“Thalas is adept rank”
The thought rung continuously in Tunde’s mind as he steadied himself amidst the chaos that was breaking out around them, surrounded from all sides by both a rival clan and the cult of undeath, seemingly betrayed by a supposed ally, Tunde for the first time found himself without a way out. So he did what he always did when faced with insurmountable odds, he dived headfirst into battle, drawing on the Ethra of the rift, cycling it as quickly as he could, finding his body more amenable to the process.
Ethra sight flashed as Thalas attacked, his affinity of jade and pressure crudely overlapping each other on both gauntlets-covered hands, Tunde parried the first one with great difficulty, his bones jolting with the bare force each blow carried, the second sent him sprawling in the mud, coughing.
“You take blows that would instantly pulverize the insides of any disciple” Thalas observed.
Gripping Shadowfang in his right hand, Tunde got to his feet just as quickly, dodging a blow from a disciple of clan Acacia and Shadowfang instantly removing his head, leaving a body spurting blood in its wake. He kicked the body with all the force he had in his imbued body at Thalas, a heavy blow from the new adept exploding the body into flesh and mist. His axe burning with his midnight Ethra, Tunde went on the attack again, Ethra strike cutting through the air as Thalas dodged, knowing better than to take the attack head-on.
His body already healed but his clothing was in shreds, he once again traded blows with the new adept, seeing the futility of leaving lasting damage on Thalas. He wasn’t facing some tier 3 creature, this was a true adept of the third stage, his Ethra stronger, more powerful, with two affinities that were made for raw beatings. Thalas grabbed his wrist, gauntlet squeezing tight to snap it apart as Tunde prematurely released a resonance explosion, Thalas hissing for the first time.
[notice!: adept grade titan heart fruit will manifest at your location in one minute!]
The entire fight paused, Tunde staring at his screen when he watched the Ethra in the air begin to flow towards a position, the remaining disciples looking around, desperately searching for it. Instincts had him turning in a flash, Shadowfang coming down with a cleave, burning with raw Ethra to cut at Thalas whose adept ranked speed afforded him the chance to sneak up on Tunde, lost in his screen. He cursed as Thalas dodged the attack, landing a punch to his shoulder that sent him careening back into the muddy waters.
“They can’t see it,” Tunde thought to himself as he sunk further deep into the swamp, buying time for his body to heal.
Ethra sight was truly a blessing, whatever had bestowed that technique on him had his thanks. He could see Thalas waiting for him to resurface with a hesitant look on his face when a streaking projectile stole the adept’s attention, deflecting it with a snarl. Tunde swam away, aware of Joran fighting three adepts, the blind tiger tearing into them with as much fury as they did at him. He considered helping, common sense telling him to stay out of the fight, if they gave Joran this much trouble then he had no business in the fight.
Instead, he would go make himself useful by stealing the fruit, tracing the flow of Ethra while being aware that his time below the waters was limited, he hurried as fast as he could, Shadowfang strapped behind him. Within his void ring were adept grade cultivation elixirs, for when he was ready to advance, costing as high as three hundred thousand elixirs, they were only for when he had the right items in place.
These elixirs made advancements a bit easier, allowing the body to absorb whatever adept-grade fruits or items he would ingest, helping his advancements, and yet, elder Joran had warned him they would be useless if he took weak adept-grade essence fruits or items. The titan's heart sounded like a good fruit, something he could acquire, the first of many actually, and Tunde was about to steal it right from under their noses. Surfacing slowly, he allowed himself large mouthfuls of air, watching the battle from a distance.
The two lords were nowhere to be seen, their battle too fast for the naked eyes to see, they had no use for the fruit he believed, and the adepts as well, unless they simply wanted to fortify their bodies the more. It was the disciples of clan Acacia he had to be wary of, watching as they searched around, even as the timer counted down. Taking a deep breath, he went underneath again, swimming towards the first of them.
40 seconds left.
Calmly appearing behind him, he grabbed the disciple's neck before he could imbue his body, snapping his neck and letting his body sink into the muddy waters, after he took his void ring of course. Tunde hadn’t stopped to count the number of void rings he had acquired and what was within them, perhaps when they got to safety, if they got to safety.
35 seconds left.
He went below again, his hunt continuing.
