Zalkutaro blocked a soul weeper's claw slash with his dawnite harp as it floated in place; he ducked under another claw slash, from another soul weeper, before jumping into the air, using only one of his legs. He landed on one of the soul weepers' heads, with one of his feet, before slamming the soul weeper into the ground when he jumped back into the air.
The dawnite bow flew up and under Zalkutaro before he landed on it. Multiple of the soul weepers screeched at Zalkutaro and fired a barrage of purple burning teeth at him. Zalkutaro tracked the burning teeth and whistled the moment they were within a meter of him. The burning teeth abruptly scattered in every direction before circling on and piercing through the soul weepers and exploding them.
Olivia cut down a few soul weepers with a barrage of wind blades from her battle axe. She let out an exhausted exhale before batting another soul weeper away. She glanced upwards and watched as Zalkutaro smashed two soul weepers' heads into each other.
"They sure do look like nuisances against him," Olivia commented.
Storm fired a barrage of water jets before encasing the top of his coral staff with a water blade and slicing a soul weeper's head in half. Storm created a ball of water and launched it at a group of soul weepers before detonating it and launching soul weepers bits in every direction.
"These soul weepers seem to be above their usual monster rank," Storm commented as Zalkutaro dropped down in between the group and the strings of his dawnite harp glowed black.
"Indeed, I'd say these soul weepers are around a B rank now," Zalkutaro commented as he strummed his dawnite harp and launched all the soul weepers away from the group. Olivia, Hex and Xelphia darted their heads at Zalkutaro with shocked expressions.
"But how could they raise their rank by two whole grades?" Hex asked as Kunai rushed over to Zalkutaro.
"Master, should I do the thing?" Xelphia asked as she was weaving more pink string. Zalkutaro surveyed the area as more soul weepers began to form. Zalkutaro gave Xelphia a head nod before Xelphia tossed a pink sting into his chest and placed the other end into Kunai's. Zalkutaro slammed his hands together as he told everyone to get close to him; before he could even turn around Olivia quickly grabbed the back of Storm's robe and yanked him over to the others.
"Judgment Chains: Rising Crusade!" Zalkutaro shouted calmly as a wave of black mana flowed over the ground. The soul weepers halted their attack for a second and after nothing appeared to happen they darted their heads around, causing Zalkutaro to smugly smirk.
"Seems my hunch was right," Zalkutaro remarked before he slammed his hands together again. The ground began to tremble and crack before a barrage of black mana chains bursted forth from the ground. The black judgment chains raced up and pierced through the soul weepers causing their bones to dim.
The chains retracted out of the soul weepers before they began to crumble away and scatter into the wind. The others glanced around but couldn't seem to spot any more soul weepers.
"Seems like it's over-," Olivia managed to say before the ground shook again as more black judgement chains bursted out from the ground deep in the forest and raised up high into the leaves of the trees. A figure leapt out from the trees as the judgment chains raised after them. The figure coughed as they fired red energy out from their hand that struck the judgment chains before the chains bursted into particles.
"What the!" Xelphia blurted out as Zalkutaro glared at the figure as he descended onto the path. The moonlight shined upon the figure revealing him to be wearing a black hooded cloak made of black metal plated scales and a black metal mask with six glowing red eye-shaped marks.
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"Impressive, you were able to locate me even though I'm using mana suppression," the figure remarked with a deep echoed male voice. The others instinctively ducked behind Zalkutaro when the figure lifted his mana suppression and the sheer intensity of it sent a shiver down everyones except for Zalkutaro.
"Sadly for you, I know how to use the echolocation version of mana sense," Zalkutaro remarked as he cut Xelphia's mana tether(the pink string she attached to him and previously Storm) causing it to fade away.
"I see... well, I assume the time god already knows of my plan that will come to fruition tomorrow?" the figure asked, causing Zalkutaro to flinch.
"I take it the silhouette that my counterpart, fought was also your doing?" Zalkutaro inquired with a serious tone. The figure shook his head diagonally.
"I wasn't the cause of that bandit getting infected; However, I was the one that took him to that cavern that had a high magic dungeon instance rate to speed up his conversion if that's what you were wondering?" the figure replied as he raised his hand into the air. Zulkutaro got on guard and entered his sage form causing his hair to glow and turn the metal parts of his hair black, but not glow.
"Who do you think you're anyway!" Xelphia angrily shouted as she flailed her front legs around. The figure remained silent, almost to the point it could be considered awkward before shaking his head.
"Given my plans... I'd say a fitting pseudonym for me would be Crimson Moon," Crimson Moon stated before he dropped a black pellet from his none raised hand. The pellet exploded into a cloud of black smoke when it struck the ground and shrouded Crimson Moon. Zalkutaro fanned the smoke away with wind magic. The smoke quickly dispersed and revealed Crimson Moon was gone.
"Did they teleport?!" Xelphia confusedly shouted as Zalkutaro and Olivia detransformed, along with Olivia's battle axe disappearing and Zalkutaro storing his dawnite harp in his hair.
"That was weird and very heart-pounding, but in a bad way," Olivia commented.
"It could've been worse," Storm remarked as he stored his coral staff back up his sleeve.
"So... can I go back to the others now?" Xelphia asked as she whispered into Zalkutaro's ear.
"Very well," Zalkutaro said before a small rainbow-coloured portal appeared next to Xelphia when Olivia, Storm and Hex weren't looking; Xelphia quickly jumped through the portal before it swiftly closed behind her.
"I recommend we get going before someone else attacks us," Hex recommended. The group agreed and did one more check for soul weepers before heading on their way.
A few minutes later, Xinia exhaustedly yawned as she walked through her well-furnished inn room.
"Who would've thought a Phantom would show up the day before the day of the tournament," Xinia commented as she noticed the bathroom light was on and the sound of hard brushing emanated from the room.
"How'd you manage to get skin dye on your tendrils?" Fei-Ku confusedly asked before the frequency of the brushing sounds increased.
"I thought it was soap!" Mei-La embarrassedly shouted. Xinia amusedly sighed as she continued down the hallway and commented she should probably start preparing dinner.
Meanwhile, a half-asleep Nola, in her banana-themed PJs and with Xelphia sitting on her head, floated across the campground and past Zuno, as he was meditating under a tree. She eventually arrived at and entered the wagon where Zalroth and the others were sleeping.
Nola floated past Sophia and Ruby, who appeared to have passed out while reading the tournament rule book and were leaned up against each other; Nola landed on Zalroth's tails, which Lola, Chronia, Minia, Zalina, Zalmaru, Mimi and all the other kids were sleeping on. Nola and Xelphia yawned in unison before they went to sleep.
Vivo remained vigilant on one of the wagon's horizontal support beams as a phoenix made of slightly liquidy magisteel, with glowing white ring-shaped pupils, two enormous wings with white tips and eight tails with white tips, flew into the wagon and landed next to Vivo.
"What a surprise, I wasn't expecting you to come here Zallino," Vivo remarked, as Zallino was ruffling his own feathers.
"Given, Master, Zalkutaro was heading to Talkia, it was more effective to rendezvous with Master Zalroth instead," Zallino stated before his eyes dimmed down as he lowered his head. Vivo chuckled to himself as he closed his eyes and rested, but was interrupted when a sleeping Kusana bumped into him.
Vivo sighed as he transformed into his winged human form and carefully guided Kusana onto Zalroth's tails without waking her up. Vivo transformed back to his crow form and flew back to his spot before returning to his rest.