Seth roused from his slumber with an unremarkable grunt.
Yet again, the hazy memory of his mother silently pleading with him had already begun to fade. Before he had even gotten to his feet, the dream had already escaped the grasp of his mind.
After taking a swig of his water vial, Seth checked the built-in menu clock that he had bought in Ethin. It seemed like only about four hours had passed this time. His sleep patterns had become even more distant and lackluster as the weeks passed. This wasn’t a bad thing though. The less time Seth slept, the less time he had to deal with the foreign nagging feeling that grew from his forgotten dream.
Seth did a couple quick stretches and dusted himself off while the cascade of whispers and his own thoughts flushed out the unpleasant feeling that lingered from his sleep. After finishing his bend-and-reach, Seth made his way over to the broken window and briefly checked out the surroundings. Noticing nothing out of the ordinary, his excitement slowly began to rise.
“Back to the grind, baby.”
--------
Five minutes later, Seth found himself creeping through the streets, nearing the site of the next challenge. Rather than rushing straight there, he was forced to slow down to a crawl after hearing some odd sounds nearby. After running through the city for a few days now, he could tell that they were not the footsteps or groans that belonged to the Sckriz’Ul.
He silently scaled to the top of the nearest erect building, where he looked down on the streets from the open access roof. The building was set right at the corner of a large intersection which allowed plenty of view down each street. He sat up there for nearly twenty minutes before he finally spotted movement from the street in the direction of the challenge.
Seth’s eyes widened in interest as he watched two identical lizard men appear in the middle of the road. They both had blue scales that shimmered in the pale sunlight of the two stars that shined overhead. Seth looked on as one of the lizard men seemed to notice something nearby. It raised up it’s claw in a summoning motion, and a large blue myth appeared in front of the pair. A huge stream of water shot out of the myth at an unbelievable speed and hit an invisible target down the road. Out of nowhere, a sleek Sckriz’Ul fell out of the air with a large hole through its chest.
Seth would have whistled if not for him trying to stay quiet. He could tell by using True Sight that the lizardman who killed the monster had an overflowing amount of energy under its thumb, even for a tier three. It seemed to be some sort of mage type of fighter, something that Seth had not seen so far.
How does it have such a large energy reserve? Maybe its some sort of treasure that it picked up, or maybe that’s an aspect of the Concept System I heard about!
Seth’s interest was piqued, but he knew that regardless of how much he wanted to continue observing the mage, he still needed to get to the challenge. He had a really good feeling about this one, especially since the challenge was directly in the middle of a huge coliseum, which basically assured a fighting type challenge. Greed overwhelmed Seth’s reasoning as he decided on a plan to get around the two participants.
He was unaware as to why they were guarding the road in the first place, but it didn’t seem like they moving anytime soon. The other lizardman actually seemed to be setting up shop right there in the middle of street too. A series of metal objects were laid on the ground in front of them, and the non-mage popped a squat right on the ground before beginning to tinker on the collection of items. Almost an hour passed while Seth waited in earnest for the two participants to either leave or become distracted.
Fortune shined upon him only ten minutes later when he noticed a lone warrior strolling down the road toward the two stationary blue lizards. The man was quite the imposing figure, so much so that once the mage spotted him, four large pillars of water were instantly conjured above him. The new arrival seemed wholly unimpressed by the display, and even gave the lizard a toothy grin, or a snarl, Seth couldn’t tell due to the lone man’s predatory-like visage.
He looked like a huge lion who had somehow learned to stand up, body build, and then caught on fire. His stature was even larger than Ty’s, and the tips of his sandy brown fur were actually smoldering with embers. He didn’t wear any armor as well, so the only thing on him was a large black battle-axe strapped to his back, and a dark kilt that kept him civil.
Seth was left with no more time to analyze his appearance as the pillars of watery death shot toward him like a natural disaster. Seth couldn’t even imagine surviving the mage’s ability, so he was left incredibly dumbfounded when the lion man didn’t even attempt to block the water at all. Instead, he stood his ground as the fire on his fur began to crackle in intensity. Finally, the pillars hit him head on, causing a huge plume of steam to billow throughout the roads.
