He kept pressing Tymon to the ground with his entire weight, pushing his neck with his knee, and gathering his limbs like a swatted spider. The Gold that King extracted from Tymon was way higher than what Arcen thought he’d get away with. It coated almost an entire arm of his.
Tymon reeled on the ground, trying to wrestle away from Arcen. The man—the boy—was physically weaker than Arcen thought. Despite all his muscles, their weight difference worked in Arcen’s favor.
Holding him down, he wanted to see this lunatic’s numbers again. He’d seen his numbers a while ago and couldn’t risk it while getting chased in the spider domain.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
REVEAL
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
He only wanted to see the Aura. His other information would mostly be obscured and wouldn’t help.
╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ ACTIVATION SUCCESS ╰︶
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ AURA ─╮?
╰ 295,971,802 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
He’d lost a significant amount of Aura during their fight, but it couldn’t have happened in the spider domain. There was nothing he could do there to spend Aura on. This had to have happened the moment they burst out. Part of it had to be King siphoning his Aura as Gold. Part of it had to be some sort of skill or contract activations from him.
But the man was pinned to the ground. He hadn’t done anything useful while wasting almost ten million Aura. Arcen found this rather suspicious. It was almost like this boy wanted this outcome, to prolong the fight. King was more than happy to get more Aura to play with this lunatic. Arcen felt more apprehensive about it, but there was nothing he could do or say to stop these two from going at each other.
Tymon eventually found a way to sneak away from the King’s strong grip. He used Restore on himself as soon as he got the chance. It was a much higher rank than what Arcen had seen. He wasn’t sure if healing tendons needed that much. Either way, Tymon had the Aura to waste. He exploded with luminous white threads weaving in and out of his wounds and stood up as soon as his feet were back in order.
Arcen leapt away with the Gold that the King stole.
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ GOLD ─╮?
╰ 16,410,221 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ AURA ─╮?
╰ 2,424,054 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
THAT IS A LOT OF GOLD.
It was indeed more Gold than he’d ever held, but that barely made a dent in Tymon’s vast reserves. Shoving four fingers in his mouth, Arcen ingested a lot of Aura in a single gulp. His vision flickered, and he felt a high as if he mixed nicotine with caffeine and multiplied that hundredfold. He continued to eat a lot of Gold off his hand.
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ GOLD ─╮?
╰ 15,158,768 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ AURA ─╮?
╰ 8,681,319 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
He knew he had to consume all of the Gold rather than keeping it out in the open. Gold mixed with blood almost immediately. He could lose all of this if Tymon injures his right arm badly enough. It will all be absorbed into the blood—that in itself wasn’t bad, but that meant he’d be losing some of it to ‘heal’ the wound while he already has a superior Regenerate trait. He could also lose the fresh blood that Gold mixed with.
All considered, it was far better to ingest all of it—without wasting a single drop—straight through the mouth.
Tymon seemed to have the same idea. The boy was topless as always, and during their struggle, Arcen hadn’t seen a single drop of Gold anywhere on his gray skin. Granted, he’d not seen Tymon’s nether regions, but that seemed like an uncomfortable place to keep Gold anyway—especially if you wanted to eat some in a hurry.
Tymon started hopping in place with a menacing grin on his face. He was getting ready to attack again.
Arcen started dashing away as fast as he could, clearing tens of meters with his long leaps out of the chamber. This place was too open and too empty for him to deal with Tymon’s straight line dashes effectively. About halfway through, he heard rocks shattering behind him as Tymon came bursting through like a missile.
He located the nearest chamber veil and headed towards it as fast as possible before Tymon caught up. If he stayed still for half a second, the lunatic would be closing the gap.
He dodged to the right as Tymon dashed from the left, exploding the rocks that he was crashing into with no regard for the damage suffered. He seemed to have something equivalent or better than Arcen’s trait Sufferance that increased the pain tolerance.
Rather than using Mirage Blades to inflict damage, King started using them as invisible anchors to swing around obstacles and rapidly change directions. He avoided three serious blows from Tymon using this method—sinking the blade into the ground or rock as a quick pivot point to redirect momentum.
