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Sal looked at himself and realized what an awful mess he must've looked like, once the comment about being out in the storm was said. Man, new clothes sounded more and more appealing each passing second. Oh well, there would be a time for that later. Though he was confused by this woman. Why would being outside in the storm be smart if he had a camera? That hardly seemed like a logical progression of thoughts...and didn't make much sense either. Sal rubbed the back of his head, slightly confused, and said "yeah, I guess you could say I was standing out in the storm." Technically true. If you counted getting on a boat, nearly drowning and getting washed to shore all in the middle of a storm standing out in it then sure, he totally stood out during the storm.

He wondered if the rest of Australia was like this. All broken and waterlogged from that freak, probably dark angel caused, storm that was going on. He was wondering about how all the citizens of the continent were doing to deal with this. He was also wondering where everyone else from the group was. That was a pretty big deal, being split up and all. So he decided to go and ask the most prominent question on his mind. "I'm sorry, but why would standing outside with a camera in the middle of a storm be any more smart than not having a camera while standing outside?" He needed to get this odd confusion sorted out before he thought about anything else.

Spoiler: Arbitrary Self Training Post #8

Fuck intros!

Spoiler: Round 1

Sal was back in his dream world ready to train his powers once more. Since he had been there for earth and sun already, it would stand to reason that he'd now be having to work on his healing prowess. That'd help what with his body being kind of being bruised in the real world. Speaking of which, he wish he could do some more training in the real world. Was much more rewarding than this type, but oh well. Round one was beginning with an old really dickish foe spawning in. The shambler type. Well who else would be here in the healing trial? No more formalities though. Just action time.

The fight kicked off with the shambler acting like an ass and just firing off its tentacle spikes in a continuous stream of pain. There were three to be counted. It wasn't anything he hadn't dealt with before, though he usually was either much faster or much stronger when he was dealing with this kind of an enemy. All Sal could do was dodge and weave back and forth to avoid the attacks from the shambler type. Sal had gotten into the rhythm though, so just three was not enough to bring him down, not even touch him. Once he was comfortable dodging this shambler's attacks, Sal then decided to go in for the kill.

He started running forward, dodging as he ran. Dodging while avoiding, though, was significantly harder to do as opposed to stationary dodging. Sal was not deterred by this regardless, and kept getting grazed by each attack. It only took a little while, but eventually he made it close up to the shambler and it switched back to its mix up spike attack. Sal avoided the first set of two, next up a set of three, then a set of four. He wasn't going to allow this thing to do anymore, nor did he really care about getting hit by the spikes, and just punched the shambler in the face, killing it and getting slightly stabbed in the process.

Spoiler: Round 2

Sal was slightly riddled with holes, and was bleeding a bit. It wasn't entirely the greatest feeling in the world, but Sal had gotten used to it though. Pain wasn't just really a deterring factor towards the carefree man. Case in point was his lack of flinching at all during the regeneration process. He realized the strategy he used right now was actually pretty risky and that it should only actually be used in close quarter situations. Otherwise running without any care towards getting impaled would just get him a loss. And while Sal was sure that it would advance the rounds regardless, Zachariel probably wouldn't count it if he just gave up and died each round. There was a point to this training after all.

The shambler spawned in and almost immediately attacked right off the get go. Sal didn't even have time to have a bit of a monologue about this thing before it started attacking him. This time it was five continuous tentacle spikes attacking him at once, instead of three. Sal tried to dodge all the spikes this time and was still easily able to avoid the attacks without getting hurt at all. This was still going to be a rather easy round, as it was only the second one, but Sal was easily able going to kill it regardless.

Sal started off with a regular sprint towards the shambler and kept at weaving around all the tentacle spikes. This time, it was obviously more challenging than against the three spike one, but he was still able to manage. Getting slightly cut here and there on his run over to the shambler he began his shingeki no shambler. The shambler stopped going continuous once Sal was there and started going into its usual spike melee manner. Sal wasn't even really caring about the attacks this time, dodging them that is, and decided to just go in a kill the shambler. He was hit by five spikes all at once towards his abdominal area, but he didn't really react enough to it for it to stop his fist from punching the shambler dead.

Spoiler: Round 3

Well two of them had already been beaten down and clearly they were still in the early stages of Sal being able to handle everything that was being thrown at him. He didn't feel like that would last much longer really. Maybe this round and then he would be presented with a situation that was going to prove to impossible against him. But for now, he was going to continue just fighting as he always had. He stretched a bit and then noticed the new shambler spawning in for a battle. Nothing special about it just yet, so Sal was just going to kill as he had all others.

The shambler started the round off by firing its tentacle spikes off at Sal. This time it was a total of seven continuous spikes. Sal started to dodge around these spikes only to realize that this was a lot harder than any of the other shamblers before it. He was getting nicked a bit from the attacks anyway and he was just standing still in this scenario. Well this was certainly going to be a difficult win to pull off. Granted he had already beaten this thing before so Sal was quite confident in his ability to take on this shambling mess of a monster.

He started running towards the shambler, continuing his dodging maneuvers while doing so, and going around all the tentacle spikes coming at him. It was quite difficult to get around as well, Sal was getting cut up from the attack as he charged forward. Eventually he did make it up to the shambler and was then met with the close range attacks. Normally Sal would just take the attacks and just head in, but his body had already taken damage from the attacks prior so he didn't want to get killed this round. Dodging around all the close range spikes as best he could, though still getting stabbed once or twice, Sal punched the shambler in the face and killed it.

Spoiler: Round 4

Sal stood there as the familiar feeling of healing, that had been neglected to be mentioned in the last post, was happening on him once again. Oh how he loathed the feeling of muscle repairing but hey, it was better than keeping the holes that he had. He looked over to see the next shambler forming in and noticed that the gimmicks were going to begin. This shambler had a golden aura encompassing it and golden eyes to match. Well that was going to be a problem. He had already dealt with power and regeneration, but now the ways he had dealt with those were now against him. He was now going up against speed.

The shambler kicked things off by immediately using its long range spikes to come and kill Sal right off the bat. Unlike last times seven, though, this one was only three. One would think a reduction in numbers would mean that it was easier. Only these three spikes were moving at a much faster rate than all of the others. Sal was caught off guard by this sudden speed burst and was cut by each spike that was sent at him. He tried to continue to dodge the attacks and was still being cut by it despite his best efforts.

Sal decided to say **** it yolo and just charge at the shambler. It was a really, really bad idea. Sal was not exactly ready for how much more of a trouble that dodging while moving was going to be against this being. He was trying to get into his usual dodging groove, but was getting sliced through much more than the seven spike one had managed to do. Eventually Sal had been attacked enough that he stumbled from the wounds and was eventually impaled multiple times by all three of the sun spikes. Sal fell down, bleeding and ended round four.

Spoiler: Round 5

Sal had been lying there, bleeding out from his stab wounded hole ridden body, when he felt the familiar feeling of healing once again overtake him. It was quite the painful and agonizing process, but Sal was minding less and less each time it happened. He would call himself a masochist for it, just sort of apathetic towards it. After everything was said and done, he stood up and got himself back together, ready to take this sun shambler on once more. He had the feeling that he was going to lose this fight as well, for some sort of oversight, and then win the round after that. Oh well. Sal got ready to bring this shambler down and begin round five.

Round five started the same way that round four had. It was firing off the sun tentacle spikes as it had before, but Sal was more prepared for it than he was last time. However, Sal was infinitely more prepared for it than last time, meaning he actually knew what was coming up this. He dodged as best as he could from the attacks but it clearly wasn't enough. The tentacle spikes had still been able to cut Sal and was bleeding a bit. He was going to need to get going soon if he was going to win against this being.

Sal decided to go in and try to run towards the sun shambler as he had last time. This time however he was able to dodge more fluidly than last time, though still got cut by the spikes regardless. Dodging this thing was incredibly hard work man. Sal eventually made it past the shambler's attacks regardless and decided to get ready to punch the shambler down and beat it completely. However, the oversight came in. The sun shambler started attacking with its close range mix up attacks and was infinitely harder to deal with. Sal tried to dodge set after set, but they kept wounding him and he just couldn't handle it at all. Eventually the spikes managed to overwhelm and completely impale him.

Spoiler: Round 6

Sal lied there, bleeding once more, unable to move. This feeling of healing was there and his regeneration was coming back. Man this agony related to getting "killed" by these creatures was really starting to lose its edge. Now it was just plain bothersome. Oh well. Sal now had all the info he needed to bring down this stupid shambling beasty. His speed was pretty terrifying, yes, but at least now Sal got the rhythm of dodging it down and knew just how it fought now. He was going to go and beat the shambler this round, and that was going to be a fact.

Round six started with the shambler attacking as it normally would. All three consecutive sun tentacle spikes were heading at him, one after the other. Sal had gotten his dodge down and was able to successfully avoid most of the damage as opposed to the other rounds he had fought this thing. Despite the shambler attacking him continuously with these spikes, Sal was not deterred at all. In fact, he was just now getting ready to totally bring this shambler down once and for all.

Sal began his yolo charge towards the sun shambler and was met with the same kind of resistance as last time. As such Sal continued with his dodging ability to get out of the way of each of the attacks. He was still getting cut up by the attacks, and could feel the attacks slowing him down, but nevertheless, he had been able to finally get up to the shambler and begin his melee dodging. Sal would probably just have let himself get stabbed by this thing, if he wasn't afraid of it basically being able to stab him faster than he could punch it. As such he jumped back away from the shambler as it began its close range spike mix up. However, once it missed it moved back to the long range, which Sal took advantage of and punched the thing, killing it instantly.

Spoiler: Round 7

Sal was quite confident with his killing of the sun shambler. Not everyday you're able to bring down the most threatening of the creatures that he had to fight. On speed...well, enhanced speed not the drug speed. Regardless, Sal was feeling ready to take on the next set of beings he was going to have to fight until he inevitably lost. But that was for another time. There was two of the creatures forming in the wisps. Out spawned two shamblers. One was a sun shambler and one just seemed to be a regular shambler. This was going to be difficult. Sal then realized he had an aura of his own around him. Sweet, healing auras. Well this was going to be quite the fight.

The two shamblers started the fight off the bat. The sun one fired off its tentacle spikes faster than the regular shambler, and the regular one continued to attack anyway. Sal had to dodge the attacks, but it proved to be more difficult than one would actually think. The irregular timing of the attacks made the rhythm necessary to avoid each of the attacks much much harder than it usually was. Sal was barely able to dodge the attacks, but they didn't hit too hard.

That was when Sal realized something interesting. The places he was getting cut at, no longer had wounds on them. Man this healing aura was awesome. Sal made use of it and decided to just yolo charge the two shamblers at once and decided that in this scenario, the more dangerous one would be the best one to get rid of first. As such, Sal booked it towards the sun shambler first, and was getting cut up a lot more than before. Dodging this irregular timing of attacks was proving to be quite difficult, but eventually Sal made his way to the sun shambler and was able to punch the sun shambler in the face, killing it. Unfortunately, he was getting a lot more injured than usual, and his healing aura wasn't fast enough. That didn't matter though, with only one left, Sal was able to beat it easily, despite his injuries.

Spoiler: Round 8

Sal was quite happy about that victory. Good lord this healing aura was useful. Sal had grown quite used to this kind of abuse that he was taking and was glad that he could mitigate even while the fight was going down. Suddenly, the healing aura just intensified on him until his entire marred body was healed. The aura then settled down and went back to its usual rate, and he got ready for the next battle that was going down. He watched as the next round of combatants came into the picture. Out came the wisps of darkness forming two shadow type and one sun shambler. Here it goes.

