DAY 49Saturday, November 09, 2013 Spoiler: Arbitrary Self Training Post #10 Spoiler: Round 1 Sal was back in the dream world once more to begin his training here. He wondered how much progress he was making along with it and seeing as he had just fought Brandon he figured he'd be able to skip out this night. Oh well, guess you just gotta roll with what you're dealt sometimes. Wondering what he'd be doing this time, he saw a black orb with a hilt protruding out of it appear in front of him. Sal then, obviously, grabbed the hilt to see that it was his familiar baselard. Oh? He figured he was done with sword training, but apparently not. He looked over to see a short sword type spawn in. Sal was not really taking this opponent seriously at all, truth be told. Why? Well it was simply because he had already taken this thing on a myriad of times before and saw no real reason why one on one against an average enemy should be any different than any other time he's fought this thing, if not easier. So he still took his stance and ran towards the short sword type to begin the assault this time on his own. The short sword then decided to rush towards Sal as well, as if to meet his challenge. The fight was essentially blades clashing and **** getting slashed. The short sword, was admittedly, faster than Sal was and so he was kind of unable to get the first strike off on it, but nevertheless he was able to simply block the strike regardless. Sal then pulled his blade away from the short sword and started attacking relentlessly. The short sword couldn't do much but block against the quick onslaught of knife slashes and soon fell prey to the fury of Sal's baselard. After clashing blades with the thing a number of times Sal had finally beat back its guard and cut into the short sword type until it died. Spoiler: Round 2 Having defeated the short sword type, Sal saw that the creature had left behind a shadow orb again. Knowing what to do with this thing, Sal simply stabbed the orb with his baselard and watched as it sank in. Once that was done with, the hilt popped out and out came Sal's short sword. Well this was certainly much faster than last time. Sal did indeed wonder what exactly was going on here but didn't dwell on it too long. Next came the fight against and new type, the really tough one. A knight type spawned in across from Sal and pointed its blade arm at him. He wondered if this thing had some sort of memory or something, but decided not to dwell on that. The fight started with slow advances towards each other and each opponent was cautious about the other. Sal had only one the first fight through a cheap tactic and he was using his longsword in the second fight. So he didn't really know what to do in this scenario other than fight with more than what this thing has. Sal blocked the knight's swing against him and pushed the blade back. The two then started to move in circles, keeping their distance from each other, until Sal decided to go in for an attack of his own. The knight used its buckler to deflect the attack that Sal sent at it and was pushed back. Trying not to get skewered by the knight type, Sal let himself fall down on the ground before continuing with fighting the thing so it missed as it tried to totally lop his head off. Sal then picked himself back up, and then went in to strike again. Only this time, he stopped mid-swing and then continued the attack from a different side. The knight was slightly surprised by this but was still able to block with his own blade. It was at this moment that Sal punched the knight in the face, causing it to stumble, and then proceeded to hack away at it. After all was said and done, the knight type was slain. Spoiler: Round 3 There was a large black orb that appeared before him again and Sal obviously had to do the same twice here. He stuck the short sword into the orb and as it sunk he wondered what was actually going on here. He grabbed the hilt as it popped out and brandished his long sword. He already had the long sword and it wasn't even round three...well it was now, but it was still off. He couldn't really think of anything else that he would need for the sword unless it was just general practice but he stopped thinking about it when his two new foes spawned in. A beast type and two shadow types. Both with sun auras. Interesting. Sal had fought these things before, easily, and with fists. And swords were not fists. Granted they were easier to use, but they were not fists. So Sal got ready for whatever this trio of sun aura enemies could throw at him, and was quite ready for it. The enemies then decided to do what they always did and charge him. Well that was not interesting at all. Granted the shadows never seemed more terrifyingly fast then now but he wasn't going to let that stop him from totally cleaving them in half. As the two shadows started to run circle around Sal, literally, He just stood there observing. The beast came in to deliver quite the deadly blow. Sal simply dodged it and slashed off its arm since, really it was right there. The beast tried to attack him with the second arm but that also got sliced off. Not really sure what to do next, the beast tried to headbutt Sal, but he just chopped the beast's head off. Sal then cut the two shadows that tried to get the jump up on him. With that the round was over. Spoiler: Round 4 Well ****. This longsword made killing everything stupidly easy. He was feeling quite confident with his skills and was wondering what else would fall to his blade. Though, Sal was still curious as to what the overall goal to this challenge was. It didn't seem like it had any real goal to it, but his thoughts were cut short of the spawning in of new enemies. It was another beast and a shambler this time. Sal twirled his blade as the enemies predictably got their sun auras up. The round started as predictably as one expect it to. The shambler started firing off its super ****ing fast tentacle spikes and the beast was trying to run at him full force to totally kill him. Sal was kind of getting pressured by this shambler. As useful as it was for breaking the tentacle spikes, Sal was not really getting much anywhere with it. The thing attacked just way too fast. Probably faster than the usual sun shambler at that rate. Now wasn't exactly the best time to be thinking of that though, simply because there was a super fast beast that was trying to beat the everliving **** out of him. As such, Sal stopped breaking the spikes and started dodging instead and cleaved the beast's attacking arm off again. It was slightly comical. Sal then cut the beast in half causing the beast to die and dissipate. Sal then started breaking the spikes with his blade again and then started to charge straight at the shambler. Sal then was able to book it past the shambler until he was close enough to just peg his blade into the shambler, and kill it. Spoiler: Round 5 Sal walked over to the where his blade was and picked it up and looked over to see what he was going to have to go and fight next. Apparently there was a reading issue once again, so Sal actually ended up fighting the round three enemy now. Well he assumed that just meant this was going to be easier than the last two rounds. In came three beast types with on wearing a sun aura. Well this certainly didn't seem like it was going to be the biggest challenge ever. The round started with the three beasts charging at Sal. Two of them were lagging behind since one was simply much faster than the other two. Eventually the beast came close to Sal and Sal was all prepped to just slash this ones arms off as well. But rather than charge him the beast jumped back when it came in punching distance. The other two then came in and tried to punch Sal out instead, which slightly caught him off guard. Sal was able to dodge the attacks easily enough, though. The sun beast, however, was now charging him and punched at him once more. Sal didn't have enough time to slice its arm off so he simply dodged to the side. The two beasts were now charging him once again, but Sal had enough time this time. So he simply cut their arms off as they punched at him. Being armless, Sal then sliced through them once more and killed the two beasts. There was only beast left, granted it was the sun one, but Sal was able to deal with it easily enough. Sal cut through the beast as it threw a punch at him, and ended the round rather nicely. Spoiler: Round 6 Sal was wondering what he was supposed to do now. He had fought every enemy type with a sun aura and the goal was still unclear of this training exercise. That is, until Sal was faced with the new challenger of this round. Something he wasn't entirely sure was coming up. Out of the water ground, a sun orb floated and quickly blackened. The orb slowly morphed into a new type of enemy. Its build was similar to that of a knight type, and it was well armored as well. The only major difference was that its arm seemed to be a rapier rather than a long sword. Oh this was going to be interesting. The sun sword was the first to make a move that round. The sun sword type started to advance towards Sal at a rather slow pace, and Sal just brought his longsword up ready for whatever this beast was going to throw at him. The sun sword came a little closer and Sal started to step to the side. The sun sword matched him and the two were now walking in circles. Sal was still not sure to expect from this enemy and didn't want to attack first. It was then that the sun sword made its move. It lunged towards Sal and started to jab at him with a vicious attack. The rapid thrusting attacks were pretty hard to block seeing as the long sword was a) not a blocking instrument and b) stabs were hard to guard against with a blade in any scenario. As such, he did get hit a few times, but decided to retaliate with a slash of his own. The sun sword was able to block the attack and then parried Sal. Sal backed off of the thing and then went in for another attack. The sun sword attempted to parry him again, but Sal was able to punch the thing and knock it off balance before finishing his sword slash. Spoiler: Round 7 The sun sword type died and left behind a weird looking orb. It was both black and golden, so Sal wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. Nevertheless, he decided to do what he was always did with a random orb. He stabbed his longsword into it. As he did, the longsword sank in and the orb began to react. All the gold seemed to focus in on one spot until it was no more, and out popped a rather unusual hilt. When Sal grabbed it, he pulled the blade out and saw it was a rapier. How nice of Zachariel to increase his arsenal even more. He flourished the rapier as he saw what was spawning in. There were four beasts standing across from him. All glowing with the sun aura. Well that was interesting. All four of them then charged at Sal and he wasn't exactly sure how to respond to it. As they made their way to Sal, he quickly dodged each attack and slashed with his new weapon. It was barely able to cut them, though that may just be due to the fact that it was a rapier. So what Sal decided to do was just dodge around the attacks until he was ready to finish them off. When he finally saw the opening present itself, Sal took full advantage of it. Seeing one punch at him and get slightly off balance from the missed attack, Sal thrust at the beast multiple times until it didn't move anymore and simply dissipated. The other three were not relenting though, and so Sal kept dodging around picking them off as he went along. One kept striking at him, and though he couldn't find an opening to stab at it, he killed it by cutting it enough times. With only two left, he found being able to stab them particularly easy, and killed the rest. Spoiler: Round 8 Sal was quite content with his ability to kill things with his newfound sword. In fact, he was content with his newfound sword in general. Sure, it felt different from a longsword and was going to take a bit of adjusting to, but overall, it was a nice weapon of choice to mutilate things. Now that he finally knew what he was supposed to be doing this round, his uneasiness had dissipated and now he was fully ready to go in and kill all these things. He looked over and saw his new competition spawn in. It was simply eight shadow types, granted they all had sun auras. This fight was going to be quite the interesting one really. He had no idea what to expect from eight shadow types on essentially speed. Four of them immediately bolted past him. Like no warning at all, no attack at all, just rushing past him. So as such, Sal paid them no mind. They were just going to try and inconvenience him later on anyway. The next four charged at him but immediately split off and started circling around him in the usual shadow manner. Granted it was really annoying to deal with because hot damn, these things were fast. He couldn't entirely keep up with their movements and so when one of them just came straight at him, he didn't really see it coming. Nevertheless, he was able to bring his blade up in time and just whipped it over at the shadow, which was apparently enough to kill it. The next three circling then attacked at once, and then the other four joined in on the action. Sal didn't really care too much and just whipped the rapier around killing each shadow one at a time. Spoiler: Round 9 Alright so he was now at the penultimate round as usual. So far this sun sword thing was quite the handy little rapier. Sure being a stabbing weapon was totally a culture shock but he was being acclimatized with it. Sal realized that none of the rounds so far were really too hard to deal with and he wasn't thinking any of the next ones would be. Granted only two shamblers spawned in this time. Albeit they both had ****ing sun auras so this was going to be quite the joy to deal with. Oh well. The round started off with the shamblers attacking him at their super sun aurad speed, and Sal had no other real option other than to just dodge the attacks. Sure he could slash at the tentacle spikes like he always did. But it was a bit harder to