeps a glance over the spacious crane's back and puts on his most apologetic face. "Oh no. It's full. Ash isn't on yet. Whatever shall we do?"
Vera gives me a cold smile, just waiting for me to beg.
I wave it off. "That thing is a disaster waiting to happen. Even if you begged me, I wouldn't get on."
My mech suit can cover thousands of miles a minute. That flesh and feather bird doesn't even come close.
Vera's temper finally snaps. "Fine. If you're too good for us, we're done worrying about you. Eli, let's go."
The spirit crane lumbers into the air and wobbles away into the distance.
The beast watches its prey escape and loses it. With a furious roar, it snaps its jaws wide open and launches itself straight at me. It gets about halfway to me, and then my energy shield sends it slamming hard back.
I pull out my micro aerial sonar device and play a frequency no ordinary human can hear. The beast freezes. It stops attacking instantly, drops right to the ground, and kneels, completely submissive.
Interstellar era sonar tech can replicate the language of any beast. What I just played was a direct command from the Beast King. Every beast is hardwired to obey the Beast King. It's buried deep in their instincts, impossible to resist.
By now, the spirit crane is long gone. Nothing but a tiny black dot fading into the horizon. It must be overloaded. The once graceful spirit crane is thrashing its wings in desperation, looking more like a fat, clumsy goose than any kind of divine creature.
I calmly haul a laser cannon out of my storage and take steady aim at the wobbling spirit crane above.
The system is trembling inside my head. "Player, what are you doing now?"
I flash a wicked grin, flip on autotracking, slam the fire button, and a shell screams through the air, shooting those wastes right out of the sky. Obviously it's time they learned. Against real technology, all their spirit energy is nothing but a joke.
A massive boom rolls across the sky. A brilliant explosion blooms in midair. That sound. I haven't heard it in so long. It gets my blood pumping. Every pore on my body wide open with satisfaction.
I find a comfortable hilltop, pull out my holographic projector, and settle in for the live broadcast.
The group, who thought they'd already made it out, gets blindsided by the blast out of nowhere. Every last one of them is stunned senseless. Eli especially. In the chaos, he's screaming at the top of his lungs. "It's all your fault. You slowed the crane down. Get off. Now."
When life is on the line, nobody volunteers to jump. The disciples cling to the spirit crane's feathers for dear life, and that once pampered divine bird gets yanked half bald in the process.
The shell has its own guidance system. It hits the spirit crane square in the head, leaving nothing above the neck but a gaping, bloody crater. They drop from midair like dumplings into a pot. No time to even scream.
The beast charges out and goes straight for Eli. No more gentle junior disciple act now. He grabs the nearest disciple without hesitation and shoves her directly into the beast's jaws. The beast tears her right arm clean off, crunching through it like cartilage, each snap sharp and wet. She passes out from the pain on the spot.
I dust off my hands and pull out a bag of sunflower seeds. I light a coil of mosquito incense nearby while my mech suit extends its mechanical arm to pick wild fruit for me. Even the system, frozen stiff with fear somewhere in the back of my mind, gets smacked out of hiding and set to work pouring my tea, hands shaking the whole time.
On the holographic display, the carnage rolls on.
Without her soulbound sword, Vera's power drops sharply. She barely trades a few moves with the beast before the poison starts eating away at the spirit root in her energy core. Exactly what was done to mine not so long ago.
The rest of the disciples aren't faring any better. Wounded, crippled, broken. But nobody's dead. When I gave the beast its orders earlier, I made one thing very clear. Leave them breathing. Let them survive as broken wrecks. I want to see if they still feel like playing the beloved script after this.
The beast toys with them like a cat with mice, leaving them half dead before finally walking away satisfied.
Of everyone left, only Vera is barely still on her feet. Eli used his sect sisters as human shields, so he got off with only half his cultivation destroyed.