The battle kicked off and was going to prove to be quite troublesome. The fight started with the sun shambler attacking like an ******* and the shadows charging around Sal. Sal, obviously, started dodging the threat at hand, but continued to try and pay attention to wherever the shadows were going to. The shamblers attacks were soon just being instinctively dodged as Sal was now able to fully focus on wherever the shadows had ended up going.

Sal realized that the thing he had to do in this scenario was take out the shadows first, because if he did his yolo charge at the shambler they would almost definitely screw him in some way shape or form. However, they weren't moving. That was a bit of a problem. So Sal decided to go with a rather odd strategy. He charged forward towards the sun shambler and then immediately stopped in his tracks. This caused the shadows to charge forward, thinking that Sal was going for a full on yolo charge. Since he was stopped, though, they overshot their attack and left themselves vulnerable to Sal, who just punched them the **** out. With that out of the way he ran towards the sun shambler, punched it, and killed it instantly.

Spoiler: Round 9

Sal had felt fairly awesome about that win. It required his quick thinking and wit in order to win so it wasn't everyday that a win quite like that one came around. His healing aura intensified once more to provide his entire body with a sort of instant regeneration and when that was all done with, Sal's body was ready once more. Now all that was left was getting the actual fight underway. He had a slightly bad feeling about this round, but he would just roll with it. Out came the combatants for this round, a sun shambler and a sun beast. Well this wasn't going to end well at all.

Round nine had started off with the sun shambler attacking as it usually would. Sal got into his stationary three spike rhythm dodging, but knew it was not going to last forever. The sun beast, probably one of the most terrifying of the enemies that he was going to have to fight. It was doing its usual charge, but doing it at a much faster pace than it normally would. That was going to prove to be extremely bothersome. However when the fast paced beast did make it towards Sal, he jumped away from it, so that the beast was now in between him and the shambler.

The beast, however, was not giving any ****s about this. Once it missed it did something Sal wasn't expecting it to do. Charge almost immediately after the first one missed. Being unable to react in time, Sal was taken off guard by the charge and thrown back from it. The beast then decided to go for some good old fashion teamwork. It ran towards Sal, picked him up, and threw him away. This would normally just hurt, but now Sal was being picked out of the sky by the sun shambler attacking him in mid air, thus ending round nine.

Spoiler: 10

So here it was. The loss that he was expecting because it usually happened that way. Huzzah for scripting. Sal picked himself up off the ground after his massive amount of healing allowed him to do so. Again, dying was just not a fun thing to happen at all. He turned his attention to his two opponents that he was to fight. They were quite the annoying ones to fight, that was for sure. Oh well. Sal was going to be able to take them down as he had done with every other opponent he had to go and fight. With all preparations out of the way, Sal got ready to dance...metaphorically speaking.

The round, round ten to be more specific, kicked off the same exact way as it had before hand. The sun shambler fired off all of its spikes as it did usually and the sun beast ran towards him at that same accelerated speed that it did last round. Sal did his usual song and dance of dodging around the spikes. He did the same thing he did last time against the sun beast that he did last time. Jumping back to avoid it and causing it to be in front of the sun shambler again. Now he needed to be smart about this part. The beast did the same kind of charge as last time, which he reacted to accordingly.

Sal ducked down and kicked the sun beast in the leg, causing it to get off balance. With the now toppled sun beast, Sal did the only thing he could. Take out the sun shambler. He yolo charged it, as he usually would, and was able to bring the sun shambler down. However he took too much time to do so and was met with a sun beast tackling into him, causing him to fly forward a bit. Sal's back was hurt now, but he was feeling it get regenerated at the moment. Picking himself back up, Sal kicked at the beast before it was able to attack him again. Sal continued to bring the hurt down on the sun beast, going on momentum of attacks alone to do so, and finally beat the beast and ended round ten.

Spoiler: Round 11

Well he was feeling quite well about himself. Being able to successfully bring down even more super challenging fights. Man this was quite the rank two challenge he had to go through. He also felt like the healing aura had been slightly useless during this time, but realized that without it he probably would've lost of blood loss or something like that. Oh well. He was starting to have fun in this. Sun was such an interesting aura to fight against, simply because it was the same things only a lot faster. Now the wisps were forming a group of three for Sal to fight. Two regular beast types and one sun shambler type. Well here went nothing.

Round eleven started off with being quite the different round. Sure Sal had to do the average dodge the whole sun tentacle spikes thing, but the two beasts charging him did make things different. Sal had to think quickly about how to deal with them alongside the sun shambler and he knew just what to do to bring them down. As they charged him, Sal jumped out of the way of the first one and got behind the second one, making it so that the sun shambler couldn't attack him.

The two beasts decided to just charge at him regardless, but Sal was able to duck and roll to the side so that they just comedically ran into each other. Good old slapstick. Sal immediately put himself behind them again so as not to get skewered. Sal kicked the beasts together and then charged forward towards the sun shambler. Ducking and weaving out of the way, Sal had been able to beat down the sun shambler and turn around to avoid the average speed beasts. Sal brought down a beat down upon them and then won the round.

Spoiler: Round 12

So, Sal had a pretty bad feeling about this upcoming round. Obviously, he was going to lose it. Why obviously? So that he could win the round after this and keep consistent with the pattern. Sal was still going to fight it regardless, and go down fighting. He watched what spawned in and realized why he'd need this round to figure out their dynamic. It was a sun shambler and two regular shamblers. That was quite the horrifying team he had to deal with. Spikes for days really. Oh well. Here went nothing.

Round twelve started with a lot of tentacle spikes. If this was a hentai you'd know exactly where this was going...only these stabbed and not raped. Sal avoided the spikes back and forth and got into his rhythm for dodging. Only it was a much, much, more difficult rhythm to get into. There two sets of timings that he had to keep in mind. One that dealt with high speed and one that was just slower. Not to mention the slower one was being fired off by two shamblers as opposed to just one.

Sal was getting ready to go in and then he decided to just go yolo charge them. He started running in and tried to dodge as he was being attacked by a large quantity of tentacle spikes. They cut through him at any given moment, and his healing aura was not able to keep up with the wounds at all. Sal was getting slowed down by this attack and was just not able to finish it off at all. In the end, he was slowed down too much from his wounds and got impaled multiple times by multiple spikes from multiple shamblers, thus ending round twelve.

Spoiler: Round 13

Okay so that could have gone much better than it actually did. It could've gone way better really. He was trying to figure out what to do against these tentacle spike onslaughts, and if he was going to lose the next round to a new form of beings, then he was going to have to beat this round with excellent grace. So he had to bring them down and that was that. His attention focused on the three shamblers he was going to have to fight and he was going to have to do it fast. Or else he was just going to get ****ing wrecked again.

This was how the round would normally go. Sal would get attacked by the three sets of tentacle spikes from the shamblers. He was going to dodge and he was going to get impaled. It would be because he didn't have a proper plan and thus would suffer for thinking that self regeneration and his reflexes alone would be able to stand up against them. He would be dead wrong and he would lose because of it. As such, he decided not to go with that doomed to fail method. Instead, he decided to do one kind of method he had never done before.

For once, the shamblers did not make the first move. Sal basically yolo charged right off the bat, and ran straight towards the enemies he was fighting. The shamblers seemed slightly confused by his instantaneous charge but nevertheless they went right off the bat to firing tentacle spikes at him. Sal was able to dodge through most of them, only suffering some damage, before being able to get in their face and punch the sun shambler down with relative ease. With the true threat out of the way, Sal was able to comfortably dodge the next two shamblers and beat them down with relative ease, thus ending the round.

Spoiler: Round 14

Here it was the. Penultimate round once more. The round he was basically going to get his ass handed to him by a combination of all three of the basic creature types, while they were using the sun aura. He then noticed that four wisps groups were forming in. Out of them came a beast type, a shambler type, and two shadow types...and they all had a sun aura over them. This was going to be quite the difficult uphill battle indeed. Sal got ready and stared them down. Here went the loss round.

The round kicked off with **** hitting the fan fast. Sal was immediately getting attacked by the sun shambler tentacle spikes and was having to avoid them in order to not get skewered. It was not having any sort of yolo charge right off the bat and so Sal had to keep on his toes. The other things wrong with this round were that the sun beast immediately just charged at him, and the sun shadows were ludicrously fast. Jeez, speedy speed types were quite hard to keep track of.

As such, Sal went into to try and win as best he could. He ducked down and kicked the sun beast in the shin. The sun beast was then knocked off balance and Sal went in towards the sun shambler. He stopped midway as he had against the last shadows and was expecting the same thing as last time...only they were able to adjust themselves and attack Sal at a much faster rate. This attack knocked Sal back a bit, only for him to be tackled down by the sun beast and thrown towards the sun shamblers spikes, getting impaled and brought to near death once more.

Spoiler: Round 15

Well it was time for the final round of the healing rank two set. And as such, Sal had to be sure to win this fight with all his heart. His healing aura had super intensified once more and he was getting himself back up on his feet. After all the pain and agony of the healing had finished, Sal was ready and raring to go against these four enemies. It was going to be quite the challenge to actually pull off a win against them, but hey, he had to do so if he wanted to stick to the ****ing loose leaf sheet of paper.

The round started off the exact same way as it had last time. The sun shambler was not allowing any preemptive attacks, and as such, fired off as many sun spikes as it could towards Sal. Next was the sun beast charging straight at him and then afterwards was the two sun shadows going at record speeds around him. It was then that Sal decided about the order in which he'd fight these things. And in the end, the order in which he beat them would prove to be the difference between winning and losing.

The first thing that needed to get beaten was the sun beast. Its juggernaut strength and sun auraed speed would only prove to be extremely annoying to deal with. As such, Sal didn't do the duck since he knew how these beast types worked. He jumped back as the sun beast slammed forward and then Sal went in to go and kick the things ass. Keeping himself aligned with the sun shambler so that wouldn't attack him, Sal was eventually able to bring the sun beast down through sheer momentum and fortitude of will. After that was over and done with, Sal ran forward, straight towards the sun shambler. He then stopped midway and jumped to the side, outstretching a hand. In it, he was able to catch a sun shadow and then promptly beat it out of existence. Sal continued to go forward, doing a short hop up and slamming his feet down to kill the other sun shadow, when finally got to the sun shambler, killed it, and made a new orb appear from their remnants. The orb was light green colored and as such, Sal touched and absorbed it ending the dream sequence.

Spoiler: Round 1

Okay, so the dream sequence didn't end. His wounds healed, yes, and his aura was now gone, but the dream sequence was still going on. Well this was going to be quite the fight he was going to have to go through to another rank of something else. What exactly could he be doing though? It was at that moment that a black orb appeared in front of him and a hilt protruded out of it. Sal decided to grab the hilt and pull out the baselard that it belonged to. Oh? Was he going to go and get another rank in his sword skills now? The two beast types spawning in certainly seemed to think so.

Sal looked at the beast types as they charged straight towards Sal as they would in any other challenge. Sal got himself ready for the fight and knew he had to do something against them that involved his good old baselard. Wouldn't be the first time he had to deal with two at once and wouldn't be the first time he had to deal with a beast type with his baselard. Sal avoided the charges by jumping backward and started gripping the knife tighter.

The beasts were not pleased with Sal's dodging of them. He charged in forward a bit, sidestepping a punch coming at him on the way there, and proceeded to go all ghetto on those mean mothers. He slashed one beast in the face, causing its eye to burst a bit, then ducked underneath a punch and slashed at that same one's stomach. The beast then came falling down a bit, and so Sal ended it by stabbing it in its back, killing it. Sal proceeded to then dodge the other beast's futilely muda muda attacks and proceeded to slash around and kill the other beast in one graceful effort.