deal with when this weapon more or less cut and whipped things rather than sliced through them. He had to break through this regardless and was getting ready to do so, and so he just ****ing yolo charged at them. Sal started dodging back and forth from the essentially machine gun fire of tentacle spikes. It was not a good time at all. He was getting slightly cut up and could feel his speed decreasing, but he was not deterred at all. He eventually got in the face of the shambler foe and stabbed through it easily before it was able to become any larger a problem. Only other problem was, there was a second one. He started avoiding the attacks and then figured there was no way he could get himself out of this through movement. And so he just threw his rapier at the shambler and killed the enemy. Spoiler: Round 10 Well here it was. The final round. It was quite the oddly paced road because quite frankly a two hour hiatus is pretty big. Oh well. Sal started to walk over to the rapier and picked it up. The sun sword trial was coming to an end, and Sal was wondering what was going to be the final round. He looked over to see his final wave of enemies spawning in. It was a knife type, a short sword type, a longsword type and a sun sword type. Only everything other than the sun sword had a sun aura around it. Well that was going to be troublesome. The round started with all of the bladed enemies walking towards Sal at a slow pace. Sal didn't entirely know what to do against the enemies and just waited around. Then the three sun blades ran straight at him at an, obviously, much faster rate than usual. Sal was forced to take a defensive stance with his blade as the enemies approached him, and started striking at him. Once they started slashing at him, Sal was able to parry the knife type and was able to easily stab through it. Next was the short sword type that fell just as easily. The only one left was the knight type, which Sal just threw the rapier through its face and killed it. Sal walked over and picked up his rapier when he noticed the sun sword charging him. Sal rolled out of the way of the lunge. He was able to to go over and pick up his rapier this time and deflected the next stab from the sun sword. Sal then proceeded to ****ing stab at the thing only for it to ****ing block his attack. The two kept attacking back and forth, parrying and stabbing each other, until Sal was able to get a good riposte off and totally killed the ****ing sun sword. Sal awoke from the dream training once more feeling a tad more tired than usual. Sure dream training was always tiring stuff, but Sal was also a bit sore from the whole sparring match against Brandon that he had had. Getting out of bed he stretched a bit and then walked around wondering what they were going to do. They seemed to not have a clear leader, and other than recruiting they had no real idea as to what they were going to be doing here. Hopefully Lauren would come over to their side and even more hopefully the could find more angels here before having to leave Australia. Thing were not looking for the underdogs, but now that he thought about it, it was their most crucial moment of being. Sure it seemed odd to think that it was a good thing that Hana was no longer here, but the majority of the group seemed to think of her as a leader. With her not here anymore, and no way of knowing where she is, it was at this moment that the group would prove if they actually had the ability to overcome this time. Oh well. Sal walked out of the room and decided to go downstairs to eat breakfast. As he got his seven plates of food he started to down them and noticed that his opponent from last night was over there as well. Brandon seemed a bit tired, but was eating none the less. He looked over to the boy and gave him a wave. The boy waved back before going back to eating. After the both of them finished their meals they walked over to the lobby waiting for everybody else, with Richard also sleeping in the chair as per his usual. That man and sleeping, it was certainly something else.
Brandon was sitting down waiting for something to happen all day, but no sort of fun was to be had. As such, Brandon decided that it was time to get a move on and do something, but since he was the only one not doing anything, along with his good pal Wealthard, he didn't really feel like interrupting them at all. So he turned to Wealthard, who was sitting next to him and said, "so do you want to go for another training round?" "Nope." Brandon was stunned by Wealthard's response. And after they had such an intense match yesterday, how could one not want a rematch. "what? Why not?" "Don't feel like it. Not tonight at least. Anyway, see ya." With that Wealthard got up and walked all the way to bed where he would fall asleep in. Not entirely sure what to do now, Brandon looked around until he saw that El was sitting around with a pensive look on his face. He hadn't seen the man in what felt like ages, and he was brought back by Lion bro. Well that was cool. Brandon still wanted a training partner, and seeing as he didn't feel like disturbing Lion, he walked over to El and said, "hey there man, how've you been." El looked up, pulling himself out of his thoughts and said, "oh, hello their Brandon. I'm doing, alright I suppose. Can I help you with something?" Same bright smile on his face, Brandon said, "oh ya know, just saying hi after so long. And uh, I was wondering if you wanted to train at all?" El looked to the ceiling while thinking of his answer and decided to just say, "sure why not." With that, the two went off to the roof to face off in one sparring match. Spoiler: Sal vs. Brandon The two faced off against each other. Brandon was here due to his pursuit to get stronger. Sal was here because he felt like having fun and helping the boy out seemed like a nice idea. Brandon got himself ready again by pulling out Vis Vis. He was going to be sure to have to end this better than last time. Losing was just not a fun thing to have happen at all. With a smile never leaving his face, Sal pull out his wand and extended it into a longsword. This would be the first field test of it , but he still felt confident with it regardless. The two faced off against each other, ready to go. The fight started with Brandon charging at Sal to go in for one clean strike. Sal was, by no means, a swordsman and so he didn't really think to find in the same mindset that Richard would. Instead of really parrying the attack from Brandon, he just brought up his sword and blocked the attack. After the blades collided with each other, Brandon moved back and proceeded to go with a vertical strike towards Sal. Sal was, once again, able to easily block this attack and pushed the sword away through just overpowering Brandon and pushing his own sword. Brandon was then forced to retreat away from Sal and get back to fighting. This time, though, Sal had decided to go on the offensive rather than just wait around for Brandon to do something. As such, he rushed towards Brandon and horizontally slashed towards him. Brandon was able to stop the blow and deflect the blade away, only for Sal into another strike towards Brandon once more. Brandon was kind of surprised by Sal's recovery speed and had barely enough time to bring his blade back up and block the strike. Sal then brought his blade back and went into strike once more at the lightning boy. After colliding with Brandon's blade again, Sal proceeded to not change his attacks up at all. Consistently and methodically Sal kept bringing his blade away to attack one more only for it to be blocked. Brandon was starting to feel the pressure of Sal's attacks and had to change something up. If things continued as they were, then Brandon was pretty positive that he was going to lose. After getting a grip on things Brandon waited a bit for the right opportunity to change things up a bit. Sal brought down his sword towards Brandon again and rather than trying to block again, Brandon jumped away from the attack. The shift was not something that Sal was entirely expecting, and thus he fell a little off balance from the missed attack. Brandon then took this opportunity and jumped towards Sal in an attack. Sal felt that the longsword was a tad on the cumbersome side to be able to have him bring it up in time and so he shifted it to a more suitable form. Bringing the baselard up to defend, Sal was able to intercept the strike from Brandon. He didn't stop the attack completely seeing as Brandon had more force behind his attack, and so Sal ended up moving back from the recoil. Sal then nonchalantly tossed his baselard in the air and then caught it back as a longsword. Sal was thinking about how this kid was clearly better than appearances might have dictated. He'd have to actually dip into one of his auras soon at this rate. Though he didn't want to go all out before the kid did, no not at all. If they were going to fight with powers the kid was going to have to be the one to initiate it. As soon as Brandon had landed he got ready to take on Sal once again. Sal, however, was already looming overhead and was already bringing his blade down on Brandon. Brandon, taken kind off guard by this fast attack, could barely pull up his blade in time only to get flung out of his hands and made him go backwards. Brandon was stumbling back and started to stare down Sal, kind of unable to do anything. Brandon then summoned Vis VIs back to his hands and decided to go back into using his powers to fight against his Mexican companion. As soon as he noticed that electricity was crackling off of Brandon, Sal decided that he should cut loose a bit as well. Sal then started radiating some sort of golden aura off of his body and pointed his blade towards Brandon, signaling that he was ready to go. Brandon made the first move and charged at Sal, to which Sal responded by quickly returning to his stance and slashing directly towards Brandon's blade. The attack came much quicker than Brandon was expecting, and so he was completely surprised by Sal's increased speed. After recoiling a bit, Brandon started to go for another attack, it was just that Sal was much faster than before so hitting him wasn't entirely the easiest thing in the world to do. Rather than continue intercepting attacks, though, Sal decided to go straight on the offensive. He started attacking faster and more relentlessly against the British boy who could do nothing but block against it. If Brandon was going to do anything he'd have to think of something quick. Brandon was kind of drawing a blank here until he remembered something he had only used once before that was specifically designed for getting people away from him. Charging the blade with more angel lightning, Brandon released it all in one large pulse that ended up knocking Sal backward. Sal stumbled as he regained his balance and saw the young angel send a wave of lightning towards him. Sal was able to step away to the side in time and saw that the boy was about hit him at full speed. Sal got his footing back to where it should be and slashed at Brandon's sword. The lightning was trying to impart itself onto Sal's blade, but the blade seemed to be quite non-conductive. Sal back stepped and brought his blade back, causing the boy to stumble forward . With Brandon unable to block the next wing, he channeled lightning into Vis Vis, sending out another pulse knocking Sal backward. Sal picked himself up and quite pleased to see this boy was still putting up a fight. Brandon was not feeling so hot after his second repulse. It was a good skill to have and the use on it was quite great, but Brandon wasn't exactly the most energy efficient fighter. Regardless, his fighting spirit was still stronger and so he wasn't going to let a little fatigue get in his way. Brandon decided to start doing what he did against Richard all over again. He started sending wave after wave of lightning towards his opponent and figured that based on what he had seen, Sal had no direct counter. Sal was still feeling fine though. He wasn't expecting such a large outburst of lightning powers from the boy, but he didn't really mind it too much. Sal decided to just run head first towards the attacks and dodge as he went. Normally an attack like this would be impossible to avoid, but due to Sal's increased speed he managed around it quite nicely. After clearing that onslaught of lightning, Sal then slashed forward at Brandon's blade. Brandon, however, though of slashing at Sal's blade at the same time. When the blades collided a pulse of electricity sent Sal backward and on the ground. Brandon didn't follow up immediately though , simply because his body wasn't exactly the most responsive right now. This gave Sal enough time to get back on his feet and attacked Brandon once more. Brandon couldn't keep his grip on the blade this time and it was knocked out of his hands once more. To not even give Brandon a chance to resummon Vis Vis, Sal kicked him in the gut causing Brandon to reel back and pass out. In the end, Sal was the victor and Brandon was lying on the floor passed out. Despite having some powers, it was clear that he wasn't entirely adept with them yet, and so he was still an easy person to fight. Even when all Sal had to rely on was increased speed. In the end though, he picked the kid up and decided to walk him to his hotel room. Once there, he put him in his bed and went to a room that Jun Tae had hooked him up with. As he lied down in bed he wondered about everything that was going on. Lauren being an angel wasn't too big of a shock to him, seeing as he had that slight hunch of familiarity with her, but it was sad that she probably wasn't coming along. The more the merrier after all. Then there was the new issue of Hana and Samuel missing. Oh that was no good at all. They were missing their bruiser and the only person who truly knows what they were doing. Oh well. For now, Sal figured that they were going to continue doing their recruitment thing as they always had, and cross that bridge of what the **** do we do when they got there. With those thoughts in mind, Sal went to bed.
