*WHOOSH*
*WHOOSH*
*WHOOSH*
One after another, Boe, Brienne and Dale all touched the painting of the stone forest and were immediately teleported out of the room. The moment all of them opened their eyes, blinded by the bright verdant light that shone all around them as they teleported, they saw the forest of grey trees, identical to the painting, unveil before them. The trees seemed to be fully made of stone and varied in heights and volumes. No living beings around were seen as far as Boe's eyes could reach, and only frightening silence enveloped this forest domain. While the ashen-brown ground was littered with tiny stones of different sizes, the skies were clean and not even one cloud could be seen. The atmosphere in the forest was rather surreal and the company felt like they were standing in a middle of the museum. Even though the trees looked like they were just grave statues, Boe felt that there was vigorous lifeforce within these trees.
“Uhmm… It’s really not my fault… I just touched the painting to inspect it…” Kamys was already standing in front of the three with guilt written all over his face.
“Relax, we had to leave that room anyway.” Boe didn’t even spare a glance at Kamys before he started looking around himself.
“That was so damn stupid… Well, I guess it is to be expected from someone like you.” Dale didn’t lose a chance to humiliate the one who took the victory from his hands in trials of his own people and lowered his status back at home.
“Don’t mind him. We all make mistakes.” Seeing Kamys’ depressed face, Brienne tried to console him. She had a much higher opinion on Kamys than Dale; first of all, Kamys was someone from her kingdom and secondly, she simply liked Kamys’ personality a lot more.
Kamys silently glanced at Dale, turned around and left without uttering a single word. He knew he was at fault right now even without Dale’s vile words so he decided that he will redeem himself with actions rather than words.
Seeing almost no reaction from Kamys, Dale decided to drop the matter for the moment. Even though Dale disliked Kamys and wanted to use this opportunity to insult Kamys a lot more than he already did, he understood that it wasn’t important right now. He immediately started looking around him without touching anything as he walked through the forest. Dale was afraid that there might be traps hidden in here, so he paid attention to every move he made.
Brienne thought about consoling Kamys a little more, but after she saw Kamys’ eyes full of determination, she understood that there was no need to feel pity toward him. With a barely noticeable smile on her face, Brienne began to inspect the forest as well.
“Try not to set off any traps and if you notice anything out of the ordinary, call us all before doing anything.” Boe’s voice suddenly rang out from the forest. While Brienne, Kamys and Dale were slowly inspecting the area, Boe had already moved deeper into the forest so they couldn't see him anymore behind the lithic thicket.
“Big brother Boe, you shouldn’t move alone in here. Wait for someone to reach you before you’ll walk any further.” Brienne’s voice was filled with nervousness, but she still didn’t dare to move rashly toward Boe’s location.
“Let me guess, that ‘someone’ you mentioned will be you, eh?” Dale chuckled as he made fun of another kingdom’s princess.
“Why do you have to be so-” Right as Brienne started turning toward Dale, she noticed something move high up on the trees with a corner of her eyes. Without even thinking, Brienne activated her technique - “Kyolyokyo kyimyl”. Brienne’s whole body was now veiled by black specks of battle aura and her movement speed tremendously increased. Just a moment later, Brienne was already standing right in-between Kamys and Dale.
Seeing Brienne’s sudden reaction, both Kamys and Dale instantly activated their techniques. Kamys’ whole body was radiating a blazing aura, his burning eyes were focused on the trees above him and the bird behind him appeared to be even more realistic than ever before. On the other side, an extreme coldness and horrendous howls burst out of Dale’s body. With soothing burning flames of Kamys behind her and frighteningly freezing Dale in front of her, Brienne felt a rather strange feeling deep inside of her.
Without anyone noticing, Boe suddenly appeared right next to Brienne. She was ready to see the terrifying side of Boe again, but to Brienne’s surprise, he didn’t activate his demonification.
“What exactly did you see?” Boe’s voice was calm and he behaved like everything was under his control.
