The reason why Tommy had this much power was simple. It was due to his weapon's card.
Hilt of Amgora
Rank:Epic
Description: A hilt With no blade, once belonging to a barbarian legend, then handed down from son to son, then was sold to a merchant family. This hilt has been reused over and over, blades breaking and shattering, but the hilt stayed true, never breaking. It seems its special properties of absorbing the broken blades it was once attached to, seemed to make it stronger after each shatter and reforging.
Over the last couple of days of training, he was a quicker learner than most. His reserves of mystic units expanded to the point where the first night seemed like a joke.
I could tell why though; my friend always had a mindset that failure was never an option. A lot of people's first impression of him would be a superior complex, but that was quite the opposite. He had an inferiority complex, not at anyone but mainly at himself or more like the ideal image of being the thing people expected of him.
A lot of people think he would be good at that, or this subject or this sport. Once Tommy knew what people's expectations of him were, he tried his hardest to uphold that expectation, to the point of being obsessive. His fear of thinking of not being good enough was also his strength.
The power of being weak was the will to be strong.
The image I saw of Tommy right now was him wielding a giant axe in his hand, as bodies of spiders lay around him, slaughtering groups of the spiders, blood soaked his body.
Webs shot out by the spiders that climbed the walls, as they latched onto Tommy, a fire appeared on his amour, overheating the webs and burning them away.
A perfect counter to these monsters was to use another monster, and that was Tommy.
His armor started changing, his frog-like helmet quickly reformed into the same as the dark knight. The axe in his hand changed into a rod of iron which he split in half, to then reforge them into two broad swords.
A spider crawled closer and closer, but Tommy reverted the situation as he was the one to dash towards the thing. The spider learned from its dead companions to not use its mouth to attack this time but its four legs instead.
It kept its distance, but Tommy, when faced with the legs, tilted his body backward then swapped into a front attack stance. It seemed he only hit it once, but even so, he didn't get greedy to hit another attack as he backed off, dodging the thing's legs.
With a second opening, he performed a double slashed down, aiming towards its head.
[You have slain a Red Back spider, you have gained 400 gold coins]
As a group got close to use that opening, Tommy quickly vanished into thin air.
Behind a couple of rocks nearby, I was grouped with my two exhausted pals.
"They're endless, just how many are there?" Max questioned.
"I don't know, but we can't slay them all. An exit or maybe one way to kill them all."
"How? Any ideas?" He spoke.
"I got one, but I need some time. We can maybe use the holes to escape. My plan is to do the same thing as we did before. Tommy, I want you to create something hot enough to make steam, while aiming at the pool in the middle. There's still water."
"Again really? I'll try," he said.
Tommy stood up, creating what seemed to be a ruddy shaped ball.
"Good plan, you gonna pass the ball to them, and we start laying?" Max said to Tom.
"Nah you dumbass, watch this."
With a stance, Tommy with a ball in his hand got in not a kicking position and let go of his hand to drop the footy, as it went over the room, aiming toward one spot. It burned through the webs that got in its way.
The spiders looked up as they noticed something. The iron ball kept getting hotter and brighter, and quickly became a red-orange flying ball.
As it landed into the center where the water was, in a deep crater where it all was collected together, steam burst through the room.
Normally water and hot steel would not create such an effect, but Tommy's flames were imbued with mystic energy and his raw emotion.
"Quick, run while they are disoriented!"
I grabbed them both under my cloak as we headed toward one direction - a hole that was close enough to us.
We entered, not daring to look back. It seemed like this cloak not only hid our physical form but also kept sound inside the cloak. If not, then the sound of the large iron armor would alert the beasts of our presence.
After a while of running in a straight line, the cavern we left was still making sounds of beasts screeching, even at this distance.
Small webs aligned on the rocks as water droplets dripped from the roof to the floor. A gale of wind hit our backs every once in a while.
We needed to rest for now and get our energy back up. We exerted ourselves too much.
After a while of endless running, we finally had time to sit down on the ground.
Tommy created a bowl made of iron and gave us one each. I then filled them up with the water that I still had.
And we drank like thirsty animals, our parched throats dry, gasping out of breath, our feet and legs aching due to over-exertion.
If I didn't do a good stretch beforehand, then my body would probably kill itself naturally now.
"Guys, how the hell will we clear this trial? Like do we have a clue for the clearance, or are we going in blind? Because so far from the evidence of all of this pile of shit, we are doomed from the get-go."
"Tom, this isn't a riddle-like trial, no puzzle, no secret to all this, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a pattern."