"What?" Nova looked at Yenn, prompting a shrug from the other woman.
"I don't know why but, his face..." Yenn tilted her head. "... Looks annoying to me, and I wanna punch it." For some reason, Yenn felt like she had seen this man's face before, only, in her memories, he had a scummy look.
The man Yenn was talking about, had heard what she said, so he shriveled in fear behind Ancy. "Is she always this threatening?" He whispered into Ancy's ear.
"You should see their brother." Ancy could relate with the man.
Yenn turned her gaze to Nova. "Why'd he pull you down here again?"
"From what I heard, flame head over there chased a suspicious octopus man down here, but lost him going through the portal. So when he saw my feet over the water, he mistook me for the tentacles guy and pulled me in here."
"He mistook you for the octo-man?" Yenn asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Y—yeah, but if it makes my situation any better, we had a pretty great duel in the other arena earlier." Buster pointed out to Yenn.
"Other arena? Aside from this?" Ancy asked with surprise.
"Yeah!" Buster nodded. "It's where we found the other exit portal, or at least, where I followed that tentacles guy to!"
"Another exit portal...?" Ancy started to think in silence. As much as she was aware, there was only one Colosseum in the underwater city and two portals in different locations. But now Buster was saying that there were more numbers that what she knew generally. 'How much has this place changed? Or did it have to do with that man Buster followed down here?'
Ancy would need time to research this place to know about it better, but for now...
*Clap!*
Yenn brought her out of her thoughts.
"I think everyone else has gone through the portal. If they want to come back then it's there business. You've taken care of the head haven't you?"
Knowing Nova, Yenn was sure that it was the first thing she would do after learning about the true nature of this place, take out the leading figure. And Nova's nod just proved her right.
"Then let's get out of here."
Nova sensed the urgency in Yenn's voice and thought that it was strange that someone was not with them. "Where's Ash?"
"He's been stuck above ground this whole time. And maybe it's because he wants me to focus on finding you but, he's blocked our link. I can't feel him at all. So we have to get back up there."
Hearing that, Nova didn't even wait for one more second before shooting towards the portal.
Yenn was a bit surprised by Nova's sudden action, but soon giggled it off. The girl was such a Tsundere, always pretending like she didn't care, when she did.
"Let's go." Yenn said, letting Buster and Ancy go through the portal first as she had suddenly gotten a message from her phone. As she read the news written in it, her eyes shone with surprise. "That girl's in Ogmore?"
———
At the surface of the Coity lake...
Asher skidded backwards through the air with a spear in his hand. He was panting tiredly and felt like he might collapse at anytime.
The Old Man laughed at his condition. "You were able to keep your consciousness, but you can't even use an ounce of the aura you're spewing."
"Then shut up and take over you freeloader!" Asher yelled.
"Nah, papa don't feel like it."
"Tch." Asher scoffed as he spat out blood from his mouth.
Since the start of the fight with his water opponent, the only thing Asher had been able to do with his killing aura was to unknowingly create one massive explosion. Aside from that, nothing else; he couldn't use that aura like the Old Man could.
Also normally, his killing aura would weaken his opponents even if it was just left to wander in the atmosphere, but there seemed to be a dome around the lake that nulled that effect.
And because he couldn't control it, the aura kept spilling out of his body, increasing his tiredness by the second. The only thing Asher could do was subject himself to pain like biting his lips to keep awake.
"Leaving that aside..." Asher turned his head to the left and glanced at a large group of people staring towards the battle he was fighting. "... What are these guys still doing here?"
Minutes ago, people had suddenly started appearing randomly over the water. At first it looked like they were being controlled by something as their eyes seemed lifeless, but soon they all came to.
And while a lot of them ran away as they saw the ongoing fight, there were still more staring at...
"Pft! Hahahaha! What you should be asking isn't why there are people here, but why there are even women amongst them."
Asher turned his head back to his opponent. "To see this?"
Well, Asher wouldn't lie that he didn't understand. But he and the other men around were in different situations. If he spent a single second being dazed by the female spirit in front of him, he'd be dead.
"I admit you are a strong opponent, but you'll never beat me." The female spirit in front of him said.
She didn't really look like a spirit in the sense that her body was opaque like any other living being. From the surface of the water, the lower half of the spirit's body was made of downward flowing water, moving perfectly to form a tempting hip that joined together with a smooth slender waist. Although the bottom half of her body was made of water, her upper torso was not; it was a free-from-imperfections skin from there.
She had long cobalt blue hair, with each silky strand shining brilliantly under the moon's gleam. Her face was a perfect V-shape, with clear rubies for eyes embedded in it, along with a well placed nose and luscious red lips. Her large chest was mostly bare, but still a little hidden by the small water cups spinning around them.
And although her 'melons' were 'superhuman' big, she looked like a child giant anyway, so it suit her enormous proportions.
"What gives lady? All I wanted was to go through you— I mean the lake! But for some reason, you're picking fight!"
The water spirit, undine, clenched her teeth with anger. "Your kind... You people only know how to destroy. Just like you did my home, my family, my life!!!" The wounds on her flawless skin suddenly healed as she summoned three giant water tridents above her head.
"My kind? What do you mean my kind?!" Asher was confused, but now wasn't the best time to think about matters like that.
Right now, the attacks heading for him were too wide ranged to dodge and too powerful to block without an ability.
Luckily, he had a plan.