**************************
Zehra stared at the battle from where she stood on a branch of a tree whose roots were deep below the swampy water, watching with a passive look. She had no use for the fruit, her body already honed to the peak of adept rank, let the disciples search for it, she was curious of the strength and battle prowess of Thalas Verdan. A new adept ranker, she had watched him battle the one he had called Dark Fist, Zehra confused as to why he had called him that until she had seen a technique he used explode off the body of Thalas.
That was after the jade gauntlets had somehow incapacitated as he sunk below the waters, again she wondered how he had won a battle against Thalas even as a disciple. Judging from his fight with the adept ranked revenants the lord of the undeath cult had summoned within the battle from the desecrated yet incomplete alter he had erected; he was in a class of his own. Swinging both gauntlet and cudgel with near-perfect precision, Zehra admitted to herself that had she been at the stage of peak tier, he would have given her a run for her position.
A casual swing of her blade had her frost blade technique decapitating a few of the revenants, their Ethra and essence dissipating into the air. With less than 30 seconds to go till the fruit manifested, she turned to her disciples, what was left of them, Zehra noting with a frown that seven left was a bad look on her clan.
Wait…..seven?.
She counted again, sure they were at least nine, excluding the one whose head had been cut off by the dark fist during his fight with Thalas. One suddenly went below the waters with a scream as she turned her gaze to the position, blood pooling upwards, was there a creature within the swamp hunting them?. Again she cursed her luck, this was simply meant to be a grab and leave mission, take the rift core, purify to her affinity, and then absorb while slowly cultivating till she broke through to lord stage.
Perhaps her curiosity had led them this way, ignoring the fact that she had no idea what state her war vessels were in the outside world or what was going on for that matter since all communication would be immediately cut off the moment she entered the rift. For all she knew the beast surge could have caught up with them, hordes of monsters and beasts just rampaging around the landscape.
She doubted that had happened, the rift would have most definitely produced more creatures than it was doing right now.
“Out of the swamp, now!” she ordered.
The disciples all too eagerly obeyed, tearing out of the waters only for a leg to clamp one and an axe she was all too familiar with cutting it off as the disciple screamed. With unbelieving eyes, she watched the dark fist surface, eyes a starry midnight with such fathomless depths as she had ever seen, his aura bearing the weight of an early adept rank even as he hadn’t advanced yet. All of a sudden she understood just why Thalas had been cautious of him, his strengths while admirable didn’t lay in his body but his ruthless mind, and she admired that.
He didn’t fight to prove a point, he could care less about proper methods or etiquettes in battle, he simply had a goal, and he did everything in his power to reach that goal. She swung her blade as she shot for him, the dark fist diving below the waters, knowing fully well that he couldn’t take her head on.
“Smart,” she thought.
And yet, in another moment of disbelief, he resurfaced behind her even as she was already turning, her white glowing blade imbued with her affinity of ice clashing with his axe. Two things happened in that moment that shocked her, the first was the raw strength of his body, straining against her peak adept ranked body, and the second was his axe actually eating past the layer of imbuement she had around her blade to bite the actual metal of her blade.
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“Soulbound weapon,” she said out loud.
Then a bright golden light erupted from the middle of the swamp as a large form manifested, distracting her, a mistake she paid dearly for. With a kick that had more weight than it should have, the dark fist pushed her into the direction of the creature, allowing her to take the full brunt of its first attack even as her defensive constructs activated, a petal green haze of a shield, a lord level defensive construct took the blow of the creature.
It blew her backward, tearing through weak trees to slam into the ground, panting carefully even as her Ark screen lit up.
[titan heart fruit has manifested and claimed!]
Realization dawned on her even as she found herself laughing, a powerful presence manifesting next to her, horror in his voice.
“Lady Zehra!” lord Akero exclaimed.
“He tricked me” she replied with a giggle even as she got up.
The presence of undeath filled the area again as Akero snarled, becoming a flash of light as he no doubt went after the revenant lord before he attacked her, explosions coming from around her, her hair whipping around.
“He tricked me,” she said again, this time with rage.