As the steam began to dissipate, the two lizardmen seemed to become visibly nervous as they saw the lion warrior standing tall and unscathed. The fact he didn’t seem to be hurt at all was unbelievable, but Seth wasn’t paying attention to that. He was too busy mulling over the new sensation that seemed to encompass a large zone around the man. It was like a huge oven was roaring right in the middle of the street, and the air in the intersection seemed to dance from the heat waves. Seth was absolutely enthralled with the new development as he stared at the grinning figure that seemed to be the focal point of the heat.
Even though he was high above the fight, Seth still felt like his skin was almost burning due to the presence of the heat zone. The feeling was vaguely familiar to him as well, and it only took Seth a moment to realize that this was exactly how he felt while watching The Daemon Contest. Obviously the feeling was on a much smaller scale due to the fact the man was only a tier three, but that didn’t stop him from identifying the concentrated sort of… intent that the fire exuded.
Seth had originally thought that the lizard mage had access to the Concept System due to his large energy pools, but this was on a completely different level. It wasn’t just a power boost, it was like the two men were fighting with a predetermined victor from the start. Seth knew that the lizardman had no chance of winning with such a paltry and empty attack. The lion man felt like he was truly one with the heat he released, like it was full of meaning.
So that’s how a concept works.
He still had no idea how to acquire one, or what it really meant to have one, but that didn’t stop him from trying to pull every possible bit of insight he could from the lion man’s fiery aura. Unfortunately, despite the new development, Seth’s main goal was still to get to the challenge. So with bared teeth, he covered himself in a layer of blurry illusions before taking off across the rooftops, away from the fight.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
With his blistering speed, it didn’t take long for him to get far enough away for him to feel safe. This was good, especially because he had heard a rather loud roar emit from behind him that could have only spelled disaster for the blue reptiles. Desperate to use their fight as a distraction, Seth continued to rush around the perimeter of their whereabouts until he finally arrived at the coliseum. It was exactly as he had remembered: half destroyed and gigantic.
It also seemed to bring about a rise in his greed too, so much so that he had almost forgotten about the dangers of the participants that were nearby. Drawing him in, the coliseum seemed to beg for his presence as he dashed through the nearest entrance with an almost crazed look on his face. As soon as he crossed the threshold for the main area, the temptation of the coliseum fell away like a splash of ice-cold water to the face. It was such an unexpected feeling that Seth almost tripped and fell right on top of some fallen gladiator equipment.
He slowly shook his head to gain his bearings, realizing that the building must have had some sort of attractive effect that had cast a haze over his rational thought. It was almost entirely opposite of his armor’s ability: Stalker’s Anthem, and it was definitely quite a few times stronger as well.
Finally understanding his situation, Seth abruptly jumped in place when he realized that the armor pile under him was not in fact some gladiator remains, but instead a teenage boy that had been sleeping on the ground. Still in fight or flight mode, Seth went to summon Anar in order to strike first, but was met with a lack of energy surging in his hand, as well as a screen popping up in front of his face.
-Cannot activate offensive abilities in a temporal field. Abilities will be reactivated after the space is sealed. Time remaining until space is sealed: (1:12:09:33)
Seth looked on with distaste at the hovering screen.
So it’s some sort of group challenge then? And I seriously have to waste a whole day and a half sitting here?
Seth’s growing annoyance abruptly dissipated upon dismissing the screen. Laid out in front of him was quite the gathering of participants who looked a lot more uncomfortable than he was. Series of camps were set up around the large coliseum area, and by the looks of it, some had been there for a while. Although not everything looked too bad. Quite a few of tents looked to be of exquisite quality, and there even seemed to be an actual storefront put up in one corner of the area. A small crowd was set in front of it, seemingly browsing the catalog.
The situation reminded him quite a bit of his time in the white room of Origin when he was trapped with a bunch of other subjects from Earth. Though, this group didn’t seem to be full of random, nervous weaklings like back then. Here were some of the best and brightest the whole Galactic Plane had to offer. Seth went to try and activate True Sight, and was delighted to find that it worked without any issue.
After a moment though, he wished it hadn’t.
The whole arena was full of royal talents, just like he had identified earlier, but there was also another aspect to them that he had not calculated for; nearly ninety-five percent of them were tier threes, and some were already late into the tier as well. As he was busy getting green around the gills, a few of the participants that were in a nearby group started to head his way. He watched mutely as the only other tier twos made their way across the arena towards him.