Although he didn't have an ability for now, Asher had learnt of the art of using energy freely to empower objects. So he poured his energy into the razor floss he had set over the lake. With a pull, the invisible threads would gather around the undine's neck and slit her throat. He had spent all this time fighting the water spirit, preparing for a moment just like this.
This trap required the undine to unleash a powerful attack, that would require a tiny rest in between, before she would be able to use another skill. And during that resting period of half a second, was the perfect time he'd be able to pour as much energy as he could, revealing the threads and then decapitating her. The powerful attack on him might disappear anyway if she died first.
"!!!" The undine panicked as she suddenly noticed a fluctuation in the energy around her. The world seemed to slow down as thin sharp threads started to head towards her neck.
Why did the world slow down? Maybe this was how people felt when they were on the verge of death. And as the undine looked forward, she couldn't accept that Asher's look of victory was the last thing she would see before finally being put out of her misery.
In the end, she couldn't take hold of the chance of redemption, life had given her, she couldn't get revenge for her kind.
As she closed her eyes, accepting death, she saw Asher's eyes looking at the people packed near him. 'No! The threads will also cut them down!' She noticed this too.
Since Asher's threads intertwined in a web like formation, there was a line closing in on the group of hundreds watching the fight, as the others sunk slowly into the undine's neck.
A look of anger and hate burned in her eyes once more as she realized that Asher was willing to kill a bunch of innocent people to take her out. 'You filthy monster!'
But what other choice did he have? Asher had already set that line of thread before there was an audience, and he couldn't cut it down now because it was a crucial one, if he did, then the undine would be released. And that would cost him his life, as her attacks were already going through his body.
'Sorry. I only have my one soul left. If I blow up, I won't regenerate.' Asher thought. He felt pity for the innocent people near him, but they were the stupid ones, staying around in the middle of an ongoing battle.
However, as the threads were almost half into her neck, Asher suddenly snipped off the line that was heading for the humans beside him, betraying his own rationality.
BOOM!!!
The undine stared with dilated wide eyes as her attacks struck down the man she referred to as a monster. 'Wha...' The undine was at loss for words. Did that man just save those people? At the cost of his own life?
"No!" She refused to believe it. Her image of those beings, those rogue species she had spent centuries cursing was being shaken. THEY only knew how to destroy, so she couldn't accept Asher's behaviour. Never! After her existential she made up her mind to finish the job, killing Asher completely.
Her wounds healed again completely as she dove into the water.
"Why did you do something so stupid, boy?" The Old Man asked as Asher's body started to sink into the water. He thought, why was Asher showing such weaknesses? Why did he choose such a bad time to start acting like a hypocritic hero? The answers eluded him.
Asher's eye blinked open weakly. As he recalled what had just happened.
On the surface of the water, behind the undine, a portal had opened up when he was about to kill the undine. And from within, he had seen the head of his one and only sister, Nova.
'I... Just didn't want her to see me like that... Like the person I really am.'
Asher hadn't saved all those people because he was such a good guy, but because he'd rather die than live a life with Nova looking at him like the cold blooded murderer he was. That was the one thing Asher feared the most.
So he wasn't a man with a perfect heart, but at least Nova had helped him prove that he did have one, albeit one he might lose soon.
———
Nova's hands dropped as she saw Asher get hit by the massive water attack. Although the rising water was in the way, she had seen it clearly. To save the stupid people on the farther side of the lake, Asher had lost the entire left half of his body, and had gotten a few holes on what was left.
Her eye lids were opened wide as her lips quivered. She didn't even look at the spirit that caused Asher's situation, and shot straight down into the lake to get her brother.
"ASHER!!!"
Her hoarse, loud voice made the dazed humans snap back to reality, prompting them to finally running away and made the ear drums of undine shake violently, and blast her into the distance.
As she got to Asher's sinking body, she surrounded it along with herself in an airtight golden sphere and held the remains of his body. "No, no, no, no!" She panicked as she realised that he was no longer breathing. Hugging his bloodied half body, she suddenly started feeling a type of energy flowing out of her body into his. She couldn't think straight because of how disorganized her mind was at the moment, but she didn't stop that strange energy flow.
After a couple of seconds, Asher's eyes soon blinked open, only to see Nova's pale face above his as she hugged his head. She looked sickly and her lips were dried up and white.
Figuring out what she was doing, Asher wanted to push her away, but couldn't. Nova was sending her life force into his body to keep him alive, but this was just delaying the inevitable and causing herself harm.
Although she was filling his life force, his body was still in bad condition. And without healing, if she spent all of her life force on him, he was still going to die, but this time, along with her.
Sensing the resistance from the man she held to her chest, Nova looked down at him with a shaking weak smile, as her eyes were filled with fear. "Please... Don't leave again... Please."
Asher could feel her tears dropping on his face, but even that only came out sparsely. He shook his head as this was not what he wanted.
But then, he suddenly looked to his side and caught a creature swimming towards them. But staring closely, he was able to figure out that the creature had a humanoid shape. It had long glowing purple hair, same shiny coloured eyes, and pale skin that even reflected light.The creatures magnificence filled the water with its presence, as it swam gracefully towards them.
When the creature got close, it sunk its long nails into the golden sphere, pulled weak Nova away from Asher, and fed the dying man a blue glowing object.
Asher could tell what that blue substance was by the healing effect it had in his body. Soon, he started feeling better again.
However, before his eyes shut completely, he caught sight of the strange creatures beautiful smile of relief, and let out a weak smirk as he held her cheek. "See... your fangs really are prettier than mine."
Asher soon succumbed to tiredness, hoping that he'd at least wake up fine tomorrow morning.