Suffering minimal damage due to this new strategy, he made it to the chamber veil. For a moment, he considered dropping a Worm Pit at the entrance. He abandoned the idea because that wouldn’t work as well as he wanted. Tymon wasn’t a dumb Maw that could be expected to fall into a cartoon trap like that.
Tymon had other plans just when Arcen was about to dash into the chamber veil. A rapid burst of fire bolts swept past him, bounced on the rock, and divided into smaller bolts, scattering like fireworks. The sparks singed flesh where they touched, quickly cooling down to metallic blobs. Arcen pivoted away from the chamber veil, shaking his limbs where super-hot metal pieces burned into his flesh.
He found a rock to dash behind to dodge the next burst, which happened the exact moment he started sliding on the ground towards it. Firebolts rained above him, bouncing off all the surfaces as they subdivided in each ricochet.
This was definitely one of his contracts that Arcen had never seen before.
In the fight with the nostrum team, he was using something more powerful than this. He could generate large pieces of blades made of enamel or bone. He’d driven one through the Queen to kill her. He used the top blunt edge to squash Karla to the ground, and he used a swipe to tear Leyland in half.
There was no fire involved in that fight at all. The shark boy was all about teet,h just like the oily girl was all about oil.
Thinking about it, he didn’t have anything like that. At the same time, he’d forgotten to interrogate Elena on the source of her powers. She had either dodged the question or never given him a direct answer. It was always a mystery how she could summon oil at such high pressures seemingly for an unlimited duration.
The same thing applied to Tymon. He didn’t use his teeth blades like they were reusable. He was using them like an unlimited paper cutter.
There was something between these two that Arcen had no information about. King was interested as well.
I WONDER WHAT THEY HAVE.
As he dodged another barrage rolling behind a boulder, he remembered what Tymon said at the start of this fight.
That he wouldn’t use his domain if Arcen doesn’t use his.
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If his teeth's powers were missing from the fight, that could only mean it counted as something to do with his domain. Assuming the same thing with Elena, her oil-drenched attacks were part of her domain that she was so eager to keep secret.
Comparing these two to what he’d seen so far, King pinpointed the exact piece of information that he was lacking. Neither he nor Arcen knew enough about domains. He knew Red Court was one, and he knew Zuhara’s spider cocoon was one. Both had to do with an Area of effect, or imposing some rule within a confined space.
It didn’t make sense how Tymon and Elena could use domain-flavored attack methods without imposing their areas first.
Thinking about it even further, Zuhara could do the same.
She was using her spider threads effortlessly when she came to his rescue in the chamber with the black snails. She could shoot threads almost exactly like Elena could shoot high-pressure beams of oil.
King had nothing like that with the Red Court. He couldn’t even imagine what a Red Court attack would look like. The closest thing he’d seen was the Maw using it as a flashlight from its mouth. Besides freezing and paralyzing the target, it hadn’t done much damage by itself.
THIS IS USELESS. WE CANNOT USE RED COURT ANYTHING. HE WILL USE HIS DOMAIN WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.
That was a major disadvantage. Tymon had already defeated the Red Court once. Arcen had no idea what his shark-toothed domain would even look like. Pushing all of these to the back of his mind to think about later, he focused on getting out of the chamber.
He had so many pieces of metal embedded in his flesh that he couldn’t even shake them off anymore. He had to crash into something to dislodge some of the pieces so that his flesh could properly regenerate.
Noticing some Gold sinking into the wounds on his right hand, He started eating Gold again, trying to ingest every bit as soon as possible. The high was almost unbearable as he stripped a long line off his forearm, but he could manage it while dodging Tymon’s attacks.
He dashed between two rocks as another burst exploded, this time, covering his Gold hand with the rest of his body. Metal pieces burned his back, sinking into him like hot nails.
Catching a glimpse of Tymon lurking above at terminal speed, Arcen decided to go with the same attack he used once already.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
PREDICT
????