Spoiler: Round 2

Sal gracefully got back into position and tossed his knife into the air, playfully. Catching it on the way down he spun it around and was really wanting to get ready and raring to go for round two. Fighting with a weapon was just so much easier and more fluid than just plain old punching ****. It might make him seem like a badass doing that, but hey, who was he to deny the great gift of weapon. He then saw the next opponents destined to fall by his blade spawn in. Nothing more than five shadow types. That was going to be quite the effortless battle.

Round two of the second set kicked off with the shadow types sprinting at Sal post haste. These things were quite easy to kill, yes, but their ability to speed past him made things a bit troublesome. They started by circling around him and two at a time going into rapid succession to attack him. The kept kicking off of him, slightly causing him pain, and he was getting a bit annoyed by it. He gripped the baselard tighter and was getting ready to bring down his knife skillz on them.

He had gotten into the rhythm of getting hit by them, so that he knew when he was going to get hit by them. As such when the two coming at him bounced off, he knew the timing he'd need to fight the next two. So when they did come, Sal was ready and waiting, simply slashing down the shadow type and his friend with the baselard. The next three got a bit wary of him and as such...attacked all at once. Their logic was weird and fallible and so Sal was able to easily cut through all three of them as they drew closer to him and killed them all at once.

Spoiler: Round 3

Well that was a rather easy round just as the last one had been. These sword rank rounds seemed to be quite relaxing and may indeed be just what the doctor ordered for him...granted there was no doctor here so it was really just his own opinion on it. Sal twirled the baselard around in his hand waiting for the next batch of baddies to show up. Baddies hmm. Were these actually villainous and vile creatures that Zachariel was having him purge? Probably not, they were probably just artificial illusions created with the sole intent of training him while he slept. Oh well. Here came the next two creatures, the two shamblers.

The tentacle spikes came flying out and went towards Sal with their usual intent of completely killing him. Sal, as such, decided to go into his usual rhythm of dodging ****. It was a tried and true method and with the reach of his extremely limited sized blade, he was most likely going to end up dealing with them the same way he ended up dealing with the shamblers without a weapon. Just up close and personal Eventually Sal got bored of easily dodging these attacks and went in.

Before actually yolo charging them, he decided to make his path a little bit easier. As such, he slashed at the tentacle spikes and broke them, giving him a clear window to rush in. As he was running in, Sal did a pseudo dodge and block attack hybrid thing towards the shamblers and eventually made his way to the close range position to fight the shambler. It was quite easy to beat as he could just break the things spikes and then slash through it to kill it. Sal didn't even bother attacking the second one and just threw his knife towards the shambler, killing it upon impact.

Spoiler: Round 4

Sal casually sauntered over to his baselard, that was just sort of chilling on the ground and picked it up, getting ready for the next round. This whole sword rank business was kind of ridiculous in Sal's opinion. Sure, Zachariel was a freak when it came to this kind of stuff, but locking his ability to use a sword was a tad excessive in Sal's opinion. Then again he wasn't the all powerful archangel, so he really couldn't do much about it. Oh well. The next set of enemies spawned in. Two knife types, how interesting.

The two knife type creatures were probably going to be a difficult challenge to overcome simply because they had blades...and some armor. But mostly the blade factor. The knife types sort of cautiously walked towards Sal, lying in wait for a perfect time to strike at him. When they got close enough they started to circle around him and get ready to hit him with their blades. One of them jumped towards Sal, and Sal was able to easily block the blade with his knife. The second one, however, took advantage of this opening and cut at Sal.

Sal was able to disengage and get back enough to only end with a cut on his back, but still, it showed that these two were actual threats. As such, Sal walked forward and started to attack at one of them and struck through its arm rather easily. That was only because it was beginning its own attack and brought its blade down towards Sal. With its incredibly short reach, though, Sal was able to easily back step it and cut through the knife type's throat, killing it instantly. With only one left Sal exchanged a few blade clashes with the thing before he was able to finally cut through it and kill it as well.

Spoiler: Round 5

Now that those two were over and done with Sal was only able to wonder what would be the next set of enemies he'd have to fight would be. One could only imagine when fighting in some sort of weird dream world that seemed to have differing enemy types out the wazoo really. It was then that a new creature spawned in. One clad in more armor than the knife types, actually covering the body. Not to mention it had something even more interesting about it. The blade coming out of its arm was longer than the knife types. Well, this was going to be quite the different fight.

The round began with the short sword type enemy walking towards him, looking like it was actually ready to be fighting blade against blade. Sal was slightly intimidated by its longer sword, but hey, it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. The short sword type then sprang out of nowhere and lunged at Sal, narrowly getting a clean hit off on him. Thankfully, Sal was able to dodge the brunt of the attack and only come out with a small cut from it. Sal then retaliated against the sword creature by bringing down his baselard against it. The creature was able to block it with his short sword and pushed the blade back quite easily.

Now Sal realized that if he was going to beat this thing, he was going to have to out clever it. Sal decided to go in and try to fight the thing once more. He struck at it with the blade, only stopping mid cut. The beast had instinctively brought its own blade up to counter it, and thus fell for the feint. Sal then went in and cut at its legs, causing it to stumble a bit. He then followed up with a series of rapid attacks towards the thing until it had finally fallen against Sal's blade and turned into a black orb of darkness.

Spoiler: Round 6

Sal recognized the black orb he was looking at. Simply due to the fact that it had a hilt protruding out from it. The only thing it could be was another sword orb, like the last one that he had gotten. When Sal reached for the hilt it sank back in, leaving him partially confused. He then decided to stab his baselard into the orb. After the baselard was planted there, Sal pulled it back out to reveal that it was actually now a short sword. Nice! He had a real sword now. Guess all he to do now was prove that he could use it and it would be his. To start the proving of his worth of this thing, three beast types spawned in, ready to die.

The beasts charged Sal, and Sal stood there ready and waiting with his newfound sword companion. They charged at him and one by one tried to take him down. Sal was able to easily sidestep each one and retaliated with a cut towards each of the beasts. The longer range with this thing was certainly proving to be useful. The beasts then headed towards him and started punching at him. Sal was able to easily sidestep them and cut their arms off as they attempted to land a blow on him.

Now each of them missing an arm, the beasts tried to use some weird teamwork attack where they linked their arm with one another and started spinning around to get Sal defeated. Sal was not having any of this, though, and in stepped towards the chain. He then sliced between the two arms holding one pair together and sent the outside one flying off. Sal then rushed towards the other two and was able to easily cut through them now that they were crippled and down a man. When all the beasts were dead, Sal flourished his sword and got ready to go the next round.

Spoiler: Round 7

Man this short sword was way more awesome than he could've even imagined it to be. It was like seeing things in a whole new light as opposed to his short yet effective, Baselard form. Now all he needed to do was go through for more rounds of this ****. Oh well, how bad could it actually be? It wasn't like these were particularly hard rounds to do. Not to mention they were more or less just to let him get accustomed to being able to hack slash and kill things. And just on time spawned in seven shadow types all at once, ripe for the killing.

The seven charged at Sal right from the get go and he was wholly unamused by what was going to be another pathetic attempt at beating him from them. The seven tried to hit Sal all at once, but he was able to see this coming before they even started their attack. He side stepped and brought out his short sword. Slashing once, he was able to easily kill one of the shadow types and turned around to see the startled six. They were going to go down next. The six tried to circle him but he was being widely perceptive of their movements and was not going to give them an inch to go on.

One of the shadows charged towards Sal, to which he simply ducked down and sliced through it anyway. Five remaining. The next two decided to attack him all at once, from separate sides. This plan was thwarted by Sal cutting through the lot of them with a spinning attack of sorts. The last three had...vanished? Well that was new. Only that they had actually jumped and were now coming down on him, quite tenaciously he might add. Sal swiped his sword towards them and was able to cut through one of them quite easily. With only two left they tried as much teamwork tactics as they could, but in the end they too fell to Sal's blade.

Spoiler: Round 8

Here it was, the third to last round that they would be fighting. Only thing that made sense as to what would be coming up against him. It would simply be some number of shambler that would have to fall beneath his blade. Man he sounded pretty cryptically dark in this dream world area. Maybe though, that's because he was forced into doing an extra ten rounds as opposed to just the regular one set and done. Jeez, who did Skyheart think he was? Posting two ranku ups in one mega post. Oh well, the three shamblers he knew were coming up did indeed spawn and now he was going to have to deal with them.

Here it was, the three shambler combo that would normally prove to be slightly threatening to him. They all fired off their massive swarm of tentacle spikes at Sal, and of course, he began dodging. Just because he had a sword and was getting bored with this place did not mean he was going to start acting reckless. So Sal fell into a rhythm of nothing but spike dodging when he decided to see how effective his sword was at doing ****.

With the spikes coming back and forth at him, Sal decided to start slicing around with his short sword to break **** up. With all of the tentacle spikes shattering beneath his blade, Sal found it an ideal time to go in and start yolo charging them. With the the spikes continuing to go at him, even as he approached, Sal continued to just break them up with each sword swing. It made dodging them significantly easier just because there was a far lesser amount of them. When Sal had finally gotten close enough, he didn't really care enough to just dodge the attacks and just sliced through the shambler. He then moved on to do the same to the next shambler and then finished the last one off by throwing a short sword through it.

Spoiler: Round 9

Now that was a difficult round made easy by the fact of weaponry. He could see why Zachariel didn't let him always use his blade. It made things simply too easy to accomplish. He should really treat these kind of rank sessions as a reprieve from the normal humdrum of fist fighting. It was quite more enjoyable than just punching things. Oh wait, it was the penultimate round now, wasn't it? Well that was quite convenient. It just sort of breezed by him really. Now all that was left were three knife types. Well here went nothing.

The round began with the knife types bounding towards Sal in an attempt to try and seem...sneaky? It clearly wasn't going to work like that since they were in a completely open field of water ground, but hey, it's not like there was anything to hide behind. Regardless they continued their agile "stealth" approach towards him until they came close enough to actually have to fight the Portuguese fallen angel man. Sal walked over to his short sword and picked it up, brandishing it towards his foes.

They leaped one after the other at him, to which Sal simply blocked their advances and repelled them away. Next he started to send a few blows towards one, only for them to be deflected by the knife arm. Oh well. Sal continued to side step attack after attack from these things until an opening presented itself. With one easily open for attack, Sal was able to cut through it and end its time here in this session. The other two posed very little threat as Sal was able to easily block their assaults and slice through their bodies, thus ending round nine.

Spoiler: Round 10

Well this was most certainly it. Time for the final round to begin and clearly Sal knew what his opponent was going to be. If these enemies were following the same patterns as they always had then it would become quite clear to anyone what the next fight should be. But hey, a planning sheet is also fairly handy in its own right. Out from the spindles of darkness came his final challengers. Two short sword types. These were going to be quite difficult in comparison to the others, but oh well, maybe a little challenge to end this would be just what God's Command needed.

Sal went up against them almost from the get go and was going to easily bring these ****ers down. He would normally yolo charge them, but he felt doing that would get him easily killed. The two short sword types advanced on his position and were able to close in on him. Sal brought up his blade to begin what would most likely be a long and very effort intensive battle to which he would be blocking attacks left and right and having to beat the **** out of their blades.

The first attack was from a short sword type. All Sal could do was stop it in its tracks, and deflect the attack away. The second one then came up and tried to attack him, but Sal sidestepped that one as well. Now all that was left to do was try and end them himself. Sal struck at one of them but was blocked away. He then deflected a blow from the other one and went in to riposte against it. He then struck at the short sword with all of his might and killed it instantly. With that out of the way only one more of the short sword types remained and as such, Sal was able to kill it easily. Thus ending the dream sequence for good.

