Chapter 224: The competition 8
In the hall housing the Alpha rankers, the humans watched with varied expressions as Mayura destroyed Calum with effortless ease.
Amon watched with an expressionless face while Sevas and Alexa were indifferent to the fate of the house Forge heir. Lucas meanwhile watched with a subtle frown.
Ellaria and Eren meanwhile, watched with a proud expressions as their daughter showcased her strength, and put the human in his place.
However, their proud expressions faltered, as they watched the human from earlier who had been calling their daughter an insulting name, effortlessly stopped her from killing the weak human.
"Hahahahaha." Regulus burst out laughing. "Seriously, who is that child? He definitely didn’t look special in anyway at first glance." He said turning to the humans in the room.
What he didn’t know however, was that the humans themselves, were also oblivious to who the young man was. The four in the room all threw subtle glances at each other, but they realized with a glance none of them knew anything about the boy.
The boy definitely wasn’t handpicked among the fifty, that much they knew of, which meant he must have qualified for the rest of the fifty slots in the tournament.
And they definitely didn’t bother to oversee the tournament. Maximus was the one who did.
"He does seem extremely strong?" Rhudeus spoke. "What abilities does he posses, I wonder?" He asked.
"You’ll eventually see it if you keep watching, Rhudeus, won’t you?" Sevas replied. Though inwardly, he had another thoughts. ’How had a talent this good remained unknown?’ The boy’s aura had definitely surpassed the Theta+ rank, but he didn’t actually know if the boy was at the Zeta- rank, or maybe even above.
’How interesting.’ But he had to admit, that lad might even be better at provoking people than he was.
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Manwhile, after Damon took Calum and both disappeared into the mirror dimension, he laid the boy down on the ground.
"You bastard, if you were that strong why didn’t you help in the first place." Calum cursed as he tried to sit up. "You purposefully let me fight her so you could secure that sphere." he accused.
He felt betrayed somewhat. If Damon had been that strong, why did he wait for Mayura to be at Calum within an inch of his life before deciding to step in.
"Well, I kind of so recall someone telling me to ’get out of here’." Damon mimicked. "Even though I told you I was far from defenseless, you still chose to go head first into battle, so I figured you were strong enough to at least not get beaten within an inch of your life, but it turns out...." Damon smiled. "I thought completely wrong."
"You!.." Calum wanted to refute, but he had no words to say, and in the end, only quietly lie down back. His own weakness was what brought this upon him.
Damon watched Calum with a discerning eye. This Calum had turned out far different from what he was supposed to be in the novel. Even though Calum still has his arrogant tendencies and looking down on others, he had surely stopped fixating on that, and had more of focused on himself.
’Was it because he has lost to me during the mid terms?’ Damon thought, but quickly shot the thought down. Calum had lost to Alistair too in the original novel, and that was what eventually pushed him to become a heretic.
And Calum had never even liked Sasha in the novel talk less of getting rejected by her. That was why Damon was genuinely surprised when he heard of that.
’Why did losing to me change him this far?’ Damon mused, but couldn’t come to an answer. In any case, it was a good thing, Calum wouldn’t follow the path he followed in the novel, and Damon was the cause for the change. He felt slightly good at having change another person’s fate.
"Here." He threw a healing potion to the young man who was still on the ground. "This should bring you back to full health."
Calum raised a suspicious brow.
"Why are you suddenly being nice? I don’t believe you’re not up to something."
"Would you take it or not, if not I’ll throw you back out in your injured state." Damon shrugged. "I guess I do not need to tell you what would most likely happen."
"..." Calum’s pale face froze. If he was left alone in his injured state, even someone half as strong as he was could finish him without much effort. He didn’t know what this space was, but he could guess it was Damon’s ability, and everywhere looked almost exactly the same as the outside world, but was different in an eerie way.
Calum gulped down the healing potion without any hesitation, completely forgetting the fact that he also had healing potions stashed in his own spatial storage.
After giving Calum some minutes to heal up, Damon opened a gate out of the mirror dimension directly under Calum’s body. The boy sank into the gate before, and before he could even utter a word, he was unceremoniously dumped a few meters from the ground.
"That bastard." Calum cursed.
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Somewhere in the pocket realm, Aric arrived at a frigid landscape where everything before his eyes was white.
Even the sparse trees able to survive in this frigid atmosphere had all became statues of ice. How had that happened? Aric didn’t know, but he was damn sure it wasn’t all natural even considering the unnatural existence of a pocket realm.
Aric soon felt the cold penetrating his bones, and quickly shrouded himself in shadows, before continuing to walk deeper into the frigid landscape.
He had followed a sphere here, and he wasn’t willing to let go of it at any cost. Wings made of shadows appeared behind his back, and with one powerful flap, Aric shot through the air in speeds that blurred his perception.
Aric’s initial ability was shadow manipulation. He could manipulate the shape shadows would take and he could hide inside shadows.
He could sink into shadows and hide himself for an extended period of time, so much thatsny thought he could teleport through shadows. But that wasn’t the case.
Aric’s ability was extremely powerful and versatile, and he made sure to use it well.
With the power of of flight the wings granted, Aric floated above the frigid landscape, and with a bird eye view, oversaw the entire frozen wasteland.
But it was then that Aric witnessed something extremely shocking. He froze up for a bit, before a mischievous light glinted in his eyes.
**Six hours earlier**
"WHAT THE HELL?!!!!"
Dion screamed on top of his lungs as he found himself falling from the sky. All he could see from up here white. He didn’t have to be a genius to realize that it was ice. Worse, the temperature was at least at a minus a hundred degrees. The air was extremely frigid, so much that every breath froze his lungs.
Dion shrouded his body in a thick coat of aether as a way to somehow resisting the frigid cold. After the cold was less bitting, Dion looked casted his gaze down, towards the vast white expanse, looking for any tall structure he could cling to.
Luckily, he spotted a spike jutting from the side of a massive glacier. Without hesitation, Dion angled his body to fall towards that spike.
And once he was close enough, he extended his hand, and incredibly thin strings exploded outward from the tip of his fingers, shooting towards the extended spike.
Dion’s strings sunk into the five different positions on the spike with little difficulty. Using it, as hold, the strings were stretched taut as if they wanted to snap, as they held Dion’s weight, keeping him from plummeting downwards.
"Huh! That was insane." Dion sighed in relief. But the moment he did that, three of the strings holding him in place snapped.
"What..." Dion didn’t even have time to speak before his body slammed face first into the side of the glacier.
"Fuck!" he cursed in agony. And then the remaining two strings holding him also snapped. But Dion was ready this time, a dagger appeared in his hand. He wasted no time sticking it into the side of the glacier.
A tearing sound echoed as Dion slided down the side of the glacier using the dagger to anchor his fall.
When his boots finally touched the ground, Dion laid sprawled on this back.
"That was close." he muttered. His life had almost flashed before his eyes.
Almost immediately, the second phase of the test was announced, but Dion didn’t bother paying attention to it. Even when Kaal was said to have secured a sphere, he paid little to no attention to it.
Only after two hours did he stand up from his lying position, summoned the map, and began looking for the spheres.
However, not long after he began searching, he came across a paste of frozen blood and crushed bones on the ground.
Dion’s eyes widened as he realized that was probably what would have happened to him had he not stopped his fall.
He walked carefully past the place and continued chasing after a sphere for the next four hours or so. However, his peaceful chase, was disrupted by a massive winged abomination swooping in from the sky.
Dion turned upwards and attacked without hesitation, his strings shooting outwards with lethal intent and from both of his hands.
"Dion wait, it’s me!"
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