The angry roar caused Velfor and Drel to exchange glances.

‘The real threat finally came…’ Velfor thought to himself.

Drel understood what Velfor was thinking and stopped the flow of the metallic gas from floating into the sky. Instead, he directed the open palm at the rapidly approaching orange dot. The clouds of metal started swirling at a center point in the sky like a hurricane, but without the wind. The edges of the clouds that extended to the city walls shrank and a black ball formed in that center point.

“It’ll be ready in four minutes. Stall the Gradual!” Drel commanded Velfor who nodded his head in confirmation.

In a blue flash, Velfor charged forward with the blanket fluttering behind him. Within a very short time, he was half of a mile outside the city, and the two clashed against one another at once. The dragons’ eyes fiercely stared at the insignificant creature that was coming to it and it unleashed an almost solid orange beam from its mouth.

In the presence of the beam that was wider than five combined tree trunks, the air stilled, and the light from the sun seemed to dim, oddly bending around it. In the six hundred or so feet that was between the two, the beam appeared almost instantly in front of Velfor.

Velfor saw the attack that was incoming and narrowly dodged, but part of the beam still struck his left arm. It disintegrated the blanket covering the spot, but his arm was protected by a bright brown light. Velfor glanced at the left arm that felt like it got hit by a hammer and frowned.

‘Right now, its internal energy is around the middle of second tier, but the concentration that it released is in the early part of tier three. In just this confrontation, the grade of this beast should be close to mine, 34. According to the information, it’ll only get stronger as it attacks and is attacked. If I attack too much, or it lands more attacks, it’ll surpass me, and might be able to resist Drel’s temporary sealing…’ While Velfor was thinking, he dodged a few more orange beams that almost touched him.

Drel who was concentrating on gathering all of the released internal energy to a point, watched the two, and his sight settled on Tus who seemed to have shut his eyes in the predicted resignation. Like Velfor, he also frowned at the sight of the Gradual’s growth. ‘Unless I finish this quickly or one of the Warriors come here, the Gradual will take this ingredient away.’

As he looked at Tus, his heart clenched. ‘What is going on?!’

The low sound of a something similar to a beating heart came from Tus’s body. It grew in strength and the faint ripple of rejection that could only be sensed expanded, pushing off Drel’s internal energy that surrounded him. With the support released, Tus fell to the ground under the crowds watching eyes.

Just before he was about to hit the ground, the worlds’ rejection slowed his fall until he floated above the grounds’ surface. The pebbles that were under him flew away and his body gently touched the ground.

The faint heart beat became louder with every ‘thump’ and the dust in the area started flowing away with his body as the center. Then on his head, left side, and right side started being covered in light of red, blue, and yellow. As it happened, Tus’s face twisted from the pain that rammed against his senses.

Drel floated in the air dumbfounded. ‘He… he is forming a second heart? How is that possible?’

The crowds that were around in the plaza backed away with some taking the chance to flee as the attention of everyone was diverted.

Yarla, Worill, and Shel stared at Tus with complicated gazes with Yarla appearing as though she was deliberating about something.

Haya’s squad mostly expressed shock throughout the course of events, from finding out that Tus was actually a transcendent and yet was being hunted by the alliance, and then there was the formation of a second heart that had three primary composites, something that they never heard of before.

After Drel calmed himself with difficulty, his eyes pointed to Tus like an assassin facing someone who saw his face. ‘I need to kill him, or else if he escapes, I’ll be facing against something worse than that Gradual in the future. Although the boss said to capture him alive, a dead transcendents’ body is better than nothing at all.’

With that thought, his freed hand opened to a palm. The skin gradually became a surface similar to metal and a silver spear grew from his hand. After it reached over five feet, a width of the shaft at two inches, and a pointed blade at about half a foot in width, Drel clasped it. He arched the arm and with the desire to kill, he threw the spear, aiming accurately at Tus’s neck.

Based on his level, theoretically, he could crush Tus by simply waving his hand and utilize the air to be the weapon. However people who reach higher grades and tiers have to face greater limitations brought by both, the resistance of the world and their own body’s risk to injury, similar to the limitation of growth from the second heart. The difference is that this is a matter of the actual entity that lives in the world instead of the entity’s pure physical body. This land being the Land of Trials is for those who are taking trials. Those who pass the Trial of Passing in Oblivion are qualified to bypass the worlds’ limitations by status of both body and entity. They are thusly marked by the rejection, to have everyone and everything take notice, while, in this case, serve as protection as Tus receives his reward from the Trial of Passing.

