Fabby and Tenzai just found a cave, and after releasing the musculars to roam nearby, they entered the cave, hoping to hide inside. Luckily, there was a water stream and many plants growing inside because there were holes in the ceiling and enough light reached inside.
However, there was already a hooded man, dressed in a green cloak decorated with silver, resting inside. Seeing how he wasn’t wearing a uniform, he could be a foot disciple or even an inner disciple, so the two of them turned to leave.
“You can rest here,” just then his voice reached their ears, “if you want.”
They didn’t think he was awake, but after hearing his words, they couldn’t just leave, so they sat on the opposite end of the stream.
“I’m Tenzai
The next morning.Fabby was the first one to wake up in surprise. On one hand, she felt angry at herself that she had fallen asleep, but on the other hand, the blankets made her think.Numo was nowhere to be seen, but Tenzai was still snoring like a pig, having fully wrapped himself in the blanket. In fact, in his sleep, he had rolled quite a distance and was currently right next to the pond.Fabby tried to wake him up, but no matter how much she patted or pushed him, he showed no response. Eventually, she was fed up with it and then pushed him into the pond, and it worked wonders. Tenzai woke up like a cat. Though it took him some work to get out of the blanket, he eventually brought his head out and breathed.To her surprise, most of the swelling on his face was gone.After eating a papaya, they came out of the cave. They clapped thrice, but the musculars didn’t come. They tried it a few times, but there was no change.“You think they ran away?” Fabby wondered.“If they came across
In the Green Valley Inn, located in the southern border of Lero mountain.Dozens of groups occupied the seats, leaving only a few empty. Many foot disciples and outer disciples were enjoying food, alcohol, and beverages.Beast cores was the only currency taken in this inn.Fabby, Tenzai, and Gossini were seated at a corner table. Edgar, on the other hand, was at the main desk, ordering food. He just paid one strength core. After licking the core, the innkeeper, an elderly man in a leafy hat, said, “Mm, what’s the order?”“Four plates of chicken, and four mugs of honeyed lemon.”“That will cover it,” his eyes fell on Edgar. “What’s your name?”
The musculars were not allowed beyond the Green Valley Inn, so they had to be parked at the inn, and they would soon be delivered back to their respective stations they were rented from.All the mountains behind the inn and between the Great Eye were called the Worry Chains because they often worried the travelers for more than one reason.Fabby and Co were strolling along a road that had flowery gardens on either side.Fabby was asking Edgar to give Tenzai a new shirt because the current one was torn at places. However, neither Edgar nor Tenzai agreed to that. Edgar didn’t want to give another shirt for free, especially because Tenzai was just being too careless. Tenzai, on the other hand, just felt that a shirt would only come in his way.“Why are you sayin
The redback squirrels were feasting upon the barks of different trees. Whether there was dirt or mud or dung or gel or gum, they didn’t care. They just ate the whole barks, not just the insides, which showed how hungry they were in this winter season.Each of these squirrels were more the size of regular house cats, and after they had their fill, they roamed around, torturing other animals by jumping on their backs and skinning them alive. They often triggered the rhinos and the elephants that had bigger backs and took more time to fall let alone roll on the ground.When there were no beasts or creatures in their territories, they attacked each other and skinned themselves. So most of these adult squirrels had redbacks, which is where their name came from.Currently, as Fabby and Co were entering the Redback Z
The next dawn.At the edge of the Redback Zone, Fabby and Co had camped from the previous night.Fabby was the only one who slept throughout the night.Tenzai didn’t sleep at all, and he fully absorbed four strength cores overnight, and thanks to that, the wound on his arm given by a garden leech mostly healed.“Not bad. The cores of these squirrels seem to give multiple different boosts. I’m glad healing is one of them. Now I can hunt more of their kind, haha!” he laughed out loud, though not for long as no one else laughed along with him. “Ahem, anyway, I might not be able to use drive, but what about it, huh? I can still become stronger in other ways and will one day beat the living crap out of the Grebb family and then conquer the world
Leesa, who was watching them from the sky, was bored and a bit frustrated as she observed Tenzai. “I can’t believe I’m watching a trashy foot disciple train.” She painstakingly waited a few more seconds. “Ah, screw this. I’m going in!” Her swan dove straight down.“Mm?” Tenzai smashed a rabbit away and lifted his head. “What the…” A bird was coming down at him fast, but before the bird even came, Leesa jumped down and unsheathed her sword with a wide grin on her face. Red drive covered her blade.“Enemy!” Tenzai shouted.“Crescent Descent!” A slash of her sword sent a curving slash.Tenzai roared and jumped up and swept his leg at the incoming attack. “Colossal Kick!&rd
