In the heart of a gorge, Rose and Kai found themselves surrounded by towering mountain walls, each side adorned with ominous caves.
Above, a celestial display unfolded as the sky transformed into a canvas of vibrant Aurora. Colors danced and intermingled casting an ethereal glow upon the barren gorge. The Aurora painted the world in hues of mesmerizing greens, purples, and blues, creating an otherworldly atmosphere.
Unfortunately, this atmosphere was broken by the waves of monstrous beasts that resembled lizards leaving the caves.
The terrifying roars that escaped their mouths sent chills down the spine of the two small figures, causing them to give no appreciation to the ominous yet beautiful landscape around them.
The lizards lunged at them with no care for the world.
"See, I told you we should take another route," Rose grumbled at Kai, however, Kai ignored her and instead brought his right hand to the handle of his sheathed katana as he watched the lunging lizards with an intense light in his eyes.
It had already been five hours since their seniors left them in the first zone. During this time, Rose and Kai had already faced off against several beasts.
As geniuses with immense talents and with cultivation in the advanced realm, Rose had thought that she would be able to match beasts in the master realm and even best them. She had confidence that she would be able to venture into the second zone and even take a peek into the third zone.
However, her confidence was shattered a few hours after arriving in the secret realm.
The beasts she encountered were simply terrifying and were nothing comparable to beasts on the outside.
Ever since then, she started taking the secret realm seriously and has been more cautious. She had been informed about how the realm hosted immensely powerful beasts but seeing was believing. Now, she even doubted if she could even enter the second zone.
Immediately when the lizards entered a range of five meters to Kai, his cold voice resounded:
"Sword draw..."
*Click!* The katana returned to the sheath.
"Six consecutive slashes!" As he said the name of his technique, his sword had already been sheathed, and red lines appeared vertically across the bodies of the lunging lizard.
A moment later, six lizards slowly came to a stop as their bodies split apart, causing a shower of blood to rain.
Rose's ethereal eyes slowly spun faster as they gazed admiringly at the back of the kid two years older than her.
Even though she was the only God-tier talent currently present among the humans, she couldn't help but feel deep admiration for Kai's immense battle potential.
Kai had an affinity to a rare weapon law, the sword laws, and his innate trait allowed him to send out invisible sword energies that could cut through almost anything. Combined with Kai's intense passion for battle, this allowed Rose to believe that he was at the ultimate peak of all supreme-level talents.
The approaching lizards quickly came to a stop as they gazed at Kai with wary eyes.
The smile on Kai's face deepened. His usual indifferent look was no longer, and the aura around him was completely different from usual.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"If you won't come, I will!" As he finished his words, he lunged in the direction of three lizards with a battle-craze light flashing within his eyes.
Rose was stunned by the development. The beasts she thought would be difficult to handle didn't seem that menacing any longer. However, her eyes soon widened as a completely different scene than what was happening appeared in her spinning eyes.
"Watch out..." Her cry slowly turned into a whisper as a new scene appeared before her.
At the same time, in the present, the eyes of Kai who was lunging at the three beasts widened as he saw the beats open their mouth, and instead of releasing a breath-like attack or the usual ball-form attacks, a storm of sand rose before them before moving toward him. However, his legs didn't stop as he closed the distance between them and got swallowed by the sandstorms.
A second later, a voice rang out within the billowing sands with the clicking sound of a sword returning into the sheath following after.
"Sword draw..."
*Click!*
"Nine consecutive slashes!"
The three sandstorms were split into three, before slowly dissipating. Kai emerged unscathed before the widened eyes of the three lizards.
"Sword draw..."
*Click!*
"Three consecutive slashes!"
Before the lizards could even react, the light of life died within their yellow eyes.
"Hahahahaha!" An excited laugh rang out within the gorge as Kai jumped into the waves of lizards and commenced a massacre.
While it seemed that Kai was in a favorable position, the truth was far from it, as the number of lizards escaping the caves increased.
In the end, Rose had no choice but to join the fray.
Several branches rose from the ground before entangling with the lizards and binding them in place, allowing Kai to kill them easily.
That wasn't the end though, as Rose jumped into the wave of monsters and evaded their tail attacks almost as if she had predicted them. However, what was happening was even more disbelieving, as she could see their attacks even before they were launched.
Her voice resounded among the droves of beasts as her chubby cheeks shook and her spinning eyes released a golden glow:
"Rose shower!"
Hundreds of red petals appeared around her before enveloping the entire waves of beasts. The petals acted like sharp barbed wires that cut into the lizard scales and drew countless cuts across their bodies. The momentum of the beasts came to a stop as the entire horde became incapacitated.
Kai ran around the fallen beasts with a speed no different from a normal human, and with the sound of his clicking sword as a piece of background music.
He seemed to do nothing aside from running, but the split bodies left in his wake spoke otherwise. His sword draw was too fast and fluid to be caught by the naked eye.
About a moment later, Rose released a deep breath, "That went better than I thought!"
Kai simply nodded as he had returned to his normal indifferent self. If it wasn't for the blood that covered his body, no one would believe such a little boy had just finished a massacre.
Receiving no response, Rose harrumphed in displeasure, "Hmph, with that attitude of yours, no girl would ever like you."
Kai simply ignored her and started digging into the beast corpses to remove their beast's cores.
She equally ignored him and fell into deep thought. She might seem like a cute spoilt girl on the outside, but the truth was that she was quite intelligent and could reason calmly when the situation called for it. Her only bad side was that she spoke her thoughts without any care.
'Why would the lizards suddenly emerge like that? It is almost as if they were escaping from something.' she wondered as studied the corpses around her.
*Rumble!*
She was suddenly pulled from her thoughts as an intense rumbling sound drew into her ears. What amazed her was that the ground beneath her was normal, instead, the sound seemed to be coming from a...
Rose and Kai gazed into a dark cave as the rumbling sound grew louder.
Suddenly the cave seemed to be lit up with a fiery light, and soon after the cry of a bird rang beside their ears.
Kai's eyes widened as he saw a magnificent bird with red feathers flying out of the cave. His eyes widened further when he saw the little figures on its back.
But he failed to see the reaction of Rose beside him, who saw an entirely different scene than he did.
Rose's chubby face became pale and she shouted in fright:
"Run!" she now realized that the opening in the mountain walls were not caves but tunnels...ant-tunnels.
Kai didn't understand why she seemed scared by the appearance of the bird. The bird was magnificent but judging from its aura, he didn't think it was anything terrifying.
However, he soon realized that the rumbling sound was not coming from the firebird, but the colony of ants that soon followed after them from the cave.
With the same reaction as Rose, the battle-crazed Kai turned around and ran for dear life.