Sal awoke from his very long and arduous multi rank dream sequence that he had to go through. His body felt more sore than usual, though that was probably from having to stay there for an extended period of time as opposed to his normal length in the dream world. Sal pulled out his wand and had it turn into its baselard form. Next he turned it into its newly released short sword form. Well that was quite great. He was certainly fond of being able to use his sword as a sword now, instead of some magic dagger.

Sal pushed himself out of bed and looked around to see a broken window. Well how did that happen? Oh that's right. Sal ended up breaking and entering last night in a town called Foster. Man, that was quite the easy thing to do. Disaster time hotels sure were nice to break into. Sal casually opened the door to his room, that wasn't even technically his room, and walked outside the hotel to breathe in some fresh air. What to do today?

Sal decided since he had barely any moral obligations to attend to, and he was basically just waiting to be found anyway, that he would go and explore the town. Walking around the city was...not as enjoyable as it could have been, though he attributed that to the wet ground and disaster ridden city they were in. The thought of getting new clothes entered his head, but he didn't really think too much on that. Sal was lost in his thoughts as he continued walking until he bumped into a female on the street and went back a bit. "Oh my, I'm sorry Miss." Normally he'd keep walking on after that apology but he had this...weird feeling about this woman. Hm, wonder what that could be.

Oh right! Water was always important to drink. If one didn't get enough of it then one would be feeling pretty bad. And the thought of trying to get some help for the others was quite a good one as well. Brandon had completely forgotten that others might've been completely wrecked by the ship wreck. After all Compadre was acting like Old Man Wizard Gandalf on their large walk here to Inverloch. However, how was Brandon doing? "Me, I'm doing right as rain!" Brandon was not in the habit of letting others worry about him, and as such even he had been banged up at all, he would do everything in his power to not show it. The bruises on his arms were covered by his jacket sleeves and his perseverance, not to mention it wasn't like you could treat bruises.

He then rubbed the back of his head and said, "whoops, forgot to wake up the girls. But I'm sure what with all of the other three guys at least one of them is awake and could alert the girls. If not I'm sure they're as bounding and ready to take on the day as the both of us are. Anyway, let's get going." Brandon and Adan ended up driving around the town to find some sort of pharmacy and thankfully they found one that wasn't totally destroyed. Man, Inverloch sure was a convenient place to be. After the two had gathered the necessary supplies for the rest of the gang, they stopped at a general store, still miraculously open, and got some snacks and drinks for the rest of the gang. After handing a water bottle over to Adan, the two ended up driving all the way back to the hotel and waited around for the others to get up and get going before they could do their daily antics.

After Brandon had asked the question to Adan something really weird happened. Adan's body just sort of shifted or moved around at an impossibly fast rate. Brandon was not entirely sure what he just saw and Adan's position hadn't even shifted that much, but it was still pretty weird. Despite that weird occurance Brandon decided to not bring it up at all as he figured he was probably just imagining things, awesome things no less. That little tangent aside, Brandon listened as Adan told him he just had a headache. Well that seemed rather...weird. Brandon had had his fair share of headaches, after all you don't just get hit in the head on occasion and not feel aches from it, but never had he been in such a seriously intense pain. Maybe there was something more wrong with him?

Brandon was going to ask but Adan seemed to sort of space out. Man he just seemed really out of it. As such Brandon decided to propose an idea of sorts to Adan. "Do you want to go and try and find a pharmacy or something and get something for that headache there? Don't worry, I'll pay for it. After all, a friend in pain is just not a good thing."

Evan was having the time of his life up here in the hills of the hike of the nature of the place with the stuff and the things and the holy run on sentence batman. Sure rollerblading on a nature hike had not been the best idea. And sure, being drunk on said rollerblades during said nature hike was probably a worse idea. But in the end, so long as everyone was having fun and not randomly dying, everything went and everything was chill~~~.

Eventually, though, they had run out of the good old alcoholic beverages. This saddened Evan. Saddened him like a puppy that was denied its treat. However he got over it surprisingly quickly and continued to drunkenly blade around his legs decided that they wanted no more part in actually moving. As such Evan just sort of collapsed on the ground resigning himself to his fate of wasting away forever here in the great outdoors...next to a group of friends with a camp fire...about a few miles away from a beach resort. OH THE HUMANITY OF IT ALL!

It was certainly a good thing, though, that the group had decided to go and sleep out here for the night, rather than hike all the way back. Short of someone carrying him, there was no way Evan was actually going to be able to make his way over to the resort by tonight. So he simply lied down on the ground, where he had collapsed earlier, and was simply watching everyone do their own thing. He found it nice to watch the couples pair off with each other and enjoy each other's company. If only he had someone like that that he could spend time with. Some conspiracy crazed nutcase entered his head as a candidate, but he brushed that thought aside and chalked this whole thought process up to the alcohol. With nothing left to do, Evan fell asleep.

After Brandon had made his proclamation of "wake the fuck up" proportions, the first person to actually wake up was Adan. Only something seemed really off about him. Brandon was usually the last to notice anything, but something being wrong with Adan was blatantly obvious. He clutched his head, kind of like he was in severe pain and more so tears started coming down his face. He heard Adan mumble something, and then he proceeded to throw a pillow towards Brandon. Brandon did not have much time to react to the pillow toss at all. And while he was lightning, he was not as quick as it. As such the pillow had ended up hitting Brandon square in the face, making him stumble back a bit, and then fell harmlessly off his face. Jeez someone was definitely cranky.

Eventually Adan did some business in the bathroom, and then left the room. While Brandon had resolved to stay in the room and wait for everyone else to wake up, he felt genuinely concerned for Adan. Sure getting hit by things from people was a given whenever Brandon did something like this, and he was totally fine with it happening, so the pillow was not why he was concerned at all. Instead Adan seemed to be in some great form of pain and it looked like it probably needed to be checked out. Couldn't have a bro on the team feeling bad now could he? As such, Brandon reluctantly left the room and went to the lobby. Once there he walked outside to where Adan was and asked, "hey are you alright? You didn't seem so good back there." Brandon wasn't just gonna leave a bro alone in pain, no siree. He would even take him down to a drug store and buy some painkillers for him if need be.

"Goooooood Moooorrrrrnnnniiiinnnggggggg!"
Context: Brandon woke up that morning with a start and feeling raring to go. He certainly wanted to get this show on the road. The whole, finding everyone else in the group. Going to deserted islands, flooded cities, rocky areas that don't actually have a real beach but people can wash up onto them anyway. Man, it'd be awesome to do anyone of those while looking for the group. As such he bounded out of bed and yelled....what was said at the beginning. Brandon wanted to be sure, though, that everyone in the room got out okay, since some seemed to be injured. Not to mention there was no way he was going to burn his day in a lobby waiting for these people to get up. If they weren't waking up on their own, especially after that proclamation, he was making 'em get up.

Richard woke up on the island, rather uncaringly. The ground was not the best place to sleep, that was for certain, but it was still a place to sleep nonetheless. He stood up and stretched out, looking around and noticing everyone else still passed out. Jeez, when did he become the first to get up? Regardless Richard felt that something was probably going to have to be done today on this island, whether it be exploration or some plan of escape. He was fine sleeping for the whole day, but he'd much rather do it indoors. In a bed or on a chair or something. Not to mention the others were probably going to be wanting to do something...what a bother this situation was.

Richard had absolutely no idea as to what he should be doing in this situation. They were on an island, that much became clear. One more thing that was clear is that they were on a shore, and that was most likely the safest place on the entire island. Richard didn't know which islands in the world were inhabited and which weren't, but he hadn't seen a single person who wasn't a member of this little group and as such came to the conclusion that they weren't near any form of society. It was the answer of least effort and could easily be wrong, but Richard was not willing to go on an exploration mission on an unknown island with potentially hyper lethal animals. Not without a nap at least. As such Richard just said, "staying here for the night is probably the best choice." And with that, he fell asleep, right where he was sitting.

​

Evan did not have the greatest start on the morning ever. That was simply because he was late for an event that he had no idea was going down. Or did he? The last few days were a bit hazy for the rollerskating man of rollerskating-uh-ness. But time was a wasting when it came to this awesome sounding drunk hiking and Evan was totally not going to be that one square of a person to miss out on such a thing. As such he rollerbladed post-haste to the place. Once there he got handed a bottle from some chick named Lennox, who happened to be Bossman's sister. Well that was cool. Evan tried to remember if he even knew the man had a sister, but that was neither here nor there for now. What did matter was that he had alchol and he was with his bros and and Ria and Lennox (who he wasn't sure if they minded being called bros or not.)

Evan had downed some of the liquid before passing it over to Bossman and said, "c'mon you know you want to." He wasn't taking no for an answer, and as such he more or less forced the bottle onto Bossman before walking forward, twirling around and hopping and skipping up the terrain they were on. It was quite the fun experience, hiking that is. Taking in all of nature and taking everything in. Heck he even loved the rugged terrain they had to walk across. The long battle uphill to reach the top and or more uphill was amazing too. It was just one long metaphor for the power and perseverance of the human spirit and its ability to climb through and conquer over every challenge...there was a slight chance Evan was already drunk.

It was at that moment that he thought of a great idea. If walking across rocks and rugged was so much fun, and rollerblading was a good deal of fun, then wouldn't it make sense, that the two of them together were a jolly good barrel of laughs and fun? So, Evan pulled out his wheels and attached them to his shoes, and then started blading around with a jolly fun spirit. Granted, blading uphill was extremely hard and used much more effort than he actually needed to, but hey, efficiency was not his middle name...that was Allen.

Brandon had been walking around good old Australia with good old Compadre and Eris, and they were just moving about towards Inverloch. The gang was clearly exhausted and fatigued, seeing as they walked a grand amount of distance from their starting location to Inverloch in one day after a boat drowning, but Brandon was not having any of that. With his infinite pep and enthusiasm he had, he lead the group blindly through Australia to where they were now. When he looked towards the road, though, he noticed something. There was a car that was just sort of slowing down until it came to a complete stop. Brandon didn't really pay much attention to the car until he looked at the person who came out of the car. He looked quite familiar and the man looked to be trying to wave them down, but Brandon couldn't hear anything coming from the person. It took a lot longer than it should have, but Brandon finally realized that that was Buch waving them down, and Brandon probably would've noticed sooner if he could matchup the voice coming from him. Why wasn't Buch yelling towards them? Brandon remembered him to have quite the charismatic distinct voice that one could spot a mile away, so he didn't really get why he wasn't using it.

The tired gang of Brandon, Eris, and Compadre all ended up going to the car only to find that Buch wasn't the only one sitting around there. In the car was also Jo and Brawler, and it was being driven by good old Adan. Well that was quite convenient for them. Especially that they had a car. Brandon figured that Adan had stolen the car...and didn't care either way about it. Point is, they had a car! With everyone comedically piling into the car like they were a family from a sitcom getting ready for a road trip, they figured the best place to go to would be a hotel or something. The gang was met with the simple fact that they had no money...except for the fact that Brandon had Cass's money. Man, that phone call sure did help them out in the long run...was still a pretty bad topic but it was helpful nonetheless. Without actually telling anyone where Brandon got the money from they eventually went to a hotel and Brandon bought them rooms. Two to be precise. He had money but wasn't made of it. Not wanting to have awkward moments with boy girl stuff, and the fact that Jo kept looking at Adan with both terrified and murderous intent, Brandon decided to split the rooms up by gender. Once Jo and Eris go there key and went to their room, Brandon, Buch, Brawler, Compadre and Adan all went to their own room to sleep.

