He opened his eyes to see the stern face of Kage looking down at him.
"You did well in there, your skill is quite destructive, with just the right amount of essence you would be a force to be reckoned with. The nice thing is this ia an instance dungeon. In this world instance dungeons can't kill those who enter and any creature you kill in the instance dungeon has their essence drained and automatically added to yours, this makes them the perfect places to build up strength. Try again." Kage said as he grabbed the crystal gem and they were teleported back into the dungeon.
Alsvid immediately located the open area and made a beeline for it. He made it just in time to hear the rustling again. He payed attention carefully, then, a pincer came from the side just fast enough for him to bearly react as he fired an essence burst in that direction destroying a large part of the vegetation. Just like before, the scorpion managed to get away with injuries but unlike before, he didn't blind fire in desperation, instead he started paying close attention to the one moving the slowest as it was the injured one. As he payed close attention to the injured one he forgot about the other two as two quick strikes hit him and just like before, his vision darkened a little and returned to normal.
"Huh, wait is that the shield that I saw in my skill set, kage did say it would activate automatically if I was in danger so, maybe." He said to himself.
He decided to test this theory by just standing still, soon a pincer came out of the vegetation towards him, he saw it and decided to pay attention to himself and just as he thought, a black essence shield appeared just a second before the pincer hit him and took the hit then the sound of glass shattering followed as the shield crumbled.
"There goes my only protection, but last time the third one got through, am guessing the essence I got from the scorpion I killed helped me." He said to himself as he started looking for the weakened scorpion.
Two more bursts and a punctured thigh later, the scorpion was dead. He tried to look for his next target but just like before, when the first one died their attacks became simultaneous and he quickly died again. By his third try his shield took three hits and survived while he managed to kill the first scorpion a third time, this left him in perfect condition to dodge the first simultaneous strike but lost to the second ones as one went for his leg while the other went for his head. He jumped trying to avoid the head and ended up getting stabbed in the chest as the poison and blood loss killed him. He was training.
For this next part we focus on a different person.
A person could be seen moving through the forest. He was a tall young man with crimson red hair and eyes. He had well defined muscles which are hidden nicely behind his clothing which were strangely all red. It was a simple t-shirt and trousers with some sneakers but it worked.
Not far from him another person was heading in his direction, from the look of things, they didn't know each other. An unmatched beauty with a bountiful body. She had ocean blue hair with a tint of silver grey strands, light aquamarine pupils and a fair, beautiful face.
They soon saw each other as they both stopped in their tracks. These two people had been in this strange world for months now and each hadn't met anyone until now. The objective flashed before their eyes as they both wondered if the other was hostile. The boy lifted his hand but before he could do anything the girl threw a column of smoke in his direction.
Having been in this dangerous world for so long the girl had grown unaccustomed to friendly gestures as she took a simple wave for aggression and struck first. Acting quickly, the boy moved to the side as his fight or flight response kicked in. He started running around in the trees to disorient the girl, the moment she lost focus, he conjured blood from seemingly thin air and shaped it into a disk before throwing it at the girl who quickly dodged it. The disk made a large cut on a nearby tree. The girl using her opportunity threw out three balls of black smoke that revolved around each other. Not knowing what the smoke was the boy didn't take any chances as he quickly dodged the balls as they burst on a nearby tree, she then made a sneaky move as the scattered smoke behind the boy took the shape of arrows for more speed and flew towards the distracted boy.
The boy managed to sense the attack and vanished into the trees. The girl started frantically looking around as from random directions, blood disks flew out aiming for the girl. What made the situation worse was that these disks changed direction and retargeted her when she dodged them. After a while they started to fill up the small space and eventually one grazed the girls cheek. She then released a huge amount of smoke in all directions as the small area and beyond were covered in the smoke. The boy jumped into a tree branch just in time but this revealed his position. The tables then turned as the attacks that would usually come from the girl were now coming from random directions as the excess smoke started taking shape at random to attack the boy. He had tried at one point to block with his blood disks only for the disk to dissolve into normal blood again upon first contact, then he lost full control of the blood when it fell to the ground as if it just disappeared. The boy's eye started glowing red as he prepared for trouble.
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[Helpful Information]
Apparition: Murk
It is an apparition that allows the user to control intangible black smoke that dimensionally devours anything it touches.