Chapter 321
Roar of a King (IV)
The group stuck around the wasteland for the few days after, mostly just waiting for Cain’s Mana to recover, penning out the plans for the immediate future. They weren’t going to leave the world right away as there were still the world’s depths to explore for more potential rewards, and because there was no need to rush it.
Lear joined the four soon after, having been found meandering around the edges, completing the group. As it stood, the five of them were entirely unmatched, but that was only when it came to the other ‘challengers’, so to say. It wouldn’t be wise to assume that the King Cain fought was the strongest being in this world, especially since these were still the fringes, and the world’s depths remained dark and muddy.
Cain paid attention to the world outside, often spotting hundreds hurrying about, those who’ve survived the ‘battle royale’ that never got to its end trying to find the answers, the fruit that would allow them to ascend to Demigodhood. In-between, he continued to replenish his Mana, eat, drink, and joke around.
Some two weeks after, the things begun to slowly settle down as the people began to scatter about, finally realizing there was more to the world than a small pocket. Among them were the five, led by Cain, who elected to stick to the forested area beyond the ruined landscape.
Forests dominated the world’s topography, with occasional canyons and chasms splitting it, though they themselves were green through and through.
Though the group ran into a few creatures, most were hardly worth fighting as they just consumed time, not offering any rewards in return. It wasn’t until a whole week into their journey that the group finally encountered something different and interesting, and it wasn’t surprising as it came at the heels of them finally leaving wooded areas and emerging into an open plain that bled into a valley pinned between two massive mountain ranges.
The creature that awaited them was a twenty-feet-tall giant, four-armed at that, with each one of the arms sporting the same weapon--wooden clubs that seemed to have been beaten into their current shape, likely having been just the trunks of the trees sometime in the past.
Cain was forced to sit out the fight, with Quinn rushing to the front to tank, the twins flanking, and Lear acting as the ranged DPS. The reasons were banal, led by the ‘we’re your Guards, don’t worry about it’. Nonetheless, Cain shrugged it off and pulled out a chair and sat down underneath the faintly-glazing sun, enjoying the scenery.
Outside of a rather brutal fight, as the giant turned out to be insanely resilient, the view was quite beautiful--the grass here was soft though still dense, rolling in soft dunes across the plain, swayed altogether in concert whenever the wind blew. Most of the wind today, however, was unnatural, emerging from the battle itself.
He still had to sigh in awe--even Lear, the ‘weakest’ among them, displayed the kind of experience that nobody back on Earth could even half-match. It wasn’t strange; if anything, Emma, Senna, and others were likely light years ahead of even Quinn and Lear if compared at the same point, but the differences still opened up such a huge rift that even talent and items and skills could not bridge.
Unlike when he fought, nobody yelled, nobody ordered anyone, nobody had to cut in to save a missed shot--the four were peak performers above just playing into their roles, but understanding what those around them had to do, and then doing the perfect thing to accommodate them.
For instance, during the last bout of attacks, Quinn used a major skill, utilizing it to push the giant back a few paces and destabilize him. If it were Emma doing it, she would have had to yell ten-fifteen seconds prior and inform everyone of what she was doing so they’d be ready to fire off major spells. Yet, Quinn was mum--and still, the other three immediately jumped at the first sign of it, unleashing a barrage of attacks.
The communication, even Cain knew, at the highest level was all instinctual. Though he himself had never actually reached it, he’d witnessed battles like this--when there was no shouting, no yelling, no commands, no questions. Everything that had to be said was said before a battle, and the fight itself was silent.
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In part it was due to the pace of fights--eventually, things would be happening at such high speeds that there’d be simply no time to relay any information, so even yelling would lag behind what was being yelled about by seconds.
Cain himself, though, never fought at that level. Even at his peak, when he fought the strongest opponents, he never took that leap--where the reality of things sped past the brain’s conscious computing power. He was too afraid to do it. At least in his previous life he was.
In this, he’d already fought beyond comprehension and on instinct alone many, many times. What shocked him the most, however, was how good he was at them. He ended up figuring out the reason within the infinite cycle of life he lived through--his library of fights was massive, with thousands upon thousands of decisions that his body had made in the past. All of that transferred over and became part of the new him.