Sal had remained standing idly by as Jun Tae had come over to the Walker residence. Sal felt both relieved and slightly terrified at this moment. Relieved because if Jun Tae was here that meant that everyone wasn't dead. Or at the very least he wasn't dead. And Jun Tae was quite the good fellow to have around. He was terrified because, well, this guy seemed to be none to pleased to find him so far out of the beaten path. Perhaps staying in Foster might've been the better course of action, but hey! Turns out Lauren was actually a fallen angle named Ahriman, the Destructive Spiri- hey wait a minute. Sal at that point had a bit of a flashback to when they started their session of skeet shooting. 'Zachariel.' "Yes?" 'Did you know that Lauren was an angel all along?' There was a bit of a pause between the question and the answer that was supposed to come."...No." Zachariel's inability to lie well aside, this was quite the fortunate development and allowed him to play off having totally traveled irresponsibly away from the closest city to them he was at with no real reason other than he was bored. He didn't say much, simply because he didn't think of anything to really say. Jun Tae seemed to have it all covered and Lauren seemed to think that it was an elaborate prank, only to then think on what he had said a bit more and actually come to the conclusion that she was indeed an angel. Well there was another person convinced of their reality is stranger than fiction story. Only Alice was not having Lauren get involved because she was afraid of Lauren getting hurt. As much as Sal wished he could assure her safety, judging by the dark angels popping out of nowhere and the fact they kind of have been in two issues where water was to be used as a lethal weapon, it would be quite the lie. When all was said and done Jun Tae bid them farewell and clearly the asian man wanted him to follow along. He turned around to the ladies and rubbed the back of his head with a nervous smile. "Well, there you have it ladies. I must be on my way now seeing as I've been away from the gang from a bit too long now. I do hope you'll join us in the future, but in the end it is still your choice. Thanks for the temporary housing Walkers." After saying his goodbye to them, he walked back and followed after Jun Tae. "So, did I end up missing anything?"
Sol had been quite soundly knocked back and was sent flying by that attack. It was an extremely painful attack and Sol was pretty sure if his math was right, he should be dead. Maybe. He still had no idea the stats on like, anything related to this beast, but hey lens were for not title getting chumps. Sol picked himself off the ground and grabbed on to his sword. Being in this much pain, man, it made him feel truly alive. He started laughing to himself at the situation and let out quite the wicked grin towards the beast. Oh this made carving up this over grown poodle all the more satisfying. Charging at the beast he let loose a hyper slash towards it trying to inflict as much damage as possible.
Spoiler: Arbitrary Self Training Post #9 (Happy 100+) Spoiler: Round 1 Sal had reappeared back in this interesting dream world area once more. Ah what fun life or death challenges awaited him this time? It was then that a black orb with a hilt protruding out of it spawned into view. Oh, another sword rank challenge. Well that was a nice way to unwind after having to do two in a row. He walked over to the hilt and pulled out his trusty baselard and waited around for the next enemy to spawn in. He saw his competition spawn in, that being a beast type and two shadows. Well no time like the present to kill the dark creatures right? The fight started off with a masterful charge from both sets of enemies. The beast doing his easily telegraphed attacks and the shadows going at a blinding fast speed at him, it was the same old same old really. Sal had to avoid getting punched by the beast still; just because his offense was increased didn't mean his defense was. Then there were the pesky shadows trying to get all up in his grill as well. They kept trying to attack him in the back while the beast tried to assault him from the front. He kept dodging punch after punch and dash attack after dash attack until he was finally ready to end this match. Tightening his grip on the baselard Sal began his assault. The beast jumped back, though, as he tried to slash him down. Well that wasn't cool. With his strike missing the shadows tried to attack him from behind, but Sal simply turned around and killed the **** out of one of the shadow types. The other one turned back and charged Sal again, but Sal simply pelted his baselard at the shadow type before it could get close to him. The beast then tried to kill that weaponless Sal by punching him, but Sal ducked under it, sprinted away, grabbed his baselard, and eviscerated the beast type, thus ending the round. Spoiler: Round 2 It was now time for round two. Ah how he did enjoy using the baselard to defeat his foes. It was quite satisfying really. However he was still going to have to eventually muscle through a fair bit of **** just by virtue of the length these sessions usually end up being. Oh well. Whilst wondering what he would be fighting next, the enemies in question decided to come into existence. And so it was revealed to him that his enemies for this round were a shambler and two shadow types. Well this certainly seemed different from the last round. The round kicked off with the shambler doing his shambler thing and firing off five spikes at Sal consecutively. It was a tad annoying and he couldn't exactly use the short sword method of breaking the spikes simply because, he was not using a short sword. So he did what he usually did and that was just stand in place and dodge the spikes that way. However that didn't change the fact that there were still shadow types buzzing and zipping around. He was positive he was going to have to take them all out first, just like he always did, when he realized he could just use a method he's been using already. Sal charged forward at the shambler trying his best to evade the five spikes. He was becoming adept at dodging these things, but it still didn't change the fact he was one person running up against five projectiles. Now that he had started running, he stopped and caused the shadows to overshoot where he was going to be and completely miss. He then continued to charge but the shadows were able to get out of the way fast enough and looked ready to come in for a more difficult to avoid attack. So what Sal did was throw his baselard at the shambler and powerslide. The baselard implanted itself in the shambler and Sal had successfully avoided the attack of the shadows altogether. As such, he quickly picked himself back up, charged towards his baselard, picked it up, and sliced the two shadows as they were charging him, killing them. Spoiler: Round 3 Well that was quite the satisfying round. He was starting to enjoy the concept of using his baselard as a pseudo ranged weapon. He was actually starting to think of his practice time with this knife quite effective, but after seeing what he was going to be fighting for this round he knew that it would not last. There would be no more baselarding simply because his opponents were a single beast type and a single short sword type. Sal had only done this twice before, but he could already piece together the patterns forming when it came to what sword type he was going to be using. The round started off with the beast type charging at Sal at a breakneck pace, trying to floor him to the ground. Sal didn't really care about this and figured the bigger threat was going to be the short sword type. So he side stepped the beast and stabbed him in the back. Now with that beast slightly wounded he started to pay more attention to the short sword. Unfortunately the short sword type was much more aggressive this time and was already attacking him. Bringing the blade arm down on Sal, he tried to block it with his baselard and had to sidestep to make up for his not so great block. Now that that mal parry was out of the way Sal had to finish up the fight quick. The beast type had gotten himself back up and wanted to charge down Sal again, so he had to jump back and duck to avoid both the slash and the charge. With both avoided, Sal cut at the beast's legs before coming back up and finishing the thing off. Now that he was dead, Sal turned his attention to the short sword type. For some reason this one felt like it was going to be harder to beat, so Sal did his super technique. He threw the baselard square in the things face and killed it. Spoiler: Round 4 The short sword type before him had turned into a black orb. Remembering what he did last time, Sal stuck his baselard into the orb and let the blade sink into the orb. A new hilt popped out and he grabbed it to reveal his short sword. Alright, time to get on with the bigger amounts of slaying. His first combatants to have the short sword tested out on them spawned in and Sal was completely fine with the haul. It was one beast type, two shadow types and one shambler type. Oh this was going to be enjoyable. The shambler started the round off like it always did, by being an ******* and firing off tentacle spikes towards Sal. He quickly dodged in his similar fashion and started breaking the spikes as they were coming towards him. It felt good to have this sort of weapon back again. The shadows and the beast were doing their own charge but they were approaching from different sides trying to flank Sal, so he did the most logical thing to avoid them. He rand straight forward, breaking spike after spike on his way over completely avoided the two separate charges altogether. Having already picked up momentum from the start of his avoiding charge, Sal decided to continue on forward, attacking the spikes to and fro and breaking them as he went. When he was finally close enough, Sal sliced through the shambler type and killed it instantly. Because the other two didn't seem to want to charge or something, the beast picked up the two shadows, and charged at him. In the middle of his charge he threw the two shadow types, to which Sal countered by slicing and then thrusting forward, killing the three combatants instantly. Spoiler: Round 5 Well this short sword made things rather easy to deal with. Sure its reach wasn't the greatest, but in terms of a standard melee weapon, it wasn't half bad. Sal figured he was ready and willing for the next round against whatever Zachariel had to throw at him, and so he stood tall and proud, already ready to take on the next set of creatures. In spawned four shadow types and two shambler types. Well that was nothing new. Sal figured it would probably be as easy as the last, though the second shambler did seem like it might be a tad bit of a problem to deal with. Regardless, the round kicked off with the shamblers attacking with their usual volley of tentacle spikes at Sal and he was all too ready and prepped for this. He started breaking the spikes as he had done in previous encounters, only at not as fast a rate as he usually did. The addition of a second shambler did make it slightly hard to go swing his blade around in a defensive manner. The four shadows also seemed to be plotting something since they weren't moving at all. Sal decided to ignore the fact that something might be up and just yolo charged at the shambler set anyway. Breaking the spikes on his way over there he had finally managed to make it all the way within melee range of one of the shamblers. With the hard part of getting to it being over, Sal cut through the shambler and started charging at the other shambler. The four shadows then made their move and tried to bounce Sal all at the same time. Sal simply gave no ****s and sliced through two of them, stopping his charge midway. The shambler was managing to hit him during this time, but Sal kept charging anyway, and killed the shambler by cutting through it. Now all that was left was to deal with the shadow types, which could only charge him and die on his blade. Spoiler: Round 6 Sal felt pretty experience with his short sword at this point and felt like there wasn't anything that was going to be able to stop him. However, he suddenly felt this odd sense of foreboding when some new enemy type spawned in to face him. The enemy looked like the short sword type, only its blade was longer and the armor on it was more covering. With a body encased in armor Sal wondered how would he be able to deal with this thing, not to mention it looked to have a buckler. Well this was all just going to be dandy. Oh well. The new enemy type, which was now classified as the knight type, was not charging at Sal. It was steadily advancing towards him. Sal got himself read for the assault he was expecting and gripped his blade tighter. When the knight type had finally made its way to Sal, it stood there, as if waiting for Sal to make the first move. Sal wasn't sure what to make of this but he realized that nothing would get done if he simply did nothing. As such, he attacked the knight type with his short sword only to be