Without Nightmare Adrenaline, Seth would have surely died to the initial attack from the two young amazons.
Maximizing his speed, Seth threw his body backward to escape the two-pronged attack. Despite his desperate leap, the gilded boot still grazed his right torso.
He grunted in pain as he felt a loud crack sound from his ribs. Tia, the one who threw the kick, grinned in satisfaction before pivoting on a hand to deliver a devastating follow up kick to Seth’s knee. He quickly crumpled to the ground before another haymaker from Dia connected with his jaw, turning his vision into a blur.
“Urgh!” In a last ditch effort, Seth expelled most of his mist to create two clones of smoke that went to attack the two warriors.
He didn’t risk summoning either his weapon, or the illusions of daggers because it might warrant them to use their own arms. In the split second it took Dia and Tia to realize the illusions were harmless, Seth re-activated Wicked Being and turned it all the way up. He soon realized his fault when both of the girl’s expressions turned from angry, to disgusted and rageful. He attempted to get up and run away, but that’s exactly when both his arms were pinned behind his back and he crashed to the ground yet again.
Seth rolled over to find that his hands were now bound in golden chains. Before he could cuss in response, a rain of blows descended upon his face.
Both girls took turns beating the living shit out of him on the ground while Lord Dick stood to the side and watched the scene unfold.
After a measly two hours later, the group finally got tired and Rich signaled for the two devil women to stop their onslaught.
“I think the boy has finally learned his lesson. Let’s not waste any more time on this mongrel.”
As the trio finally went on their merry way, Rich looked back in satisfaction at the unconscious man lying in a pool of his own blood and a little bit of piss. Little did the trio know, the man was becoming quite accustomed to head trauma and was not as unconscious as they thought.
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“Ureghh…”
Seth’s beaten body slowly roused itself as he strained to move his bound hands. Whatever chain they used was much stronger than any that could be found on Earth, yet he didn’t think it was an ability because of the lack of energy coming from the material. With a groan, he finally was able to splay his right hand enough to summon the blade from Anar. As the blade cut through the chains like butter, he let out a sigh of relief before pulling out another recovery crystal.
“FUUUCCC-” he growled as a pain eclipsing his most recent beating spread throughout his body.
Internal bleeding and the pain of broken bones faded away until Seth was left lying on the ground in a cold sweat. The beating continued to replay in his mind. The pain was nothing to scoff about, but it definitely wasn’t the thing that bothered him.
What bothered him was the helplessness that had overcome him during the ‘fight’, if you could even call it that. He suddenly recalled sitting on a bench at school while watching a similar event unfold. I’m that weak ass little kid. Anger blossomed from his chest at that thought. Seth chomped on his lip and scowled in the direction that the trio had gone.
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“I’m going to do what that little shit should have done.”
Without cleaning himself off, Seth activated Specter State and Stalker’s Anthem before following the path Rich and his girlfriends left behind.
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It took him three hours of tracking to find the group.
Even though they had only left around ten minutes before Seth starting following them, it turns out that tracking people through a swamp is a lot harder than it looks. It is especially difficult when you are teenager who has never had to track anything through the wilderness while being bombarded by monsters.
After backtracking multiple times and killing countless random tier two monsters, Seth accidently stumbled upon the trio of royals camping around a very large grey tree with crimson leaves in a small clearing. The leaves differed from the normal violet ones of the other trees in the swamp. He now sat high in a grey tree a couple hundred meters away from their camp.
The two girls were leaning on the grinning young lord while he wrapped his arms around their waists. Although younger than Seth, it seemed like Rich Letmond had gone much farther with women than him.
Must be nice you little douchebag.
Seth held up his hand in a finger-gun gesture and pointed it right at the royal bastard. What I would give to have a long-range attack or something.
Looking past the group, Seth observed a large silver door embedded into the trunk of the tree. So it’s another challenge huh?
A plan started to formulate in his mind.
After setting a ping on his map, Seth cast the group one more glance before heading in the opposite direction. After six more hours of searching around, he found and pinged three more spots that looked like challenges. It was much easier for him to find them now, traveling from the trees. The altitude as well as the lack of thick purple mud allowed Seth to feel like Tarzan as he jumped from branch to branch in a feat that would’ve been impossible before gaining a Foundation.
As every hour passed, Seth became more and more accustomed to the swamp. Soon enough, he got so comfortable jumping from branch to branch that he started using Fear Itself so he could try multitasking while moving.
A large amount of faceplants and scrapes later, he was finally able to passively control all three of his clones while traveling through the trees. The key was using his mirror method. Despite not being able to act just on command, the illusions didn’t require constant control when Seth just thought of them mirroring him. Before he knew it, it was already nighttime.
Unaware of how much time actually passed, Seth had found a total of eight suspected challenges, two of which seemed like they had already been cleared by other participants.
Satisfied with his progress, Seth checked his map and began making his way back to the tree challenge where his targets were camping. When he arrived back at the tree, it seemed like the group had already entered the challenge. The fire they had made seemed to still be smoldering, so they must have entered fairly recently. So that’s how they knew I was inside. Just above the door was an orange myth that seemed to fluctuate every second. The myth resembled a countdown in a way, although Seth had no idea how to read them, so it didn’t matter.
“Take all the time you need.” He grinned. Now it was time for him to start the plan.
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Eight hours of work later, Seth was finished.
Standing before him was an incredibly barbaric barricade consisting of twelve thick tree trunks and a large ditch. Using Anar, he acted as an improvised lumberjack to cut down, and debranch all of the nearest trees. Then, after that backbreaking endeavor, he used his superior strength to dig a trench that would make a soldier drool. The trench spanned the whole length of the door and stretched ten meters away and was half as deep as each tree was long.
For the next step of his trap, he set each log at an angle in the trench to sit against the lower half of the indestructible doors. He even tested their metal against Anar’s Unstoppable Edge, and found that it didn’t even leave a scratch.
To finalize his trap, he filled the trench back in to hold the logs in place against the door. Now, even a tier three’s strength and abilities should be no match for the barricaded doors.
“Too easy.”
Seth grinned with a tired smile. Confident in his construct, Seth retreated back to the trees and carved himself out a nice cubby to sleep in. He curled up inside the hole and pulled out his water dropper and a bag of jerky he bought back in Ethin.
After a couple of pieces and a nice helping of water, Seth finally settled in and instantly fell asleep.