PoV Diego
After Fury mercifully killed the little girl, we were transported back to our encampment. It was in the middle of the night. Satsui was the one watching over the ones that were sleeping. I noticed immediately that they had bought a lot of food boxes and what looked to be a set of knives.
'A warning for future times: if you don't want to be abandoned in a corner, don't ever interrupt me, understood?'
Fury didn't respond; she just showed me an image of a middle finger pointed at me.
"Fury!" After she materialized, I dropped her on the ground and kept going towards the shelter.
I noticed that, in the meantime, Satsui had taken an offensive stance and had already covered his fists in blue flames.
"Don't worry about me; I was simply disciplining my weapon."
He tilted his head sideways, squinted his eyes. He made a funny expression that I didn't know how to decipher.
"So even this stage was a joke to you, huh?" Valis said it in quite a spiteful tone, as if she wanted me to fail.
"I don't know. As much as I'd like to take credit for this, I was unconscious for most of the time." I answered.
'The next one is the eighth. So far, the goal of each one has gradually become harder and harder to clear, not just with strong enemies. I look forward to what the future holds for me.'
I noticed that Satsui was still staring at me, confused and curious, wagging his tail while making small adjustments with his nose. It was very cute to watch.
"Is there anything on my face?" I asked while heading to a pile of bags, searching for something to put on.
"Your eyes... were they always like that?" He then handed me a long sheet of cloth, which I tied around my waist.
"What do you mean?" I asked him.
"Your pupils remind me of those of a snake."
'What is he talking about?'
"Plus, with your physique, you've gotten a lot more fit since you went back to your egg." His brother added.
"Weird, I swear I haven't noticed any change in my body."
'Even Dubir made a comment about my strength before. Maybe it's real that I've gone through some changes after hatching from my egg.'
Satsui then laid his hand on my back and suddenly stirred me up from the inside with his aura.
I immediately fell to the ground, vomiting whatever was left in my stomach that wasn't fully digested. Satsui looked disgusted at the sight of the many chucks of meat still attached to the bones I had ingested.
"Thankfully, this time you didn't reset the amount of aura you had. If you really want to build up that power, you should stop relying on that kind of power."
'It's probably because I've reached a new milestone. I wonder when the next one will be.'
PoV Maxim
After completing the tenth stage, we found ourselves on top of a flying cloud. It was soft and wet, and it was carrying us up into the sky.
There, we could admire the beautiful scenery. Tall mountains covered the horizon; a layer of water separated the sky from the earth; and under us there was a lush jungle. Everything was brimming with so much life. I was probably too stressed before to realize what really was around me.
A colorful world, the chirps of birds, the sounds of many animals waking up or fighting for their lives, the sounds of the many rivers flowing down towards the unknown. As the cloud kept flying upward, we finally.
I was probably the one that said, "Whoa."
Some of them smiled, and some of them simply admired that beauty in silence. My brother, who was always so protective, was shedding some tears.
We probably shared the same thoughts.
'Once this is all over, we want to spend the rest of our days in a place as beautiful as this one. '
Then the God of combat appeared again.
"Congratulations! You're the first group to complete the first ten stages."
The god had appeared in a child-like form, with long, pure white hair, golden eyes, split pupils, and red nails. He was wearing a huge shirt that was so baggy that it could even cover his feet.
"Honestly, I was expecting another group to be the first to clear the tenth. Anyway… Hugo?"
Many clouds started accumulating around us. After they cleared the sky, they started to form a shape. It was a giant, and we were in his palms.
A sudden stream of water from the ocean floating above surrounded us, creating a sphere around us. In the meantime, the god was acting as if he were directing some kind of orchestra.
"So, now that we are perfectly isolated, I have a deal for you. It doesn't consist of much. In exchange, you will each receive a small gift for each ten stages you clear until you reach the fiftieth. All you have to promise me is that when this is over, instead of returning to your home planet, you'll decide to stay. There is no written contract; it's just a magic shackle that'll assure me you won't try to pull any funny stuff at the last minute." He said this while showing us many magic circles.
What followed was a long silence. Everyone was absorbed, wondering if it was really worth it. It's true that this seemed like an ideal world, but at the same time, we would also be the only four of our race present in this world.
"Will the shop remain available even after the trial ends?" My brother was the first to break the silence. His skin was shining so brightly that it was almost blinding.
"Yes." The god answered.
"Will we still receive points?" My brother asked.
"That'll depend on you." "Here, income scales off of your physical capabilities, magical ones, and the number of stages cleared. The short answer would be yes, but if you stop training and become lazy, then it becomes a no."
