Chapter 801: The fifth day of the development trial (part 13)
Chapter 801: The fifth day of the development trial (part 13)
Seeing that the wolf had stopped moving at his current half-baked state, the bear directly shouted.
"Who told you stop, keep going you fool!", naturally, since all the animals in the pit traps were being consumed by fire, the bear was telling the dead wolf king to go and kill some animals of the army in order to reach the peak of his power.
That didn’t necessarily mean to kill the ones that were fighting the girls of the sect, some animals were actually not killed by their respective opponents but just injured on their legs or feet so that they couldn’t move anymore, those would be the target of the dead wolf king.
"Awooo!", the wolf howled as he charged towards the battlefield, not without being shot arrows by the archers on the top of the camp’s wall, surprisingly the dead wolf king didn’t even try to dodge and instead continued charging straight towards his target.
"Clang!", continuous clinking sounds accompanied by sparks were produced when the arrows hit the wolf’s body, his enhancing ability was made so that his defense and toughness increased first before his brute force, it was done like this so that the dead wolf could last longer, otherwise with strength that surpassed the bear he wouldn’t remain more than a minute at most.
Of course, with only forty animals absorbed, the dead wolf king only had defense at the bear or Guardian’s level if they were animals that focused on that, in exchange he could last more than an hour in this state, unfortunately for the wolf, by doing so he had caught the attention of an incredibly dangerous wild "beast".
"Crack!", the wolf stopped his charge in cold as a heavy object landed on the ground in front of him, making it shatter due to the impact.
"Now, you look like you could take a beating", that was of course the wild dragon princess who was boringly breaking the necks of the animals that were unfortunate enough to be close to her while she looked through the battlefield for Espi after gaining interest in the tail of the little wyrm.
"Shouldn’t we call her back, she just left a hole in the defensive formation?", asked Lieze to Aria only for the ice princess to sigh as she shook her head.
"It is actually more peaceful for the rest of us if Alice has something to entertain herself with", said the platinum blue haired girl, Alice is not known for doing as she is told, of course she wouldn’t cause trouble to her beloved brother in a serious situation, but in any other case, her wild and fickle attitude was taken into account by Aster and the others.
"I see...", mumbled the girl from the white sword faction, she still had a lot to learn about the dynamics within Aster’s group and while she found some rather weird, it would be a lie to say that she wasn’t amused and interest by others.
"Boooom!", the moment Alice fist landed on the dead wolf king, the area of the impact was covered in a solid layer of bones, which prevented the wild dragon princess from shattering the skeleton of the wolf, she did make the bone layer crack and crumble apart a second later though.
"Hahaha, now that’s more like it, you better last at least a few hundred rounds!", shouted the wild dragon princess as she fiercely used her fists and legs to rain attacks on the dead wolf king who was unable to advance anymore, he could only defend and try to break away from Alice’s endless torrent of attacks.
Unfortunately, the dead wolf king didn’t know, that as Aster could confirm, Alice is really hard to get rid of, once she had gained interest in something she will absolutely not let go of it, though in his case it was a positive experience overall, very much not like what was happening to the wolf.
The bear saw his "reinforcement" being blocked by the red eyed creature, which had been eyesore for him from the very beginning and he gritted his teeth, unfortunately the bear didn’t have the leisure to think about that right now, because Guardian was charging at him again.
"Rooar!", the lynx fiercely roared at the bear as she prepared to slash his claws at his chest, to which the bear reacted by raising his right arm to then swing it downwards aiming to crush Guardian against the ground.
Of course, the lynx dodged to the side with ease, but it was then that the bear slashed his left paw sidewards, he had learned to not go all out with both arms so that he could follow up with a second attack in case Guardian dodged the first one.
It wasn’t a bad idea, unfortunately he was too outmatched in terms of maneuverability, so the lynx simply bent her legs lowering her body just enough for the bear’s claws to miss her, this movement had a second purpose as well.
"Crack!", Guardian’s current stance was that of a predator preparing to pounce on its prey, the lynx’s legs tensed making some shattering sounds to come from the ground, before she leaped frontwards.
