PEDDLED
Leonel looked off into the distance, turning back toward the direction he had just come from. No, it should be just a bit off from that, but it was close. Just a slight deviation, but it was enough.
That clash just now was felt even by him. He recognized one half of it, but the other half was entirely foreign. © content.
He expected those as strong as Alpha Clown to be rare, and he still felt they should be. Who would have known that his luck would be so bad that he would run into two of their territories back to back.
In the end, Leonel turned back toward the direction he was headed in and continued to rush forward, chuckling to himself.
'Seems like he's pretty mad about that kneeling incident. Worth it.'
He was just buttering himself up. With that Alpha Clown's temper, he wanted to be the only one on the mountain top, he wouldn't share his position with anyone else.
Whether Leonel had pissed him off or not, that battle would have been inevitable.
The real question was whether Alpha Clown and the others as powerful as him could adapt to the situation. Those that still insisted on having the mountain top all to themselves would likely soon find themselves being thrown off.
Leonel had a feeling, though, that Alpha Clown was of the smarter variety. Someone like him should also travel alone, so why did he have so many Alphas around him when Leonel met him?
Compromise.
Alpha Clown had likely felt that there was something wrong about the situation they were all in currently. He might not know as much as Leonel did, but he definitely felt the moving tides around him. As expected of a beast in human form.
Anyone as powerful as them would be bound to have quite a level of intelligence, and if you paired that with the instincts of a beast, the feeling of the world crashing down around you would be almost palpable.
People who called themselves Gods suddenly descended and "asked" you if you wanted to participate in a battle Royale that would kill over 90% of billions of participants?
What was the catch?
That was a question that they'd all be asking, and it was an amusing one at that. Wasn't the catch the fact that 90% of you would die?
The smart ones would know that there was another layer hidden within.
What Leonel didn't know was that it wasn't just personal deductions that would spread this issue, but his own actions as well.
He hadn't really thought much about the little test he had given the little pink-eyed woman. But it would have reverberating consequences that he hadn't cared to consider.
...
Amethyst was leaving a trail of corpses in her wake. She moved with quite a bit of stealth and she was both smart and sharp. It wasn't a surprise that she had managed to survive until this point.
Suddenly, she frowned, coming to a stop. Her breath became slow until it stopped completely and she almost melded into the ground.
Although she hadn't disguised herself in any way, to the Internal Sight of any passerby, she would have looked like another piece of nature. A rock by the roadway, a short tree, maybe even a fissure in the ground depending on what the target's mind chose to fill in the gap with.
However, her worst fear seemed to be realized.
A sweet, angelic voice drifted into her ears.
"Little cutie, you can't hide from me with just that."
A bell-like laughter resonated, and Amethyst realized that she had been discovered. Without hesitation, she turned and sprinted off in the opposite direction, but she had only taken two steps when she came to a hard stop.
Before her was the most beautiful woman she had ever laid eyes on. At first, the only thing she could feel was softness and the huge mound of deep caramel before her. However, when she took a hurried step backward, she found that what was before her was the very chest she had just run into.
A beauty with skin the color of milk chocolate and amber eyes that looked like the final dying embers of a once radiant flame stood before her. She was an entire head and a half taller than Amethyst, and a white gown seemed to have a mind of its own, flowing through the air like the fins of a koi fish.
"You... I..."
Amethyst lamented her own bad luck. First Leonel, now this woman. Why did she keep running into absolute monsters? She hadn't seen when this woman moved behind her at all.
"Don't be scared, cutie, Mama Bear won't hurt you," that beautiful laughter echoed again, like caramel drizzling across a brownie, it was so rich and satisfying.
"I just have a question to ask. You killed so many of my people, but why is it that you haven't absorbed any of the energy they left behind?"
Amethyst froze.
...
'Finally,' Leonel thought to himself.
He could sense the Seeded Participant was just a few hundred kilometers away. It should have been a half day journey, but it became a nearly three day affair as he crossed these territories. After the Nomad Dimensional Verse, there was another territory, this one even more wild than the last.
This territory had no organization because Leonel assumed there was no Seeded Participant. Due to that, it was just a free-for-all and everyone was much more aggressive.
Thanks to this, though, Leonel got a much greater understanding of Little Blackstar and had time to fully heal. Not only did he fully heal, but he could feel more of the changes that his separated soul was causing to his body now, and they were truly astonishing.
Thinking back to his enlightened self, and how he was usually covered in scales, Leonel wondered just how much of that strength was coming from the demon side of his bloodline.
A few hundred kilometers was nothing to Leonel, it was a matter of a few minutes at worst. But as he moved to close in that distance, his thoughts grew eerily silent and his expression seemed to have lost all of its playfulness.
His body might be hundreds of kilometers away, but this was a distance his Internal Sight could easily cover now, and what he saw left him completely enraged.
Every human within range of his senses wore a neck collar of iron as though being peddled as slaves.