There was no question that Grendolyn was absolutely livid as she awoke the next day. She was having a nice time that night, dreaming about legendary mechanisms and weapons she would make. And in an instant all of it broke down into a rusted pile of metal. Only when she was able to free herself of that nightmare did she realize why.
The whole camp now smelled of iron from the blood of the beasts Zhao Wei had brought back home. But that wasn't the biggest reason she was angry, no, it was because they were supposed to leave by tomorrow after she made some final adjustments to the ride. But with the pile right in front of them, she'd need at least another 3 days to make enough space for all of it.
And that was just mentioning space, not including all the things she had to put in like heating or cooling enchantments to make sure the food didn't rot in there. Zhao Wei would come back to camp that day to find that his living quarters had been downgraded to a windowless, comfortless little cube just enough for him to stretch his body.
And if she was honest, she was prepared to sneak in and turn his precious weapons into tent pegs if Jeff hadn't mediated for a lighter punishment.
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Finally after hauling ass to prepare everything, Grendolyn could sigh in relief as she looked at the majestic facade of this monster. In a way, this train was a real iron beast, retaining some of the Gren's abilities to heal it's outer shell. Whatever was inside was a different case altogether.
Up till then, Thirteen and Panda had to accompany Zhao Wei day in and day out to make sure he was too occupied to go out hunting again. At this point Myra had slowly begun to refuse sparring with him as his speed had already caught up, and with her size and generally non-aggressive skill, she was basically a big target for him to practice on.
Panda was still matchless in terms of speed, if they hadn't trained together for so long, he would no doubt finish each match with a several more footprints and claw marks all over his body. The one who was completely caught in the middle of these exchanges was Thirteen.
Up till then, her skills were made to kill humanoid targets, or at least ones that moved like humans. Zhao Wei and Panda were more like beasts, their technique nonexistent despite their hobby for fighting but that was where the danger came in. Any martial artist was systematic in the way they fought, no matter their temperament, this led them going for the obvious paths to destroy their targets.
Zhao Wei and Panda's fighting style was more playful and inconsistent, and the worst part was that they could throw out an attack from any position and still deal a devastating blow to their opponents. These were attacks only her instincts to danger helped her avoid, all her other training and techniques didn't even come close to coping with it.
Jeff watched them play with a smirk, feeling a little jealous of Guru for having seen this back at Dracas. At first he thought Guru was keeping him down and making sure he didn't grow to be their own threat by not imparting any of his techniques to the boy. Only now did he realize Guru was a teacher through and through. The thing he did best was make sure he didn't leave any shackles on the kid's potential. In their last fight, the kid had staved him off pretty well even without the techniques anyway.
Watching his current student get pummeled by the two actually made him feel elated. A blood child's techniques were ingrained in them since young and were to constantly be refined as they grew older. Every unorthodox hit that landed onto Thirteen's body would break down her reliance on them, maybe with those basics and an open mind towards the subject, Thirteen might actually evolve the Blood Child techniques beyond their current limitations.
Right now she was actually quite lucky this was a battle royale, the other two had little focus to spare just from facing each other that there were little lapses where they would lose track of the child assassin and create just big enough an opening where she could disrupt their rhythm enough to land a blow or two.
What Jeff really wanted to see though was what would happen once Zhao Wei let loose, even from Jeff could feel the fluctuations from the shackles he was wearing, which meant that he was at least at peak silver tantra stage, and unlike the normal who circulate their tantra in fleeting moments of battle, he was maintaining it through out the day.
He felt both anxious and excited at the sight he was going to see when those things do come off.