Without a moments hesitation, I ran. Speed boosted by my (Thunder-Step) Elemental Spell and (Warrior Sprint), Physical Spell.
When applied correctly, it was the perfect diversion.
My foot hit the ground at the start of my sprint and the world around me became untraceable by human eyes. It all blurred into one painted canvas of greens, blues and yellows.
In a flash, I came to a stop. Boots steaming. Location changed.
The sounds of thunder rattled from where I once stood and shook the earth, drawing the Wild Elves away from me and to them.
The Sharks.
The moment they entered the Tangent, the Elves screeched and hollered in their native language. In a panic.
"I can sense you, Sword-Fish!" Ihaka yelled over the sound of him stomping Elves into meat paste. "I'm going to kill you. Your body won't exist in your world as ours stopped existing when we left the seas…. WE DID IT FOR YOU. For you humans!" Ihaka uprooted a massive Wylder-Wood tree with living limbs and threw it across the Tangent landscape.
I took off as the tree crashed into my previous location, smashing lizards and birds all the same. Clearing a path of destruction for miles.
"WE, The Angorian Salt Biters, GUARDIANS OF THE TRENCH! We ignored your hideous greed and colonizing habits of old done to our ancestor humans in hopes that we could save the surface! Unify! We have a common enemy. I WAS WRONG!" Ihaka raged as he dove beneath the Tangent jungle earth and swam in a cyclone, turning the grounds within into a slaughter pit of mud and stone. The other sharks dove in and ripped up the sunken Wild Elves like they were still in the ocean.
Low level earthquakes shook our small world.
I rested in a tree. Mind scrambling.
Angorian Salt Biter? Ancestor Humans? Guarding the Trench?
I looked down at myself, remembering I had no Armor. My blades were in Kaia's home.
The memory of the children taking my armor flashed across my mind. They never returned it. I never searched for it. The Elder encouraged it, I'm sure.
He wanted me as weak as possible. So he could continue to use me and the sharks. The Sharks wanted me as weak as possible because Ihaka knew I'd kill them all once I found out. He knew once I had a…..
Oh god.
I leaned over the tree branch I crouched on and threw up.
Before I could even finish, I was back flipping out of the trees and rolling into cover as a flurry of projectiles ripped through the jungle towards me.
I rested behind a tree. Shark teeth as large as small daggers stuck out of my leg. They broke my aura. I bled from the serrated weapons.
I was lacking.
But it was simple.
They were still trying to finish me off. GME Puppeteers pulling unholy strings. Only this time they had help. A whole island to form a lie around. To play me.
Only the lie was over. The curtain was pulled. And I was done hiding.
***
Ihaka rose from the mud-pit now watered down with blood and partially consumed Wild-Elves.
His shark-skin soaked in the fluids. His ta moko tattoing glowed. The warrior tale blending with his warrior actions. Red fissures of energy popped from the markings as it shifted like waves in an ocean.
He roared. The red blood energy soaked into his clan.
"Let the blood frenzy and Wild Magic take you, brothers and sisters. If there's ever a time to succumb to your warrior spirit, it is now. I will bless you all when we return to the birthing waves."
"Ihaka, we will survive this. Only the Feke-Fomori can harm us. No man—"
Ihaka held up a clawed hand stained by old blood. "That is no man…. Man has a soul. This…. Thing— is a culmination of violence, lies and misfortune. It is a weapon. One of the strongest the surface world has to offer."
Everyone's electro-receptive heads turned up to face the weapon.
He stood at the edge of the deeper jungle. A Elven sword in one hand and a severed bundle of Displacer-Feline tendrils in the other hand. A steady electrical charge caused it to still function, sending refracted images of the man all across the jungle.
Making his true self invisible.
"I'm ashamed to die by a fool. But at least you're no weak f—"
The clouds churned overhead.
"GO!"
****
I watched as the WereSharks dove into the grounds and swam through land, fleeing the electrical carpet bombing I called down to the jungles.
It set the lands ablaze and rose the temperatures like the sun was falling.
I ran, keeping pace with Ihaka as the tables turned. Now the surface was burning, and his world below was a dark thing of fleeing and pain.
But he wasn't me.
He exploded from underground and swung his muscled arms.
"Don't forget your strength!" Massive gusts of wind blew out the fire around him. Some of his clan members weren't so lucky. The fires began drying them out. Suffocating them as they exerted themselves physically by swimming through dirt and stone.
My illusions became realer to them in those moments.
Ihaka faced me and spit his teeth in a white bullet shower.
The projectiles rippled through my displacer clone and I lunged in from behind, slicing open the back of his knee with my blade.
It shattered against the strength of his tendon. A Gold Ranked Tangent weapon…. reduced to a toy.
He spun around and attempted to remove my head with a back kick.
I ducked low and sent a knife handed strike into his femoral artery.
With my aura fortified I cut the thick flesh and hit it. The sweet spot.
I rolled away in a lightning fast blur as blood exploded from the wound.
When I looked up he was standing over me. Eyes red as Ruby gems. Skin steaming.
"AHHHHGHHHH!" He brought his fist down.
Mushroom clouds of smoke and dirt rose from where he struck the earth.
From the remains he lunged.
I caught his charge and used his momentum to throw him through three flaming trees. Then I sent a blast of lightning after his rolling frame. I used my aura to scoop up the flames and mix them with my element. Further drying out the WereShark Alpha.
He slowly stood up with a hand up to block the lightning blasts. When the shock ended all that remained was a spiral of steam rising from his white palm.
I was gone.
I reappeared behind him. He swung his tale and broke the floral environment for a mile out.
My clone dissipated.
