496 CHPT 496: Impact
The crowd had long since exited the minds of many. No more human screams and shouts. No gamblers lust in the air. The smell of coin and ale diluted by sweat was like wispy scented ghosts of slurring greed. Gone under the Sunlandian Sun. Burned out like stranded Vampires. Gone in the face of what goriness lay ahead.
The grass told a story. Claw marks. Foul smelling fluids that turned the blades into shimmering collages of black and red like glowing gasoline. Slime. Impact dents. There were monsters from every corner of the world. Just ahead. Deeper into the Tangent Biome.
Silence fell. They already discussed their plan. Their group got a terrible Bane selection. Warren was without a bow. Ursula lost her axes. Maris couldn't take ten steps without tripping. Claude was banned for his first event domination and the riots it caused.
That means leadership was changed. And for that, Isaac suddenly felt a new level of responsibility considering the fact that the entirety of their most combative and supportive potential resided in him.
Sometimes relativity was a blessing.
He no longer felt the pressure of his father watching. Of the Lion, judging beside his Sunlandian supporters.
"Why don't you look scared?"
Isaac looked over at Ursula. Her freckles looked more prominent below her honey gold eyes. Maybe it was the paleness of her face in those moments. Or the brightness of the sun. She cracked her knuckles.
"I am. Stop playing, you know I am…." Isaac reiterated, "But come on. This is fear we all know. Fear before battle is good."
Warren nodded as he was suddenly seen leaning over Isaac to join their huddle, "It means we're alive. Let's stay that way. Claude's already an emotional wreck. If we die... well, let's just not."
Isaac slapped Warrens shoulder and grunted loud, uncaring of the students he got a rise out of. Or how Warren rubbed his shoulder.
Ursula understood the action and turned so he could smack her upper back muscles, waking up the skin and bones with quick heavy impacts.
They did it all the time before weightlifting. Especially before personal records….. and surviving the event, would absolutely be a personal record.
Maris held out her arms for Ursula to pat down and slap as Isaac did.
He ended it slapping his shield with his cutlass.
When the Announcer spoke it seemed like the outside world returned. Suddenly Isaac realized all the students staring back at them with noses and lips twisted in disgust.
Isaac looked at his friends, "Mess Hall all over again…"
Ursula laughed.
"SPECTATORS! Watch for your respective nations, things are about to get messy. BEGIN!"
There was hesitance in mind, but nothing of the sort in body. Especially for the Third Years, they were hard wired to charge headlong into deadly summits. This was second nature to them.
Isaac almost got swallowed by the horde as he took off.
They stayed in formation. Tights rows and columns— even with the difference in speed they understood a stampede helped no one.
As the students began entering the Tangent Scenario grounds held inside the massive spherical glass dome, the formation shifted. The outer students slowed and fell to the back.
Others began flying on heavy winds to get ahead. Isaac almost stepped on a student slithering on the sanded grass floor over a focused stream of water with a massive cobra in tow.
Once inside the students fanned out. The third years got to work with a professional nature that was both impressive and lack luster inside the forested jungle biome.
Archers grabbed high points in trees and hills nearby to scan the area. Isaac could almost feel the pressure in their pulled bowstrings.
Team leaders yelled orders and commands while firing off blasts of fire and lightning. He could only assume it was to attempt to get a rise out of the monsters hidden within. They'd long since gone silent.
"Ok should be we be like them?" Warren asked.
"No." Isaac said. "We don't know what subtleties to look for. It would be like a child trying to copy a professional artist to be honest."
"This isn't art. Warren get in a tree." Maris retorted before tripping on her lead feet.
"I think life imitates art more often than not though…"
Ursula helped her up.
Warren ran up to a nearby hill. He searched beside another with his daggers held firmly.
Isaac didn't need future telling acquired skills to know he wouldn't find anything.
No one did.
"Let's get some pressure and recon going. SLOW AND STEADY!" Someone ahead yelled before slowly batches of students fanned out and entered the Tangent Scenario grounds.
Isaac pushed onward, "Ok we'll go straight ahead. It's not the highest ground but it's the easiest lay of the land. We can get general locations of each Monster by earshot."
"Alright. And if anything tries to dive us I can slip them up and ice the hill." Ursula added as they moved.
"This is so fuc—" Warren was cut off as someone leaped over him.
They all looked up just in time to see Chase soar over them with his God Form activated. An aura of cloven footed legs shimmered around his own. Glowing antlers sprouted from his forehead. When he landed grass blades rose and danced around him as if he were a tornado of pressure and wind.
Conroy and Stella yelled after him.
"-CK THIS TOURNAMENT! I can't face my rival!? AND NOW HES BANNED! ... AND the enemy is playing HIDE AND SEEK! ARE YOU STUPID! WHAT IS THIS! COME OUT!" Chase snorted and stomped his feet like a raging stag.