completely out matched. It held up its buckler and guarded against the attack from Sal, parrying at the same time, and going in for a riposte. Sal had to rely on being quick on his feet in order to not get extremely impaled by this knight type. After avoiding the attack, the knight type began to go and slash down upon Sal. He was forced to block strike after strike, without really being able to do much but think. He had to think of a way out of this mess of fight he was in and there was only one thing he could think to do. Backstepping away from the knight type, he took aim and feinted throwing at the knight type. The knight type then raised its shield to block against the attack, only for it to realize it was a feint, and Sal to throw it for real and kill him instantly. Spoiler: Round 7 Well that was a cheap win, but hey, Sal wasn't an honorable fighter or anything. If the opportunity presented itself, Sal would totally kick a guy in the nuts. Tangent aside, the knight type had died and transformed into another black orb. This could only mean one thing. Sal stabbed the short sword into the black orb and it sank in. After a bit of waiting, the hilt shot itself out and Sal grabbed it. He pulled out his blade to reveal that it was now a longsword. Kickass. The first people to get longsworded? Why, that was going to be two beast types, five shadow types, and two shamblers. A bit excessive, but Sal figured that now he could handle anything. The round kicked off with the shamblers firing off the tentacle spikes as they usually would and the beasts and shadows charging as they normally would as well. Sal started to break all the spikes coming at him, and found something out about his new found weapon. It had much better reach. In fact, it just seemed overall better than the short sword. Jeez, this thing was awesome. The beasts eventually made it in front of him, but Sal simply cut them away and in one fell swoop they were dead. Man this thing was way stronger than his last weapon. Sal then decided to yolo charge, feeling absolutely amazing about his new weapon. Breaking through spike after spike he had made it halfway to the shamblers when three shadows overshot their attack and missed. However, two didn't and his Sal in the back. Sal responded to this by losing his balance a bit, but spinning around and slicing through the shadows who had hit him. Regaining his balance, Sal sliced through the three shadows, who seemed dumbfounded, and continued on to the shamblers. He finally made it in front of the shamblers and cleaved them out of the way, ending round seven. Spoiler: Round 8 Well that was quite the different round. Usually he didn't feel so empowered with his new weapon or ability, but with this longsword he felt like he could do just about anything. Granted those weren't the most difficult of creature to dispose of, but hey, a win is a win no matter how small. He then looked to see that his next competition was going to be three knife types. Well that sounded like an odd match up against him. He still felt completely confident in his ability, and as such approached them without a worry. The round had started off with the three knife types running towards him, quite like a beast type would, only it was moving faster and less ferally. Sal got ready to fight these things as they approached him and brought up his sword. The three started to fiercely attack him all at once and he had to react accordingly. As such he blocked and parried most of the strikes from these knife types and was doing quite successfully at it. He continued to block the blade away and beat them away until he was finally ready to bring in his own pain. Sal had slashed at the knife type, to which it just attempted to block the blade. The longsword broke the blade and the knife type jumped away from Sal's blade. The other two then lunged forward towards Sal, and he had to step back in order to avoid it. The two only managed to graze him, and he then brought the blade down on one of the attacking knife types. Killing the knife type, he then lunged forward at the other knife type who had his blade broken. With only one left, he turned around and killed the final knife type with one fatal strike. Spoiler: Round 9 Here it was, the penultimate round. With longsword in hand Sal didn't think he could lose at all. The next round was probably going to be nothing but blades. Same as the last only with short swords probably. With that thought in mind, two short sword entities spawned in and Sal was validated quite expectedly. The two seemed lean and mean and ready to bring on the hurt against Sal. Oh how fun defeating these people quite convincingly was going to be. Sal gripped his sword tighter and spread his stance out, ready to take the two short swords on. With that, round nine had begun. The short swords walked forward towards Sal and circled around him. He was not entirely sure as to what they were plotting but knew it was probably going to mean no good for Sal. As they stood circling around him one started to slowly advance towards Sal. Sal turned his attention to it and decided to kill it before the other could get a chance to do anything. As such he charged at the short sword and slashed right at it. The short sword, however, had just been a bit of bait. It jumped backward and the other shortsword simply charged towards Sal. Sal turned around just in time to block the sword strike. Pushing the blade away from himself, Sal then went in for a counterattack and brought his blade down on the blade of the short sword type. Having soundly stopping it in its tracks, Sal turned around, ducked and struck at the legs of the second short sword type, causing it to fall down. He then stood up and stabbed the short sword dead, and then struck at the short sword type he was fighting first. He then continued to fight the thing until it finally couldn't hold its own and got slashed through by the longsword. Spoiler: Round 10 Sal had been getting quite accustomed to using his longsword now and was to have to take on whatever the hell the final round was going to throw at him. Oh well. He was going to be quite ready for it. He stood there waiting for the enemies to spawn in and wasn't quite sure what to expect. It was then that the enemies he was to fight came to being one knife type, one shortsword type and one knight type. Well that was quite the combination. Sal did not know how to deal with this combination but he was sure he was going to think of something on the fly. Round ten had started with the knife type running towards Sal, the short sword type advancing towards his side and the knight type merely advancing forward. He didn't know why but the knight type seemed to be even more threatening than before but no matter. Sal swung at the knife type, who backed off away from the blade, and the shortsword type then took that as an opportunity to charge at Sal. He simply spun around and brought his blade down on the opponent's blade, knocking it off balance, and the finished it off with a swift strike. The knife type tried to strike at Sal to which he simply parried the blade away and killed the creature. It was then that all that was left to do was beat the knight type. Sal didn't think that the same projectile trick would work again, so he'd be forced to go in a one vs one against this creature. The fight started with Sal attacking at the knight, but it simply parried the blade away with its buckler. It then attacked with its own blade, to which Sal responded to by backstepping. The blade grazed him, and then Sal went in to strike at the Knight. The knight dodged and was simply hit in the armor, chipping it, and then went in to restart its own assault. Sal and the knight started to exchange blow after blow, cutting him up a bit and breaking pieces of the armor on the knight, the two seemed evenly matched until Sal was finally able to go in with one last strike only for him to be attacked. Sal was stabbed in the gut but he ended up killing the knight type in the end, thus winning the round. Spoiler: Round 1 His wound had healed up completely and a new shadow orb appeared before him. Sal put the blade back into the orb and sank in there. The orb then vanished and Sal realized that he was probably in for more fisticuff related training. Oh well. He stretched himself out a bit and then saw what his competition for this round was going to be. Five beast type creatures spawned in and Sal immediately knew what kind of challenge he was in for. Also five was a bit of a ridiculous number, wasn't it? Here it was coming though, these beasts were going to be quite the challenge. The five beasts started out the round quite like any other round would happen. They charged at him. Only they were acting smart about it and charging him in some sort of large horizontal line to make sure he couldn't side step them. Oh this was going to be a problem. As they got closer, turned and started to run away from them, with the beasts trying ever so desperately to converge on his position. As they finally caught up with him, Sal turned around and jumped over one of them to evade it. Sal then proceeded to kick the one he jumped over in the back and punched the one next to it in the face. The other three started to triangulate around him and started to punch at him repeatedly. Sal tried to dodge the attacks but they were basically converged right on him and made it really hard. He ended up kicking one down, but the two from before were blocking his path. The two of them then punched him in the chest and he got flung backward. The other two from before stood their ground and punched Sal down to the ground, breaking his spine, and ending the first round. Spoiler: Round 2 Sal had not felt this broken in quite some time. They had essentially put their fists into his spine and his body was contorted in a way it really shouldn't have been. The super magnified healing aura that Zachariel provided for him had then started to feel all that really familiar painful feeling of getting revitalized. God why was healing such a pain sometimes? Oh well. As soon as he could be physically able to do so, Sal picked himself back up and faced his five beast type opponents. They were quite fierce but weren't anything Sal couldn't handle. Round two of the second set started the exact same way as round one had. As the beasts charged Sal he got on his feet. As they approached him, he spun around and started running as far away from these beasties as fast as humanly possible. They picked up the pace and were starting to catch up to him, so Sal initiated his plan. He spun around and punched the beast in front of him in the face. That beast went hurtling backwards and Sal was quite proud of the pack that punch carried. The other four had ended up completely over shooting him, so Sal took this as good a chance as any. He ran towards the beast he had punched and kicked it in the face as it was picking itself back up. The kick sent its head flying back a bit and then Sal proceeded to curbstomp it to death. With the beast type dead, the other four had already been converging on his position, but Sal was able to respond accordingly. As one approached him, full charge, Sal ducked down and let loose an uppercut that smashed into the beast's jaw. With that done, Sal turned around kicked two of the beasts in their shins. The fourth one tried to jump on him, but Sal avoided this by dodging to the side and ended up smashing one of the fallen beast's head into the ground. With that out of the way, Sal proceeded to kick down the other fallen one, and hit the only remaining one with a series of rapid blows, thus ending round two. Spoiler: Round 3 Ah how satisfying it was to easily lay waste to those five pesky beast types. Ah the good old days when they were somewhat terrifying to fight. Now he had some like, super massive amount of punching power to use against them or something. He wondered what would he would end up fighting next. It was then that seven new shadow types spawned into the arena of sorts getting ready to bring down the hurt on him. Well this was certainly a different thing to be fighting. Despite them not being beast types, the shadows acted as if they were and started the round by going on a full on assault on Sal...except not really. They ended up closing in on him really quickly, yes, but when he punched at them, they had already retreated backwards and were now circling around him. Well this was certainly going to prove to be a bother of unproportionate caliber. As he got ready to take them down while they were circling around him, they started leaping at him. Only one at a time, but they were still leaping at him. However each time they leaped, they stopped midway and went back into their circle formation making Sal's reactions go all over the place. He saw three leap at him now and thought that this was going to be their actual attack. Only it wasn't. There was one behind him that hit him down before the other three made it over, and so Sal was hit off balance. The other six then quickly converged on Sal. They started to beat down on him constantly and Sal just couldn't contend with the pressure. Eventually