From above I used my strongest— and riskiest spell, (Raijin Blade LV1)
Lightning flashed. I caught it with my bare hand, shaping it with my aura, enhancing it with my (Sharp Arts LV10) Swordsman skill, further empowering it with more caught lightning.
Every strike. Another level. Another gap in power.
My hand burned. The clothing on my right arm blown away completely.
The lightning blade in my hands looked like a sword made of pure light. It was so loud my ear was beginning to bleed. My fingers were going numb from the recoil.
This time the lightning didn't strike.
I did.
****
I hit the ground hard and fast with a swing of my sword. Ihaka took the first strike and lost his hand. I followed the path my blade set out for me and spun, going again for his leg. His source of power.
Ihaka jumped and flipped, diving beneath the earth with his massive weight.
He swam. Attempting to turn the earth around me into a pool again.
I slammed by Raijin Blade into the earth, superheating the world below and causing earthquakes from the thunder that followed.
Ihaka jumped from below behind me.
I spun around and found only a flaming boulder flying towards me.
Copycat.
I didn't have enough time to turn. I sacrificed my lightning shroud for the Raijin Blade.
Ihaka's beastly webbed foot smashed into my back.
I flew.
He swam with me. Before I could hit the ground, he rose from the earth, catching me by the face and throwing me back the way I came.
It was an efficient style. He was letting the ground beat away my aura. Saving his strength for when it broke.
But he was running short on time.
The world was on fire.
The storm raged.
His people were dead.
He rose again. I swung.
He didn't catch me this time.
He jumped. The timing was perfect. A practiced mastery of coordination and hunting strategy for prey that required work.
"Don't give me hope, Sword-Fish... when I bite I don't let go. Neither do my kin." He came crashing down.
His fist slammed into my gut. A crater formed.
Then I was pulled into the underearth. The tunnels they formed as their own makeshift sea. My sword interacted with the enviroment and turned it to lava.
We swam through lava.
As he dragged me, the heat ate my aura. The daze halted me.
But I had to get out.
I swung my blade and removed his other hand. I lunged again and stabbed through his heart, boiling his insides. Then I cut my way to the surface, breaths heavy and stamina waning.
(70% HP Remaining..) (35% Mana Remaining…..) My System alerted me.
But I was too busy looking at the Masked Elf sitting atop a Draco-Rex to notice.
Its clawed fingers gripped the reigns of its mount tightly as it raised its spear.
I spit a lightning bolt through its head.
[+3000 EXP]
The Draco-Rex's slitted eyes widened with rage.
"RRRR—"
Ihaka exploded from the lava-like grounds below and tore into the Dinosaur.
The creature was torn in half in seconds.
Ihaka turned to face me as I got to my feet. He held the Dinosaurs spine like a chain whip.
His skin was so dense it was containing the heat of three lightning bolts as it seared his organs and stopped his literal heart from regenerating.
He glowed like a god on earth.
What the hell kind of power was this?
"What is your purpose? Why did you come to my lands…." Ihaka questioned.
"I came as a man seeking peace. To a place I hoped the gods couldn't reach. My purpose is my curse, I kill monsters. I save the world. The human world."
Ihaka spit blood so hot it melted through the earth.
"I hope you learn before it's too late…."
"What?"
"I've told you everything. But like the humans before you— you aren't receptive. You still swim in oceans of fear and hate. Those are blind waters. When you finally enter mine…. You will be alone. And that is why…. You're losing." Ihaka groaned.
I felt my stomach drop. I felt myself in the cave of the WereLion changed by a Demonic Armament. An Akumoid Limb. Ten years ago. Sgt Sayaad stood across from me. Beside Ihaka.
"We're losing…"
Ihaka seemed prophetic in those moments. Like a god.
But there were no gods I didn't want dead.
And like Yuki, prophecy came before death.
"I don't lose."
Ihaka nodded like he knew I'd say that and charged.
I held my Raijin Blade out in front of me with both burned hands and dispersed the charged lightning using my spell, (Taranis Pulse).
As expected, Ihaka wasn't bothered by it.
As the lightning spread across the entire Tangent for a fraction of a millisecond, I was connected to everything living.
All life that was electrically charged.
All energy that pulsed and worked through circuits.
I was within it all.
I could sense Ihaka as he sensed me. But only I could do something about it.
Ihaka crashed into me.
We hit the ground and rolled like ragdoll's.
By the time we came to a stop— no before that, the titan of the seas had fallen.
Nothing more than a superheated flesh bag. Id taken it all back. All the electricity. Every charged that sustained life. I took it. It took me a hundred Tangents to even learn the process. Who knew how many more Ocean Expeditions before I could land one.
[95% HP Remaining]
Somehow he was still alive….
Hanging on by….. I still don't know.
"When you take her life, do it quickly. She didn't ask for this. And know that when it's over, the gods hating you was never your curse, Ronin."
[+10,000 EXP]
DING!
[You have Leveled Up!]
[You are now Level 85!]
[8 Stat Points Available]
DING!
[Congratulations! You and your allies have Slayed the Elven Dino-King! Collect your rewards and exit the Tangent in the next hour!]
I pushed Ihaka off of me. He was dead but his eyes still followed me.
Like Sgt Sayaad he'd become another ghost. Maybe he already was. Maybe I was hallucinating as I stood alone in a burning world.
Trees and Elven settlements crumbled, spitting up ash and sparks like a coughing dragon. The heat was nothing.
I headed for the Tangent exit.
I headed out to finish the job.
I kill Monsters. It's what I'm good at. It's what I was trained for. It's what the world needs. We're losing. I have to be uncompromising. I have to…. I…..
Focus.
Two more remained.