PREDICT
????
PREDICT
????
PREDICT
PREDICT
PREDICT
PREDICT
…(11)
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
It was a waste to predict more than a few seconds ahead. He needed to deliver damage to Tymon in shorter bursts. His eyes brushed over the boy’s knees and ankles.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ SKILL ╰︶
????
DETONATE
????
DETONATE
????
DETONATE
????
DETONATE
DETONATE
DETONATE
DETONATE
DETONATE
DETONATE
…(121)
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
Tymon landed in a heap again, having missed a jump when his knee gave out in a series of Detonates.
Taking the opportunity, Arcen dashed back to the chamber veil, intentionally running into rock walls along the way to shake the metal pieces off his flesh.
Having shed most of the metal pieces, he jumped into the chamber veil.
The chamber that he entered was one that he remembered only too well. This was the one with red strings on the floor. The chamber in which he died once. He didn’t have to do a lot to disturb the inhabitants this time.
Jumping through the tangles of red strings, he ate more and more Gold off his forearm. The creatures in this chamber—those kiwi fruit-textured gigantic bulbs—sensed his presence as his Aura increased almost twice as much as when he entered.
Tymon riled the whole chamber the moment he arrived, red strings flashed all around him like a light show, red glowing dots darting directly towards Tymon and him. The chamber floor shook as the bulbs came from all around them, bouncing higher with each jump.
Arcen finished eating all the Gold on his forearm. The wounds had already healed, and he had almost the same or a larger amount on his upper arm to go through.
A bulb came at him from the dark, dragging a tangle of red strings behind it. Dashed away, running into another one. Ripping it with the Mirage Blades, he kicked off its bouncy surface, propelling himself faster towards the chamber wall to find the exit.
This wasn’t a good chamber to fight Tymon with either. It was emptier than the one he came from, with only tall structures being jumping bulbs that he couldn’t hide behind.
Tymon exploded with the same contract, hitting every single bulb around him in a wide arc as the ricocheting fire bolts riddled what remained when the bulbs popped like thick balloons. Arcen managed to dodge a fire bolt barrage thrown his way by dashing behind a particularly fat bulb that ate the brunt of the attack. It exploded in a thick gas cloud.
All of the popping bubbles filled the chamber with a pungent, deadly gas. He could feel his insides regenerate as he breathed in this new toxic fog. Tymon would have the same problem, he thought—until a great gust of wind swept away from his direction.
HOW MANY CONTRACTS DOES HE HAVE?
He found the chamber wall straight ahead and bounced through two Jartera bulbs to get there faster. Tymon had the same idea, following him closely behind, catching up much faster.
Out of options mid-air, Arcen wanted to create a distraction. Focusing on Tymon’s manic face, he activated a contract to slow him down.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ CONTRACT ╰︶
????
BALL LIGHTNING
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
Tymon covered his face with his forearms as the bright ball of light popped into existence right in front of his face. He went stiff as the first thunderbolt electrocuted him. Going down, he used some sort of attack Arcen hadn’t seen before. He felt three whips of wind slamming his lower left leg.
His lower leg went flying into the darkness as he landed. Regeneration took care of the wound immediately, bones growing again as he hopped around on one leg.
Whatever contract Tymon used had cut through him like butter. All three slashes had landed with perfect precision, just like when Arcen used chained Predicts. It was likely that Tymon was using the same thing that he figured out for himself, but compensating for Multivariate with a much more powerful and costly single Predict.
King used the remaining leg to dash towards the chamber wall, but it wasn’t fast enough to get away from the barrage of fire bolts that spattered on the ground before him. Arcen barely managed to get out of the mess of sparks without losing the other leg. Though it hurt like electric shocks, he had to use the half-regenerated stump of a leg to stab into the ground with the bone to pivot with.
Tymon kept firing more firebolts at regular intervals, preventing Arcen from getting to the chamber wall. Some of the stray firebolts hit Jartera bulbs, which were now hopping all around them, gathering from all directions.
