Chapter 54: Impenetrable Wall
After summoning his spear, Rohan boosted himself off the ground in a light jump. Elane watched as he flew through the air and landed on a higher platform closer to the ceiling of the entrance.
Relying on his body’s strength, he then thrust his spear as hard as he could manage into the translucent membrane.
CLANG!
’Woah!’
The impact between the spear and the wall caused Rohan to be sent flying backwards off the platform, landing head first on the ground next to Elane and Norm. Instantly, his hopes and expectations were dimmed.
Nobody but him knew it, but his spear was Elite tier! Yet not even that left a scratch on the wall, let alone made it all the way through. Elane’s face dropped just as much as Rohan’s, as despite not knowing the true power of his spear, she’d seen him take down an Elite tier beast and mow down countless Normal tier others with it, so seeing it had no effect whatsoever on the daunting wall stopping everyone from advancing further was disheartening to say the least.
The surrounding chatter only grew louder after witnessing Rohan’s failure.
"Told you. You owe me 2 Origin Crystals."
"Not yet. The other two still have to give it a try."
"Look at that; his spear just bounced right off. The sharpness at its dip had no effect at all."
"Well, look at his spear. I recognise it — it’s a Horned Rabbit Spear. They aren’t exactly known for their penetrative ability. They are rather average amongst F rank spear-type Genetic Armaments."
"At least he had the guts to go all out."
Rohan clicked his tongue inwardly and pushed himself up from the ground, rubbing the back of his head where it struck the ground first.
Nobody laughed at his failure and subsequent fall to the ground. That didn’t make it any less embarrassing for Rohan, though.
Norm looked up at the membrane again, his expression becoming heavier.
"Even your spear couldn’t leave a mark..."
In the short time he spent travelling with Rohan and Elane, he’d seen Rohan in action a couple times against a Spike Beast or two, and he judged him to be stronger than him already despite the years of experience he had on him.
Elane frowned.
"That thing didn’t even budge."
"Yeah, well, they used E rank materials for a reason. That thing was made to keep any Awakened from entering but also to keep the Elite contained inside as well." Norm replied to her.
’But this thing was made from Normal tier E rank materials. Even though I still wouldn’t have made much of a difference, my spear should have at least left a mark where it struck...’
Rohan fell into deep thought.
His spear evolving to Elite tier F rank didn’t make it on par with an E rank weapon, but it did narrow the gap between them, so the fact that it deflected his attack so effortlessly was disturbing.
’Was our information wrong? Did the government use stronger materials than everyone thought? No... that would be a huge waste of money and resources. This has been reinforced afterwards by someone else.’
It was hard not to link this with the destruction of the waystones. In fact, it made sense to do so. Destroying the waystones only cut off the easiest route of escaping the gate, while strengthening the membranes blocking the entrance to the boss’ lair sealed the only other option for escape tightly shut.
His already sour mood became worse. It was bad enough that this had happened, but he couldn’t even tell anyone about it either — not even Elane.
If he did, then he’d expose the fact that his spear is Elite tier to everyone, as it was the only source he could use to prove his point.
Elane only knew of his Firestone Skin being Elite tier since concealing that would be impossible. Rohan wouldn’t know how to explain his Horned Rabbit Spear being Elite tier, since Elite tier Horned Rabbits didn’t even exist in the first place according to public knowledge.
And he definitely didn’t plan on exposing his Evolution Gene to explain that any time soon, if ever.
’If I used my Firestone Skin as well to bring myself up to full strength, I might be able to chip a few millimetres from the membrane here and there, but that’s both too time consuming and exposes my actual strength.’ Everyone would starve to death by the time he made a hole to the other side.
Ever since he and Elane came across Norm’s group, Rohan hadn’t utilised his Firestone Skin once to hide his true strength.
He ran a few easy calculations in his mind. At full strength — Firestone Skin utilised and all — he could bring out over 31 points of strength using the Awakened Associations evaluation.
If that could only take a few small chunks out, then smashing through it entirely would need over 120!
That was well into E rank territory, far stronger than just the baseline E rank that the membrane was supposed to be protecting up to.
’Someone has definitely strengthened this membrane.’
Norm and Elane had their own attempts against the membrane while Rohan fell too deep in his thoughts to notice, and they ended up returning to their group, deflated after a few tries.
Everyone was convinced there was no way to make it through to the other side, causing dark thoughts to begin to cloud all of their minds.
Would they ever be able to make it out of there...?
Meanwhile, Rohan returned back to the group after he was finished deliberating in his own thoughts. As far as he knew, he was the only one who knew about the membrane also being sabotaged, most likely by the same figure behind the destruction of the waystones.
"Where did Elane go? Liam and Gerty too?"
Upon his arrival next to Norm and the others, Rohan noticed the absence of Elane immediately. But Liam and Gerty being gone as well caught his attention.
"We found out one of the Awakened here has a Healing-type gene, so Elane and the other two offered them some Origin Crystals in exchange for healing them."
’Healing type?’
Rohan was intrigued. Part of his future plans were to obtain a healing-type gene of his own someday. Decking himself out with a defensive gene, healing gene, and other types of genes as he grew stronger would make him the ultimate powerhouse. Especially once he evolved all of them.
"I just thought of something that might work!"
All of a sudden, an excited voice burst out from the middle of the gathering.