"Will we be the only ones of our race left in this world?" Asked Giovanni.
"Of course not, except for you. Every other member of your race will be free to go in and out of this world. Unfortunately, by then lots and lots of powerful beasts will have appeared, so very few limited zones will remain safe." The god answered while showing us all kinds of weird and unique looking creatures.
"With powerful, you mean-"
"Of course, they'll be strong enough that even with your current artillery, you would barely scratch them. In other words, you four won't be enough to hunt them by the time you all finish the trial." He specified.
"And where are we supposed to live then?" Giovanni asked.
"In the floating islands, of course, if you want to stay on land, you'll have to earn your place. If you're curious about the little gifts, I can't say what they really are, but what I can say is that they will be really helpful in the long run. "
'This awfully sounds like a scam.'
"That is so cruel to think about. I would never scam potential warriors." He said it in an even more childish tone.
"And, yes, I want you to become proud warriors. I want to see mythical adventures. I really like those kinds of stories, you know... from warrior to hero and hope of his race. " He said this while looking at my brother.
"Anyway, I think I answered enough questions, so what is your answer?"
He then started to spin all the water around us, only to start swimming all around us, carried by the flow he created.
"Don't worry, I'm not petty enough to punish you for refusing my offer. Unlike many, I am truly a benevolent god." he said.
I looked at my brother to see what his reaction was. His eyes were staring at the horizon. Giovanni wanted to say something but immediately shut his mouth as soon as he made eye contact with him.
After a long pause, he finally made a decision.
"We accept your offer."
The god smiled and started giggling by himself. Many portals appeared, and the heads of many dragons came out of them. They immediately began roaring, while the God was cheering us.
"Today is truly a glorious day." He said this before pointing his fingers at us.
Suddenly, I felt nauseous. I felt something heavy on my stomach, but at the same time I felt light. I felt a weird electric feeling all around my body. As I looked around me, I saw blue veins popping in my brother's body. They were extending and covering his whole body. He was visibly in pain because of them.
'Son of a-'
Then I heard someone falling on the ground, or better yet, a solid cloud. It was Giovanni. He had put his hand on his throat, and, for some reason, he was tightening his grip. The rest of his body was spasming uncontrollably.
The god then approached Giovanni. He stared at him for a long time. He then sighed. He seemed disappointed. He then touched him with his left hand. When his hand came into contact with Giovanni's chest, weird waves started spreading throughout his whole body. It was as if his entire body was made of water. Then the god put his hand inside Giovanni's body and started moving it in a circling motion.
After that, he stopped playing with Giovanni's body, and when he took his hand out, Giovanni stopped feeling bad.
Once the pain stopped, we all fell to our knees. It was not because we were tired or because of the pain of the gift, but rather because of the dragon's roars. Something about their roars made my entire body tremble like a leaf. We lost control of both of our legs and kneeled in front of him.
Then the god put some golden leashes on our necks. Our contract had been finalized.
"My little gifts are not something that gives immediate strength. I find those kinds of gifts distasteful. Cherish what you have, cultivate it, and make it bloom into something even more amazing. I have high expectations of you."
The dragons then disappeared, the god disappeared, and the only thing that remained was us, the giant made of clouds, and the sphere of water that had encapsulated us.
Giovanni tried to use his marks to get out of the water cage but was unsuccessful. What followed was the giant throwing us with all of his strength towards the ground. I closed my eyes and activated one of my marks to cover my body with tentacles. Immediately, I felt something heavy and slimy covering them.
Giovanni and Marcello were both freaking out and screaming during the whole fall. But just like what happened with the cannon, our fall stopped around 10 meters above the ground.
As I finally opened my eyes, I noticed that my brother had put himself between me and the ground and had already covered me with his imitation of my mark. Even after I finally deactivated the mark, he kept me safe until we safely made contact with the ground.
'Soon we'll have to have a heartfelt conversation about this. We should move on from the past.'
PoV Florine
I was comfortably enjoying my nap when someone came knocking on my door as if his life depended on it.
"Reverend Gloria, this is an emergency." He shouted as he kept knocking vigorously on my door.
As I raised my head, I felt a sudden fit of pain right between my temples. It was as if someone was hitting me with a sledge hammer, and my brain was bouncing inside my cranium. My eyelids felt extremely heavy, my throat was extremely dry, and every small sound was echoing in my head.
'Who dares cause trouble when I'm sleeping.'