“Skull Cracker!” Reud arrived at the scene with an attack aimed at Tenzai’s head.If Tenzai had failed to hear Reud coming and didn’t roll out of the ax’s line, his head would’ve gotten split into pieces.Reud, however, continued to attack in the same manner. Tenzai continued to roll.Soon, Tenzai ended up running into a tree.Reud smiled through his eyes and swung the ax down, but this time Tenzai rolled in reverse and dodged the ax again. unlike the previous times, Reud wasn’t expecting that, so he was just a bit late in continuing his motion to resume attacking. Tenzai made use of this time pretty well by spinning on his back and kicking in Reud’s face by jumping up on his hands. The trees weren’t dry, but their leaves still burned when Leesa’s hot slashes cut the trees.“Hey, you…” Leesa said in a demanding tone. “Why don’t you show me your face? If you’re less pretty than me, then I might go easy on you.”Gossini slowly raised her hand, making Leesa think she was gonna reveal her face, but then Gossini only showed her middle finger.Leesa’s face warped in rage. “Since you want to die so badly, I’ll give you just that.” Leesa lunged at her, thrusting her sword. “Steel Sting!” Her sword whistled through the wind.“Floating Swan Arts…” Gossini moved her arms in an elegant fashion before meeting the point of the sword with her palm thrust. WHIT 158 - RISING HEAT
Edgar woke up, only to find himself in a pool of mud. He could feel that he was being healed by fish that were swimming in the mud and were nibbling at his skin.At first sight, it might look like they were eating him, but they were actually taking away the negative energy from his body, though he was not able to feel that.Edgar tried to grab one of those fishes, but they turned into pure mud, pleasantly surprising him.He looked at Fabby who was sitting in the distance, by the cliff. “What are these fishes, sis?”“Elder Gavin made them with his drive. He said they can suck away impurities from your body and make you stronger,” Fabby explained. “He said even your drive will get smoother and faster afterward. Also, the negative effect the beast cores have on our bodies can also be reversed, or so he said.”“Such a thing is possible with drive?” Edgar was both surprised and doubtful. “These fish are biting me, but I don’t feel any pain.”“Yeah. Just stay there until all those fish are
The eagle brought the siblings to a mountain range and dropped them next to Gavin who was weaving gloves with drive.He wasn’t surprised to see the position the siblings were in.“Here,” Gavin handed the gloves to the eagle, and it put the gloves on its feet and then screeched in happiness.“Haha, you like them, huh,” Gavin smiled. “They are durable as I knit them with my drive. So, don’t lose them.”Scree~!The eagle replied in a confident voice and then began to walk around happily in its new footwear.“They look like gloves, but they should be called socks, I guess?” Gavin wondered. “Ah, well, whatever…”Gavin then looked at the siblings, out of whom only Fabby was still conscious. She was trying to sit up, and it was taking her a while.“You don’t seem to have any external injuries. You are probably tired from using too much energy,” Gavin said. He sent a bullet of energy into her forehead, which didn’t hurt her but went straight into her brain and melted into it. This suddenly ga
“Surfing Strike!’ Edgar’s foot viciously struck Ryu’s face and sent him flying high like a rotating paper fan. Any normal person would have had their head separated from their shoulders from that kick, but Ryu’s neck was flexible as well as sturdy as rubber.Ryu grabbed his head and stopped it from spinning before somersaulting and landing in the distance.“Huh?” Fabby was quite shocked by it. “Why is he not dead? Is he even human?”“His body is a bit special, you see,” Anarga smirked and then looked at Ryu. “But, hey, how could you get hit by that brat like that? You should be glad that there isn’t anyone else around, or it would have brought such shame.”Blood leaked from Ryu’s ruptured upper lip. He licked it and faintly smiled. “It’s been a while since I tasted my own blood.” His eyes turned red.“Oh, crap…” Anarga skipped backward. “You guys brought a disaster on yourself. When he goes into that frenzy mode, he’s unstoppable. Even I wouldn’t dare stand next to him because he can
Anarga squeezed Edgar’s chest down, but when Edgar saw Ryu step toward his sister, he uttered, “Thunder Knight…”The ground beneath them cracked, and the air around them crackled. The very cliff itself vibrated in resonance with Edgar’s heartbeat.Anarga lost her balance just for a second. A double-edged lightning spear appeared in Edgar’s hand, and he thrust it right through her abdomen.She thought it would leave a hole in her, but it didn’t. However, it then electrocuted her to the point her clothes were half-burnt, and she looked like a semi-roasted grizzly bear.Ryu immediately clawed through the middle section of the spear and then took Anarga and jumped a few feet away. “How could you be so careless?”Anarga fell on one of her knees. Blood leaked from both corners of her mouth, even though she tried not to leak any blood.“Does it hurt that much?” Ryu asked.She gave him a glare.“I see…” Ryu then looked at Edgar, who was rising off the ground without the use of his hands, as th