"Chase!" Ursula yelled at him as they jogged behind him, "You're embarrassing your sister…. And us!"
He didn't listen. He just kept galloping and yelling into the nothingness. Each heavy stomp shook the earth. It was then that a student yelled. And Isaac realized they were way ahead of everyone.
"Got hollow ground ahead!"
"HOLLOW FLOOOR!"
"HOLLOW SPOT!"
Bunches of student teams yelled out varying calls all with the same meaning.
The ground. It wasn't what it appeared to be.
Ursula who stood beside Isaac had stopped and dropped down to one knee, sniffing the floor like a dog. It was so bizzare, he would've remembered to ask her about it afterwards if Chase didn't stomp a final time and collapse the floor.
CLSHHHH!!!
An all too perfect line erupted through the Tangent biome, ripping up grass and shallow roots. Trees split where they stood over the line and tipped over. Blasts of fire and massive blades cleaved them down to safe size. But that was all for nothing as the line spread with the two halves of the Tangent grounds falling inwards like cabinet doors.
Everyone fell into ungodly levels of darkness, but not before noticing the Monsters break free of their chains that hung from the underside of the crumbling ground.
Isaac's stomach dropped with the fall. His adrenaline rose with the creatures. Behind him the previous student with the Bane of Doubled Weight rocketed towards the bottom of the blackness like a thrown anvil. He tried to scream but was swallowed up in a chaotic splash. The sight of his was blurred and…..
"WATER!" Isaac yelled but the sounds of students screaming and fighting off Monsters as they fell was worlds louder.
Something zipped past him.
Ursula growled.
Another student next to them yelped before a sound of flesh tearing filled the silence.
He only remembered one creature with wings. The Yokai Hybrid. Like a serpent-man with wings straight out of hell.
Isaac flipped around with his back to the ocean depths below. Rocketing closer by the second. He raised his hands to the sky, superheating and focusing the fire in his palms until they were steaming balls of light.
Suddenly he could see. Above him students fell, others flew above it all like gods, dipping and dodging the array of horrifying monsters attempting to frenzy kill them midair.
The Yokai Hybrid flew as if it was swimming, grabbing students mid dash and eating them carelessly before taking on the next.
A Sunlandian Fire Troll dug his steaming claws into a far wall and hung like a gorilla, spitting streams of fire into the dark to give Isaac and the others a flash fire viewing of pure massacre.
Isaac couldn't think. What was there to do? The water was closer than ever. All he could do was brace himself.
His flames died down. The last thing he saw was a small hand grab his own before his back hit ice.
"OH SHIT! OH MY GODS!" Warrens hands glowed with the use of his element.
Isaac stood on the ice, almost falling again as they smashed into the water with a loud splash.
He brought out a flame.
They stood in a ball of water. Inside a floor of Ice held them up. Ursula crouched over it, maintaining the thickness while Maris kept up the water sphere within the turbulent chaos.
It should've been smooth sailing from that point but a hundred other students splashed into the water using their own powers to the fear stricken maximum.
It was like a light show viewed through a crystalline blue lens. Arcs of lightning swirled through the water, colliding with shifting plates of ice and creating small underwater hurricanes that spun the students and shredded monsters.
Inside the liquid ball they spun and rolled like marbles in a funnel.
"Isaac! FOCUS!" Ursula roared.
Isaac upped his flame and looked away from the drowning warriors.
"We're sinking." Warren managed, "I can't use my element correctly because everyone else can't!"
"Let us." Isaac said.
"We can't do this forever, bro!?" Warren complained.
"We won't. There's a Fire Troll above us and everything else is water…. Already being superheated. They didn't send us here to die. This is an entry test." Isaac forced out. "Ursula can you guide us downward?"
Ursula got up and approached the water bubble, sticking her hands out into the liquid depths.
"It feels insane out there." She managed as she began freezing the water around them until they rolled down an ice walk made as they traveled.
It didn't take longer than a few seconds to escape the upper level of chaos and begin to see the ruins below.
A gamble Isaac won. For all he knew there was nothing below and this was the event. And he froze.
"Warren..." Ursula started, "Hey Warren we're going kind of fast…. WARREN!"
Ursula turned back to him along with everyone else to find him looking up towards the surface. He was the first to notice how bright it was becoming.
It looked like a sun was falling into the water.
But suns didn't roar and have furry brown skin. Or blood red eyes.
"TROLL!"
The beast hit the waters with a firestorm so hot Isaac could feel the heat even from where they were. But that was it before the aftershock of rapid evaporation combined with heavy impact sent them crashing into the ruins.