I stayed in bed for a long time before even raising my head from the pillow. I wanted to ignore everything today, but in the end, I decided against it.
Without even bothering to change clothes, I got out of bed and headed straight towards the exit door. The one who was constantly knocking was a bald old man with a bit too much fat on his belly.
Behind him, Cory and Ganeshi were fighting some unknown warriors. Cory had probably used his ability to silence the zone to not bother me, while Ganeshi had created enough clones of herself to match the opposing numbers.
The warriors did not have faces, as most of their heads were empty. They were equipped with various kinds of swords, mostly one-edged curved swords. They weren't wearing any armor and had a strange outfit. It was mostly a purple robe with very large sleeves. They had some white strings keeping the ends attached to the body, probably to prevent the user from tripping on their own dress.
Cory was not using his usual equipment; instead, he was wearing casual clothing and fighting barehanded, while Ganeshi was holding her usual weapon. It was a unique polearm I had never seen anyone else use before. It had a blade on both ends of the pole. Both blades were massive, almost as long as her forearm and about 30 cm in width. The pole, however, was probably about 40 cm long. Her copies were fighting barehanded.
"Is this really it? They can easily-" I wanted to say that they were perfectly fine and could resolve the situation by themselves, but then I noticed something.
Ganeshi's hair had turned white from the usual black, and her skin had started to show weird white patterns all throughout her body. The same thing applied to Cory.
'I see now.'
"Go prepare the fruits of discord; I'll deal with them." I said to the man.
He immediately ran to get the fruit. I didn't even have the time to take a couple of steps out of my house when a couple of men ambushed me from above.
They were both wearing some sort of purple kimono with blue strings. They had large straw hats, and they both had a purple katana in their hands.
'What's with all of these swordsmen today?'
I didn't even need to react, as their blade and magical powers were not strong enough to hurt me. Their blades couldn't slice off my neck. The impact was still strong enough to make me feel dizzy, or perhaps it was because I felt so sick that even a weak blow like that could make me feel that way.
One of them clicked his tongue, then backed off with a backflip.
I used that moment as an opportunity to inhale a lot of air into my lungs and prepare my fire breath.
"Is she an idiot? STOP HER IMMEDIATELY!" shouted someone from far away, but for some reason I couldn't locate him.
I was ready before those two could charge at me again. I turned to my right and used my fire breath to incinerate one of the swordsmen while the other was preparing his next attack.
Someone appeared right in front of me. He was ducking right beneath my fire breath. With a rising uppercut, he managed to stop me from attacking. The other soldier put some sort of chain around my left arm while the guy in front of me turned invisible right in front of my eyes.
So I simply grabbed the chain with both hands and swung it in a random direction with all my strength. A lot of people flew away, not because I hit them but because they were desperately holding the chain in order to restrain my movements.
Before they could recover, I decided to head towards Cory and Ganeshi, carrying the chain with me. I used the chain as a whip and managed to hit both the enemies and Ganeshi's copies.
"The number two strongest warrior of the golden army is finally here. Prepare yourself-" I couldn't finish my sentence because the invisible man punched me again in the face.
This time, I managed to grab his hand before he could disappear. With one arm, I lifted him and started slamming his body left and right.
He lost his senses after that, so I wrapped his body in the chain and used his body as part of my new weapon.
I then tried to swing the weapon countless times, but as it appeared, I did not have the talent for handling whips. The poor, invisible guy got slammed left and right. I couldn't hit anyone with his body, and I managed to hit someone once because I was a bit too careless with the chain.
As his body started to finally regain color, I noticed that more than half of it was mechanical.
'I could probably get an amazing reward if I bring him back.'
Then suddenly, another invisible man managed to put another shackle on my other arm. The chained man activated something on his back that started propelling him away, while the invisible man did the same.
'If little tricks such as these could have been enough to defeat me, I would've never reached the position of second strongest. Did they think about that? Why are they targeting me specifically?'
I couldn't find an answer to all my questions, and I only managed to get a mild headache from it.
Meanwhile, Cory and Ganeshi's curse grew worse and worse as they borrowed more and more power from it; their sanity began to wane, and their movements became less precise in favor of more power and quick attacks that frequently left their guard wide open.
So once again, I started preparing my fire breath.
The faceless men then decided to turn and prioritize me instead of Ganeshi and Cory, but the moment they turned their backs on them, some of them got fatally wounded by the two. Then swords started falling from the skies, targeting our enemies.
The hunters in the city had decided to join us.
I grabbed both chains and smashed them against the ground, then used the fire breath on the invisible guy on my right, and that killed him on the spot and melted part of his body.