Anarga’s body went into the rock, causing cracks all around her to spread for over thirty feet.Ryu’s feet were still locked by the earthen boots that Fabby had created, but he forcefully broke through them and whipped his leg at Edgar. “Dragon Knock!”“Ngh!” Edgar raised his left arm and blocked the kick with his forearm.Ryu’s foot forced its way through Edgar’s flame drive and struck his forearm and hit a nerve, sending a jolt of shock through to Edgar’s brain. On top of that, Edgar’s forearm got dislocated near the elbow.Ryu’s kick still sent a gust of energy over into the distance, which ended up blasting away a part of the cliff, shocking Fabby and Edgar.Fabby’s heart shook at that moment because if Edgar hadn’t deflected that kick, he wouldn’t have just got his arm dislocated. It was Edgar’s hunter-like instinct of parrying the kick at the last second was what saved him from experiencing a crushing defeat.Ryu didn’t even use drive. Whether he could even use drive or not, Edg
“Is this the best you can do?” Ryu said disappointedly. “I know you can do better, bald brat.” He treated Edgar as nothing more than a kid because he was much older than him. “Why don’t you show me what you got, or I’ll kill this bald girl.”Edgar, who was bleeding profusely from the chest, felt his soul stirring madly after hearing Ryu’s words.“Don’t listen to him,” Fabby said in a low voice. “We are not their match. Fighting them will only put us at a disadvantage. And there’s no one else here to stop the fight in case things go bad. It doesn’t benefit us in any way no matter how I look at it. Moreover, you are already badly injured.”Fabby’s words made total sense, but there was one thing that she didn’t consider. Edgar just couldn’t digest let alone accept the fact that Anarga Utsav had used her wind attack and pushed Fabby off the cliff. What if Fabby died from that?Edgar utterly disliked Anarga as well as Ryu. He didn’t want them to leave with a sense of victory.“Sis,” Edgar
“AHHH!” The siblings cried out in horror, mostly because of the pure shock value. Their eyes sprang out of the sockets. They totally didn’t expect that the eagle would do such a thing.Edgar was about to use his skill, but Fabby quickly said, “No, wait.”“Huh? Wait for what?” Edgar asked her back as winds viciously whipped at their faces.“Just wait,” she replied. As both of them kept getting closer to the ground, Edgar’s heart raced fast. “Screw this. I’m-” he was saying, but then the eagle suddenly came swooping down and caught both of them when they were about 100ft close to the ground and took them away with him.Edgar and Fabby held onto its talons so they wouldn’t fall.The eagle stopped by another mountain top and acted as if everything was okay.“You think I’ll thank you for saving our asses, you shitty bird!” Fabby punched the eagle hard in the face. “I thought I was going to die! You were the cause for scaring me near to death.”Even Edgar looked angry. His heart jumped in
Coming back to the present.The eagle had no idea who Edgar was, so Fabby had to do all the work except for flying. “Where is he?”She was worried for many reasons.The eagle even flew over the colosseum grounds, and she shouted for him, “Are you there, Eddie?”“Who’s that?” some masters and disciples wondered as she wasn’t clearly visible from below. “How rude of her to be flying over this place when the competition is still going on?”“He’s not here, either,” Fabby told the eagle to keep flying.As she kept looking around, she noticed someone bathing in an open pond. Just when she looked at him, he also looked up. She remembered his face mask. This was the same guy she met in a cave not long ago.Numo was not wearing a shirt right now, and his body was pristine white. It wasn’t muscular, but it still looked athletic and toned. It was very attractive, especially because he was a tall man.“Ahem,” Fabby looked away.After the eagle flew out of his sight, Numo continued rubbing his body
Months turned to years.Even though working in the fields had become a daily habit, so did the body pains. If not feet, then legs; if not legs, then back; if not back, then something else in the body took the turn. And by the time they got home, they were pretty tired, yet they wouldn’t be able to eat what they had produced or found.They were only given a limited amount of food such as corn or grains so they could make soup and live with it. The same plain soup with no vegetables in them whatsoever waited for them every night. And they were not paid anything else for their labor, for they were forced to work for the rest of their lives. There was no contract. Nothing. They were pretty much treated like cattle, or maybe even worse, with the only difference being their ability to talk. No matter how they were treated, they still worked hard, for most of them had reasons, be it their children and families.Fabby had Edgar, and Edgar had Fabby. Everyone had someone else they were willing