************************
It had been risky, bordering on suicidal, but Tunde had seen no other choice, the fruit had been about to manifest, and he had not expected her to come after him, the moment Tunde saw the creature forming along with the golden fruit that hung on a stalk above its head, he knew he couldn’t take on any of them, not alone. So he had done the most logical thing, he had turned them on each other, and it had paid off, the titan heart fruit within his grasp and straight into his void ring.
“Very good my student!” elder Joran’s voice rang through the air as Tunde winced.
All the disciples of clan Acacia turned to him, rage in their eyes.
“You killed my brother,” a female said.
“He would have done the same to me” Tunde simply replied.
No other words were said as they came for him all at once, water techniques flashing at him from spears to blades to even hard-compressed balls of water. Ethra sphere met most of them, Shadowfang flashing through the air to cut through the rest as he dropped a kick on the skull of the first, a bald man. He held back his strength, doing nothing but knocking him out, he had killed enough of their numbers today, and his aura flashed out, incapacitating them as he strapped Shadowfang back and went in with his fists.
Bones were broken as he danced around them, not needing resonance for lethal attacks, he could sense and see the frustration coming from them, meanwhile, the large creature regained its senses, a loud roar coming from it. The sound of an incoming projectile had him pulling back, Thalas landing in the middle of his fight, rage in his eyes.
“coward” he snarled.
“he’s ours!” one of the few remaining disciples said.
Thalas struck at the disciple so fast that only the lower half of the disciple’s body was left standing, the rest reeling.
“Traitor!” a loud voice said as one of the three adepts crashed into Thalas.
Tunde needed no one to tell him, tearing for the large creature that was slow but seemed to pick up speed the moment Tunde entered its vicinity.
[peak-tier 3 swamp guardian]
The creature looked like a fusion between the muddy waters of the swamp, vines, and hardened earth, its deep green eyes glowing as it lashed out at him. Shadowfang was in hand again, his Ethra slicing through its vine attacks that came at him with near-blinding speed, feeling vines wrap around his legs from beneath the waters. The creature’s next blow had Tunde careening, head snapping back as he bit back a grunt, channeling Ethra sphere that shot at the creature. A bunch of vines took the brunt of his attacks, exploding on them, he grabbed at the vines with his aura-coated hands, tearing them off and rolling away as he lost Shadowfang beneath the waters.
Tunde dived straight under, grabbing the weapon before it was lost below the murky depths and swimming towards the creature that went below the waves as well in pursuit of him, its green eyes glowing. He watched as hundreds of vines began to twist towards him, gathering Ethra spheres again when Tunde realized something. It took a bit of willpower, something he couldn’t readily gather seeing as he was under attack, and having to fight as well but he did it.
Ironically thanking Elder Moros for the idea, Tunde now found himself with floating discs of Ethra made of his affinity.
[new technique created: ____?] Ark wrote.
Tunde fired the discs as he chose a name, watching his Ark update.
[technique registered: Ethra razor discs]
The discs sliced through the vines just as easily as they moved through the murky depths, aiming for the creature itself. It opened its mouth, bright green light accumulating, Tunde swam out of the way, a loud explosion tearing through the depths, blasting with so much force that it shoved him right out of the depths and smacking him on a tree branch as he coughed, stumbling on the banks of the swamp.
Somehow, he had kept a grip of Shadowfang, the weapon coated with murk and mud, breathing heavily as his cycling never ceased. He whipped Shadowfang backward, clashing with an icy white blade and staring into the cold but furious eyes of Lady Zehra of Acacia.
“You would pay for that insult,” she said before slamming a kick into him, blasting him further into the swamp trees.
******************
Joran saw himself facing three adepts of clan Acacia, a wide grin on his face as they danced across the trees of the swamp forest. Slapping away a wind blade from the hands of Vaya before she could stab him with it, he dropped a punch to her chest, the echo blasting apart the gathering attack of Vasriq as the earth and water adept began fusing both together. Ketos wielded blades of both fire and water, an admirable feat seeing as how hard it was to channel them both without a core.
Twisting away and hopping to another branch, he sighed.
“This is pointless, I don’t want to kill you,” he said.
“But we do” ketos respond.
Joran turned his gaze to the adept where the very air vibrated with the flame spears that took shape above him. He pointed at ketos.
“You intend to follow the concept of mist regent,” he said.
“of course, few ever reach that far anyways” he continued.
“You follow the concept of the flowing wind” he pointed at Vaya.