“I’m not sure. It wasn’t really big, but it moved at an incredible speed.” Seeing Boe’s indifferent reaction, Brienne understood that she might have overreacted.
“Now that we know that we’re not alone in this forest, it’d better be for us to move together. Kamys, since you have the best physical training, you should be in front. I will be moving behind all of you and protecting your backs. Brienne and Dale, be ready to react to any threat coming from either side.” At the start of his speech, Boe looked like he always did but with every word he spoke, his aura was becoming colder and his eyes were slowly turning into two pools of blood.
Seeing Boe’s transformation, all three his companions felt shiver running down their spines. No matter how many times they saw Boe’s strange power, they couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was the most sinister aura in this world. Even air around Boe was trembling as if trying to run away from him, so it was no surprise that people would react in that kind of way.
‘Fascinating! I saw that transformation quite a few times already, but I still can’t keep my body from feeling instinctual fear toward it.’ Brienne focused all her attention to Boe and her eyes were sparkling with interest. Right after Boe finished his transformation, Brienne grinned and closed her eyes. “I guess it’s time for you guys to see the real power.”
Seeing that Brienne was about to finally reveal her strength, all three boys turned to look at her. But to their surprise, even after Brienne opened her eyes, they didn’t see any changes in her appearance or aura.
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“What? Did you expect me to burst out with fire or howling spirits like you? The real power needs nothing like that. Let me prove it to you.” With a playful smile on her lips and strange grey mist in eyes, Brienne simply clenched her right fist.
Before any of the three could react, all of them felt something grabbing their feet. The scorching fire, freezing coldness and eerie howls immediately radiated out of the three young men. All of them managed to easily destroy shadow shackles that attacked them a moment ago and right after that all of them turned their heads toward the location where Brienne stood just a second ago, but to their shock they saw nothing but a void. Kamys started looking around himself with astonishment written all over his face, while Dale was infuriated by Brienne’s actions. Boe was the only one who reacted calmly and kept looking at his shadow under his feet.
“So, what do you boys think about the ‘real power’?” chuckled Brienne as she materialized in the same place where she stood before.
“So that’s how the King Karib’s legendary ‘Shadowmerge’ looks like…” Dale was a prince of The Dark Elf Kingdom after all. He had the information about the power of Brienne’s father, so he easily guessed what she had just used.
“Formless body that merges with and controls shadows around it. Legends say that it’s the strongest shadow attribute transformation that exists in this world.” Kamys was looking beneath him and thinking back to all stories about the invincible king he heard from his father. He was raised in complete belief that King Karib was the strongest wizard in this world and no one could challenge his authority, but now that he met Boe he was suspecting that there were far stronger people that his father simply never heard of. Just thinking back to Boe’s ‘eldest sister’ and strange power she used was enough to convince him that she was definitely someone out of this tiny world he used to believe was everything that exists in universe. And such a freakily strong person was just another pupil of Boe’s mysterious master…
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“We won’t achieve anything by standing here and looking around. Let’s move out and slowly inspect the forest. Kamys shall be our vanguard and three of us will be ready to save him when he triggers something again.” The party of four was standing on their guard in the same place for more than five minutes without anything happening, so Dale was already irritated and bored.
“I’ve already scouted the area in front of us and there doesn’t seem to be anything there. Let’s go to the right.” Even though Boe was calm on the outside, even he was disappointed by Dale’s behavior. Without saying anything further or waiting for response, he moved out first in direction he chose.
“Brother Boe, let me go in front of you. I’m better suited to face sudden dangers.” Kamys wanted to rebuke Dale, but after hearing Boe’s response, he managed to calm himself down. He knew better than anyone else that he was very well trained physically unlike Boe who was basically newbie in the world of wizards and pair of prince and princess who weren’t even used to actual combat.
