'That wasn't as easy as I expected…'

Mountain's ability turned out to be a bit more powerful than expected, not only did he master a preliminary elemental control ability, but that was just his side support technique!

His actual prowess stemmed from his elemental weapon technique as it was actually more powerful than it seemed to be, it surprisingly had the ability to slightly influence gravity as the mountain splitter attack he threw at me would have been impossible to avoid if I didn't have my abnormal speed.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that his offensive power was on the upper part of the scale, which proved somewhat hard for me to deal with since I didn't have the intention to kill him, forcing me to activate all the veins at the same time to give the spear's pole enough power to knock him out without leaving much damage to him, mostly relying on the paralysis effect of lightning…

'It was a bit satisfying though.'

As Mountain was one of the few people who somewhat managed to get on my nerves easier than they should be, it felt a bit good to give him triple smacks to help him sleep and calm down after holding back till now…

"Your intention…?" Sean finally had a serious expression on his face as he sent me a questioning stare.

"You needn't worry much, I don't plan on killing him or anything, he is an acquaintance of Lan after all, I was just replying to his provocation."

Seeing the slightly hostile yet worried expression on Sean's face, who I could already sense that he was preparing his elements discreetly, I assured him as I didn't plan to continue fighting. Smacking Mountain to sleep was already more than enough to achieve my goal, and I was sure that Sean himself understood that my abilities weren't measurable using normal power scales, he was just preparing in case I went fully hostile…

"I got the message you wanted to deliver… We will take him and leave…" Sean said, as he slowly approached me as he tried to lift Mountain's big body on his shoulders

'Oh?'

Noticing the shrewd expression hidden under his affirming complexion, I couldn't help but feel slightly surprised…

'He actually understood half of my intention…?'

His reply and his following swift actions showed that his intellect wasn't normal either, and while I was sure he didn't get the part that I was also Lan, it seemed that he managed to understand the underlying intention of mine to prove the strength of Lan's backing.

"Alright then… I'm leaving then, the horses that you left should be in their place so take Lan's horse back with you, he used another mean of transport to leave…"

"Ok, thanks for looking after us while we were deeply passed out…"

"No problem."

Leaving these last words I simply picked up the sprout human and accelerated in Battle City's opposite direction to leave the scene…

`~~`~~`~~`

"Brother…" seeing that the somewhat tyrannical acquaintance of Lan had left, the silent girl that stood in her place since the beginning of the exchange called out to Sean who was dragging Mountain on his back to the place that the horses were tied at by the side of a rock...

"Yes Clara?"

"What happened after all? did we really just collapse after we touched that sapling…?" Clara's face was full of signs of confusion as she seemed to be quite lost...

"I'm assuming you also have these fragmented memories about entering a forest of some sort and other events that followed that, right?" slightly nodding his head, Sean replied to her question by a countering question...

"Exactly brother! That's exactly what I experienced, using my natural ability doesn't help me at all, I can't tell if that was the truth or not, it felt so real, yet it doesn't make sense at all…" Clara nodded her head heavily as if to confirm every word of Sean's question.

"I wonder as well, I can't really tell as my brain is also in shambles like yours, but I reckon that all of this might have been some sort of an ancient illusion." Sean held his chin in his hands as he also pondered deeply about it as he seemed to have come to a preliminary understanding…

"An illusion?" Clara questioned.

"Yes, an illusion. I kind of got the hint to that possibility from the fact that Lan has managed to wake up before us, so as long as we weren't just cheated by that Zero guy, it's likely that this might be related to the events in this fragmented dream…" Sean started to explain his theory…

"You mean…"

"Yes, if your memory is similar to mine, then you must have at least remembered that when we were sent to that strange forest after we touched the sapling, we were separated from Lan, which is already a big hint as to why he might have woken up before us," Sean added.

"But why would he be separated from us to begin with…?" Clara still didn't get what might be the reason for that.

"My guess is that a certain ability of his might be much stronger compared to us, this Zero guy seemed so strong after all, I believe that Lan might be still hiding a big part of his strength as well, we might have underestimated him a little bit… Come on let's get going," finishing with his answer, Sean got the horses ready as he gestured towards the empty horse for Clara to ride it, he wasn't obviously going to continue discussing in this stranded location…

"But…"

"I got it, I know you are feeling quite confused , I'm also still wondering about the trigger of this whole event… Just why did I believe that I must collect all the other item holders of this set and get to this location, I'm not really sure," the sign of worry could be easily read of Sean's face, he really wasn't accustomed to dealing with this amount of mystery solving naturally…

'Great, everything is going as planned…'