he simply got hit too many times and his bones started to break. With that done, the shadows retreated and had ended round three. Spoiler: Round 4 Well that could've gone much better. He had to think back a bit, but couldn't remember the last time he had been beaten down by shadows alone. Man, there was definitely strength in both numbers and tactics. No denying that after that display. He felt his bones get repaired and his bruises get healed away as Zachariel had provided quite the good spot of healing for him once more. He stood up and faced the shadows, determined to defeat them quite convincingly this time. The round started with the shadows leaping at him the same way as last time. He didn't even both punching at them this time, since he knew they were just going to fake him out again. After they did do a feint, they retreated and then did their circle around Sal again. He needed to figure out a way to overcome their feints when they were all collaborating like so. Oh how this was going to be quite the difficult matchup. He put himself into observation mode and started analyzing around everywhere, all while they were feinting at him. He then realized the one thing he could do to completely shut them down altogether. Sal rushed forward towards the shadow type that was currently feinting and completely caught it off guard. With a hearty kick, the shadow went flying and exploded almost immediately. The other four were taken aback by the sudden display of plan ****ery, and decided to just bull charge him. Without any feints or anything to go along with it, Sal was feeling quite confident in his abilities to bring them all down. Punching at them one at a time as they approached him, Sal was able to easily defeat and destroy all of the shadow types, thus ending round four. Spoiler: Round 5 Well now that those shadow menaces were quite soundly taken care of, there was only one other enemy type he could think of that he'd have to fight. And these enemy types were not really that preferable to fight. He was as the wisps of darkness formed the three shamblers that spawned on the opposite position of him. This was going to be quite the difficult round, no denying that. Heck he was starting to think that based off this pattern he was going to lose. Oh well. Clenching his fists together, Sal faced the shamblers and got ready for round five. Round five kicked off with the shamblers doing their shambler thing. Firing off three spikes each Sal was tasked with dodging them back and forth as he stood in place. However, three on one where the three has some pretty sharp long range was not a good match up at all. However good Sal's dodging was, it wasn't entirely the best at avoiding all of the spikes. As such, he was getting cut up every here and there before he even began his charge. When he had finally had enough standing around, Sal began to rush forwards towards the shamblers and was almost positive that this wasn't going to end well. He had to dodge the set as he ran forward and while he was running forward he wasn't exactly sure which of the three to take down first. This uncertainty, along with the wounds that he had been inflicted with, caused him to slow down quite severely. With not as much speed as before, Sal eventually got impaled to "death" by the trio of spikes, thus ending round five. Spoiler: Round 6 Okay, so that didn't go over too well last round. In fact it was the very definition of doing a bad job. Oh well, he was just gonna have to try his best this round and improve over everything that had been done wrong last round. But first! He needed to be healed quite some bit. Feeling Zachariel's oh so heavenly healing being used on him, he was finally able to pick himself back up and face the shamblers with more confidence then before. Only he was still positive that he was going to lose this round as well, but details details. Round six had started off the same way that round five did. The tentacle spikes just came flying right at him and he knew that he needed to get into a fast dodging groove. He was able to perceive where the attacks were going to go in advance, and as such was able to understand how to dodge them. The problem here was, that he just wasn't fast enough to do it, not yet at least. As such he continued dodging as best as he was able to until he decided that he was having enough of just standing around getting attacked at. He began his charge of yoloness at the three opponents. This was going slightly better than last time. Sure he was still getting stabbed at repeatedly, and sure he was still getting slightly hit by each attack, but at least he wasn't impaled yet. Not to mention this time he had clear cut enemy in mind to be killed by his fist of fury. When he finally closed in on said shambler, he knew what he had to do. He started dodging the melee range spikes and started getting in a groove, getting ready to just pound the shambler in and- he was cut off by a sudden spike impaling in him. He had been too slow and the shamblers had adjusted themselves to attack him still from a range. Crap. Well that ended round six. Spoiler: Round 7 After getting released from being impaled by the melee spikes, the defeated Sal lied there on the water ground, watching the shamblers slowly hobble to an optimal range away from him. Well shit. He had done goofed that round up. All the concepts he used were pretty good, he just wasn't fast enough this time either. This was the sun trial after all, and speed was the power in question. As such, Sal picked himself up off the ground, after getting healed up of course, and face his shambling foes, ready to take them on. Round seven started just like six and five really. It was growing into some sort of ingrained pattern that he was starting to get used to. He started dodging back and forth, away from the spikes and minimizing the damage as best as he could. It was still getting him, which was a tad bit of problem, but nothing he couldn't deal with. He knew that trying to dodge forever would end in him losing, as the first of this three part challenge had shown him. Wasting time around doing nothing was just not a good thing at all. As such, Sal began to charge straight at the shamblers, ready and willing to take on anything they could throw at him. He wasn't afraid of them in the slightest and knew just what they were capable of. As such, he was able to dodge them like a pro, and eventually made his way up to the shambler in question. Rather than getting into a dodging groove again, he just dodged the first attack and went straight in with a punch. Jeez, what it always that easy? Feeling accomplished, Sal turned around and was now going after the other two shamblers. With them firing spikes at him, he was able to dodge them much more easily since they were fewer in number and was eventually able to punch those last two out, ending round seven. Spoiler: Round 8 Well that last round made Sal feel quite accomplished with himself. Having easily defeated those three shamblers that gave him quite a bit of trouble last time, now that was quite the easy victory for him. He had wondered why he lost those last two rounds at all. Oh well. Now there were three new enemies spawning in for round eight. It was simply three beast types. well that seemed quite simple to deal with. That was until the middle one had a faint light green glow around it. Well that was great, it was another healer. Sal wasn't really sure what to expect in this scenario. The only reason he had been able to defeat the last healing type enemies quite easily was simply because he had the ability of the earth aura to simply punch them the **** out. With no aura, he wasn't entirely sure he was going to deal with these beasts. Who were now charging at him. Great. He had to get ready for the oncoming onslaught and his odd foreboding feeling of defeat coming up against him. He had been able to successfully evade any damage from the charge, and then the healing beast came in and tried to completely deck him down. Sal was forced to engage him and dodged the attack, and followed it up with a few punches and a kick to finish it off. Now with that beast out of the way, Sal was able to deal with the other two beasts. He ended up being able to keep them at bay and dodge their attacks quite easily. He was about to go in for an attack when a third beast suddenly appeared and grabbed Sal. Of course it wasn't dead, and of course it was healing now. At the mercy of the healing beast, Sal's bones were completely crushed from a giant bear hug and the round was completely over. Spoiler: Round 9 Well that was quite the disgraceful loss on his part. Oh well. He would just have to pick up the pieces of defeat and trudge forward on a path towards victory. Well, pick up himself first. In a literal sense at that. All your bones being broken does not do well for ones ability to move. He felt the excruciating feeling of getting healed once more and picked himself back up to get back and ready for this round. He was definitely going to overcome this challenge and defeat this healing monster. The round had started off the same way as the last one without any monologue this time. Sal had to prep himself for the attack of the beasts and was ready to dodge out of the way of the attacks that were sure to come at him again. He watched as they were coming ever so closer and was able to easily dodge out of the way of the charge attack they usually sent at him. Sal responded to this by kicking one of the regular beasts in the back and waited for the other two to make their moves. The next two then came at Sal with a vengeance and were punching at him with full force. Sal dodged out of the way of them and made a point to only hit the non-healing one. When that beast was looking to be fatigued, Sal turned back to notice that there was the third one from before charging at him. Sal then was able to turn around and kick it squarely in the face and killed it instantly. The other beast was then hit by an uppercut and beaten quite soundly. With only the healing beast left Sal treated like it was a regular beast type. However, despite his best efforts, the wounds were healing just too quickly. So Sal picked up the pace and eventually was able to out speed the healing process, killing the healing beast. Spoiler: Round 10 Well Sal had felt like he dealt with that situation like quite the pro he was. #humblebrag. Well Sal wondering what he was going to be fighting up against next, when suddenly the wisps of darkness started forming up once again. Out from them came three beast types. Clearly it was going to be different than just three standards. It was at that point, the three developed healing auras around the. Beautiful. Sal was wondering how he was going to do this when he felt the sun aura around him. Much better. These three started the fight off like they would if they were regular beasts. They charged him in such a beast way that it was just all too predictable. Sal was able to easily outspeed them and actually counter charged them full speed, feeling quite confident in his ability to run against the beasts. When he was close enough, he powerslided underneath one of them and picked himself back up right behind one of them. It was then, at that point that they turned around and decided to go against him. Trying to punch Sal was quite the futile effort these beasts tried against him. He was simply too perceptive, too reflexive, and fat too fast for these beasts to keep up with him. As such, he was able to easily dodge all of the attacks thrown at him and was able to retaliate almost instantly. Despite his speed increase, though, that still didn't mean he was any stronger. He had to keep attacking these beasts at a fast rate in order to actually kill them. It was just much easier now. After letting loose a flurry of punches Sal was able to easily kill all three of the healing beasts. Spoiler: Round 11 Man, Sal did indeed enjoy his sun aura. Sure being an absolute Iron Teager was fun, and sure self regeneration was quite the useful thing to have, but nothing quite felt the same as speed bursts. He was able to out maneuver and out kill everything that was sent his and it was truly a wonderful feeling to have. Now all that was left to do was to wait for the enemies to spawn in. As they did he saw them to be one beast type and four shadow types. Only two of the shadows got the healing aura though, and of course the beast did as well. The round started with the four charging at Sal at quite the irregular fashion. The four shadows had hopped on the beast and were using it as a mount of some sort. Well that was certainly different. As Sal was getting ready for the beast to finish its charge at him, the two healing shadows dropped into its hands and it threw them at Sal. Sal simply punched them out of the way and saw that the beast was now at him. The two shadows then jumped off of it and attempted to knock into Sal. Sal was able to easily backstep these attacks and simply hit the regular shadows into oblivion. With nothing but the healing beast left this was going to be a piece of cake. He started dodging the attacks of the beast