The Immortal Berserker Chapter 179

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Barrett hadn’t expected yelling at the tornado to provoke any reaction. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but he found they were going straight towards the building- and thus the people down below. Every time he circled around the tornado, he could see the people were running closer to the building, but were also a bit closer to the tornado. After another few circles, they had actually made it inside the building.

“Oh well,” Barrett sighed. He would have scratched his chin, but moving his arm recklessly could have thrown him spinning again. However, he did have to move his other arm to reach inside his bag. It was hard to dig around inside it without letting anything out into the tornado, but he managed. Eventually, he brought out his only message token. He had it in case he needed rescue, or in case of major events. If he needed rescue, he would have to buy a new one… but if he gave information useful to the Immortal Berserker Sect, they would replace it for him and possibly reward him otherwise. A mysterious building showing up in the middle of the Tornado Plains seemed to qualify. 

Of course, it wasn’t in the exact middle… but close enough. Barrett actually had a great view of most of the plains, and he could even just barely see Stredo’s walls. With that, he was able to give a pretty accurate position… though relaying that message was much harder. The message token required him to speak- and in a tornado, that meant he had to shout over the sound of the wind and smashing boulders. He activated the magic token, shouted his message, then broke it, releasing the magic. That would send the message back to the Immortal Berserker Sect.

Now all he had to do was figure out how to get down from the tornado. Before, he had only gotten away because it had reached the edge of the plains, and it didn’t seem to go past them. Now… he was in the middle of the plains.

Barrett felt himself being pulled towards the center of the tornado. He had to fend off more debris, and couldn’t be bothered to worry about keeping a proper orientation. He punched and kicked with berserk energy, shattering everything that came at him into pieces. Then, he found himself falling. Unlike before, he wasn’t ejected with speed… but was just falling. He managed to orient himself to fall with minimum damage- which meant no broken bones. Not that he was perfectly fine, but he had the right techniques for falling from any distance- and a body strong enough to hold up.

He landed in the dirt- unfortunately all the nice soft topsoil had been lifted up by the tornado, so it was almost as bad as rock, but not quite. Barrett might have laid there for an hour or two to recover, but the tornado was still all around him. He needed to move to not be picked up. Where could he go to escape, though? He was still in the eye. The only things around him were flat dirt and… the building. Well, that made his choice. He just hoped the woman from the Silver Blade- and perhaps the others- weren’t watching the entrance.

Inside the entrance, Barrett saw a number of doors. Five, to be exact. Other than that there were a few pillars holding up the roof, and the entrance out behind him. Barrett still felt the wind whipping by outside, but it couldn’t be enough to cause him trouble with the building covering him. Unless it took the building away, too. However, that seemed unlikely. The structure looked old, with small cracks and damage… but there was also no dust to be seen. Perhaps it had been recently constructed and was already falling apart, but that didn’t feel right.

There were no signs of those who had gone through ahead of him. Just in case, he circled each pillar, but found no one hiding. He also didn’t detect any traces of people being invisible- though he was aware that didn’t necessarily mean there weren’t any.

The gusts of wind outside became even more intense as the eye moved further away from the building. There was no door on the front, and Barrett could feel the winds pulling. The Immortal Berserker Sect would have gotten his message by now- it would have only taken a minute or so to travel to them. Within a few hours they could reach him… but Barrett was no longer sure that the tornado wouldn’t attempt to pull him back out of the building. Perhaps it would be safer to go further in…

Barrett walked to the first door, starting on the left. He tried to turn the handle and pull it open, but something resisted him. A magic ward of some kind sealed the door. Instead of trying to force it, he moved on to the next door. The results were the same. However, the third door opened easily. Behind it were stairs leading down- the only logical result, since the building was not large enough to house much else. The fourth and fifth doors were likewise sealed.

The wind whipped outside, vaguely pulling on Barrett, some of his trailing bandages flapping in the breeze and almost trying to unravel. Barrett returned to the third door and stepped inside.

The corridor below was lit by magic as he walked along- though Barrett couldn’t tell from where. All he noticed was that the area he was in and what was close around him was lit up. He couldn’t see the bottom of the stairs… but instead of being worried about someone hiding in the darkness, Barrett was relieved. Any enemies would likely be similarly lit, unless they could avoid detection by the building that encompassed them. A building that Barrett could tell was full of strong magic- if nothing more than that.

Barrett continued down the steps one at a time. He wasn’t exactly sure how deep he had gone, but it had to be close to a hundred meters with the same slope and without turning. He wondered if the other stairways would lead to the same place, or remain parallel corridors. Then he arrived at another door- and seeing no other way to proceed, opened it.

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