After quite a while of walking Sal had finally felt that his body was well enough healed that he didn't need to continue using his healing aura. That and he didn't really want to go to society with a light green glow around him. Then he'd just be taken to the Australian government alien research center. He didn't know if that sort of facility actually existed, but it would be a safe assumption that every government ever has one of those. Sal continued to walk through wherever he was and ended up passing through some weird stretch of land that if you looked through a satellite picture would look like some sort of weird sand river, Sal had eventually found his way to civilization.

It was a town known as Foster, one that was in Australia and devoid of most description simply because Sal did not know how to describe it (and neither did Skyheart.) Sal walked in, feeling pretty tired from his extensive day of walking and healing, and figured that now would be a good time if ever to find some place to eat and sleep. Sal was quite hungry after all, and if there was one point that had been reinforced quite a bit since he joined the group, it was that sleep was very important. Granted, Sal had no money and no way to contact his parents...who probably thought he was still traveling around in Europe anyway. Man he was bad at keeping them up to speed. Oh well.

Sal walked around the slightly waterlogged town, still damaged from the hurricane, and found his way into a hotel. Acting like he was certainly planning on coming here from the beginning, Sal calmly walked around the hotel and went up to the second floor to find a room. After knocking on a few rooms to see if they were occupied or not, Sal found a room that he figured was going to be the place he should finish his night off in. Keeping the location of the room memorized, Sal walked outside and around the hotel, looking around to make sure that no one would see what he was going to do. Sal pulled out his wand, turning it into the baselard, and engaged his sun aura. Going at a much faster rate than he possibly could've without the aura, Sal ran forward and managed to kick off and up the wall for a bit, until he stabbed the baselard into the wall and continued to climb up the wall kicking up and stabbing the wall. When he was finally at the window of the room he had found earlier, he broke it with his baselard and jumped in there. After quite the action/spy movie scene had occurred, Sal lied down in the bed in the room and went to sleep there.

Both Eris and Compadre were now awake and awaiting to go on their grandiose journey of Outbackien proportions. They also both wondered where this little badass team of awesome people were. Brandon had thought the answer to that was pretty freaking obvious. Clearly they were in Australia. Were these people not listening when they were making voyaging plans? Did they miss the part of the plan about having the sea drag and carry them all the way here? Regardless, Brandon knew that the best thing to do in a situation like this...was walk as randomly as humanly possible. Who has time to stay around in one place along side the coast where probably it'd be the most likely place for everyone else to wash up at. Not this kid that's for sure.

Brandon looked around and decided that it was time for this unlikely trio to get the lead out their pants and get moving! To where? Fuck if he knew, this was Australia, a continent and maybe country filled with nothing but desert and kangaroos...or at least that's what television taught him."Alright gang! This way to society!" Brandon outstretched his arm and made Vis Vis point in the direction of where they would be heading. It took a lot of walking, but the trio eventually did make it to Inverloch, some weird town that Brandon was quite surprised it existed. Not because of any real factors, more so because he had absolutely no idea society would actually be the way where he was pointing to. But hey, he didn't question these things.

Spoiler: Arbitrary Self Training Post #7

Sal had awoken in the same place he had been in for quite some time in his dreams. Like every time he went to sleep this place was here. Why am I even still describing this intro part? It's not like it has any real bearing on the rest of it, or even counts as a part of the post...does it? I don't really know. Welp, time to get going.

Spoiler: Round 1

Sal had watched the world turn crimson as it always did and knew he was in for a good old fashion beatdown within the realm of his subconscious. He was wondering just what kind of event he was going to go through this time though. He had acquired Sun rank three recently, so this was going to be most likely earth rank two. Sal was wondering how much of this fighting he actually had to do and how much of his day to day life this would become, but he stopped caring as he noticed the form of four new shadow types spawning in. Well this was going to be an interesting session.

The four had started off just sprinting towards Sal, though two went slower than two others. This caused the leading two to continue their way and start their assault while the backing two attacked from the air, simply by jumping towards him. Sal felt the stinging blows of the shadows coming down upon him and tried to think of a way out of this situation. Wait a second. Sal was pretty sure he had been fighting four on one of these things in earth rank one before. Oh well, he was sure he could rethink of the strategy he had used before. Though he would have to do it soon as the stupid shadow types were really starting to bog him down.

Sal simply jumped back, causing the two to attack from the air to fall and the two from the front to get out of their beatdown rhythm. Next up, Sal went to go take on the four shadows coming at him in the most fashionable way possible.The first one charging at him he grabbed and tossed aside, the second one a quick uppercut sending it sailing upward. The next two managed to start hitting him, but he quickly grabbed them and tossed them aside, punching the falling one dead on killing it instantly. There only remained three left that tried to triangulate around Sal and charge him from that form of position. Sal simply knocked the one in front with his foot, killing it as well, and proceed to get hit in the back by the other two. Sal simply punched those two away and caused them both to die ending round one.

Spoiler: Round 2

Sal was quite intrigued by that last round. The shadow types seemed to be getting more durable than usual, normally only dying in one punch. But oh well. This would make for a more interesting and more difficult fights ahead of him in this session. He could indeed get used to more of that. Or really less of that. Less challenge probably meant a shorter time here and much less pain. So yeah, Sal was all for less challenging battles to be underway. However the fact that five shadow types were forming as opposed to the four he had just fought was pretty clear indication of that was never happening. Oh well.

The round began off with the five sprinting around Sal into a pentagonal formation. He wasn't really quite what the purpose of this was, but the shadows just stood there, like they were waiting for something. Sal realized, that they were most likely looking for some sort of opening against him and would only dash in when the opportunity presented itself. Having nothing else to do in this situation Sal simply walked a bit forward and unleashed the trigger flag that the shadows needed. They all simply charged at Sal and went in to kill him.

Seeing as Sal had seen this coming, it wasn't really a shock when they all started trying to converge on his position. In fact, he was easily able to punch one away from him as the others started to attack him. Okay well this was kind of bad. There were four attacking him from all different angles and Sal did not have much maneuverability during this time. However, he was able to grab a shadow type and toss it aside, alleviating some of the pressure. The other three then started to attack him in a synchronized fashion, hitting him and the bolting out only to repeat the process again. This gave Sal the opportunity during their out period to punch one of the shadow types away. The other two that had been incapacitated, though, soon got up and charged at Sal. What Sal did next, was grab the two that had been attacking him already and toss them at the two charging ones, killing the two chargers instantly. Sal then proceeded to kick the dazed ones and ended round two.

Spoiler: Round 3

Well that was quite the lively round indeed. Looks like more detail was finally being put into these fight posts because otherwise they'd just start ending up being the exact same post over and over again. Sal felt the damage he had taken heal up from the fight and was ready to go for some more. Not like he had much choice in the matter anyway. Though he was confused by what came next. Normally difficulty was supposed to amp up with each new fight. And that translated to more things fighting him than in previous rounds. But now there were only five shadows forming in. Sal remembered that in the last earth rank challenge something like this happened where they would come back, only be harder to take on. Well this was certainly going to be an interesting time.

The match kicked off with the five shadow types approaching him in a rather unique way. They went to attack him in a single file line. That was something he hadn't seen at all up to this point and didn't know what to expect. Thinking that it was just going to be easy pickings, just knocking them out one after the other, Sal got prepped to punch out the shadows as the approached. Only when the first one in line jumped, it jumped over Sal, clearing him all together and moving in from the back. Well that was a bit of a problem.The next two jumped over head as well, but were continuously bouncing off the air in order to do so. The final two actually jumped straight towards Sal, and he was going to meet them head on with his fist. Only the one from behind and uptop started attacking him when the front two engaged their plan.

Being attacked from all sides at once was not something he wasn't used to, but it sure did present a bit of a problem. Oh well. Sal was just going to have to kick their asses all the same anyway. He started to brace himself amidst the onslaught and pushed outward, knocking the shadow types back and away from him. Sal quickly ran towards one of them and kicked it out, killing it, before it could get back up. The other four were now moving in on his position and all Sal had to do was kick the oncoming ones. One of them got hit by this, it died, and the other three proceeded to just ram him down and knock him off balance. Sal proceeded grab two and throw them off of him until he finally punched the final one off of him. With only two left, he charged the shadows who tried to charge him. The shadows ended up getting punched out and died instantly.

Spoiler: Round 4

Well that was a certainly different round from the last. Sal was feeling quite confident in his abilities, even without having to use auras. He felt the bruises heal up and he just awaited what new challenge he was going to face next. Was it going to be six of these shadow types? It'd make sense following the old pattern. Only these ones did not follow the old pattern at all. There were only three shadow types that spawned in. That was a bit interesting in of itself. The next interesting thing was the aspect about these shadow types. They were glowing a faint light green and white color. Oh that could not be good.

Round four kicked off with the shadow types sprinting at Sal in a familiar fashion. Sal, as such, responded in a familiar fashion. When one got too close he knocked it away with a punch. The other two, however, used that punch as an opportunity to close in on Sal and continuously attack him. Going in and out they attacked him in a fashion that would make them safest, only Sal was able to punch one of them away anyway. With only one remaining one of these glowing shadow types left, Sal figured he could easily take it on. As such he ran towards the thing only for it to evade and counterattack him. Its counter attack was short lived as Sal was able to kick the shadow away and easily knock it away.

Sal was pretty confident in his ability to beat these glowing shadows and was awaiting the previous two to come and attack him. And come at him they did. Sal beat away the first one and then proceeded to deal with the second one. The second one, however, was being quite squirly and avoiding Sal as best as possible. That was when Sal got hit in the back by another one of the shadow types and turned his attention to it to punch it away. After he did so, the one he was chasing came back and hit him in the back of the knee. It knocked Sal off his balance and he figured he could take the last one of these things on easily enough. So he beat the shadow type away before it could make any attacks of its connect with him. Only the round didn't end and Sal was assaulted by two from the back. Wait, that was weird. These things took two hits to kill, and he had dealt a total of six hits, two to each one. So what was going on here? Sal tried to pick himself up over the pressure but was having trouble doing so as the shadows were being smart about their attacks. Sal did manage to knock one of them away, but not before a different one came to take its place. Eventually the third one came back to the fray, and being unable to beat the shadows, Sal was defeated and beaten to a pulp.

Spoiler: Round 5

Sal was quite thoroughly confused as to what just happened that round. He was positive he had hit them enough times to kill them all, but none of them had actually been bested. So what was actually going on here? Sal felt his muscles and slightly fractured bones start to heal up as he rose up in pain. This was going to be quite the difficult time against these ****ers wasn't it? Sal looked to the glowing shadow types and figured that this was just going to be more of a challenge than he anticipated. Fully healed and ready to go, round five went underway.

The three glowing shadows went charging off the line a single file fashion that the group of five from previously did. Sal knew all too well what they going to be doing, and so as one tried to jump over his head and get clear past Sal, Sal jumped up and knocked the shadow out of the air. This plan was then interrupted by the other two shadows charging a defenseless mid air Sal and knocking him to the ground, forcing the wind out of him. Sal was able to push himself back up, though, and continued to fight the two shadow types attacking him. He was able to punch one of them away, before it actually caused any more real harm, and kicked the final shadow. The original shadow type was now on his ass and Sal wasn't entirely sure what to do about this thing.