type, like a champ, and then was able to pelt him with his own attacks. Sal was hitting the thing too fast for it regenerate all of the damage and was about to win, when suddenly he felt the back of his knees get hit. He saw the two healing shadows are what had done it, and was then met with the crushing blow of defeat by a beast uppercut to the jaw. Spoiler: Round 12 Well that was quite the embarrassing defeat. Sometimes Sal's perception was godly and other times he was blind as a bat. Jeez Skyheart, just because you want to write these doesn't give you an excuse to disregard consistency. Jeez. Anyway, having a broken jaw was not fun. What else was not fun? Feeling your broken jaw get magically healed by angel magic. Sal picked himself up after the aforementioned healing and faced his previous challengers. Sal was totally going to kick their asses this time. The five enemies started the fight in somewhat of a different fashion than last time. They were still riding on the healing beast like it was a mount, but this time when got close enough the beast didn't throw the two healing shadows at him. It was probably because they realized it was somewhat of a one trick pony type thing and if they were to do it again, well it would just get totally f'ed in the a. As such the beast decided to engage in different tactics than last time. This time the shadows jumped behind the beast and the beast jumped backward. It was then that the shadows attack feinted him and then started to circle around Sal. Well that was annoying. Sal wasn't quite phased by this circling technique and when they all tried to attack him, they got served by Sal's blazing sunlight fists of fury. All that was left at this point was simply to take out the healing beast. It presented little problem in fighting against Sal as he was able to treat it like any other beast. After hitting it repeatedly, it just ****ing died and ended the twelfth round. Spoiler: Round 13 After a long ass hiatus because Eureka Seven took precedence over this, Sal was finally back in the game and ready to take whatever the sun challenge had to throw at him. He was kind of hazy about the round that just happened, but oh well, it didn't really matter too much. Looking at his competition he saw that the beings he was to fight now was a beast type, a shambler type and two shadow types. The only out of the ordinary thing here was the fact that the beast had a healing aura over it. Seriously? He was supposed to lose this round. Goddamnit planning sheet. So the round started with the shambler assaulting at him with its five consecutive spikes, going at him quite stabbily, and he just responded by doing what he always did. That was dodging. Five spikes wasn't anything that he couldn't handle, but the two shadows and the healing beast were going to try and prove to be a threat now. Sal noticed the two shadow types circling around him and then getting prepped for a strike. It was then that the healing beast was right on top of him and he needed to deal with it right away. As such, he was able to avoid the charge of the beast quite easily and saw the two shadow types then take this as an opportunity to attack him. Sal was busy avoiding the spikes from the shambler but still managed to quickly intercept the three shadow types and knock them out completely. He then turned his attention to the healing beast and went in to unleash a flurry of punches on the thing. Only as he approached it, something different from the norm happened. He was impaled by a spike. The spike was going through the beast type. It then retracted from the beast and the wound healed itself, only now the beast decided to punch Sal out and end the thirteenth round. Spoiler: Round 14 Alright well that could've gone better. Much better really. Sure he was able to take out the two shadow types, but let's be real here. A regular shadow is like the most pathetic enemy type ever. However he now learned that friendly fire was totally a thing, though probably only because the thing being fired upon could heal itself now. This was going to be quite the difficult thing to deal with. Sal got healed up and stood himself back up, ready and willing to take on the set of four creatures that he had just failed against. The round kicked off the same way as the last one did. The shambler started firing its tentacle spikes at Sal and he was easily able to dodge them. The shadows seemed ready to do the exact same thing as they did before and as such, were now behind him. The healing beast did the same charge as before and was coming straight towards Sal. He knew how to deal with it this time. He dodged to the side of the beast and saw the shadows now begin their advance on him. Sal was able to turn around beat the **** out of the two shadow types with a single kick. After contact was made, they both just sort of exploded into darkness and now he was left with the beast type and shambler. They tried to do the same friendly fire thing as they did before. Sal was able to easily dodge the attack, since he saw it coming, and completely ignored the beast altogether. As such, he solar sprinted towards the shambler type and punched it the **** out. With the healing beast the only one of the four left, Sal was able to easily get rid of it through melee combat means. Spoiler: Round 15 Sal did not know how to feel about those kinds of victories. He always felt satisfied after beating an enemy set that had caused him trouble before, sure, but when it was because they used some trick out of nowhere, he didn't really know what to think. Oh well. He had been able to beat them and that was that. All that was left now was to continue on fighting and continue on beating the **** out of the challenges that were presented towards him. His competition spawned in and he saw it to be two beast types and four shadow types. Correction, two healing beasts. Oh wonderful. The round started in the odd way of the shadow beast war mount technique. Two shadows jumped on one of the healing beasts and the other two jumped on the other one. With that out of the way, the just started charging at Sal in quite the odd looking fashion. Sal was getting ready for the shadows to be used as projectiles or something and was fully getting ready for it. However it didn't happen in anyway he saw coming. As the beasts got closer, the shadows simply jumped backwards off the beasts and they continued their charge. Sal was able to easily dodge out of the way and figured that despite that weird feint he'd be able to easily win. He started punching at them, quite diligently, and was going to completely defeat them. However, as he was punching one of them and avoiding the other, the shadows made their move. Charging at Sal, he took his attention off the beast and proceeded to dodge two of the shadows and take out two as well. Only this left him open for an attack from one of the beasts. After getting punched by it he was sent flying, only to be kicked back by the shadows and then further slammed on by the beasts. Spoiler: Round 16 That could've gone way better. For starters he could've not lost. But that wasn't too big of a concern right now. What was, however, was how he was going to not lose this round. The attack was pretty well executed, so perhaps he should've just dodged them all instead of killing them? Who really knew? Sal started getting healed back up again and was able to pick himself up off the ground only to see that the two shadows were spawning back in. Glorious. Sal stretched out and then got ready to bring on the hurt towards his previously victorious opponents. The round started with the same tactics being used as the previous round. This mounting technique was really weird to watch, in all honesty. It also proved that these thing could get smarter overtime, though because of how these things work that intelligence doesn't necessarily last. As the beasts closed in on him, Sal was now just ready to dodge out of the way of the beasts this time, knowing that the shadows were just going to jump back again. As they did, Sal avoided the charges of the healing beasts and was getting ready to plan something out. He started alternating between hitting the beasts, trying to think of what to do. He clearly wasn't attacking fast enough to kill them, but he wasn't really focused on killing them just yet. Noticing the perfect moment to move in, Sal was able to duck and rush around one of the beast types, and run straight towards the four shadows. Clearly not expecting this, only two were able to get away before getting killed by Sal, to which Sal responded to this by just chasing after and killing the other two shadows. With them dead, nothing really got in his way of killing the final two healing beasts, thus ending round sixteen. Spoiler: Round 17 Sal stretched himself out already in preparation of this round. Man, beating down that set sure did feel good. Granted he lost to them for not really reading their tactics last time, but hey, practice makes perfect. Out spawned his enemies from the depths of the dark. Here it was, one healing beast type, two healing shadow types, and one healing shambler type. Because of reading issues, Sal should've fought these guys for round fifteen, but those posts were not getting changed now to fit the ****ing outline. The round started as one would expect it to. The healing shambler started firing off its spikes towards Sal and he was able to easily avoid them as he always had with the sun aura. Next up was the introduction of the healing shadows trying to sprint behind him and the healing beast charging him. All too familiar. As such, Sal had already thought out a plan to take these things on. He avoided the charge of the healing beast and began his charge towards the shambler type. The spikes were pretty easy to dodge with the sun aura, even while he was running. After a short bit of running, he jumped to the side and had managed to avoid the healing shadows altogether. Getting closer to the hobbling mess of a terrifying enemy, Sal had closed in on it and punched it not once, but twice. He was almost positive it was going to take more than one punch to take this thing out. He then turned his attention towards the healing shadows and dispatched of them like a pro. With the only thing left being the beast type, Sal was able to easily take the thing down and end round seventeen. Spoiler: Round 18 For once Sal figured he was going to win three consecutive rounds in a row. Why did he think that? Well it was simple really. It's because this was round eighteen and he was clearly going to lose round nineteen so he could pull off a comeback victory. That was going to be quite nice. Anyway, all of that aside, Sal got ready and saw his enemy forces spawning in to fight him. He saw it was nothing more than a beast type and three shamblers. The beast type then showed itself to have a healing aura, but Sal wasn't really caring too much. He was going to take these ass hats on and well, kick their asses. The round started as it should've. The three shamblers tried to impale him as they always would, and the beast tried to rush him down as they always would. Sal dodged around quite easily from these shambler spikes as he was just too fast for them to really matter. He had to get out of the way of the beast though, because he did not want what happened against that other round to happen again, no siree. As such he was able to evade out the way and started his sprint towards the shambler types. They were slightly harder to avoid while sprinting, that much was true. As fast as he was, he wasn't able to just see twelve spikes coming at him at once and evade them all while moving at top speed. He was eventually able to clear past these things quite easily and proceeded to hit the nearest shambler down. He then hopped to the side to avoid the healing beast's charge and then proceeded to knock out the next shambler. The final shambler continued to attack at him, and all Sal did was powerslide past the healing beast and into the shambler, killing it as well. The only thing left to do was beat the beast and after a series of punches towards the thing, he was able to do so quite easily. Spoiler: Round 19 Here it was, the penultimate round. Would all second to last round posts start like this? Hell yeah they would. It was good way to take up space after all. Anyway, this was the round that Sal knew that he would lose. Why? Because he always lost in these rounds. Not to mention it was predefined to happen on every outline sheet ever, but it was time for Sal to face the music, fight with his heart, and bring down the hurt on these things. The things in question, were now spawning in. Two healing beasts, two healing shamblers and three healing shadows. Well this was going to be quite the round. The round started off with it being really odd. The shambler did not attack at all. The shadows mounted one beast, and then the two beasts started charging him. Sal didn't really know what to make of this, but didn't really care. Instead he just rushed at the beasts taking advantage of the shamblers not attacking. The beast without the shadows then proceeded to attack him, but