Oh, man! Even I could beat these guys, do I seriously have to team up with them?!
He whined in his head. It was pretty easy to guess why they were coming over to him. There were only three of them, which meant that Seth was the fourth tier two to enter this place. Clearly, they realized how out of their depths they were, so they were recruiting everyone in the same situation in order to build up safety in numbers. Unfortunately, Seth knew that although he might be able to beat them, he was truly at a disadvantage among the rest of the participants in the challenge.
There looked to be seventy-ish participants strewn about, and just based off of the energy they were giving off, Seth bet he could only triumph over a scant few of them outside of the tier two group. Not matter how much fighting experience he might have over monsters, people were still a relatively new type of opponent for him, so he was even less confident in his ability to overcome anyone else.
As the group finally reached him, Seth prayed one last time in his mind that the challenge wouldn’t hedge participants against one another.
“Hello my lonesome friend! And here I thought we were the only ones foolish enough to enter this place while still in the second tier.”
The cheerful voice of the boy in front enveloped Seth’s ears as he offered a friendly wave to the three. He couldn’t say he was particularly happy to see them, but he also didn’t see any reason to be cold.
“I guess I finally met someone else here that isn’t a tier three, what a relief! My name’s Seth.” He said in the most cheerful voice he could muster.
The trio looked to be of the same party, as they were all of the same race and wore similar gear.
Family perhaps? Eh, it doesn’t matter.
They all were annoyingly attractive, just like everyone else, and they seemed to be of an unknown sub-race of Celist, as could be told by their light red skin and slightly curved ears. Their constitution had a similar energy to Sydney’s, which was the only reason he could tell this much. The one girl had glimmering raven hair as well as the guy in front, while the stringy guy to their side had grey hair and eyes. And of course, they looked to be around seventeen or younger, as per usual of the participants so far.
“Worry no more Seth, you aren’t alone now. I’m Drake, this is my sister Blaire, and my buddy Licht.”
The main guy addressed Seth as the other two nodded his way upon their introduction.
“I see you’re alone Seth. Did you come here by yourself, or do you have a party coming?”
Seth reciprocated the friendly nods, before giving Drake a wry smile. “Uh, no I don’t have anyone coming. It seems I might have overestimated myself a bit when given the choice to come here.”
For now he thought it would be smart to play the slightly ignorant lone adventurer, as he really had nothing to lose from befriending the group. The sister’s expression did not change, but Licht adopted a slightly pitiful look that most definitely branded Seth as an idiot. Surprisingly, Drake let out a sincere laugh.
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short man, you made it this far, right? I don’t think you overestimated yourself at all, plus I can tell you’re no slouch just by your aura.”
Seth inwardly raised an eyebrow at his words. For the first time in a while, a pleasant sensation spread out through his mind. Huh, he doesn’t seem to be too bad a guy. Seth was so used to the idea of The Incubator being full of royal brats that he honestly didn’t expect such a genuine guy to be participating. He could tell it wasn’t an act either, as the guy seemed to have a warm air about him that almost made Seth activate Perceive just to see if his anima looked like a teddy bear or something.
“So would you be open to the idea of teaming up with us for the upcoming challenge? We won’t force you to stay or anything after it’s over, plus any loot you get will be your own. As you can see, we might not be the most powerful group around, but trust me when I say we are no slouches either.”
Seth actually thought about it for a good second, but before he could deny their request, Drake interrupted him.
“I can see you might not be sold on the idea, which is understandable as we just met. But don’t feel the need to answer now, we have almost a day and a half to get to know each other, so why don’t we show you what’s going on over at the storefront? The organization that’s in charge of The Incubator made it, it’s actually pretty interesting!” The boy gushed.
Seth’s rejection was put on hold at Drake’s proclamation. It wasn’t that he thought the extra time would help their case, but Drake’s pushiness and excitable attitude were infectious. Not to mention, a store put up by the creepy doll people with abyss eyes was actually something that sounded worth checking out. Putting his thoughts to the side, Seth threw on an easygoing smile and met Drake’s big red eyes.
“Alright man, I’m sold. Let’s go check it out!”