Grayson still felt a bit sapped of his strength but it was just an illusion of his own mind, he knew very well that nothing should carry over with the reset.
His power had yet to disappoint him in any way, he had first feared ending up stuck in a loop against an insurmountable challenge but his power had always brought him back right where it was best.
He had no further doubt that his ability was perfect, even the hardest of challenges could be overcome with enough tries.
Grayson backed off the thorns, he had no need to retry that same loop for he had learned enough information.
"Do you have any vision from the future?" asked Aiden while trying to get the description of the thorns, only to get a normal description.
"I sure did, get away from the thorns now!" he told them as he was backing off, he noticed their strange gaze to something behind him.
"Don't worry about ball of vegetation and step away from the thorns" he repeated moments before hitting a hard surface, that didn't feel like a ball of vegetation but rather...
Grayson turned around and looked up at PH-3's face, seeing a faint green light coming from the opening in his thorns.
The creation of the Father-Lord choked him and lifted him up the ground, raising him up to his eye level, piercing him with nothing but his instense glare.
"Knowing what will happen sure is practical, isn't it?" calmy spoke the thorn face as he exerted more and more pressure on Grayson's neck.
"I do wonder if there is something I can do to counter this troublesome ability, do you know what I will do now or not?" questionned the creation, sounding as if he had a smirk on his face.
"No? That is too bad-" he was interrupted by a head-sized fireball slamming into his thorns and encompassing his whole head.
He didn't let go however and the flames were put a single second after the attack.
"The third would obviously possess fire resistant capabilities, that much should be obvious but I guess you don't know that much" spoke Ph-3 as he turned his head to the fire slinger.
As Aiden visibly panicked due to the failed attack, Grayson vision suddenly darkened, unable to understand what had happened before he found himself in the same spot as before, staring at the thorn wall.
'Shit! He's onto me, whatever I do, he intends on showing up...'
'I need to do something...' that much was obvious but he wasn't sure what to do, this guy hadn't waited long before killing him each time, he talked a bit but didn't let his guard down.
It appeared like he was capable of killing all three of them in second if he wished to do so, he could do it right now.
Grayson needed to think about it, PH-3 seemed aware of his ability but he still couldn't remember what happened in previous loops, from his point of view at the moment, it might as well be the very first time.
Grayson just ran for it, there was no need to think too much about it, he had as many tries as needed at this, he could attempt anything and running suddenly sounded like a good enough idea.
Since his two partners weren't as dumb as they sometimes seemed, they could connect the dots with his supposed ability and booked it too.
This resulted in three people running in different directions, normally, anyone would have to make a choice about who to chase.
PH-3 however, he could send roots to instantly kill all three of them, which he did, Grayson was back at step one.
This loop of dying to the well-dressed creation went on for quite a while even if technically speaking, no time had passed at all.
Eventually, it simply appeared that PH-3 didn't try to stop them from going away, Grayson could only find a single explanation to this phenomenon.
The only one who could have informed the thorn head about his ability was this Father-Lord of his, he must be somewhat aware of the looping and most likely ordered him to stop trying to stop him as it was useless.
Grayson imagined that being sent back into the past constantly and be aware of it must be quite annoying, the answer to the problem had really been to just keep trying.
In the end, he told Jake and Aiden that he had seen a future were the one rsponsible for the thorns revealed that his name was also initials for something but that he was way too strong for them, Grayson was quite worried about that fact that every single thing they had encountered so far had been so much stronger than them.
No amount of tricks could have helped him even close the gap with PH-3, the creation hadn't even been trying hard to kill him all of those times, it was clear for Grayson that he could do much more than what he had used to end him.
Slurping all of the nutrients in his body with roots, snapping his neck with some plants or just his hands, slashing him to death with thorns, causing plants to grown on and inside of his body and many others...
If he had to put it in simple terms, PH-3 was technically just a minion of the main boss and yet they were severely outmatched already, even if he was one of the strongest minions, it didn't spell anything good for the future.
However, this world wasn't a game, things followed actual logic even if things could get insane with magic, Grayson had a hard time believing that someone who seemed focused on creating killing machines such as PH-3 would also have time to be a killing machine themselves.
Complex creations should be time consuming and considering the way they were named, they had to be creations.
Grayson deeply believed in those two facts, otherwise, if any of those two were to be false, things would get ugly.
Either ways, Grayson had to find a way to strengthen himself and his two comrades, only Jake had battle oriented ability, even if it wasn't clear what it was, it allowed him to react quickly, he had seen him dodge at least one attack from PH-3 during the loops, which while sounding pathetic was way more than he could say for himself.
They needed to do some easier things in between the search for others such as PH-3.