Sal was able to avoid that quite easily. The three shadows then jumped off the healing beast, to which Sal responded with punching them all out of the way and dodging the beasts attacks. Sal then decided to break past the beasts and go straight for the shamblers. He was then met by a wall of tentacle spikes suddenly shooting themselves out and had to avoid them quite well. He wasn't impaled there, only cut. The thing that happened next was the end of this round basically. The three shadows had healed up all of their damage and as such, attacked Sal while he was trying to dodge. This caused him to lose balance get impaled to death by the spikes. Not fun. Spoiler: Round 20 There was only one more round left now, and Sal was going to be sure to win it. He actually wondered what would happen if he lost round twenty, but didn't feel like tempting fate at all. He started to get the intensified healing aura on him as he felt his body get mended back together. There wasn't anything he could really do differently this time than what he did last time, but he needed to be sure that he got it right, right from the get go. Otherwise he was doomed to just get ****ing impaled again. The round started off differently than the last one. Shocker really. The beast still did the same thing and the shadows did the same thing as well, only this time, the shamblers started attacking right from the get go. As such, Sal had to get into a rhythm for dodging as the beasts started charging towards him. He was continuing his rhythm until suddenly the shamblers completely stopped. Sal used this as a means to take his time and avoid the attack from the beasts. The shadow then came back down and tried to pounce on Sal to which he casually avoided and ignored the attack completely. So now Sal basically had to just end this and get on with his life and not retype this ****ing post. So after dodging all other attacks, Sal rushed forward towards the shamblers who started attacking at him once more with extreme prejudice. It was not entirely easy to avoid the attacks but he did and punched them the **** out. With only shadows and beasts remaining the group didn't last lone before they too were punched the **** out and Sal had emerged victorious. With that done, the golden orb appeared to which Sal grabbed it and ended the dream sequence. Sal was awoken by the sound of his friendly ditz girl Lauren. She seemed really hyped for this skeet shooting thing, which admittedly Sal was as well. He hadn't done this kind of a thing in a year or so, so he wasn't entirely sure how well his skills were at this point. Not to mention he was sore from last night's training session. It was not entirely the most enjoyable experience so maybe shooting things was a good way to unwind. Pulling himself out of bed he walked outside to where Lauren to begin the shooting of the skeet. What he saw once he made it out there was quite different from what he was expecting. He saw Lauren, with the gun, and figured she was probably liable to shoot literally anything but the target. However when the shot was actually fired, the target exploded and Sal was quite shocked. Didn't see that coming. "Well she is quite the destructive spirit." Oh? This was the first time in a while that he had heard something from Zachariel. 'Right, right. Guess it only makes sense that she'd excel at a sport that involves breaking things.' Sal let out a small chuckle to himself. He walked closer to the girls and said, "sorry for coming out late. Mind if I give it a go now?" He got a gun for himself and looked towards the sky. As the next target was shot, Sal observed it. When he was ready he pressed down on the trigger and fired his shot out. The shot barely made contact and Sal brought the gun down rubbing the back of his head. "Oh my, looks like my aim is a bit on the regressed side as well."
Brandon awoke that morning feeling rather sore. It wasn't as bad as it could've been, thanks to the magic of angel fatigue restoration, but he was still feeling the affects of last night. Jeez, that was quite the one sided fight against Wealthard. His lightning did not match the other's fire at all, and it was showing itself quite well. This just showed Brandon all the more reason he needed to get stronger and train more. But for now! Brandon was hungry. Fighting fellow angel comrades with magic powers left a guy feeling famished. As such he picked himself out of bed and started merrily walking down to get something to eat. After his belly was full, he went to the lobby to wait for everyone else. Richard woke up and felt a tad sore himself. Sure he had not overexerted himself quite like the kid had, but using powers in a fight like that was still tiring nonetheless. Though that's what sleep was for. He got himself out of bed and wondered what was going to happen today. More car rides were going to be rather bothersome. Though he was curious about something. Maalik was oddly angry with the fighting yesterday. It was his idea in the first place to go and train with the kid, but as the fighting continued on, Maalik's rage seemed to be building up. If not for the fact that Richard's usual demeanor was uncaring, than things might've gotten messy. Regardless, Maalik had not seemed to talk to him at all after the fight and still made no appearance yet today. As such, Richard just decided to go downstairs without a second thought and fell asleep in the lobby, waiting for the next day's events.
(Credit to Nomes/Hyuge/Whatever she feels like going by for the banner. You're awesome.) Johnis was sitting around looking at all of the people who were here. These "souls" as they were referred as were apparently all of the players waiting to be their race or class or something or other. He looked around and thought it was pretty interesting that this MMO tutorial stage was actually like a hub world or something for all new players. He was extremely stoked to pick whatever these things presented to him were. Apparently they didn't affect his race or his class, but was still quite curious about them regardless. As such Johnis knew exactly what he'd pick. It was quite obvious, really. He always had one track mind when it came to his weapon type preference in games. After going over to the option to do so, Johnis pressed yes next to the icon. That icon, of course, being the sword. Swords, swords, and more swords. Though since they hadn't picked a race or appearance or anything yet, and it was apparently coming after the tutorial, Johnis was a bit curious about how he was going to use this sword in game. Floating orbs don't have opposable thumbs after all. Chris was having some off feeling about this computer program thing, OLI. No real reason, just the way the thing talked made it seem like some divine prophet or something. He disliked prophet speak, it was far too wordy and indirect in conveying points. Nevertheless he was still playing this game and still needed to actually get to the real game. Right now they were still locked in pre-tutorial things. He didn't even realize that was possible as he thought of it. Looking at the options that would apparently influence something or another about their character, Chris wasn't entirely which to choose. Nothing really seemed to interest him too greatly but he decided to go for the daggers. After clicking yes on that icon Chris then proceeded to sit back and wait for what happened next, all while munching on his pretzel sticks.
The gang had made it to a hotel that Lion Bro had managed to get them once more and as such were going to sleep here for the night. It was good not having to dip into that finite yet still maybe infinite pool of money that Cass had left behind for them. As the group walked around Buch seemed to be trouble about something. He showed them a notepad with stuff written on it about El and was concerned that they had missed him. Well, its not like this thing was ever wrong though, right? So there had to be something here. Brandon decided to say, "don't worry, I'm sure that he's doing fine. He might've just gone on some sort of adventure or something and got dragged away for whatever reason. Whatever it is, I'm sure we'll find him soon enough." After that, everyone sort of did their own thing and went to bed. Brandon, however, on his way to his room stopped. He had been meaning to do something, something about everything that had been going on. He figured the reason that Xana was kidnapped was because he was too weak. And that just wasn't good at all. As such, Brandon went to the person who was oddly still awake. "Hey there." The usually sleepy man, Wealthard, looked down at Brandon and glanced at him questioningly. Brandon looked at him with one of determination and said, "do you want to spar against me?" Wealthard looked around and looked at empty air as if someone was talking to him. After a minute or two of whatever it was he was doing, Wealthard sighed and said, "alright then."Brandon was feeling ready and willing to go against this lazy man and the both of them decided to go to the roof where no one was going to bother them. Spoiler: Brandon Vs. Richard The two faced each other down quite ready to proceed on with this oddly impromptu training session. Richard was only doing this because he was being bugged by Maalik to do so, and Brandon was here because he knew that he needed to get stronger. Brandon turned his bracelet into Vis Vis and got into his very gane protagonist fighting stance. Richard drew out El-Harriss and got into his very en garde fighting stance. Richard spun his blade around and stared down Brandon not entirely sure what to expect from this kid. He had honestly no recollection of the last time he had seen this kid fight. Regardless this kid was probably no better with a blade than any other person in the group. Brandon however, had no idea why Wealthard was taking such an odd stance. That's not what video games and anime had taught him at all. It was always spread yourself out as wide as possible and never stop bouncing. Oh well, the training between the two was now getting kicked off. Brandon started the session off by attacking at Richard with a slash. Richard simply parried the blade away and then did an extremely lethargic swing down on Brandon. Brandon was able to get his balance back just in time and brought his blade back up to defend against the strike from Wealthard. Good lord, this man was strong. Brandon then proceeded to go slash again only to be parried lethargically away once more. He went in to attack Brandon's left, to which Brandon managed to block the strike barely once more. Brandon could tell that Wealthard was barely even trying in a sword on a sword fight, but he was going to definitely not stop. He stuck his blade out, ready to charge, and Richard beat the blade before Brandon even struck at him, knocked Brandon off balance, and then proceeded to go bring the blade back down towards Brandon once again. Brandon, this time, let himself fall down and then shot back up, ready to bring on the pain towards Wealthard again. Only Brandon knew when something wasn't working to not keep trying it over and over again. He wasn't insane after all. He decided to go charge at Wealthard, who was ready to parry again, and then jumped back. Wealthard had parried him again and ended up missing because of it, to which Brandon then lunged forward towards Wealthard. Unfortunately, what he didn't realize, was that Wealthard could move backward. And he could actually move pretty fast. As such, Brandon had missed completely and Richard took the opportunity to beat his blade and went to strike down Brandon. Right before the blade hit, though, Richard turned his sword back into a wand and stopped. The two were not satisfied with this being the end of the sparring match, and so they returned to a distance away from each other and drew their blades once more. This time, though, rather sticking strictly to blades, they decided to amp up the death level. Richard ignite his blade in white hellfire and Brandon electrocuted his blade in...angel lighting? Terminology aside, the two were ready to bring on the hurt towards each other in a much more extreme way than before. Richard then proceeded to fire and let out a wave of mist towards Brandon. Unfortunately the mist did not get rid of the lightning. That proved that it was not hellfire based. Brandon just sort of stood there, kind of confused, as to what that mist actually was. After standing around for a bit, Brandon decided to fight. Brandon attacked Richard, only this time he was moving faster with his lightning coating. Colliding with Richard's hellfire saber, the lightning and fire started reacting towards each other. One trying to overtake the other. There felt to be some bad blood between these attacks. Richard could feel some sort of anger building up inside of him, most likely caused by Maalik, and eventually overtook Brandon's lightning. Brandon was able to jump back and avoid any actual damage, from the flames and then attacked with a more intensified lightning sword swing towards Wealthard. Richard struck back with a more intensified flame strike towards Vis Vis, and the same