The shadow had went for the knee again and knocked Sal down quite easily. However that did not deter Sal from punching this glowing shadow away from him and continuing to go on an all out rampage against these ****ers. With the other two shadows coming at him, Sal needed to react accordingly and outstretched his arm, like the beast type did to him, and tried to catch them in their tracks. This did not prove to work when the first shadow came and attacked him in the back. Sal turned his attention to the one that just knocked into him and noticed something odd. There were pieces of the shadow missing, that were slowly reforming into green light, that quickly transformed back into the shadow's body. Sal got beaten down and defeated before he was able to actually process this information, thus ending round five.

Spoiler: Round Six

Sal had figured out what the gimmick behind these shadows were. The real reason they weren't dying. It was simply because they were regenerating after each blow. Sal was not dealing enough damage to them all at once, and as such they were recovering before he could actually finish them off. He also figured that the glow off of these shadow types was actually the healing aura. So now that Sal had figured out why he was losing, he needed to come up with a good way to win. Turning his attention towards the three glowing healing shadows, Sal cracked his knuckles and got ready for round six.

The three had started off by advancing towards Sal in quite the usual fashion. Just altogether at once, straight up charging him. Sal did not attack them this time, though, and instead decided to go for a different means of winning against these beasties. He simply dodged out of the way of their attacks and continued onward thinking of how he was going to manage to take these things out. There had to be no spaces in between his attacks on these things. They had to get hit once, and simply die from it. That was all there really was to this fighting against these shadows, and as such Sal got himself prepped for the final hurrah against these three shadow types.

After missing they quickly spun around and charge right back at Sal. Sal avoided out of the way, biding his time until the shadow types came straight at him again. Until he could single one out and take it down. With three of them coming at him once more, Sal avoided the sprinting shadows and managed to grab one out of the group. With that one singled out, Sal able to put all of his strength into releasing and punching the shadow all at once. Hitting the shadow at full strength, it died instantly, not having a chance to heal up from the attack. With one down there were only two left to take out. Those two then veered back to Sal, who was no prepping to take one of them out again. When the shadows approached Sal he kicked at one of them with all of his strength killing that one as well. With only one left, Sal was able to easily hit it away and take it out like he would've any other shadow.

Spoiler: Round 7

Sal was rather pleased with his ability to kill those three healing shadows at once. It was quite the nice accomplishment. But now he realized that the challenge rating on these rounds was only going to be amped. Oh well, it was good enough for now and he was just going to cross those challenge bridges when the came. Sal looked forward as the ripples in the water started to reform and reveal that five shadows were being formed. They all seemed to have that same healing aura on them as the last three did. Well that was certainly a way to make things harder. Sal was getting ready to fight when he realized that he too was emanating faint glow. That glow appeared to belong to the earth aura.

Sal was not entirely sure what to do against these things this time as he had the earth aura over him now. What did the earth aura do again? Sal had only actually used the sun aura so far so his...oh right. It made things ****tons stronger. Well that was good news. Sal awaited the charging of the five as the did some sort of irregular charge simply attacking in a line, stretched wide. They tried to circle around Sal but he was getting ready for the attack.

When they attacked Sal had simply punched one of the ones closest to him away. The punch he delivered was much, much stronger than his regular punches and he could tell it was. The shadow type that ended up hitting with his fist just simply ceased to exist after he punched it. Well damn, that was pretty awesome. He started getting hit by the other four, but their attacks didn't feel nearly as punishing as they had before. Easily able to take the attacks Sal continued to fight back against these shadow types and merely killed each and everyone of them with a single punch.

Spoiler: Round 8

Well that was certainly awesome. Sal was loving the fact that he had been able to easily take down all of the shadow types that used to bring him a good deal of stress. Well, stress that only last two rounds before he killed those as well. Nevertheless, Sal was really liking this new power of his and was going to have to get prepped for round eight. Oh what he wondered this round would bring him. The ground started to spew out the wisps and out came only four enemies. Three healing shadows and one regular beast type. Sal was certainly going to enjoy this fight.

The round started off with the healing shadows running to the side and trying to get behind Sal. Sal simply responded by getting ready to go after the ones behind him. The beast type did its typical straight up charge and tried to bring Sal down from the get go. Sal simply caught the beasts fist with his hand, albeit he was struggling to fend it off, and stopped the beast dead in its tracks. He was winding up a punch and was ready to kill this beast type when he suddenly got hit from behind.

The three healing shadow types had managed to get in from behind and hit all at once, knocking Sal off balance and opening himself up. The beast type took advantage of this and punched Sal in the gut, sending him flying back and having the wind knocked out of him. An attack that would usually rupture his organs, though, did not seem to be causing as much pain as it usually would. Sal stood up through the pain and got ready to go in and fight this thing. The three healing shadows tried to come in and bog him down, but they were too late. Sal was already up and had already delivered a successful punch to one of the three shadow types. Sal then proceeded to fight off the other two by grabbing them and hurling them at beast type, who killed the shadows by punching them away. Sal and the beast type then charged at each other, and Sal punched the beast type out, emerging victorious over it.

Spoiler: Round 9

Well that was certainly fun. Sal had been able to beat down one of his long standing rival enemy types in a test of sheer physical strength. Take that beast type, not so strong now are ya? Well that didn't really matter. Sal was wondering how long he had been doing this for and realized it was already round nine. Cool. He had been blowing through these fights and was certainly ready to use his earth aura powers more against these enemy types since it certainly was indeed fu~n. He looked to see his next opponent form in and realized it was just a bit more of the same. Four healing shadow and two regular beast types. Sal prepped himself in anticipation of the fight and let round nine get underway.

The fight started off with the healing shadow type beings rushing after him all at once. Sal was easily able to fight against these things before and he didn't really see how they'd be a problem this time. Though the four did do what three did to him last time. That is to say, rush behind him. The two regular beast types had also charged at Sal and were getting ready to beat him down as well. Sal had proven that in a one on one fight he could easily take these things...that didn't exactly hold true for two on one though, so he had to get himself ready for all the fighting. He was dodging the attacks of both beast types when the shadows made their move.

The healing shadows charged at him and all went for his back. Sal, seeing this coming, turned around and beat the shadows away by swinging his arm at them. Two did not survive the blow and two others were greatly damaged and started healing from the attack. The two beasts took this opportunity to hit Sal, though, he had been seeing this coming as well. Sal dodged out of the way of the beast types and uppercut one of them, causing it to fly into the air. Sal then went and punched the other one in the gut, followed by a punch to the face. With that enemy type defeated, Sal then went on to kill the other one, who was now falling and simply killed the remaining two shadow types that were left as they tried to charge him.

Spoiler: Round 10

Sal was feeling quite good about himself after those previous fights. He had been able to overcome an old effective enemy strategy and was able to out physically fight an old physically powerful foe. Now all he needed to do was continue on for six rounds and then bam, he'd have earth aura rank two in the bag. Sal looked and noticed that the shadows were now reforming and he saw what he was fighting this time. There they were. Three shadow types and one beast type. Oh ho, but there was twist this time. Both the shadows and the beast had the healing aura around them. Well this was certainly going to be much more different than the last rounds...probably.

The round started with the three shadows splitting off. One riding on top of the now charging beast and two attacking from behind. The whole riding thing was certainly different and Sal didn't entirely know how to deal with these. The beast type then approached him and punched at him, which he simply avoided and punched straight at the gut of the beast, causing its shadowy innards to be revealed. However, now it was kind of healing and the shadow type had jumped off of his head and was now attacking him from above, whilst the other two were now attacking him from behind.

Sal grabbed the one above him and launched it away, killing it when it landed on the ground. Sal then proceeded to punch at the two behind him, only to miss completely. The two shadows then approached him from the front as the beast attacked from the back. Not seeing this attack from behind coming, Sal was blindsided and was sent hurtling forward, albeit killing one of the shadows on his way forward. Picking himself up, Sal grabbed the approaching healing shadow and threw it straight towards the beast type. The beasts leg collided with the shadow, killing the shadow, and injuring the leg. That injury soon healed as it charged at Sal, who simply evaded the attack and punched the beast in the face, killing it.

Spoiler: Round 11

Sal was wondering what could come back in the next five rounds. It was going to be quite the great challenge indeed. He was going to have keep up his a-game and his earth aura in order to keep this moment of him constantly winning these matches going. He knew that eventually he was going to meet his match, but hey, to was all in good fun. And him losing still counted as a round and there were only fifteen rounds anyway. Getting ready for the next round of his Sal saw what was coming forth. That being a shambler type and once again, three healing shadow types.

The match kicked off with the shadows running to the side and the shambler immediately trying to skewer Sal with its tentacle spikes. Thankfully, the earth aura didn't make him any slower or less reflexive so he was easily able to get out of the way of each of the attacks. Next came the shadows who were charging Sal at quite the speed. Sal had to deal with them first if he was going to get rid of that shambler. Though the shambler was probably going to take advantage of his fights against the shadow types and skewer him anyway. Decisions decisions.

What Sal decided to do was simply grab the tentacle spikes as they were coming and break them in his hand. With that out of the way, the spike writhed a bit before retracting back to the shambler. It was at this moment, Sal simply punched the first of the healing shadows that was approaching and almost immediately killed it. The other two didn't prove to be much of a problem as Sal was able to, just as easily, kill them as well and get raring to go against the shambler. The shambler was having a difficult time attacking Sal, as each spike kept getting broken and it only made Sal's job of punching the thing all the more easier. With the shambler dead, Sal had won the round.

Spoiler: Round 12

Here it was, round twelve. Sal knew that things were almost coming to a close and he was ready and willing to bring this close as fast as he could. He was just wondering what his new opponent would be. And if this was going to be one of the ones he won or lost against. Seeing the forming of the black wisps once more, Sal was getting ready to take on his next challenge. Though his next challenge appeared to be three shadows and two shambler types. Both of them had a healing aura around them. Well that was certainly interesting. Sal cracked his knuckles once again, and got ready to bring the hurt down on these dream monsters.

The round started off with the shadows jumping across the air in order to avoid being skewered by the tentacle spikes of the two shamblers. Dealing with these things in multiples was always exponentially harder than just dealing with one of them. Sal had his hands full just dodging the two, let alone actually trying to break the spikes from them. However, his dodging concentration was broken when he was assaulted by the three shadows from the sky. He had to jump back to avoid the attacks of the shadows and got ready to bring on the hurt on these monsters.

This plan, however, ended to be riddled with holes. So did Sal, but not just yet. Sal went to go attack the shadows and actually managed to kill one. However, a tentacle spike from the shambler, however, did end up skewering into him and that was just a whole mess of problems. Sal quickly broke the tentacle spike only to have it writhe and then instantly reform. The tentacle spikes from the shamblers then proceeded to overwhelm Sal and completely riddle him with holes.

Spoiler: Round 13

Okay, so that round could've gone better. For starters, he could've not died. Not dying was always a good thing to have happen. Sal felt that good old healing angel magic from Zachariel and was in quite the agony from it. She knew just how to make him feel every bit of the pain he should experience. He supposed that was the only real downside to losing a fight. Sure it still counted as a round, but the pain that followed it. Sal then thought that he should probably win this round and proceed to the final set so he could end this dream sequence. Cracking his freshly healed knuckles, Sal got ready to bring on the hurt of these monsters.

Round thirteen started off with the shamblers attacking Sal as fast as they could with the shadows charging at him from above. Sal started to dodge the tentacle spikes once more and tried to formulate a plan that would save him from this ****. Breaking the tentacle spikes was clearly out of the question as he definitely needed to not get stabbed by a healing spike. However he still wasn't entirely sure how to best approach this problem. If he continued to move forward than he would just get stopped by the shadows and then skewered. If he didn't move then he'd basically just be waiting out his demise. The latter clearly would not end well, but the former was undoable.