“And you, well, this swamp resonates well with you, doesn’t it?” Joran asked, finishing with Vasriq.
“Your point?” ketos asked.
“My point is that we could split both ways, right now, go our separate ways, find what tier 5 items and essences we can, we’re at the border of the true rift lands itself, there’s enough for everybody” Joran explained.
“I’d rather we kill you here than face opposition later on,” Vaya said.
“You still have undeath running around” Joran pointed out.
“Nothing lord Akero can’t deal with,” Vasriq said.
“So, you all want to do this?” Joran asked again.
Their attacks primed themselves as they fed them Ethra, Joran shaking his head even as he took a stance, wisps of Ethra coming off him as the trees around him, began to shake.
“Shame, take the flame one,” he said out loud.
A raw force slammed into Ketos, driving him straight down into the swamp, a figure in dirty green robes with large gauntlets on his arms stood straight.
“Take your time,” Joran said to the figure.
“I had to be sure,” the rumbling voice of the adept ranker that leaked jade Ethra said.
Jashed Verdan, looking like a mountain of a man he was, an explosion behind them drew the attention of Vasriq who snarled and shot towards figures fighting in the swamp.
“Very good my student!” Joran shouted, chuckling to himself.
“Your son never betrayed you, did he?” Vaya asked as she forged a blade of air and water on both hands.
“you clan Acacia adepts are really good at this double affinity use, I’m impressed!” Joran replied with a smile.
Ketos was back on the branch above, bleeding from one side of his face, rage in his eyes.
“It would take more than that for a child of Verdan to turn” Jashed replied, cracking his neck.
“To think I’d see the day we’d work together as allies,” Joran said chuckling.
The tree he stood on began to crack, vibrations running through its frame, the audible snaps coming from its body.
“don’t make me regret it” Jashed replied and shot for ketos.
The tree shattered, Jashed grabbed a broken branch and fired it at Vaya who sliced it in two with her blade. Both sides clashed in a blow of power, Joran wielding a branch imbued with vibration Ethra, sound Ethra coating it as well as every clash disrupted the water blade of Vaya, the adept slashing with her wind blade as well.
Joran danced around her, carefully picking apart her attacks as she endured, both sides imbued with their auras tearing apart their surroundings. The other couldn’t be said for Jashed who crashed into ketos like a beast, ignoring the cuts of his blade as his jade imbuement saw him able to crystalize whatever part of his body he wanted.
He turned his attention back to Vaya, the winds picking up around her even as they formed shapes, the waters of the swamp flowing up as well, she was in her element, a danger to her foes, it was a pity Joran’s element went wherever he went. She swallowed him up in a ball of water dominion, trapping him in his watery depths as wind blades began to form as well, he stared at her without eyes, wondering if she’d actually do it, and when she did, Joran reluctantly released his projection technique.
Tiger’s roar blew the water prison with a bang, tearing apart her dominion and projection techniques in one move, Joran was next to her as she reeled, slowly slipping a broken branch in between her stomach as she gasped, holding his hands there firmly.
“Lodged close to your heart, should you retreat now, a few healing elixirs later and you staying out of the fight would see you recover slowly, assuming you don’t do something stupid as trying to cultivate rift Ethra,” he said with a dry chuckle.
She stared at him with hate-filled eyes, warring with herself.
“You don’t get to advance if you’re dead, now run along” he added, a hint of lethality in his voice.
Without a second hesitation, she tore away, leaving Joran standing and turning to where Jashed was busy beating ketos to a pulp, broken bones and blood running down his face as he faced a fully jade-covered Jashed. Ketos had summoned a fiery hell, the heat growing in strength as it was obvious the adept was prepared to fight to the death, he tsked, flashing to him even as flame shaped like a whip lashed at him.
Easily dancing around it, his aura-covered palm slapped ketos in the chest as he released a force of pure vibration Ethra, the adept’s eyes wide open. He stared at the hole in his chest, blood spurting out of his mouth.
“My benevolence only runs so far,” Joran said, removing the void ring of the adept and watching his body fall into the murky depths.
“You had no right to interfere,” Jashed said harshly.
“Cut off the armor, you’re wasting Ethra,” Joran said before turning away.
“Now where’s that student of mine?” he asked.