In regards to the entities that don’t take the trials; their existence is merely ignored and/or allowed to live there to be part of the trial or the mercy of whoever is overseeing.

In summary, Drel can’t utilize his theoretical strength that is reduced by at least thirty percent, to penetrate the inflated rejection of the world by merely using the wind, and can’t reduce his concentration away from the temporary seal anymore to produce anything stronger than this metal spear.

“Milady! What are you doing?!” Shel and Worill shouted. At some point, they were pushed back and Yarla was already next to Tus with the worlds’ rejection allowing entry.

Just as the spear was about to reap Tus’s life, Yarla grabbed him by the arm while running, bringing him away from certain death. With one smooth motion, Tus was hauled away on Yarla’s back, and the spear shattered the ground, embedding itself.

After a single moment, Tus’s and Yarla’s presence disappeared from everyone’s view, while Yarla used some kind of device to hide their presence from Drel.

“Where do you think you are going?!” Drel did not expect someone to take away Tus while he was concentrating on both forming the temporary seal and the attack. Consequently, he was furious.

“You bitches think a little skeleton like this can stop me! The nerve!” The dragon yelled as Velfor retreated with wounds all over his body. He flew at top speed to where Drel was.

“You have to stop it now!” Velfor yelled after he flew into the city. Before he could proceed any further, an extremely large figure appeared above him and the back part of a giant claw smashed against his side. He used the last remnants of internal energy to protect himself, but his body immediately shattered into a mist of blood and body parts by the strike.

Drel looked at the now 200 foot long dragon that covered a tenth of the city with a vicious gaze. The sudden death of his colleague that he has been working with for over two hundred years and the loss of his target filled him with blazing fury that was ten times worse than before.

It has only been a little over three minutes and the metal clouds above weren’t ready yet. Facing such a situation, Drel was rendered desperate, and tapped an inconspicuous emblem that was hidden between the metal plating on his left shoulder. It shined with violet light before it discharged a massive lightning bolt at the approaching dragon with the latter’s pupils constricting to the point of a needle.

It struck the dragon and caused it to crash into the ground outside the city. It twitched uncontrollably from the shock while the emblem turned to dust.

‘I need to stall it and try finding that vermin! I need to activate the seal prematurely.’ When he thought so, veins popped up on his forehead while he groaned, while the nearly completed seal rushed together. With his palm still directed at the target, the originally black ball transformed, shining like a metal baseball in the clear sunlight until it blurred, pouncing toward the recovering dragon.

Once it hit the dragon, it spread out like a slime, forming a metal membrane that quickly moved across its’ scales, and prevented it from moving a single inch. The dragon released muffled roars and curses.

Not sparing a single moment, Drel swept his eyes over the area underneath him to find that, at some point, all of the people who were down there had scattered, and ran in all directions kicking up dirt that obstructed any sign of unusual movement or the rejection of the world.

Feeling intensely frustrated he yelled, “Stop running around!” The people who he threatened before didn’t take heed this time and continued fleeing.

The current situation made him completely helpless as he was in the predicament of being unable to annihilate everyone due to several restrictions, such as the need for Tus’s complete body, or else he would be killed on the spot by his superiors, and the eventual release of the Gradual.

In the time that he was considering while flying around, the city was almost deserted. At the point where his fury was converting to despair, he then heard distinct cracking sounds coming from the metal seal he created.

With the sound of shattering glass, a booming roar burst forth, “You motherfucker! I’m going to skin you alive!” In the span of a moment, the dragon furiously flew in the sky and was right before Drel.

‘It became a tier 4 monster!’ With that thought, he tried his best in fighting the dragon, but his internal energy was suppressed even further by the monsters’ superior internal energy, and he only went through a couple of rounds before pitifully being chewed upon by the dragons maw.

Even though the fight only lasted for a short time, the blasts still rang across the city, blasting apart most of it. The dragon reveled in its growing strength, but it soon redirected its attention as it stuck out its snake-like tongue.

“Where is my meal?!” It roared, flying about the city at the utmost frenzy, causing some of the already unstable buildings to collapse, but it couldn’t find a trace of its quarry. After a couple of hours, it moved beyond the city, not ready to be defeated, and wanting to search further.

…………

In one of the streets filled with rubble, a transparent figure limped with blotches of blood following its path as it carried something on its back.

End of Arc 1

Sand