So what Sal did was realize that he should eliminate the shadows before they became too big of a problem. When they dropped from the sky, Sal simply punched upward, towards the sky, and killed a shadow as it was coming down. The other two veered away from Sal's fist, but were not able to veer away from his foot in their face. With them dead, all that left Sal to worry about was the shamblers. They had continued to unrelent on him, even as he was killing the shadows, and he needed to stop their **** now. So he simply charged up to what, punched it down, and charged at the second one, killing it. With that out of the way, round thirteen was over and done with.

Spoiler: Round 14

Here it was. The penultimate round for this session once again. Sal had this sinking feeling that he was indeed going to lose this round, and knew it was going to be horrible. Oh well, the final round is where he could make it all up. Sal had fought many a foe in this challenge and now there was only one set, presumably, of these creatures left. Sal witnessed his foes coming into fruition, those beings that were going to basically end him. They were, a beast type, three shadow types, and a shambler type. All with healing auras. All basically ready to engage and kill Sal at the drop of a hat. Sal with all of his earth auraness got ready for round fourteen.

The shambler started the fight off by just stabbing at Sal, who had no choice but to try and avoid the attacks as best he could. Next came the three shadows that were sprinting around him, looking for some kind of an opening. The beast simply bull charged him as the types always do, and Sal had to figure out what he was supposed to do in this situation. Well the answer seemed rather obvious. He continued to avoid the tentacle spikes, sent his fist upward, though just barely grazing the shadow type and caught the beast type's fist. Sal pushed the fist out of the way proceeded to punch the beast away and charge after the shambler.

With nothing really to deter him, Sal kept avoiding shambler spike after shambler spike until he was finally close enough to bring the pain down on the shambler...unfortunately so was everything else. Sal hadn't actually killed any of the things he fought so far, and as such the shadow types hit him in the back of the knees and the beast type came up and threw him around like a chew toy. With Sal flying through the air, the shambler found a clear opening for an attack and skewered Sal through, ending round fourteen.

Spoiler: Round 15

Somehow, Sal's prediction about losing the fight last time was somehow correct. Oh well. This was it, the final round. The round to make it all or break it all. Sal had to drum up a new plan to take down this marching band of enemies, if he was going to have any shot at taking home the gold...well...the earth aura wasn't exactly golden, that was more the sun aura. Hmm. Well technicalities aside, Sal had to get ready and fight off these creatures from the weird wisps in this water ground. Turning to his foes, he got ready for the final round of this fight.

It was go time, Sal had immediately, and instinctively, started avoiding the shambler spikes as best he could as he always did. Next were the shadows. They didn't do much damage, but their ability to harass was off the charts. He couldn't entirely break away from these spikes without them coming and messing **** up. Next was the beast. The beast had to get killed almost instantly otherwise it was just going to heal up all the damage it had and then prove to further annihilate Sal. Sal had then formulated a rather simple plan that would make the enemies wonder how it could have happened to them.

Sal started off by backstepping to avoid the sky dropping shadows. With that out of the way, he had to focus on the beast. The shambler was putting constant pressure on him though, but Sal decided to dodge a little less and punch a little more. Getting cut up by the tentacle spikes, Sal managed to punch the beast type in the face and send it flying. He then turned around and punched the shadows approaching on his position. With those three out of the way, he simply ran in a straight shot to the shambler avoiding all the spike on the way there. After closing in and punching the thing out, Sal turned around and beat down the charging beast that was only partially healed. With all the enemies dead the black orb formed in front of him and Sal touched it to reveal a green and blue orb underneath it. Absorbing that orb the dream sequence ended.

Sal hacked and coughed as he was awakened to the realization that he was on solid ground. He was pretty sure that the boat was not this solid and the waters were that calm. In fact weren't they- oh right. They had all drowned. Did everyone die? Was this what the afterlife was like? Sal opened his eyes to see that he was...well not in any form of paradise. He was pretty sure the afterlife wasn't supposed to be filled with this much water. Or maybe it was and that's why no one would ever go thirsty there. Oh well.

Sal had eventually theorized that he was, indeed, on the mainland of the waterlogged Australia, and that one of two scenarios had occurred. One! The others had washed up on different parts of the shore and they were all now separated from each other. Two! Everyone else had drowned and he was the lone survivor of the gang, the only one left who could actually save the world. He was really hoping that the latter was not true.

Sal decided to check if his belongings were still intact and as such he fiddled around in his pockets to pull out his wand. Turning it into its baselard form Sal smiled to see the thing was still around with him. Turning it back into a wand and pocketing it Sal decided there was no use just sitting around here doing nothing. That would get awfully boring after all. Picking himself up, Sal felt all the pain from the bruises he had acquired during the little tumble through the sea, and the soreness from dream training. Radiating a faint glow of light green and white off of him, Sal began to walk towards civilization, healing himself with his healing aura as he went along.

[/url]Dennis had been taking it pretty easily today. There was just not much going on at all. Between him chilling in the pool and...chilling in the pool. Maybe he should get some friends...Nah, that wasn't anything necessary right now. Not to mention he had the odd feeling he'd be completely irrelevant to everyone in a few days (his time that is) anyway. So that didn't really matter anyway. What did matter was going around and exploring this place as much as humanly possible. Dennis dragged himself out of the pool, drying himself off, before getting his shirt and shoes on and going on a little adventure around the place. He didn't exactly know where to go seeing as he had actually no idea what this place had to offer, but hey that's what exploring was for!

Dennis eventually stumbled upon a small area that just had two lone, what appeared to be, gravestones just randomly in the ground. No one seemed to pay them any mind, but Dennis was rather creeped out by these random tombstones, but he proceeded to read them anyway...for adventure? The first one said "Here Lies Cassidey, she died in the most preventable way possible. What a shame really." That was...interesting. Dennis was pretty creeped out by that. What did it mean by, preventable? He turned his attention to the next tombstone and all it said on it was "S ane." Well that was not nearly as interesting. It was like no one could really think of what to write in description of this man. There looked like something was faded between the S and the A but Dennis couldn't make it out. Feeling thoroughly creeped out by both these random tombstones, Dennis decided it was time for dinner.

It was there in the dining area where he decided to get something for his dinner. He sat at a table, not too far from some weird brown haired guy who just seemed to devouring meal after meal, without pause. The man had an interesting appetite to say the least. It was then that a blond haired man had arrived to take his order. "Hello how may I serve you today? Would you care for some Ham? Everyone loves some good Ham-" the man stopped taking his order and immediately went to assist a female who had just arrived. He seemed very eager to help the girl, though the girl looked quite fiery and was not having any of his would be advances. After a much longer time of waiting than he should've, Dennis got his food and finally left the dining hall.

On his way back to the room that he shared with three other people, he wondered about Pierce. He hadn't seen her at all since the...incident, and was wondering what she might be doing. Hopefully she wasn't in solitude and tears, trembling for eternity. Dennis eventually made it back to his room and sat down to watch him some TV. There was this weird television program that seemed like captain america, only the person who was supposed to be the Captain looked more...golden. Oh well. Dennis eventually just went to sleep wondering what he would do tomorrow.

Brandon had awoken to probably one of the most invigorating feelings he had ever felt, one that you could say charged his very being. Made his state from unconscious to absolutely electric. Brandon was awoken to the feeling of his entire body zapping himself. He had been passively letting off his lightning abilities as he was out cold and as such jump started his entire body. Sea water and electricity just didn't go well together. "HOLY ENGLISH PROFANITIES!" Brandon jumped as his body was awoken from his deep slumber, erupting steam due to the electrified water, and got right into activity. He was raring and ready to go and do...wait what was he supposed to be doing again? Brandon looked around and noticed...where in the large water covered world were they? Brandon had remembered them being on the Island of Looney Tunes, and then suddenly they were besieged by a large torrent of unimaginable force...and water. There was a lot of water in his recent memory. Heck the whole ground was water.

Brandon then realized something else was a miss. Looking around the first thing that was drawn to his attention...There was no tennis racket anywhere! Oh what had hap- that's right. He had put it down while he was on the boat, and now it was lost to the briney deep for all of eternity...well that sucked. Oh and hey most of the group was gone. Well that was certainly a mix up from the norm as well. Where was everyone exactly? All Brandon could see was Compadre and Eris...just lying there. Immediately Brandon thought to zap them awake but then realized he had nearly no control over the magnitude of which his lightning bolts came out. He only had one power level with these things and it'd most likely inadvertently kill them. Killing friends was bad after all and should be avoided at all costs. Instead he just walked over and poked Compadre saying "hey, hey. Listen. We gotta go find the others so wake up now."

Richard awoke to one of the more unpleasant feelings he had had in his life. That was the feeling of freezing water drenching him and having to cough it out in order to wake himself up. Richard turned over and heaved out all the salt water that was in his mouth and proceeded to cough like a bronchitis patient. What the actual hell had happened? All that was supposed to go down, was them sailing through the rough waters and making it to the Australian mainland. Nearly drowning was certainly not on Richard's to-do list. Dying was too much of a bother for him to deal with. He wondered briefly what had actually happened to the others and where they might be. Also what caused this. Well Richard had a pretty good hunch it was the dark angels' fault, because it almost always was.

Richard decided to take a quick look around and see who else was still alive and or near his position. He noticed the unconscious bodies of three other people who were lying around. Those belonging to Henrik, Hana and Hay Sun. Well, this was certainly an interesting group he was thrust into. Looks like they'd have to find their way back to all the others...without having any sort of magical inclination as to where the others would be. Perfect. Richard was tired of being drenched and as such he simply made heated hellfire mist come off of his body to warm him up. He was getting so warm, that the water on his clothing started to boil. Well that was convenient. No need to wring out his clothing when he could simply heat it off. That said, he still needed to wait for the others before he could go on his journey to find everyone else. A journey that, were he by himself, he would probably sleep through. "Hey, wake up everybody." Richard decided it was probably better than saying nothing, but required the least amount of effort on his part.

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5​

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Spoiler: Arbitrary Self Training Post #6

Sal been taken back to his usual dream world and was quite curious as to what was going to happen this time. Was he going to have go through hell again or was Zachariel just going to let him be and explain the sword thing to him. "Well now that you are here, I'll begin the explanation of what is happening." There it was. "As I mentioned to you, your sword will not function until you earn the right to have it do so. That is what we are for this session. This will be a much shorter session in which you simply acquire your blade and prove that you can use it. That is all." With that Zachariel's voice just disappeared. The scenery changed back to its usual combat ready form and with that, Sal got ready to go in and train.

Spoiler: Round 1

Sal was ready to bring on the fistacuffs against the new enemy that was bound to spawn in. He had no real idea what he would be fighting seeing as none of the other types of creatures really seemed to stick out as being worthy of him having a blade now. Not to mention, he had beaten all of those types before hand so winning against them wouldn't be anything really special. That's when the wisps started forming. When they all came together, it showed a form that was slightly like that of the beast type's. The only differences being that it looked like it had small patches of armor across its body and one of its arm was just a small blade. Well that was certainly different.

Round one started off with the knife type charging after Sal, who was slightly cautious of the beings oncoming attack. It swiftly came upon him and started swinging back and forth towards Sal and was trying to clearly cleave him with its knife arm. Sal swiftly stepped out of the way of all the attacks and continued to look for an opening. Unfortunately, the reach and attack type of the blade significantly different than that of a fist, so Sal was getting slightly grazed by each blow of the knife. Eventually he had found his opening and decided to go into his groove of attacks.

