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  SEASON 3: ADAPT

  PART: 2

  . . .

  2 days have passed ever since the meeting of the Royal Guards and the cat. They were given individual small apartments after their successful mission of defending the Other Lands from the invasion of the shadow elementalists. stefan3B was laying down on his bed, eyes wide open, looking at the ceiling. He couldn't help but remember the events of the battle. The trial, DG, Daiana, the terror of seeing the sky falling down… they were all memories that haunted him every single day.

  Suddenly, dozens of portals start popping up around the Other Lands, bringing forth several demon bats and staining the air with thick smoke and red mist. On a random part of the field, between the residence of the wizards and the city, a cluster of portals opened close to each other. Orange came out of one of them. He looked around for a bit, then, minotaurs started coming out. Following them, imps, demons with a thin silhouette and red skin, started coming out as well. Orange looked down onto them with slight disgust but also sympathy before shifting his focus back onto the city. From these portals, a thicker red mist is being transported into Other Lands. The “mist” looked more like a bunch of particles. They floated up in the sky, but stopped at one point, slowly forming a glowing red blanket above the world.

  Ares was the first one to notice it as he was walking down the street. He took no time to activate his elementalist coat and launched a fire spear straight at it. The spear traveled far, easily hitting the blanket. Upon exploding, it left a hole that quickly reformed itself. Ares snarled with disgust at this weird thing above before he went to gather up everyone else as well. He rushed back to the apartment complex, boosting himself with flames as he leaped from building to building. Upon reaching the block, he quickly ran to stefan3B’s room first, since he was the closest one. He opened the door dramatically and screamed out “Wake up!” He panted hard before saying “Something bad is happening!”

  Radu, hearing him scream from the room next to him, woke up. Ares ran over to Darius's room too. He opened the door just as dramatically. “D-Dariu-” but he looked down and saw Darius struggling to do push-ups, sweating bullets. He couldn’t help but find him pathetic as he stared down at him for a few seconds.

  Radu came out of his room, sleepy, rubbing his eyes. “What is it, ‘mr charcoal’?” asked Radu, drowsy.

  Ares got a bit ticked off from his reaction. He turned to him suddenly “Tsk, look out the window, dirt face!” commanded Ares.

  Radu did as requested. The red blanket spread much more by the time Ares woke them up.

  “Oh… my…” whispered Radu to himself.

  stefan3B was still in his bed, laying down as if Ares didn't exist. Darius quickly got up from his embarrassing secret tough boy workout, and, panting, he walked over to the door.

  “What are we doing?” asked Darius, slightly sheepishly.

  Ares turned around to face him. He got his face up close to his and spoke in a deep tone as he looked at him dead in the eyes.

  “We're going to roll some heads on the ground. Let's go now.” continued Ares before grabbing Darius by the collar of his shirt, dragging him out. After he passed by stefan3B’s room he shouted “Hey! Stop laying around! Get up, 3B!”

  stefan3B slowly snapped out of his lost in thought phase and got up from his bed, quickly walking after Darius and Ares. After he got out of his room, he saw Radu in the hallway, still rubbing his eyes. stefan3B gestured at him to follow. “Come, let's go.”

  stefan3B followed the two as Radu was behind him. Once they were out of the hotel, Darius broke free from Ares’ grasp.

  “So, what should we do now?” asked stefan3B, as they were all four looking at the sky.

  “Could the grand wizards even know about any of this?” continued Darius.

  “Probably not, we should ask the cat-” resumed stefan3B, who was quickly cut off by Ares.

  “We do not need that sack of fur to help us. We are the Royal Guards, not him!” exclaimed Ares as he crossed his arms.

  stefan3B sighed before speaking once more “I'm still going to them. We need all the potential information we can gather.”

  Ares groaned heavily before talking over him “Fine… let's go see them…”

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  Radu, frowning, didn't want to go see the wizards again. “You guys go by yourselves. I'll go see what's happening there myself. I'm a high ranker after all.”

  Darius' eyes widened slightly at Radu’s confession. “Him? A high ranker? So soon…?” thought Darius to himself, jealous.

  stefan3B struggles a little, but manages to pop out his artificial sword mode. “Let's go now.” commanded stefan3B eagerly. The 3 boys took off straight to the altar of the grand wizard. Radu saw them run away. He turned his head slowly to see the center of the forming blanket.

  Out of nowhere, the entire ground starts shaking. 2 towers of raw, crude, red flesh started to rise up from the ground. Once fully grown, the entire sky turned bloodshot, as if the sun itself turned red, shining a crimson light all over the land. The landscape started to slightly look hellish.

  Screams could suddenly be heard around the city, as the demon bats started terrorizing the local elementalists. Radu sighs slightly, smiling, rubbing his forehead a bit before speaking with a bit of pride in his tone “I'm the one to defend the city again, am I?”.

