**Klaus**
I woke up with wounds all over my body. I couldn’t feel my legs. Were they broken? I tried to look around and get a vague image of where I was, inside the tent that I set up previously.
I turned to the side and saw Ash, Tico, Victor and Wayne grinning at me.
I tried to recall vaguely what happened.
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Ah… now I remember. Victor invited us to have a brief training session. Ash suddenly smirked and his eyes shone devilishly. Out of the blue everything became blurry. The surrounding seemed to evaporate and before I knew it we were standing in some sort of vast plain.
I could feel the deadly vibe everywhere as the four of them stood before me in their menacing fighting stances. It was quiet.
“Are you ready?”
Due to confusion, I could not define who asked as such.
“Uuh…” I was slightly distracted, then right before my eyes, Ash evaporates and disappears. I looked around trying to find and discern his presence but out of nowhere Tico was standing right under my nose and gives me a strong hit to my chin.
OOPH! SSSK!
I was lifted up slightly above ground upon impact and pushed back. I skidded the ground with my feet, stopping myself from falling back any further.
Her speed did not surprise me, as I knew her ability boosting up her speed with the application of wind elements. But her powerful punch caught me off guard. I could feel her restraining her strength as much as possible though. I shuddered as I imagined what would have happened otherwise. I staggered back in pain and Ash reappears right before me and lifted me up in the air by the throat. I struggled in suffacation as I tried to get out of his grip. From Ash's sudden disappearance to Tico's punch and finally to Ash again, it all happened in a split of a moment.
Knowing that I could not win in terms of physical strength, I immediately focus my energy in the palm of my hand and transfer a strong amount of electricity into his body as I grip his hands. He squinted in pain and lets me go. I fall flat on the ground but quickly stagger back up and put some distance as the rest might attack me at any moment I put my guard down. I stared at Ash who was caressing his smoking hand.
“Well, I’d say, that actually stung a little.” Ash exclaimed, albeit calmly. His eyes turned into small slits as he scrutinized me. Damn, he's so cool. Of course, for a guy like him, why would that amount of power bothers him.
The four of them swiftly surrounded me. Tico was the first to launch an attack. I could tell from her preemptive strokes, punches, diagonal, vertical and horizontal slashes that she is an all ranger. As the goddess of the wind, it is an established fact that she could attack from mid to long range distances in any battle. But from her fighting style and warrior spirit, as well as her herculean strength, she proved to be deadly in close combat as well.
I tried my best to mostly evade and block her hits. Everytime I blocked one of her hits however, I could feel my bones threatening to crack and break. We danced around the plain for a couple of minutes, testing each other's combat techniques, exchanging blows and kicks. The other three gods did not join the fray for the moment, which I am thankful for. Though I know that I will have my hands full once they do.
With a slightly more force, Tico punched towards my face. A dread feeling crept up my back in that split of second, so I quickly tilted my head, dodging the punch by a hair's breath. As her fist missed my face, I could feel the sharp pressure of wind grazing my cheek. A straight line of cut formed on my cheek and a trickle of blood flowed from it. My eyes grew wide in astonishment, and seeing her other fist coming in succession, I bend my body down, almost in impossible way to the side and made a roundhouse kick, my feet crackled with lighting. Tico evaded and I managed to earn myself some distance in that short time.
However, as we were both seen pulled back in opposite directions, creating distance...
Tico flexed her hand and behind her a thousand small and sharply pointed wind cyclones materialized and pointed directly at me.
Wow, that looks nasty. I need to evade that or I will be full of holes! Beads of sweat started to form on my forehead.
I prepared for the worst. I instintively casted a high level barrier of lightning energy. The small but thousand wind of terror whizzed through the air but once they reached me, the barrier I created, halted them. Tico grunted, dismissed her attack, retreated, and signalled the others.
Immediately, Victor initiated a distant chi attack with a few motions of his hand and I felt a strong wave of energy heading my way. The chi attack, to my great surprise, bypassed my lightning barrier and rather punctured me. Victor smirked seeing my reaction. Since the chi attack was not literally physical in nature, my barrier seemed to be useless against it. It appears his knowledge on Jujitsu and a wide range of martial arts and energy like Qi Gong really paid off. I clenched my body in pain but I know that I do not want them to think that I’m that weak.
I give them a cold stare as I analyse my surroundings, fixing my disoriented body while my barrier flickered, threatening to collapse. As the gods (kindly) waited for me to get back on my feet, I tried to flow my energy through the ground without them knowing. In the meantime, I must lead them to the spot that is a few metres away from me. It was hard to divide my concentration like that but I had no choice. I tried to launch a divertive attack. I hit a few distinct blows towards them. Of course they dodged most of them rather easily, but it was my intention to occupy their defensive measure to my continuous and relentless lightning attacks. I focused my attention towards Wayne and smacked a high bolted surprise attack on his chest right after a speed transport to his exact location. He looked shocked and I grinned.
