Chapter 112: Anomaly Uhtred
Chapter 112: Anomaly Uhtred
Many of these people Antoine had scrambled to put together over the last few hours were going to die anyway, their talent grades were simply too insufficient to handle this trial.
Were they seriously implying that their short-term survival was worth more than a powerhouse who had climbed all the way to Level 23 in less than two weeks?
Antoine kept his expression perfectly friendly, masking his disgust as he stepped to the front of the line to act as though he was enthusiastically leading their charge.
"Move out!"
They all burst into a fast dash, executing the special movement technique to throw off the blind serpents beneath the sand as they headed deep into the north-west parts of the desert.
They traveled in this manner for thirty minutes, tracking Uhtred’s position through the map interface.
His movements remained completely erratic the entire time. At one point, Uhtred would bolt deep into the north-west, only to abruptly reverse and sprint directly south. There were even moments where it was as if Uhtred was heading directly for them, before he would suddenly switch north again.
His movement made absolutely no sense, and by the twenty-minute mark, Antoine had entirely given up on trying to understand what Uhtred was doing.
He began to form a mental picture of what this mysterious ranker would look like. He had received a detailed, classified briefing from John Allen and Michael Bush regarding the apex anomaly of Sector 13, though the two officials had carefully avoided revealing his true name during the political talks.
But still, it hadn’t been hard for Antoine to connect the dots on his own: the alias "Red" paired with the name in this trial "Uhtred", coupled with that fifteen thousand merit bounty, made the connection entirely obvious.
The guy hadn’t even done a particularly good job of hiding his identity if he was going to use such a transparent alias anyway.
But regardless of Uhtred’s bad naming sense, the main thing was that they knew who he was, and had finally now closed the distance.
They had just crested a large dune to reach Uhtred’s position when all of them stopped dead in their tracks, forgetting to continue with their movement technique to throw off the Dune serpents.
But staring at the absolute madness unfolding in the sandy plains below, they seriously doubted there was a single Dune serpent within several miles that would dare to roam around this place.
A lone human figure was standing in the center of a massive, scorched crater. The guy was covered from head to toe in a thick gooey black material that looked like organic slime.
His skin was visibly charred and blistering at several areas across his arms and face, looking as if a massive vat of industrial acid had been poured directly over his body. Even his hair was hacked away and missing in jagged patches.
He was holding a menacing, black battleaxe in his right hand, and he was locked in a horrific, high-velocity battle against a colossal titan of a serpent.
The beast completely dwarfed every single Dune serpent they had encountered since entering the trial grounds.
The standard serpents they usually escaped from were always about the size of a standard school bus, but this nightmare of a monster made all of those serpents look like little worms by comparison.
It was a mountain of muscle and gray scales tearing through the earth.
Even standing safely at the high crest of the dune several hundred meters away, the crushing physical oppression roiling off the beast was heavy enough to root Antoine’s entire party to the spot.
Antoine felt his breath hitch as the oppressive aura slammed against him from a distance, meanwhile it was even worse for the lower-leveled ascenders behind him.
The Level 7s, 8s and 9s in his group were literally trembling at their knees, barely able to stand properly.
The eager, greedy glints in their eyes at the opportunity to kill Uhtred and gain quick merit points had disappeared entirely.
The scale of the battle that was unfolding before them had destroyed every fantasy that was lingering in their minds.
Aside from the terror of the beast itself, the fact that a single, lone human was still fighting against this monstrosity was what shocked them even more.
Uhtred, the guy that they were meant to kill, was fighting against this titan of a beast without any fear or hesitation.
Antoine’s eyes were wide as he stared at the high-intensity battle which rapt attention.
Uhtred was swinging that heavy battleaxe of his with terrifying might, while at the same time casting various elemental spells: ice magic, earth magic, heat magic, all at once.
The spectacle completely broke Antoine’s perception of what was possible. Of course, he had deciphered that Uhtred was a multi-elemental ascender from what he could see, but the scale and the speed at which Uhtred was casting was what defied Antoine’s understanding.
It wasn’t as if Antoine hadn’t encountered multi-elemental ascenders before. There were a handful of high-tier Uncommon and even Rare grade talents who had recently joined the United New Eden coalition, who controlled two distinct affinities.
But he had never seen a single human capable of dual, and even triple-casting separate true elements at the exact same time with this level of efficiency.
"Just what kind of talent grade does he have...?" Antoine muttered under his breath.
He had expected something exceptional from the number one ranked human on the planet, but seeing the actual, physical gap between their capabilities left a severely bitter taste in his mouth.
The sheer wonder of the display made him feel incredibly insufficient, completely bruising his ego despite the fact that he knew he was considered an absolute powerhouse by all rights among the human rankers.
As Antoine silently observed Uhtred’s clash with the titan from the ridge, the conviction in his own heart grew heavier, completely shifting his perspective.
A few minutes ago, there had been a small trace of doubt inside his mind, a petty, human part of himself that still secretly wished to secure those fifteen thousand merits for himself.
If they had stumbled upon Uhtred while the guy was resting or vulnerable, Antoine knew he would have faced a massive internal dilemma of whether to help the forerunner of humanity or claim the merit points by killing him.
But looking at the spectacle that lay before his eyes now, that doubt was blasted out of existence.
The logic of his future survival took over entirely. He might still harbor some professional hatred and political disgruntlement against the guy for choosing to snub their United New Eden coalition, but without a single doubt, Uhtred could not be allowed to die in this trial.
If humanity lost a weapon like this during the first trial of the integration, the species would be completely doomed.
Antoine could now see exactly why the ancient variant leadership had gone to such lengths to place a ten thousand merit bounty on Uhtred’s head, even going as far as to increase it to a crazy amount of fifteen thousand merits!
It was because they were terrified of his talent! They were terrified of the crazy anomaly that he was!