"Clang!", that being said the bear did manage to react this time so Guardian’s claws didn’t get to meet their real target, namely the bear’s neck, but the bear’s arms which he crossed in front of himself to block the lynx’s attack.
Guardian’s claws travelled all the way from the bear’s wrist to his elbows, leaving five claw marks on each of his forearms, the bleeding was contained but the impact of the clash forced the bear to retreat a dozen of meters.
That was because he blocked Guardian’s pounce at such a close distance, maybe the lynx loses to him in terms of static brute strength, but she can combine speed and her not weak in the slightest body which is bigger than that of a lioness even, to shortly explode with stronger force.
’Why are those fools not back already, they only had to kill one enemy which they naturally countered as well, there were very few horses with them so they should be done with it or at least one of them should have already arrived to inform of the situation...’, as if Aster could read the bear’s mind, he interrupted his thoughts by casually saying.
"If you are waiting for those dead animals you sent after Vivian, don’t bother, they won’t be coming back", while the bear had no way to know about what happened so far away from the main battlefield, that signal arrow informed Aster about Vivian’s victory which is what started the bear’s nightmare as well, he just didn’t realize it, until now.
’Don’t tell me, the reason as to why their side suddenly grew stronger is because they somehow knew that the dead animal army had been killed!’, screamed the bear to his insides.
Such a thing didn’t even cross his mind in the slightest, the bear simply thought that the enemy couldn’t keep up the act for that long and decided to go all out, and in case you wonder why was Aster "revealing" such information to the enemy, that’s simple, the fight had reached the point of no return, there were less than a hundred lynxes and wolves left and only a third of them were still fighting, the rest were those who had been wounded on their legs and couldn’t move anymore.
The bear also seemed to suddenly realize that his army was done, but he didn’t seem to despair, instead of that, his eyes became bloodshot as he glared at both Guardian and Aster.
"At the very least I’ll take you two down with me!", shouted the bear, the ground below him cracked as the bear’s skin ripped in different areas, blood flowed out his wounds and formed some familiar-looking red lines, as in they resembled the power of the red silhouette which resided in the king of fangs.
"So, it’s that guy’s ability this time, I wonder what did you eat though", said Aster as he saw the bear growing until he nearly doubled his size, which is ridiculous by the way, while standing the bear was more than three meters tall, so now he stood up at a towering height of more than five meters.
And apparently the blue flaming board thought so too, because some blue flames suddenly lit up in the sky, but at the same time red clouds, black shadows and red mist materialized in front of them.
Amusingly enough, those three together didn’t even cover a third of the space that the blue flames were occupying, it could be because they are not the ones in charge of supervising this area though, but judging by how they were banding together as close as possible it really looked like they were afraid of the blue flames.
’You can hear me right, don’t worry, she needs to end this herself’, said Aster in his mind, which was heard by the blue flaming board who though didn’t retrieve the blue flames that became visible for everyone in the battlefield, didn’t continue to advance, very much to the relief of the other three supervisors.
"Rooooar!", the bear whose eyes were literally red as in both the sclerae and the irises had been dyed blood red, roared with anger, the sound was rather uncomfortable and made some of the girls with the strongest hearing sense to either cover their ears or at least frown with discomfort in Mira and Guardian’s case.
"Crack!", the bear jumped frontwards almost instantly reaching Guardian as he slashed his claws downwards, this time not only did he create a large crater due to the impact but he also left ten deep slashing marks on the solid ground, his increased strength was no joke.
’Mmm, he might be able to equally clash with Espi’s all-out tail lash, but it looks like he lost most of rationality again, what did he eat though?’, thought Aster, besides growing in terms of size and the bloodshot eyes, the bear didn’t suffer any other change.
When the king of fangs used the power of the red silhouette, his body had some major changes, on the other hand that might have been because he went from being an herbivore to a carnivore and also consumed meat from many different animals, so at the end he didn’t resemble a horse at all.
"Boooom!", the bear whose rationality had decreased in exchange for the huge increase in strength he gained, went on a rampage chasing after Guardian who didn’t have it as easy to dodge his attacks anymore.