He didn’t have to re-learn certain giveaways when his opponent was preparing to do a stab attack, or when they were about to cast a skill. His mind picked up on the most minute details without him even realizing it, his instinct then taking over. The latter part, however, wasn’t truly him--it was simply the fact that his stats had been wholly restructured from the grounds up, reshaping his entire body from its roots. He was an entirely different man, head to toe, than before.
“Oh? You’re done?” he asked, seeing that Lear had sat down next to him.
“Hm,” he nodded. “They’re tearing down the body for the materials.”
“... soon,” Cain said.
“What?”
“You’ll join the circles soon,” Cain cracked a smile. “I won’t be advancing myself before I’ve gotten you up there too.”
“Hah,” Lear chuckled. “It’s not just that. I’m lagging half a second behind every one of their decisions. I knew that there was a gap... just never thought it’d be this big.”
“...” Cain slurped down some orange juice, his eyes locked at the ‘young’ man. He was right--half a second, at this level, was actually a massive discrepancy. “Do you know what my starting stats were?” Cain suddenly posed a question.
“Huh? Insane, I imagine. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Most were in single digits,” Cain’s response seemed to freeze Lear in place, the man’s lips parted in shock. “Really, if you looked at my status window, projection would have been ‘would flatline shortly past the Second Awakening, never amounting to anything’. And that’s under optimal circumstances.”
“...”
“I spent a good part of my life,” he continued. “Watching those far more talented than me thrive. Sometimes I’d try to catch up, but I’d get discouraged. For every hour they’d put, I’d have to put in a month of work. And even then, it wasn’t enough. And look at me now,” he cracked another smile. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, is that talent just sets you higher than the rest. It guarantees nothing. You may not have been lucky enough to obtain the same level of talent as Quinn, Nature, and Harmony, but you were lucky enough to meet me. You’ll catch up, soon enough,” he winked at the man as the trio returned, sitting down as well.
Quinn and the twins sat down cross-legged on the grass, immediately reaching for the bowl of fruit Cain had already prepared.
“What do you think?” Quinn asked.
“It’s not proportional,” Cain replied. “The world’s separated by territory.”
“I figured, too,” Quinn nodded. “That valley... gives me a bad feeling.”
“Same,” either Harmony or Nature said, though both nodded. “However, Mana feels... too ordinary. It’s likely a humanoid creature.”
“We’ll proceed normally,” Cain said. “I’m more interested in another area just past the mountain range on the left. There’s something there that’s piquing my interest.”
“Will we learn what before getting there?”
“Energy coalescence,” Cain said. “Should be an altar. If it’s true, I can use it to push Lear’s Awakening.”
“Right,” Quinn nodded. “Through Mana Burst. Are you confident in doing it alone?”
“Nope,” Cain shrugged. “I’ll need all three of you to absorb some of the backlash and whiplash. That’s why we need to clear the surrounding area, since that level of disturbance would be like an invite for every creature around to come fuck us in the ass while we’re bent over and lubed.”
“Man, traveling with you is worth it for those out-of-nowhere... what even are they? Metaphors?” Quinn mused aloud.
“Similes,” Cain smiled. “Yes, I’m a master of the craft. You ought to be carrying a journal with you and jotting down my brilliance for the whole cosmos to experience it.”
“... you’re an acquired taste, I’m afraid,” Quinn chuckled. “As are your sayings. Anyway, should we go?”
“Replenish your Mana wholly,” Cain said. “I’m gonna take the rear there as well and act as the support.”
“Why?”
“The battle will probably last a while,” he elaborated. “And I just happen to be a really good bug repellent. And since the bugs will certainly swarm us, one of us has to stay in the back to spray them.”
“Right,” either Nature or Harmony said, though both nodded. “Wait, can’t we just use the fight as a bait to root them all out so they don’t interfere with the Ritual?”
“That’s the plan,” Cain yawned and stretched. “Hopefully they all take the bait. Then again, most were dumb enough to believe they’d become Demigods overnight, so I don’t have high expectations for their intellect.”