After using large amounts of his Stubborn Will to regenerate from his injuries, Al picked himself up from the tree he had crashed into. He returned to the tattered swamp where he, Cesar, and Jin had been fighting a 9-foot giant covered in mud.

In the center of the life-or-death fight was now Ellie and a smaller 8-foot giant covered in dry mud.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Al whispered as he approached. Ellie greeted Al with a wave of her hand. In contrast, the giant stared calmly at Al.

Cesar and Jin were laid next to Ellie above the wet ground. Both were unconscious. Asoto' the other blue giant who had shot and pummeled Al into the tree, was also laid out unconscious.

"Loh' Pohlieus," the short giant said before pointing at his chest. "Father sent me to North. Get Help," he explained.

Loh' spoke with his limited understanding of English.

In Tonovia, a bloodline with the surname Murellus existed. It was known for producing the pinnacle of Tonovian D.N.A.

A brother and sister were born with the name Murellus, who would prove the rumors of their blood being the pinnacle true. The brother was named Deiusus' Murellus, who went from the title Iron to Great Iron to Greatest Diamond-Commander of the Tonovian military almost instantly. His strength without ancestral crystals was ten times that of a regular Tonovian.

The sister Geova' Murellus pushed the Tonovian's knowledge of the mineral world to the edge. She pioneered the modern use of ancestral crystals for the Tonovian forces. Her genius was unparalleled, so she served as an advisor to the 'Father of Fathers' —Usto Tinneus', Asoto's father.

At a young age, Loh', an orphan, was taken under the wing of Geova' Murellus, becoming his teacher. She groomed him into one of the greatest assets for the nation of Tonovia.

Loh's physique as a Tonovian was unimpressive, but he was very resourceful. He grasped some English words through his brief exposure to a human phone.

Al looked at Ellie with confusion. Meanwhile, Ellie replied. "So your name is Loh' Pohlieus, and your father sent you to get help? Is your family in trouble?"

Loh struggled to decipher her question. "Help from North," he repeated. Ellie was puzzled by his statement, asking, "What do you mean by 'North'?"

Frustrated, Loh replied, "North people, under lake. Ask help."

Al interjected, trying to make sense of the situation: "If a family as formidable as these two is asking for help, it's probably going to be from someone as strong as an immortal. I think they're looking for the Blood Leafs' 5th Immortal Ring."

Ellie's eyebrows rose as she turned to Loh' Pohlieus. "Is it true?" she asked.

A few hours later,

Asoto' had awakened, and Loh' easily calmed him down and explained the situation to him in their native Tonovian tongue.

Meanwhile, Cesar and Jin had also regained consciousness. Both gazed at the giant who had nearly killed them. Loh' spoke to the group in English fluently, as if it were his native language.

"As I mentioned earlier, we are not outsiders but Tonovians," Loh' explained. Our history stretches back tens of thousands of years. Our ancestors were human like you and had to seek shelter from a world-ending cataclysm. They went under beneath Mammoth Cave in Kentucky in a remarkable cavern." While describing his home, Loh's facial features grew soft.

The six were walking north toward Michigan. They were slowly leaving lower Indiana's swampy lands and entering the state's north. On the way, the group shared many stories famous within the distinct cultures.

After a while, Loh' recounted the trouble his people were facing. "My teacher, Geova' Murellus, recently dissected five unknown beasts that had taken out hundreds of our Great Bronzes and Lower Iron legions. She determined that they were an entirely foreign life to our planet. We named these creatures 'Rakh-ahtan.' meaning outer-devils. The day finally arrived when they finally attacked us with their actual soldiers."

Loh' let out a deep exhale as Al and the others closely listened with curiosity to the story of Tonovia. The only one whose mind was elsewhere was Asoto'. Unlike Loh, ' picking up a foreign language was not easy for Asoto'. He couldn't understand the story his close companion was sharing to the four surface humans.

Loh' continued his story, "After the Rakh-ahtan attack on Tonovia had commenced, the Father of fathers, the leader of Tonovia', sent me and his firstborn son, Asoto', to seek help from the surface. He said to search for a small clan high up north, beneath a giant lake."

Loh's talkativeness surprised Al, although he found the story mind-boggling and terrifying.

Unlike themselves, who harnessed Will, the Tonovians utilized ancestral essence to manifest the Will of their dead. Al found this distinction intriguing.

They crossed the border between Indiana and Michigan, entering Huron National Forest.