Not only was the bear’s body really large so his reach had increased, but due to his strength and weight, his attacks were accompanied by some wind pressure, which is normal, the biggest mortal bears can weight up to a thousand kilograms and this guy was way heavier than that, of course just his arms didn’t weight a ton, but it was as if the bear was swinging half of a small car around.
"Once again you desecrated the members of your own race, originally I believed that you were driven mad due to the anger of losing the fellow members of your race, so I honestly didn’t hate you, but after giving it some thought, I realized that if such was the case you wouldn’t have eaten their remains", said Guardian as she dodged the heavy blows of the bear.
The humans of back then killed almost all the bears, however it’s not like it came without a cost, the bears were a proud race which defended the forest till the end, they died honorably and should have been sent respectfully to the "eternal forest", hunting has always been fine, however Guardian prohibited the animals from eating the corpses of those that died fighting against humans, not only out of respect, but also because who knew what the humans used to kill them and how will it affect those that ate them, the same applied to humans they killed or their corpses which could be found through the forest normally back then.
So, if the bear was truly angered over what happened to his race, he wouldn’t have let alone eaten the corpses of others bears and humans, but also killed the few remaining members of his race to then consume them.
"Now I understand that you were just a coward who wanted power and took the easy route to obtain it", concluded the lynx, the bear couldn’t understand how the weak and small "creatures" could kill the largest and strongest members of his race and was ultimately afraid of them because of that.
It was that fear which pushed him to disobey Guardian’s warnings and wanting to gain such strength, he ate the corpses of humans and went crazy after changing in a different way than the lynx.
"Boooom!", the bear had stopped paying attention to Guardian’s words, though his consciousness still remained unlike the state in which he originally used to be, he couldn’t articulate his thoughts into words anymore, so the only way he could express himself was trying to kill the lynx by ripping her to shreds with his claws or crushing her with his arms.
After dodging the bear’s attack, a sharp light flashed through Guardian’s eyes as she rushed towards the bear, her claws seemed to reflect the sunlight for a second as she slashed them at her long time enemy.
"Rooo.... Aghhhh!", with a "thud", two large objects fell to the ground, those were the bear’s arms which has been cleanly cut all the way from the shoulder, the interesting part was that there was no clashing sound unlike before.
Guardian’s claws were sharp enough to wound the bear, even in his current state she could still break through the bear’s defenses, however they would produce sounds as if something sharp was being dragged through a stone board, not to mention that after a few centimeters, rather than cutting, Guardian would have ripped the flesh of the bear and she couldn’t have cut through the bone in a single go.
But then, looking at the clean and smooth open wounds that the lynx’s claws had left, it’s obvious that there was something else going on here.
"What happened, how did you do this!", shouted the bear, the pain and shock of what happened actually made him wake up from his half berserk state.
"I chose a better group to side with... no, to join, that’s all", casually said the lynx making the bear lose it on the spot, unfortunately he didn’t have the time to do anything before Guardian pounced towards him slashing her claws at his neck.
Then as if an invisible blade had reached the bear, his head flew out of his body, blood spilled from his decapitated neck, but curiously not a single drop stained the lynx’s claws.
What happened is simple, Guardian was granted one of the two daily chances to use the first technique of her attack type manual from Aster, and she used it a moment ago.
Her attack type manual "Fierce Nature", had quite an interesting effect, it measured Guardian’s "strength" and her technique’s effect was based on that, if the enemy was forty percent or more, weaker than her, then the lynx’s claws and fangs could ignore both physical and external defenses, if it was below forty but thirty or above weaker, then she could ignore physical defenses and if it was twenty percent or less, she could ignore external defenses.
Physical defenses in her manual’s case referred to the body anything from the skin and inwards, external defenses were anything outwards from that point, fun fact, the bear was judged to be forty percent or more, weaker than the lynx, though he didn’t have external defenses since his hardening power worked below his skin.
The reason as to why that is the case even after the bear increased his strength is simple, the "strength" that Guardian’s manual measured didn’t refer to physical aspects only, it took both body and mind into account and while the bear was obviously physically stronger than her, when both mind and body were judged she overwhelmed the bear, so he was judged to be quite weaker than Guardian as a whole.
Her technique was quite something by the way, perhaps because she had dealt with humans before and knew about "armor", her instincts drove her to choose this manual which could allow her to basically ignore it as there would be way too few people that would be twenty percent or less weaker than her in this place.
