359 All fall down

While Liam lured the giant voidling network away, everyone quietly moved about in their stealth and touched the small percentage of the portal that was revealed.

They wanted to wait some more so that the complete portal would be revealed, but Liam's health was rising up and down, and it was unclear how much longer he would be able to hold on.

And the giant cluster also did not look like it was going to move freely anytime soon.

The hundreds of nodes might as well be hundreds of eyes, and it gave a feeling that no one would be able to sneak by it.

So the group decided to take the gamble, and Vincent, one of the hunters, tested the waters first. He was also the emotional one whose eyes were red.

"Here goes nothing. Boss, I owe everything to you. Without you, I am nothing." 

He blabbered something on the group chat and jumped up to touch the portal. 

The next instant his body was sucked into the black swirling mass of energy. Everyone waited with anticipation and soon another notification arrived.

"Guys! I reached! This is safe."

The group collectively heaved a sigh of relief, and one by one started taking the portal, escaping the voidling cluster.

Liam as well nodded in satisfaction and continued messing with it, now with a little purpose. Something Vincent said had actually given him an idea.

He said that without Liam they were nothing.

Hearing this, Liam couldn't help but wonder if there was a node amidst this cluster of voidlings that was slightly more important than the others.

Something that may be functioned as the glue holding the group together.

"Probably worth a shot." Liam grinned and decided to give it a try. 

He was already at his limits, trying to evade the attacks from the dozens of voidlings. At this point, there was simply no more evading.

He was now just running. Thankfully, the voidlings were not too intelligent. 

Otherwise, they could have simply bombarded the entire place and burnt him to a crisp.

Maybe there also had certain energy limitations, so they were specifically targeting Liam wherever he went, and he was also able to outrun their attacks by a hair every single time.

If he stopped to take just a second break, it would be game over.

But Liam persevered. He did not plan to throw in the towel just yet. 

These voidlings were mysterious creatures. Though no one had managed to gain anything, he did not want to rule out that possibility altogether.

Considering that he was already knee deep into this shit, he wanted to try and take this giant down, and if not, he could always run away.

Liam saw the last member of the guild step into the portal and leave the spatial rift, and then he started his counterattack.

His speed did not reduce, but he took a deep breath and started sending out icicles now, every other second. 

This made sure that he did not run out of mana.

Taking into account, his mana usage for enhancing his speed and the mana usage for icicles, this rhythm was balanced.

However, Liam was not targeting one node or the other. He had to test the theory out by brute force method, throwing an icicle at every single node.

Someone else would have already given up, but he couldn't let it go without trying his luck.

A few seconds passed… a minute passed… soon several minutes passed.

Liam was now completely drenched in sweat from top to bottom, various injuries riddled his body and he was out of breath, wheezing his lungs out.

However, he still had not progressed much.

"Huff.. huff… huff… I should have run away a long time back." He smiled bitterly, but his feet were still busily moving, dodging the voidling cluster.

His stubbornness was the only thing that was keeping him up. He had a feeling that he almost had this, so he refused to give up.

But how could the rift remain the same?

He might not have made any progress in identifying the central node but the rift had other changes.

While Liam was busy evading the attacks, two other clusters of voidlings slowly began to make their way toward him.

Since they were invisible, Liam did not notice them until they made their way to him.

A big shock wave rippled all of a sudden and before Liam could understand what was happening, the three big clusters started combining.

"FUCK NO!" 

Liam, who was already only holding on by tooth and nail did not dare linger behind any longer.

He also knew that what he was doing was an unrewarding job but now it just became suicidal. So he did not hesitate and turned around to run.

He did not even need to fight these guys in the first place. 

He could easily take the portal to the Xion realm and then use his personal portal to enter the nether realm just like he always did.

Maybe it was curiosity or maybe he wanted to solve the puzzle of how to beat this creature or maybe he was just addicted to training by pushing his abilities to the extreme, Liam had continued struggling with the voidling thus far.

Now it was time to say goodbye.

"RUNNNNN!" Liam shouted loudly and started bolting towards the Xion portal. 

Meanwhile, the three huge clusters of voidlings that were in the process of combining with each other to become a giant voidling noticed this and started chasing him.

Liam saw this and ran even faster.

Maybe because the three clusters were not perfectly synchronized, the voidlings lagged behind a little, their speed slightly inferior to Liam.

So he reached the portal before they could and was just about to escape when suddenly Liam noticed something weird.

There was a big node at the center of the three clusters that was shining brightly.

Liam saw this and he had a strong intuition that this was the node that he was looking for all along.

He withdrew his hand that was about to touch the portal, and with the last second he had, he used every ounce of mana in his body and conjured an icicle.

Actually, rather than an icicle, it looked more like an ice spear. He pulled his hand back and threw the spear right at the central node that was shining brightly.

SWING!

The spear rippled through the air and met its mark.

As soon as it touched the huge bulging voidling, the dazzling node that was brimming with energy suddenly started quaking.

A layer of frost appeared on it and at the point where the spear touched the node, slight cracks began to form.

"It worked?" Liam stopped running.

Suddenly there was pin-drop silence, followed by a loud sound.

THUD!

He turned around to see the central voidling completely frozen, falling to the ground.

The next second… 

THUD. THUD. THUD….

All the other nodes collapsed, all falling onto the purple desert sands one after the other.