The temperature dropped, and while Al and the others focused on breathwork to stay warm, the two Tonovians appeared to come alive in the cold.

However, unlike the four cultivators, Loh and Asoto couldn't nourish their bodies with their breath. The two had to search for rocks and stones to snack on.

When Loh' and Asoto' left to forage for crystals and stones, the group cultivated their Will through breath work. When necessary, they performed a specific breathing technique to nourish their bodies.

On such an occasion, Al was cultivating his Stubborn Will, and after a sound of pacing footsteps, Al opened his eyes. In front of him, Cesar was pacing back and forth, mumbling to himself.

"He said the Rakh-ahtan were not from our planet. That means I was right: aliens are real. My brother was abducted! I knew it, I knew it..." Cesar was rambling while walking in a circle.

Al jumped up and looked around to see that no one else was around, "Cesar, pull yourself together! You're the fucking Captain." Al sternly whispered into Cesar's ear while shaking his friend from the shoulders.

Al stopped shaking Cesar and pulled him close by the neck. "I'm right here with you, brother. If you're crazy, I'm fucking nuts too! We need to be patient. Remember what you told me." Al's words entered Cesar's ear, calming him down.

The two friends smiled at each other. After entering each other's lives, neither of them felt alone. They began walking toward their group while laughing.

Before the two could join the rest, Ellie warned Jin, "We're under attack. Someone just attacked my mirror clone." As she spoke, her enormous mirror materialized swiftly with someone else's blood splayed against its liquid-like metal.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Six individuals closed in on them, causing Al and Cesar to shoot in opposite directions swiftly. Two different assailants targeted Cesar and Ellie each, while Al and Jin dealt with a lone enemy.

Cesar was up against a man and a woman.

Cesar raised his spear, taking on his signature Muay Thai stance.

The man he was up against lacked a weapon, but his gray silk gloves emulated a luminous glow as he extended his arms, generating a colossal wave of plasma that moved fluidly.

In response, Cesar concentrated his Wind Will into the tip of his spear, unleashing a destructive gust of wind with a single jab.

The arrow-like wind collided with the plasma wave, resulting in an electrical explosion that dispersed Cesar's wind.

The woman next to the plasma-wielding man was wielding a rapier sword. She lunged at Cesar to engage in a duel of blades. However, she was not met by Cesar's spear but by a spinning kick, which caught her by surprise.

Confident in his direct hit, Cesar was taken aback when he realized his kick had missed.

A short distance away, the woman joined the man in attacking Cesar. With a swing of his spear, Cesar caused a gust of wind to help him ascend into the sky.

After reaching a considerable height, Cesar lifted his spear and threw it. The winds he was producing scattered the clouds. Cesar's spear moved incredibly quickly, generating sonic booms in its wake.

The man created another wave of plasma with his gloves. The plasma acted as a shield that could melt anything thrown at it. However, Cesar's spear was surrounded by a film of air pressurized by Cesar's Wind Will. The brown and silver spear effortlessly pierced through the plasma, and an ash plume trailed behind it.

In a moment of desperation, the brown-haired woman selflessly pushed the man aside, only to have the spear cut through her right leg, impaling her mercilessly into the ground. The woman shouted in agony as the man she had saved ran to her side.

Cesar remained unmoved as the wind caught his descent.

Not far from Cesar's fight, Al encountered a petite woman brandishing a small knife. "She doesn't look like a threat. I'll try not to hurt her." Al thought as he moved behind his opponent. Al disarmed the woman and forcefully pushed her to the ground.

To his astonishment, the woman split into two upon impact with the ground.

One of the two recovered her knife from Al.

Two copies of the petite woman began to swing their small knife at Al. He easily avoided their attacks and used his crooked knife for defense only. However, each time he tried to immobilize the women, she would split again, multiplying rapidly until Al found himself facing eight of them.

Al was now fighting for his life to evade the barrage of knife slashes coming at him from all directions.

"Damn it, should I just try and kill them and hope I don't hit the real one?" Al pondered, his thoughts racing. Suddenly, a numbing sensation shot through his left leg. A knife was stabbing his left thigh.

Suppressing the urge to scream, Al forcefully kicked the woman away, prompting her to split again. Enduring the pain, he extracted the knife from his leg, gritting his teeth. Al began hacking and stabbing mercilessly. As bloody rain from the clones fell on him, he sustained cuts and stabs in return.