But I should have paid more attention. Wayne is a Lightning God. So my attack did not faze him. Rather, I was a second too late to realize that I chose the wrong target. Since I could feel Wayne's presence strongly compared to the other three, it was a lot easier for me to speed transport to him. My brain must have short-circuited for a moment to make that kind of mistake. In the meantime, Ash went quite further away from our location, calculatively stayed out of my attack range and transformed himself into an eagle and flew around above us. He playfully manifested a snake-like creature around my feet and let it crawled over my body as my hands was forcefully seized by Wayne when I attacked him. I writhed in disgust as the snake slithered around.
As I was squirming, Wayne redirected my electricity and shocked me with ten times as much volt power. I arched back and struggled to get my hands free from his grasp. My knee went limp and I tried to channel out the electricity that was flowing through my veins before it reached my heart and kill me. In that instant, I had an idea and channelled the electricity out of my body, and towards Ash in the air.
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The unsuspecting and gleeful Ash was successfully hit by an amplified lightning and was electrocuted until his skin turned charred black. Ash fell from the sky and hit the ground with a SPLAT!
One DOWN! And the annoying snake disappeared too!
Wayne grunted at me as he finally let go of my hands. I dropped to the ground as I feel weakened by the shock.
I looked up and found Victor looking at me with new eyes. Tico similarly watched me with a newfound feeling. My barrage of lightning attacks must have stopped when I was intercepted by Wayne. Victor just stared at me and I don’t really know whether I should make a move or not. I try to get up to my feet when I realized that I suddenly have no control whatsoever of my body. In the corner of my eye, I could see a smile started to form on Victor's lips. Victor was controlling me. He had successfully captured my body with mind control. It seems that Victor managed to hack into my self-consciousness and take over my mind. Not a moment too soon, I could feel my body being lifted into air.
**Wham**
**Crack**
**Crash**
**Wham**
**Crack**
**Crash**
**Wham**
**Crack**
**Crash**
**Wham**
**Crack**
**Crash**
**Wham**
**Crack**
**Crash**
**Wham**
**Crack**
**Crash**
**BAAM!**
**COUGH COUGH**
I coughed in desperation. I AM NOT A DOLL!!
Victor slammed me onto the ground countless of times until he dropped me one last time with a loud crashing sound. By the way, Tico assisted him by boosting the crashing speed. By this time, I could feel my bones that were broken and others breaking. The cracking sounds of bones breaking was a nightmare to my ears. I could also detect that I suffered several internal injuries. My broken ribs slightly punctured my lungs making it difficult for me to breathe.
I gasped for air when suddenly, the air seemed to taste toxic. I realized that Tico had changed the air compulsively to a toxic gas. I held my breath as I brainstorm for a way out of this predicament. Should I persevere and see it through to the end? Or should I raise the white flag, then and there?
As I was struggling with my thoughts, Victor then stood me up and punched me multiple times like a punching bag. I puked up blood and finally Victor let go of my mind. He was probably disgusted since my blood kind of went all over him.
I looked above me expecting them looking at me with triaumphant faces, but I can’t see Victor or Tico or Wayne. I thought they had vanished somewhere and plan to ambush me so I tried to sense their energy.
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"......"
They are standing right above me!
With no time to react, Tico slams a storm ball on me and I am flung to the ground like a rag doll. I suddenly feel as if my body was in chains. Victor was controlling my nerve points.
GUH.... I hate his ability!
Nonetheless, with whatever self-control I had, I focused on my energy flow and try to loosen his grip on my nerves as I strengthen myself in the process.
They levitated towards me and landed at the exact spot I wanted them to. I accidentally smiled but they didn’t notice. As Victor chained me to the ground, Tico was building up a strong field of wind around us, almost like a tornado. Wayne created bolts and bolts of lightning and focused all of it into a small ball that rested on the palm of his hand.
With all my years of experience, I knew that even a speck was able to kill a dragon and Wayne was actually making a ball of that stuff. Does he seriously want to blow up his plain?
I kept my focus until, Tico and Wayne struck me at the same time. Feeling that my nerve was finally out of grip from Victor’s control, right before the impact by two simultaneous attacks, I shifted my body and transformed into pure lightning energy to avoid the devastating hits. Transforming my entire being as lightning is a very high level technique or skill that Wayne taught me. But since I have not mastered it to its fullest potential, the backlash from it after use is severe. But at this point, I do not have many options at hand.
I have no idea why but the explosion the two attacks caused, practically blew everything away, creating a huge crater at where I was. I was hit by a strong wave of déjà vu. That explosion reminded me of….
