Sorin was cussing up a storm as he walked down the street. He had recieved one C rank core and an assortment of D cores for his fight and bet which wasn't even close to enough. The world that he was on didn't have a lot of C rank beasts or higher roaming around and the dungeons that they did exist in were all closely guarded and had a fee attached to anyone not with an established faction. In spite of his foul mood, he was careful to keep his aether tight to himself and stay as inconspicuous as possible in spite of his showing in the proving grounds.
Sorin had tried to get more fights, but there were not going to be anything for at least a week and nobody else wanted to fight him when he was looking around in the lobby. His showing had scared most of the people that were strictly non-lethal prize fighters. They didn't want to go into a match they knew was probably going to be a lose for their record.
He could try betting more, but he always knew his luck when it came to games of chance was abysmal. Even when he used to play a card game called "Magic the Gathering" he had to minimize the amount of luck required to win and set his deck to operate more off of probability and strategy. He even had to include some cards that the community called "fetches" so that he could get the specific cards he needed. He never did end up getting one of his nastiest combos working where he couldn't take damage and couldn't lose.
*Thoom!*
The next thing Sorin knew, he was in the air with everything flashing passed him and a giant steel and wood bolt sticking out of his chest. He let himself continue to rocket through the air. Sorin's mind caught up and in a moment he had re-oriented himself to the situation at hand. He flexed his will causing the wood to incinerate and the metal, he added to his armor. The moment the bolt left his body cavity, his regeneration began to kick in healing his injuries. He was mentally kicking himself for being so complacent again. His lack of awareness was going to get him killed.
In reality, Sorin was only airborne for no more than 4-5 seconds, but at the level he was at, it was enough. Once he was ready he activated his flight skill and slowed his momentum, but not enough to stop the impact into the ground causing a crater conveniently outside of the city in the plains.
With a half grunt and half sigh Sorin rolled over and began to crawl his way out of the crater watching his aether sense as two objects entered his range. He crawled out of the crater entirely as two figured landed in front of him wearing all black and helmets that resembled the newer robocop movie. Looking at their builds he could see one was male and one was female.
"Sorin Ekart, by order of Duke Phorcys. You are under arrest. Your options are surrender or face execution here." The female spoke in a sharp clipped voice with a slight Mediterranean accent which the whole speech itself amused Sorin, but not enough to bring him out of his foul mood from being struck by these two.
He looked at them closer and was suprised. Their channels were very wide and solid. Their cores were large and filled to the brim with aether, but with types he had not seen before. The male had a core filled with a sickly green aether and the woman had a brilliant white aether.
He judged them to be between Tier 12-15. They definitely were not stronger than he was. He needed to blow off some steam so why not have some fun with these two.
"I'm not coming with you two, but you wouldn't happen to have any c rank cores on you by chance though?" Sorin replied as he felt a manic grin spread across his face.
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The man let out a sigh and drew his sword as the woman pulled a dagger from her side.
"You have no chance against us with aether levels like yours." The male said tapping a button on his helmet.
"Is that helmet like a scouter?!" Sorin quickly asked hopeful it was.
"I don't know what that is but it measures aether output from a distance and judges your tier quickly. You're a tier 5." He replied to Sorin as he began pushing that green aether to his blade.
"Sounds like a scouter, but whatever. Let's get this over with. I'll check it out for myself." Sorin said as he formed a set of hook swords from his metal armor and let the rest of it close over top of his body.
He dropped into a stance as the pair darted forward. To a standard human, they would have appeared as the wings of a hummingbird, but to Sorin, they looked as slow a toddler rushing at their parent with a stick.
The man swung his blade toward Sorin who deflected it then twisted his own sword using the hook at the end to snag the sword. He succeeded and disrupted the rhythm the man was trying to enter into to. He was the woman flanking behind him and with a flex of his will and a little timing, he waited until her foot touched the ground then shifted the soil quickly and violently using her speed and momentum against her. She went tumbling off, buying Sorin more time to focus on the man who had tried to react to the second sword coming in.
The man wrenched his blade out of the grip of the hook and fell backward as Sorin turned hooking the second blades hook with his first and lashing it out like a whip catching the man by suprise and opening up a deep gash across his chest even through the armor.
Seeing the blood gush out in a fountain gave Sorin an idea. He reached out to the blood. The vast majority of the human body was water so Sorin really looked for the blue motes and sure enough...there they were and he pulled.
Sorin's brows furrowed as nothing happened at first. He felt a strong resistance and so he applied more to his manipulation skill and still nothing. He sensed behind him that the woman was up and moving quickly in his direction. He applied even more aether and finally, it worked. The blood pulled away from the mans wounds and he reached for the blood on the ground which came up much easier.
Dismissing his blades, Sorin twisted his hands and whipped the blood and formed it into a blade of crimson at lashed out at the womans legs. As is the case with water being used in this fashion of pressure, it can cut through just about anything. It did.
The lower legs of the woman were sheared off cleanly like a razor blade through soft plastic. She began screaming as she fell to the ground, more blood spouting from her injuries adding more to his already lethal blood weapon. Sorin whirled and forced his crimson blade finish the man he had formerly cut.
Before the man knew what had happened, his body from the pecks upward was looking up from the ground at the rest of his body.
Sorin could see the woman behind him still slowly moving, but much slower as shock was setting in from blood loss. With a flick of his hand, he cut her throat before letting the blood fall to the ground.
Sorin didn't waste any time as he went and pulled the helmet off the man. With another flex of his will and desire he pulled all the sweat, snot, tears, and blood from the helmet leaving it clean before he put it on himself.
The lens from the outside was pitch black with a red fiber optic line running across the front of it. He looked around and didn't see anything at first so he flew up in the air and looked for the nearest person.
It wasnt that hard as many if the guards were watching from the gates at the battle that had taken place.
He focused in on one of them, but still nothing happened. He then remembered the guy had pushed a putton. He reached up and after feeling around he felt it around where his left temple was. He pushed in and data began rolling. It reminded him of how they show facial recognition in TV shows and movies.
Eventually it gave him a read out and based on where his eyes looked, it zoomed in on each of the profiles giving place of domicile, aether output, suggested tier, and a whole host of other information.
"Well this is useful." Sorin said as he began to rifle through the belongings of each of the "bounty hunters" he supposed he would call them. To his further add to hus disappointment, they had nothing else on them.
He was about to take off when he felt more objects moving quickly toward him at the outer edge of his range. Sorin needed to go. If he got arrogant he would end up dead.