Some of the ones that got hit with firebolts exploded in thick clouds of pungent gas that momentarily acted as a smokescreen. As two of them popped in quick succession, Arcen dashed and dove into the thick clouds left behind.
He missed a sharp gust of wind aimed at his hip. It grazed by, slashing his upper thigh.
Tymon followed him into the gas clouds, spewing firebolts from his hands in all directions. Tens of Jartera bulbs exploded, creating a sort of permanent fog around them.
Leg fully regenerated, Arcen burst out of the thickest pungent cloud. He felt sick, gas still filling his lungs. It burned his nostrils like a nasty cigarette. If it wasn't for King's resilience and focus, he would not made it out.
He heard Tymon cursing and coughing inside the gas cloud.
Taking advantage of the situation, he ran the rest of the way to the chamber wall, locating the glowing veil behind the Jartera bulbs jumping in the dark. A series of loud popping sounds came from behind him as he reached the veil. Tymon had been swarmed, and he'd used something to kill about thirty bulbs at once. Whatever he did wasn't visible through the thick gas clouds.
IF HE HITS ME WITH THAT, IT WOULD BE TROUBLE.
Dashing through the veil, Arcen knew why Tymon hadn't and would not be using his most powerful contracts. The lunatic wanted this fight to drag on. He wanted to dance as long as possible, escalating his toolkit only as much as needed.
He was playing with his prey. Just like King played with the Maw.
He was at his weakest, although now he had more Aura than he’d ever had.
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ GOLD ─╮?
╰ 9,025,094 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ AURA ─╮?
╰ 39,349,679 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
He had stolen almost eighty million worth of Aura from Tymon. It was absurd that he was even able to do it. It was all but certain this lunatic let him have it to make things more fun for himself.
Either way, he knew there was no way out of this fight without spending a lot of it. Tymon was escalating with these small nudges, like cutting off the leg just to show him that he could.
He noticed the large amount of Gold that he still had on himself. This was definitely not good. He had more than half of what he stole still clinging to his body. Taking the momentary lull in the battle, he started eating Gold again as he entered the new chamber.
He had to get it all converted to Aura as fast as possible. There was no telling what limb he could lose next now that Tymon introduced a limb-slicing attack into the mix.
The shapes in this new chamber started shifting as he dashed along, sucking Gold off his bicep. Taking a quick look around, this didn’t seem like a chamber that he’d passed through on his way up. He’d gone through a different path.
He knew this because he wouldn’t have forgotten the sort of creatures now slowly turning towards him in the distance. They looked like giraffes but with three sharp legs. They had crab-like exoskeletons and ranged anywhere from ten meters to fifty meters in height.
They had all detected him like he was a firework in a dark sky. He had a good idea why that was the case as soon as Tymon burst forth into the chamber, still coughing from the gas clouds.
The creatures riled up even further, moving through all sorts of obstacles like three-legged spiders on crack.
THEY REACT TO AURA.
Arcen slurped most of the Gold on his bicep as he dodged the first creature that charged at him from the left. He still had a little bit left on the underside. Thinking ahead, he rubbed the underside of his upper arm on his tentacles. There was more than enough skin there to store and hide a lot of gold in the crevices between his tentacles.
The last bit would’ve been a couple of million Aura at best. It was wise to keep the ‘survival’ Aura tucked away in case he ran out of everything. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about tower sickness.
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ GOLD ─╮?
╰ 455,819 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ AURA ─╮?
╰ 82,196,054 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
Finally feeling confident, he turned around, dashing with his back towards the creatures, facing Tymon, who was now flying at him in a straight line with a manic smile on his face.
King knew exactly what to do.
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ CONTRACT ╰︶
????
FABRICATE WEAKNESS
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
Arcen had almost forgotten he even had this contract. It had been ages since he first used it. The creatures that were heading towards him jolted for a moment and started heading towards Tymon, ignoring Arcen completely.
╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ ATTRIBUTE INCREASED ╰︶
????
DECEPTION
[8] +1
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
TIME TO HAVE SOME FUN.
Next chapter on Friday.
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