Sal avoided the stabbing attack from the knife type and punched the thing in the face. He then proceeded to kick, the now staggering, creature in the shin causing it to lose its balance and fall down. The knife type picked itself back up with one arm and lunged for Sal's stomach. Sal grabbed the knife type's arm and threw it to the side, and then proceeded to kick the knife type in the face. Sal continued to kick the knife type continuously until it erupted into its black smoke and formed and orb of darkness. From it, a hilt protruded out. Sal grabbed the hilt and pulled it out revealing it to be...

Spoiler: Round 2

...A knife. He was gifted with the gift of a knife. Well, that was certainly...not what he was expecting. Especially considering everyone else and their full blown swords. "It's called a baselard." Zachariel seemed to be trying to make it better that he had to prove himself able to own a knife. "Now in these upcoming rounds, you will be using that baselard to defeat the next set of enemies. Only then will you be able to use it in the physical world." Zachariel seemed to have a thing for these regulations and proving himself. Oh well, he was just going to along with it. The black wisps of a creature was forming away from him, and out came two beast types from it. Well that was just get great. Sal got his kni-baselard, ready to fight the beast types as round two was going to get kicked off.

The two beasts charged straight away at Sal and Sal knew what he had to go and do. He simply dodged out of the way to the first beast by sidestepping, and then jumped back, away from the second beast type. The two of them began taking swings at Sal, who had to carefully and cautiously avoid them. He felt the urge to fall back into old habits and just go all super martial arts master out of nowhere. Then again, this was Zachariel, who made it quite clear that Sal had to use the baselard in order for this to mean anything. As such he continued to dodge and get a feel for the blade he was using. This was going to feel awkward, but he had to get used to it.

The first beast sent a straight to his face, Sal moved to the side to avoid this. With the beast wide open, Sal sliced at it quickly, short range and all, and caused a tear in the wisps. The beast roared in pain as the second beast tried to jab Sal in the stomach. Sal brought down the baselard down on the arm, forcing it to stop and causing the second beast to roar in pain. The two beasts were now going feral and just attacking with some sort of berserker rage that Sal was easily able to avoid them simply because...they were predictable right now. Each move he dodged, he countered with a swift stab. This continued until both beast types were dead and vanished.

Spoiler: Round 3

Man this baselard was quite useful despite it being rather short. He could get quite used to a blade in hand. Granted if it was an actual sword that might've been more useful, but apparently he'd have to earn that right. The wisps began to form creating a new swarm of combatants. Three shadow type creatures. Well this was going to be a different type of matchup. He normally just beat these things by swift punches. His comfortability with the baselard was still pretty limited, so he wasn't entirely sure how this was going to go down. Oh well, this was going to have to go down and Sal was going to totally kill them.

The three shadows sprinted at Sal almost instantly. They were moving in a double helix formation with one of them moving in a straight line. One of the shadows started jumping across the air to go and hit Sal from above. He was prepping for the one above....when he got hit from the front and started getting quite brutalized by them. Well this was quite the problem that was happening. Sal was wondering how he was supposed to get around this large beatdown and he really needed to think of a way to hit them with the baselard. Fists were easy. Covered a large area. Baselards, totally different.

Sal eventually tightened gripped his hand tighter onto the baselard and began to get ready to win this fight. He swiveled around and avoided one of the shadows attacks. With that out of the way, one of the other shadows was attacking him and Sal simply cut through the shadow, killing it instantly. The second shadow backed off and the two shadows then started running in a circular formation and were getting ready to attack Sal once again. The shadows then attacked him from front to back and Sal simply cut through the remaining to shadows, killing them instantly. With that, round three was done.

Spoiler: Round 4

Sal figured what enemy type he was going to be fighting next. There was only one real enemy type left anyway. Out from the wisps came the figure of the most dangerous of the three usual archetypes. The Shambler. Them and their tentacle spikes. Sal assumed that this was a test to see how well he could use his baselard in defense against a long range enemy. Oh, well this was going to be quite the interesting battle. Sal spun the baselard in his hand and gripped it tightly before getting ready to go in and fight this shambler.

The shambler began its relentless assault of tentacle spikes upon Sal and all Sal could really do was try and dodge out of the way. It was a continuous spike one, clearly, and it used roughly around three tentacle spikes in succession. Sal continued to side step each attack, getting grazed by each attack, not really advancing forward. He didn't quite realize what he wanted to do in this situation, but just charging forward did not seem like an ideal situation. Granted, getting mutilated did not seem like a good idea either. So he decided to do something about this. And using the baselard to help him out seemed like a good start.

Sal started by simply striking down all the spike tentacles that came at him. Each time he struck at one, it shattered and retreated almost immediately. When the spikes were mostly retracted, Sal began his advance upon the shambler, striking down each and every tentacle that came at him. It was actually much easier than trying to just sidestep all of the tentacle spikes really. When Sal had finally closed in on the shambler, it began its close range onslaught. Sal had tried to dodge side to side to avoid it as per the usual, and struck down a tentacle spike every here and there. Once he seemed to have a clear shot, Sal struck in fast and killed the shambler, ending round four.

Spoiler: Round 5

Well, Sal seemed to be able to prove himself by fighting through all of the previous enemy archetypes. Now what was he supposed to be fighting. He was pretty sure that aside from combination fights, there was no more for him to actually do. That's when he remembered what he had acquired the baselard from in the first place. From the wisps of darkness formed the final enemy archetype he had fought. Out came the knife type, looking menacing and ready for vengeance. This was going to be quite the interesting fight.

Sal began the fight against the knife type that went to start attacking. It charged at Sal and immediately lunged for his throat. Okay, well this thing seemed faster than the usual knife type. Sal had to dodge out of the way, last second, before he was able to get back and start the fight back up again. The knife type was now swinging at him quite savagely and it was taking all could to keep up with him and not get skewered by this fighting slashing foe. He needed to get going on his own assault or else he was going to end up chopped and minced.

Sal blocked a slash and then continued to go and slash towards the knife type which cut off a segment of its barely attached armor. From there, Sal went into a full on assault toward the knife type. The knife type tried to guard at best as it could against Sal's advances, but bit by bit it was slowly being whittled away. Eventually, the blade of the knife type hit too many times, and it simply broke under the force of Sal's baselard. With not more opposition in the way, Sal went in and sliced through the knife type, killing it instantly. With the knife type out of the way, Sal simply tossed the baselard in the air and the dream sequence ended.

"Come along now everyone." Sal and the gang were having to move quite lickety split to Australia. Time was a wasting, and of course they needed to get a move on. After his nice training day with Hana the day after that was spent with nothing but travel. This day would probably be no different, but oh well. At least this sort of travel day would be one fraught with many a danger and turmoil. The weather was quite horrid and the boat ride to the mainland was probably going to be quite hard as well, but nevertheless the group had to get going. With a skip in his step, Sal entered the boat and they were going to begin their journey towards the main continent of Australia, home to Kangaroos.

Sal could quite clearly tell that Hana was not pleased with the way things were. Oh well. Nothing he could really do to alleviate his mood. Though he was rather looking forward to a good old fashion training session amongst angels...that didn't take place in his mind. And probably wouldn't leave him dead. That'd be a big no no if he did die during these. Also the gang was going to Australia. Home of the...well it was home to something. He remembered his friend, Ivan Waller, saying something about having an older sister in Australia, so he always did want to go visit it with his friend. But those kinds of trips just never came to fruition.

Sal then started to think of a training partner that would be suitable for him to go up against. The people with dormant powers wouldn't do, simply because he wouldn't know how to fight them and help bring their powers out. Then the other people around probably already had someone else in mind that they'd like to train with anyway. Such was being a late comer to this party of unlikely heroes. So instead he decided to just train with the person who was clearly the most knowledgeable of the group and could probably get him a good sense on what not life or death training was like.

He waited for a while until she was finished with her conversation with Jun Tae and walked over to Hana. "Excuse me, Hana. I think we could both benefit from training together right now. So, do you want to?"

Sal woke up ready to get going. Albeit he was a bit tired from the rude interruption a certain angel had done in the middle of the night, which was pretty exhausting in its own right. But oh well. Sal got out of bed and stretched, and remembered that they needed to go and rendezvous with the others. They needed to get up and going and quite early as well if they were going to not burn an entire day doing nothing. Lord knows that was not one of the more favorable days. Eventually the crew all had gotten up and decided to get a move on early, even though Hay Sun still looked fatigued. Oh well. She could just sleep on the plane ride. The gang made their way to the airport and took off on the first flight out of the coldest city on Earth. Hopefully everyone would have good news to report once there.

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8 Hours Later​

(You are all now awake....Unless you feel like sleeping 'till 3 in the Afternoon)​

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It had been a long plane ride there but they had made it back to the hotel in St. Petersburg and met up with the group that was already there. Naturally they were the last ones to arrive and it seemed that not much had happened yet. They were all waiting for everyone to arrive to discuss the events that had happened yesterday to each group respectively. Sal cleared his throat and said, "well I guess we should all exchange about what happened yesterday. As you can very well see, we were successful in our mission to find Uriel and not have him kill Hay Sun. How about the others?"

Brandon immediately jumped up in excitement and said, "all swords needed are here and accounted for. Same goes for all the people. No deaths~" That was...an odd way to end that sentence. But he'd take it as a group success nonetheless. Brandon walked around and gave both Sal and Vincent their respective swords and Sal felt that something was off about his. But that wasn't the subject matter at the moment.

"And the recruitment of Regulus?" Sal could very well see due to the lack of Regulus that they had failed. But it'd still be a good thing to hear it from them about what happened.

Oddly enough though, the usually sleeping man, Richard, was the one to step up and explain. There was a fairly different expression in his eyes than usual. Not lethargic or bored or anything. No this man looked angry. "We tried to convince him, but it didn't go over so well. He wasn't really 'interested' in our cause and then revealed to us that he makes machines out of humans. Not to mention he's apparently a father or something. Then some dark angel named Temalchaus showed up out of the blue and basically told him to join her side instead. So he did and is fully conscious of the fact that he's going to help bring about Hell on Earth but didn't really seem to care. Needless to say, it was bad." Richard's voice was also tinged with anger as he told what had happened. Sal hadn't seen much of Richard...well conscious that is, but he did not seem to be the type to get peeved easily. How interesting this would be.

"Oh well, I guess it can't be helped then. We'll just have to prep ourselves for another foe in the future." Sal was not actually too disappointed with the outcome of the recruitment. If anything he was glad about it. A man like Regulus probably would've only been detrimental to the group had he been on it. Having said that, Sal was not entirely thrilled about possibly going against this man in the future, but those bridges would be crossed later. After all was said and done and the reactions to this news were out of the way Sal clapped his hands together and with a smile said, "Well despite the whole, enemy recruitment thing going on, I'd say it was an overall success. Good job gang. Now then, there is the matter of what next to do. Any ideas?"

Richard had been fairly pissed about the entire situation. Steaming mad one might say. Considering white mist was literally coming off of his body. It wasn't so much that he was angry about the outcome of Regulus joining the dark angels, or about Temalchaus literally appearing out of fucking nowhere to recruit him. The thing that pissed him off the most was the effort to end product ratio in which there was too much effort from their side and too little product to be had. The trio walked out of the building and continued on there way. Richard looked at the place, having half a mind to burn the entire thing to the ground. The man said he wouldn't mind living in hellfire, so might as well get him accommodated to it. Nevertheless, Richard moved beyond it and went to the cars with the others. Not today, the place would only burn when he was sure Regulus would be in there to feel the flames billowing around him. Only then.

The gang had eventually made it back to their hotel, and ended up staying the night there. Once there, they each went to their rooms and fell asleep. What a story they'd have to tell tomorrow.