  He instantly summoned a pillar of dirt to propel himself upwards. Once he was up, he instantly located his first target. He broke his pillar into small pieces, then, plucking them upwards, he kicked them individually into bats, nailing each strike, knocking them down like flies. After he runs out of pieces, he dives into the ground and rushes over to them underground.

  “Oversized bats? Who are we even fighting now?” questioned Radu to himself in his mind.

  The bats notice a great force coming from beneath the soil, but they can't tell what it could be. Stunned from receiving heavy blows into their bodies, they could only wish it wasn't something bad. Radu, like an underground shark, popped from beneath the concrete and grabbed one of the bat's legs and pulled it underground in his tunnel almost instantly. The bat vanished like cotton candy pressed into water, sending shocks of terror in the other bats, who were supposed to terrorize everyone. Radu left the bat in his tunnel, buried in the dirt, before going for his next target. The closest bat whimpered as it tried to fly again, but Radu jumped from beneath the ground right onto its back and slammed it down before forcing the ground to swallow it. All the other bats around quickly forced themselves to fly away, not caring about their mission anymore. Radu noticed their attempts of running away, so he got back to business as well. He summoned pieces of ground to pop up from the ground before kicking or punching them up into the air, sending them like deadly projectiles into the bats. This time however, the bats knew he would try to snipe them, so they purposely flew in confusing patterns, abusing Radu’s height disadvantage. 20 bats decided to gather up in a formation to all swarm upon Radu in an attempt to overwhelm him with a mighty tackle. They all dove down from the sky, rushing straight into him from behind. Radu took quick notice of this and rose a thick wall of dirt, pushing it with all his force into the bats before they'd make contact, turning the ones in front into a puddle of blood and organs from the speed they flew into the wall with. All the other bats started looking at each other. They were about 800 in total numbers, and this guy just destroyed 20 of them at the same time with no sweat drops. Fighting one on ones didn't work at all, grouping up was mass suicide, so their only last resort was to attempt to drain Radu of his stamina then slowly chip him off. Said and done, they started annoying him, taunting him mid air by sticking out their long tongues and giggling out loud. Radu, slightly infuriated, started launching dirt pieces at them once again. None of them collided with any bat, as they were fully focused on dodging them. Praying over him like vultures, they waited until he would get tired. But they waited… and waited… and kept on dodging… and dodging… and laughing… but he never stopped… the attacks never ran out. The entire zone was covered in dirt, but he didn't give a slight shit about this. All he wanted was to take them all down. The bats started growing tired, eventually even struggling to dodge his attacks. The civilians were evacuated long ago. They were just wasting their energy trying to exhaust this living war machine. Radu saw their growing exhaustion. Each time they would rest on top of a building, he would stare at them, dead in the eyes, letting them fully know without saying a single word that their graves are already dug, they only have to come down for a second.

  Meanwhile, stefan3B, Ares and Darius saw the cluster of portals and Orange who stood next to them, with his arms crossed, his face aimed towards the flesh towers. Ares remembered him instantly. He took no time to detour himself in order to face the clone. Orange looked behind for a second and saw Ares charging right at him, more mad than he could ever imagine him. His eyes widened, but he managed to flawlessly dodge Ares' charge into him. Ares summoned his classic yet trusty fire spear and began a barrage of thrusts into Orange, who dodged every single attack, before retaliating with a clean right hook, staggering Ares, making him fall a few steps back. Ares looked down and caressed his cheek, then instantly snapped, looking straight into his eyes. Orange suddenly had a great feeling of anxiety coursing down his spine, not seeing him as the same child he fought 2 years ago.

  The other 2 boys glare at Ares, who seems to be winning against Orange.

  “Should we join him, or…?” asked Darius.

  “No, nah, no… no, Ares can do it, more than likely…” answered stefan3B before starting to run towards the altar of the wizards again.

  It didn't take too long until they arrived there. The 3 grand wizards were already outside, pondering what could cause such a unique calamity. They noticed stefan3B and Darius rushing towards them.

  “Wizards!” stefan3B shouted. “What could have caused this?!” he said before panting as he looked up at them.

  The second wizard spoke, rubbing his white long beard as he did so “It seems like our world is being invaded by the forces of hell… The red energy in the sky, that has to be hell energy.”

  stefan3B cut off his words, desperate.

  “What?! Why would portals from hell just open-”

  Just then, he suddenly had a flashback… He remembered being thrown into a portal a few years ago, his instincts driving him to only one suspect.

  “Iulia…”

  Darius and the grand wizards all looked at him, confused.

  “Who?” Darius asked.

  “Darn it, I hope it’s her… I wanna feel the fabric of her skull crush, crumble beneath my hands’ muscles…” continued stefan3B, suddenly lost in rage.