A sudden strong force of emotions waved inside me as I remembered that explosion. -----
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The dust clouded everywhere and Victor, Tico and Wayne couldn’t see me.
And I have no idea where Ash disappeared to….Did he got lazy? Sure he got charred black by lightning but he should have recovered by now....
I reappeared in the smoke, half lightning energy and half human body as I reformed myself physically again. That skill was a risky one. But I had no other choice. Though I know by instinct that they were going easy on me but such manner of attack could still potentially kill me.
A terrible glint shone in my eyes. Victor suddenly took a step back as he suddenly felt a strong aura that was circulating me. I don’t know what happened to me but I supposed it was a good thing.
I channelled electricity through the ground and straight towards them. They sense the electricity and immediately jump out of the way but I redirected my energy and sparks came shooting out of ground and followed them. They were startled and so was Wayne.
But that wasn’t the end just yet. They tried to dodge by any means possible but the sparks continued to tail them. At an attempt, Tico blurs my vision with a dusty stand storm. Nonetheless I can still feel their energy so I can still track them down. I try to rely on my other senses and I sense someone behind me.
I flash rays of lightning in that direction but it is as if I hit nothing. I stand puzzled but a sudden blow from behind got me whizzing through the air. Wayne stands above me and gives me hard slam to the ground. He didn’t forget to add some electricity in the blow. I tried to resist focusing on the sudden intense power I felt earlier but Wayne continued to force me to the ground as I lay weakly as I let my body give away.
The three of them stood before me. Wayne focuses some energy and a shining blade appears in his hands. He points towards me and says goodbye. What! I thought this was just a training session!?!
Damn it! If it’s like this…..I…..
Wayne hovers above me and delivers the sword to my neck. I closed my eyes and a sudden smoke engulfed me. Wayne, Victor and Tico wiped dust of their faces and were surprised to see me not chained to the ground anymore. I disappeared.
Tico and Wayne looked around and Victor sighed as he said
“We shouldn’t have underestimated him…”
I appeared high amongst the clouds. I used a teleportation talisman. I stole them from one of those crazy hunters once upon a time. A guy like me needs resources, but those talisman are one of the rare ones so I avoid using them. I couldn’t just depend on my lightning powers. I saved those talismans to escape sticky situations. When my powers were sealed by the Wincotts, I probably would have used it if Wayne did not intervene.
I summoned electricity from all around me. From the ground, the air and the clouds. I channel everything into one attack. From the ground, Tico, Wayne and Victor can only see the skies darkening around them.
Seriously…where in Olevia is Ash?! I can’t sense him at all…
Wayne flies up to investigate but Victor holds him back. He shakes his head in disagreement. They stared up and light starts to flash in the sky. All the electricity waves are flowing within me and with whatever energy I have left I….
BAAAM!!!
Wayne suddenly appeared behind and hit me to the ground and shot me again until I was paralyzed.
No fair….I was so close…maybe….
Having a contracted God who always knew where you are if he wants to is just plain cheating….you should continue to play ignorance and fight me on equal terms…..stupid Wayne….but I guess I already expected that, huh.
My thoughts started to dwindle as I was losing my consciousness.
Luckily I’m still alive. Apparently Wayne didn’t listen to Victor and wanted to end the fight here.
“It’s over Klaus, ready to call it quits?” Tico smirked.
“Hehehe, not just yet…” I passed out at that moment. The three of them looked at each other, puzzled. Suddenly they hear strong sparks coming from behind them. They turn around and the sky turned dark red. Lightning bolts started to rain heavily and each bolt had over a thousand volts. The ground itself was starting to electrocute them so they flew up and they got hit directly by the overwhelming storm of thunder and lightning…
“Just what is he exactly?!?...”
ZzZaaaappppp!!!!
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While I passed out with satisfied grin on my face. The three gods were painted charred black, their hairs stood erect with little fires sizzling at the ends before completely vanish. They simply stared at the unconscious me with half closed eyes.
Phew! Glad I did not get caught up in that! HAHAHAHAHA. You guys should look at yourselves in the mirror! Hilarious! AHAHAHAHA! Look Tico! Your hair! They all stand erected! HAHAHA!!!
The three gods slowly turned their attention towards the little figure where the voice came from, having a laughing fit.
Ash, who suddenly appeared after the aftermath and the storm calmed down, began to laugh and make fun of them. In his cat form. They later found out that he was grooming himself under some hole of a dead tree trunk.
The three gods stared at him with accusing eyes.
“What?! It is just that time of the day!” Ash simple state, inappropriately feeling wronged. Victor sighed and said.
“Enough. Let’s get cleaned up and addresses Klaus’s wounds. We have quite the journey ahead of us.”