The party of four were slowly advancing deeper and deeper into the stone forest. The deeper they trod, the more marvelous trees they met. Some of the trees even had some kind of fruits, albeit all of them were made of stones. They’ve already been walking for almost an hour and their transformations were depleting their battle aura bit by bit.
“Look!” Kamys suddenly stopped and pointed toward the crown of an oak-like stone tree. When Boe looked up, he saw a small creature sitting on the branch high up on the tree.
“Is it a squirrel?” Brienne’s voice was hesitant because what she saw looked similar to ordinary squirrel, but it had a few distinct features that differentiated it from anything she saw in her life. First of all, the creature was made out of brown colored stone similar to agate in its appearance and it was already enough to make sure that Brienne questioned her sanity. Secondly, even though the creature was ‘small’, it was at least twice bigger than squirrels. And lastly, eyes of the creature were of verdant color and they were glowing so bright that their light was actually blinding to eyes of an ordinary human being. Luckily, all four people of the party were no ordinary humans, so they could easily look past the light of creature’s eyes and see that those eyes didn’t look like unintelligent eyes of an animal.
“Can you speak? Do you understand what I’m saying?” Boe was the first one who pulled himself together and tried to communicate with the creature.
The creature turned its head toward Boe and glanced at him as if it was inspecting him. A moment later, the creature turned back to continue what it was doing without uttering a single sound.
“Why would you think that such a lowly creature could understand our speech? But even though it doesn’t look to be intelligent enough for communication, it’s still a rather interesting creature. My father happens to love collecting peculiar existences of this world, so if you all don’t mind, I will capture it and take it back to my father as a gift from this trip.” Dale’s haughty nature came out yet again as he suddenly leapt high up into the skies without even waiting for anyone’s response.
“Stop! You don’t know how powerful it might be.” Boe tried to reason with Dale, but it was already far too late.
Dale was already approaching the creature when he whispered, “Orokchu k’apas”. Dozens of white specks of light suddenly burst out of Dale’s body and surrounded the creature in form of a cage. Each speck of light was howling as if it was tormented by its own existence.
“He used ‘Reaper’s imprisonment’ straight from the beginning. That’s one of the strongest rank 2 death attribute techniques used to isolate and bound your opponent.” Seeing that Boe and Kamys didn’t know what happened, Brienne stepped in to explain everything to them.
“Hahaha. It was even easier than I expected.” With a sinister smile and smug look on his face, Dale quickly moved close to the cage he just created.
*BOOM*
Verdant light of such a brilliance that all four members of the party had to close their eyes suddenly shone out of the creature’s body and the next thing they heard was the sound of Dale’s techniques shattering.
“Strike one. The child of darkness failed the test of caution.” Thunderous voice resounded in minds of all four members of the party.
*BOOM*
Boe barely managed to open his eyes to see what happened and whom the sound he just heard belonged to when he saw Dale’s bloodied body lying right before his feet. Dale’s eyes were closed, there was a hole in Dale’s clothes the size of a fist of a newborn right in middle of his chest and blood was still flowing out of his mouth. When Boe looked up at the place where the creature was just a moment ago, he saw nothing but branches of the oak-like stone tree.
“He’s alive. A few of his ribs are broken, but no vitals were fatally damaged. Given enough time, he will recover to his best condition easily.” While Boe was staring up into the sky, thinking about what just happened, Kamys had already inspected Dale.
“So this world of stone trees was just a test for us… I wonder how many such tests are we supposed to pass before we’ll be able to escape this place…” Brienne was looking down at badly injured Dale and fear was evident in her eyes.
“It said ‘Strike one’. I wonder how many strikes do we have before it will act against us?” Even usually calm Boe was nervous facing such mysterious tests.
“I only hope that those strikes are for individuals and not for us as a group...” Kamys was pouring healing potion into Dale’s mouth as he spoke his thoughts out loud. Hearing his words, both Boe and Brienne looked at Dale and Kamys as they thought about the temper of former and sluggishness of latter and cold sweat flowed down their spines.