It’s worth mentioning that her attacks could still be blocked with weapons so long as they weren’t "defense" oriented, however her claws in that state were sharp enough to cut through tempered steel, so a high-quality steel weapon and quite a strong body would be needed to parry her attacks.
"Rooooar!", with a proud and glorious roar, Guardian declared her victory over the enemy’s leader which drew the attention from the vast majority of the people in the battlefield, the immobilized animals actually seemed to let out a sigh of relief, while the very few that were still trying to kill the girls of the sect paled and were instantly killed by their respective opponents.
"Awoooo!", a howl coming from the previously bandaged wolf followed Guardian’s howl as he ripped the western wolf king’s body apart with his claws ending his fight to then faint on the spot.
"What a shame, looks like I can’t play with you anymore, oh well, go and die", casually said the wild dragon princess at the empowered dead wolf king to then charge at her enemy, breaking his neck with her knee to then crack his skull with her fists.
"Thank you...", the dead wolf king seemed to regain his clarity for a second there and actually thanked Alice who slightly nodded to then turn around and rush towards Aster with her usual carefree expression, not without thinking.
’Don’t mention it, I got to trigger my damn mission finally and that little girl won’t be sad... it’s only fun if I’m the one to mess with her after all~’, thought the wild dragon princess.
What happened is that Alice refrained from killing the dead wolf king while his brother was still conscious, in part because he was a good target to practice her attacks and trigger her mission which she achieved a moment ago and in part because the bandaged wolf’s story was quite tragic and as much as Alice won’t admit it, she didn’t want the little girl to feel downcast due to it.
It’s not like the bandaged wolf didn’t want to free his brother with his own claws, but he lacked the strength for that in his current state, so he instead directed all his anger and hatred at the one who killed his brother, the western wolf king.
Back to the center of the battlefield where the headless corpse of the bear laid on the ground, Aster saw Guardian looking at her claws with clear amazement, she was burning with motivation to obtain the technique she just used, with her own efforts of course and he couldn’t help but chuckle at her.
’Motivating others is a leader’s duty and speaking of a leader’s duty...’, he thought as he gazed at the sky where the red lightning clouds, black shadows and red mist seemed to have frozen after seeing Guardian killing the bear with such ease.
Then as if they suddenly were returned to the real world, the black shadows as well as the red mist raised into the sky and joined hands to rotate creating a circle, the blue flames immediately flew towards those two with unprecedented fierceness, making it obvious that the blue flaming board was furious.
However, the blue flames were delayed for a fraction of a second because the red lightning cloud instead of joining those two, rushed... towards the ground, its aim was obviously Aster and the other participants.
"Clang!", still as if remembering something, the blue flames rushed towards its original target, only to clash against a gray ash light which emerged from the circle that the other two had created as a gray tombstone emerged from it.
"Boooom!", the ash grey light produced by the gray tombstone clashed against the flames of the blue flaming board and actually ended up in a tie, however even those two’s attention was forcefully drawn towards the ground as an impossible to ignore sensation of threat raised high into the sky from it.
"It appears that we look easy to bully in your eyes", said Aster as he used the privilege to retrieve "something" from the storage of the camp, it was an object covered in bandages, Aster unwrapped the ones on the upper side of the object revealing a hilt which he grabbed with his right hand to then take the thing out of the bandages, it was a large metal sword with a thin golden line in the center of its blade.
Then both, enemies and allies all felt as if eyes were glaring at them from every direction, for the girls and the others it brought a sense of safety, for the enemies on the other hand, they felt a terrible sensation of discomfort.
In fact, the red lightning cloud which was only a couple of hundreds of meters from arriving at the ground, turned around on the spot and rushed upwards as fast as it could, however Aster has never "unsheathed" his sword in presence of an enemy unless he was going to cut someone and this... wasn’t going to be the exception.
"Aghhhhhh!", the red lightning cloud which was about to return to where the others were, suddenly let out a loud scream, for the very first time since they met the supervisors, one revealed something about itself to the participants directly, in this case gender as the male pained voice that echoed through the sky, suggested.