Within seconds, Al found himself in combat against a small army of these diminutive women. He relentlessly sliced and stabbed, consumed by a frenzied state of mind. His A.R.C (Autonomous Revolution Converter) labored tirelessly to materialize his Stubborn Will so his etheric shell could enable him to regenerate from his wounds.

Meanwhile, not far away, Jin unleashed a lightning arc aimed toward a muscular man who continuously regenerated his burned flesh. However, his healing abilities were gradually slowing down. "He must be a Stubborn Will user like Al, but unlike Al, he seems to lack the speed and strength to match me," Jin speculated.

With one final powerful lightning blast, the man was to the point where he began foaming from the mouth, unable to produce any more Stubborn Will.

Jin joined Ellie, locked in combat with a colossal 30-foot woman. She swung her giant fist towards Ellie, who swiftly transformed into a mirrored reflection of the giant's blow, sending the giant woman soaring through the air and shaking the ground upon impact.

In an instant, Ellie reappeared behind her giant mirror, quickly making her invisible again.

After Ellie had become invisible, a shirtless man with wild black hair, like an animal, leaped towards her but missed. The man shot a web-like material to try to capture the invisible Ellie.

However, the invisible Ellie easily avoided the attack. "I wonder what kind of Will causes one to produce web?" she asked herself.

The man, realizing he had lost his opponent, bellowed in frustration at the giant woman. "Damn it, Agnethe! How did you let a mirror take you down like that?"

Ellie became visible next to the spiky hair and punched him with incredible force. Without breaking a sweat, she took out another opponent. After the man hit the floor, she vanished from sight again.

Seeing Ellie was fine on her own, Jin moved toward Al. In the distance, he could see Al in a dire situation, knives poking out of his body like needles on a pin cushion.

Despite his wounds, Al remained standing. The petite woman observed Al. She was trying to hide her astonishment at his resilience.

Through her Dividing Will, she had produced an army of duplicates to attack Al relentlessly. "He's just a Stubborn Will cultivator. I should have done enough damage by now to exhaust A.R.C. How is he still standing?" she cursed him.

As the number of duplicates stacked against Al, Jin jumped in to support him. Combining their strength, they unleashed a relentless barrage of electrifying bolts, stabs, and slices. The petite woman stood in the distance, drenched in sweat, away from her army of duplicates.

Her Dividing Will was being drained rapidly, and her A.R.C. struggled to convert her breath into more. She couldn't withstand the overwhelming assault from both Al and Jin.

As a result, her body reached its limit, and she passed out, causing all her duplicates to vanish into thin air.

Al and Jin were left alone in the field. Al was drenched in blood. Their breathing had become ragged, and they were beginning to feel the drain on their Will's.

The only remaining fight was between Cesar and the man with the gloves. The two were engaged in close-quarters combat. Cesar's spear was a distance away, protruding from the leg of the woman who had aided the man.

Cesar used Muay Thai and relentlessly elbowed and kneed the man. The man's face was miserable as he tried to defend himself by throwing plasma waves from his glove, but Cesar easily dodged his attacks.

With a clean elbow to the jaw, Cesar incapacitated the man, instantly knocking him out.

Running his hands through his hair, Cesar walked over to retrieve his spear, making the woman scream in pain. “Wait, Agghh!" The woman began crying and pleading, "Please don’t kill us. We're sorry. We'll give you everything we have.”

Cesar retained a calm expression as he asked. “Why did you attack us?”

Looking slightly confused, the woman said, “What do you mean, outside of the Blood Leafs Rings, stealing is permitted, and so is killing?” She whispered the last part.

Cesar sarcastically responded, “Oh, you were just trying to kill us for loot. Well, in that case, you can go free.”

The woman remained quiet as Al joined Cesar and mockingly added, “You just gave us a good reason to kill you."

She lowered her head and stopped crying. Her phantom seed had killed others before, and although they had never lost, they all knew their own death was a possibility.

Al rubbed his hairless chin, contemplating before saying. "Maybe you don't have to die. You mentioned the Blood Leaf, so I guess you're a phantom seed familiar with the Mortal Rings and maybe even Immortal Rings around here. If you know the location of the Blood Leaf's 5th Immortal Ring and can take us there, we'll let you live.”

The woman looked at her Captain, who was lying unconscious. The rest of her team was all defeated, especially Andrew Eustis, their Stubborn Will user, who seemed on the verge of dying.

Before she could answer, Al added, "Oh, and of course, we'll need you to hand over all of your merits to us."