While most of them were using long range attacks, one of them jumped into the middle of the action, using the aura to boost his speed. He would then hit his enemies using only spinning techniques, whether it was a backhanded punch or a spinning kick.
It reminded me of Kane. Whenever I would ask him why he was limiting his body to only those techniques, his answer would always be: "Because I'm the best."
I started remembering those good times, when we would fly together, play together, randomly hide to not work, and drink together. Almost all my memories with them were extremely fun and precious.
A sudden wave of sadness hit me.
'That's right, they hate me now. They have every right to.'
When my mind returned to reality, what I saw were lots of beasts the size of a small house wreaking havoc and attacking the citizens.
They had six legs and a long, spiky tail, and their heads resembled those of bulls, yet they had a horn right above their nose, like a rhinoceros. Their tails were probably double the length of their bodies.
The hunters were too busy rescuing the people and hunting down the beast. Cory and Ganeshi were nowhere to be seen, and for some odd reason, I was down on my knees.
I then noticed a weird metal collar on my neck.
A human behind me was holding a leash that was connected to it.
"I told you that this was as easy as stealing candy from a baby." He said.
"Now let's test this." he added.
"This is an order. Go and kill every hunter that is fighting back against our beasts?"
I expected the item to force me into submission, but it did not have any effect.
"W-what? I repeat, go and hunt down those hunters."
I simply ignored him and tried to use my aura to enhance my body, but the chains attached to my arms immediately absorbed it. I tried to use mana again, but that was absorbed as well.
I then partially transformed my hands to gain enough strength to crush the various shackles and free myself. As soon as he saw me crushing what was probably his only trump card against me, the man started fleeing.
I tried to restrain him with magic, but I ended up crushing him to death accidentally. He was far weaker and squishier than I anticipated him to be.
It was at that point that a massive portal appeared in the skies, and golden soldiers started raining down endlessly. They quickly managed to immobilize every enemy while at the same time restoring all the damage done to the buildings.
That was clearly Chris's power. In the middle of the portal, I could see Daniel and his personal guard, Nassus.
Nassus was looking at me as if he were watching a bug. Before I could even realize it, he appeared, standing right before me. He used his weird power to make me kneel.
"What is the meaning of this?" he asked furiously.
"I-I can explain-"
"I'm not here to listen to your pathetic excuses. You're the most pathetic dragon I've ever seen, so pathetic that you even lost your knight." His aura was terrifying; his presence was so heavy that I felt as if I was going to be crushed.
"Do you have any idea how hard it was to cover up for your little "incident"? This is the last time we'll cover up your mistakes."
"It was just a moment of distraction-" Before I could finish my sentence, he kicked me in the face.
"People have died. Under the supervision of the second-strongest, people have died. Do you realize how absurd this situation is? Do you even think about the impact this will have on our reputation? Of course not; you're just a stupid, greedy lizard who can't think for herself. Without your knight, you are probably not even worthy of the position of second-strongest."
"You're not giving me time to-!"
I tried to transform myself into my dragon form to free myself from his power. He then summoned an extremely powerful fire spirit that proceeded to pin me down and bury my face underground. The most humiliating part was that his borrowed power alone was stronger and bigger than mine.
"Nassus-" The voice belonged to Daniel.
"Stay out of this, Dani! She can't be forgiven for what happened here today. Her subordinates went on a rampage; she burned down two buildings using her own power; and countless people have died because of those terrorists! Wake up! Times have changed; we're no longer recruits! We have a duty to uphold!"
"But-" I tried to raise my head then, but the fire avatar simply buried my head back into the ground.
"She should be glad she got to keep her head on her shoulders after all the troubles she caused just in the past 100 years."
I could then hear Nassus getting closer and closer.
"His majesty was way too lenient on you just because you are a young dragon, but let me tell you. The next time I'm forced to clean up after your mistakes, it will be your end." He whispered to me.
"I'm so-" The avatar of fire then started choking me.
"Oh, so now you're sorry, only after publicly attacking me and getting humiliated by those fuckers."
"I did not at-"
"Shut it! I guess you said the same to him. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. It's just-"
"Enough Nassus! Please stop." I could hear Daniel putting himself in front of Nassus and stopping him.
I could feel tears starting to fill my eyes, but that moment was short-lived. Nassus used his avatar of fire to blind me in my left eye, then left with Daniel immediately after. About 200 soldiers remained, patrolling the area and ensuring that every one of those swordsmen was captured alive and sent to the intelligence collectors.