thing happened again. Brandon was not having a good time against this man. He was better in almost every way shape and form, but Brandon wasn't going to let that stop him. Brandon went in again, this time unleashing one lightning strike after the other, and Wealthard was not giving an inch at all. He was parrying blade strike after blade strike, with his flames trumping Brandon's lightning each time. Brandon had a tenacious spirit, though, and wanted to be stronger. He was going to give his all, even if it was against a team mate and even if it was just sparring, Brandon wasn't going to stop until he couldn't go anymore. Wealthard then decided to go on the offensive and attack towards Brandon with a lunge towards Brandon, albeit rather slowly. That allowed Brandon to be able to block the attack and then push the strike away. Brandon then took the opportunity to bring in a follow up strike, which Wealthard promptly parried. Richard was ready to strike down Brandon, only he didn't because he wasn't going to kill this kid. The two of the combatants were not nearly done though. Brandon was going to totally beat Wealthard or pass out trying. He fired off a light wave towards the lazy man, to which Wealthard responded to by throwing out a flame wave. The two collided and the fire and lightning mixed together, until the fire had trumped the lightning. Richard then went in and sent out more fire waves towards Brandon, to which the young boy could barely keep up with at all, but still was able to counter with his own lightning waves. The attacks were relentless from Wealthard now, and Brandon had to keep pushing himself to his limits to not get totally incinerated by it. Brandon was then getting advanced on by Wealthard who struck down towards Brandon, to which he brought up his lightning sword to block it. The attack had sent Brandon sliding back. Brandon was wondering what he could do against Wealthard to somehow turn the tides in his favor. So he did the one thing he could think to. He got ready to charge up and fire off a lightning bolt towards Wealthard, only for it to be to be totally intercepted by the flame of stream from Wealthard. Brandon's grip tightened and he went onto to try and fight him even harder than before with stronger lightning. Richard constantly tried to keep pace with the kid, if only faster really, because going all out on his as he was would do neither of them good. Richard could understand this will behind his blade to get stronger,and had to push the kid farther if his powers were ever going to get out of the rut he felt they were in. RIchard struck Brandon's sword again, stronger than before, and sent it flying out of his hands. Richard then pointed the blazing saber towards Brandon, to which Brandon countered by summoning Vis Vis back in his hands and striking the blade away. Richard was kind of taken off guard by this attack as he didn't know the blades could do that and left himself completely open. However, Richard sent a wall of flames upwards to deter and defend against Brandon's lightning sword strike. Backing off a bit Richard stood back up and started attacking Brandon with extreme speed and Brandon had no choice but to try and keep on the defensive once more. Each blow was starting to way more heavily on him and he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold out against the Norwegian Fencer man. Huffing, Brandon decided to keep exerting himself farther and farther. He had no sense of his limits and no sense of restriction, so each time he attacked it was everything he had. He used his sword to send out another surge of electricity towards Wealthard but it ended the same way. Brandon then rushed towards Wealthard once again and started striking at him more and more and more and more. Strike after strike, parry after parry. Brandon was eventually beaten back by Richard's blade again and was sent sliding back across the roof once more. His legs were starting to burn a bit, but it didn't matter. Brandon charged towards Wealthard once more and tried to take on Richard once more, before his sword simply got parried away once more. Brandon started to feel the fatigue in his body. All the fighting over the night had really started to take its toll. But regardless of the pain, Brandon wasn't ready to stop yet. Richard stood there, calmly, assessing the situation. Brandon sent as much electricity towards Richard as he could, but the guardian of the hellfire was too fast and much stronger than the archangel of lighting and as such, the cycle repeated. Brandon went in to try and strike at Richard once more, only for his blade to start getting parried once more. Richard realized the kid couldn't go on much longer. As such, he punched Brandon in the gut, knocking the wind out of him, and causing him to drop Vis Vis. With that done, Brandon went in with electrified fists towards Richard until Richard simply kicked the kid away and caused him to pass out. The match was done. Richard stood there looking at the kid. He was out cold now. He had a lot of tenacity, sure, but not much power to back it up. Guess that explained why he was so eager to get stronger at this rate. Richard felt more tired than usual himself, probably from his own exertion, and decided that now was the greatest time for sleeping. While he would be fine with sleeping on the roof, he didn't think the kid would be. As such, he picked him up and walked with him all the way to his room. Richard dropped Brandon off in his room before going to sleep in his own room.
Sal had felt quite welcome here at the Walker household, despite appearing quite out of the blue. He did feel bad about staying here but seeing as they were willing enough, he couldn't turn them down. There were a few things he did pick up on after staying here for only a day though. First and foremost, Lauren was an idiot. Well idiot might've not been the correct way to think about it. She had a very skewed way of thinking and was often wrong about- okay yeah, she was kind of an idiot. Secondly, Lauren broke everything she touched. He didn't exactly know how one person could be so clumsy and destroy so much in one day. He felt like he was being too harsh towards the girl. Positive traits would her being friendly and accomodating. Anyway, another thing he picked up on was the hostility from Mickey. He didn't really know why, since he hadn't been around the man for too long, but he seemed to be quite angry with basically everything. There was seldom a moment where this man didn't have a scowl on his face. Oh well. After eating dinner and thanking the Walker's for the meal, and the place to stay once again, he walked off to the guest room. It was unfortunate that he had to share the room with Mickey, such negative attitudes being around did not do anyone good. Sal didn't say really anything and just crashed and fell asleep for the night.
Ah, so her name was Alice Walker was it? That would mean that she was Lauren's sister most likely. "I'm Lauren's wife." Oh, lesbians. Well that was certainly different from what he was expecting. That aside she told them about what their reason for being in this town was. So apparently they didn't even live on the mainland of Australia and were actually in Tasmania the entire time. Oh well that was certainly interesting. They were at Tasmania at one point too sooo...this is clearly not here just because I needed to edit something meta-gamy out...Nope, not at all....Regardless they were going to Lauren's house were they? Sal was thinking that the entire Walker family must be a pretty generous one if they were willing to let a stranger just stay at their place. It took some convincing from Alice, but she was finally able to get Lauren off the bus and the gang then just stood outside. He was about to tell her that he'd happily accept the offer when the man who gave him the clothes, Mickey, spoke up. "Lauren always tends to bring in people who rob your house or destroy the place, what makes you think this man is any different." Mickey was clearly not a Walker.He stood idly by as the two Walker girls came to his defense. After they were done Sal decided to tell Mickey the reason he shouldn't be afraid. "Now now Mickey, I can assure you that I don't have any criminal intent whatsoever. Seeing as until just now I didn't know you had a place to destroy I think I'm safe on those accounts. Also, if I were trying to rob you, well let's just say you'd be doing a pretty bad job at keeping yourself safe by giving clothes to a man you're suspicious of. Not to mention I wouldn't dream of causing harm to these two sweet ladies. Anyway, thank you very much so for offering to let me stay at the Walker place, and I'd be happy to accept it." It was true, moments like these people did actually grow more suspicious of Sal then they were before he spoke, but he was only saying what was on his mind.
It was quite the show this beast had for them. Oooohhhh how that last combination of attacks was beautiful. Sure he was more of a solo act kind of guy and sure he usually despised magic, but after that attack, damn son it'd make a guy turn at the drop of dime. Between that random ruin nutcase using magic that actually helped people like him inflict more damage, and a team attack that cause that much pain, Sol was just swooned. Granted this beast wanted to seem to take them on with a large ass attack of its own, and because everyone wanted that title and/or didn't want to waste an attack no one in either of the groups it was impossible to tell how much health this thing still had. So Sol decided it had too much health and slashing it dead was the only, truly glorious, solution. If only he had a hyper slash left, but alas, the concept known as TP inhibited him from abusing such a skill. So he just attacked with a regular boring old slash.
Ah the seas what a cruel yet loving mistress she was. Aye, this boy had had quite the experience dealing with the vast majority of the world...that being water. Ah, that one fateful stormy night...er, day where they had been cast aside by the lady and dragged to the briny depths only to spit back up by it. And not to mention the other time when...wait, no that was the only time he ever had a bad experience with the sea. There was that story about a ferry or something in America(?) sinking, but he hadn't been apart of that so he wouldn't classify that as a bad experience for him...same goes for the Titanic...there was a point to this tangent somewhere along the way. What wa- Oh right! Ah, the mistress of the ocean, though she had once attempted to pull them down to Davy Jones Locker, this time she was smiling...uh...up upon them. Brandon had successfully driven the boat all the way to a beach and parked it like a pro...and accidently knocked into another boat, but that didn't matter! Once the gang had landed on the shore they all walked around following the compass, not knowing how far exactly they had to go to. It was times like these where having a person with infinite money and a person with the ability to make anything appear out of his phone really useful. Well that just meant they'd have to make due without them. As such Brandon found a random car on the beach and decided to tinker around with the car door before opening it. Then he tinkered around with the car until he ended up starting that as well. Man, modernized cars being completely electronic all accounts sure was a great thing. Brandon took the random car's wheel and watched as everyone comedically piled into the car, realizing it was far too small for the gang as it was. Didn't matter! Brandon haphazardly drove their stolen car to some other Australian city where the compass was pointing to. They eventually ended up parking the car next to some random house, since that's where the compass was pointing to. With the entire gang piling out of the car and stretching, Brandon decided not to go with the group to find their fallen friends. Instead, "I'm gonna go find another car for us to all get into." The group was going to be far too big to hold both the group and whoever they were finding. And having some skewed perception of what was alright to steal and what wasn't, Brandon deemed that this place wasn't alright to steal from or near from, and so he merrily walked away from the gang look for another car to rig up.
It had been quite the scene Brandon had awoken to. First there was yelling everywhere. And it was a lot of yelling. He opened his eyes to see that Xana was going into a sobbing mess or something about someone leaving or something, only to see her get hoisted away by some giant bird man demon thingy, and transported off to lord knows where. This was both not cool and extremely familiar. Maybe they should all just go to Italy again. Regardless, Adan then started going all weird and out of character and stuff. Through some way Brandon couldn't explain, the boy seemed like a completely different person. Weird. Eventually he and Jo went into the cabin and um, well Brandon had no idea what went on. Keeping his mind away from any gross thoughts that make people go "ew" (read people:anyone under the age of thirteen,) Brandon decided to start thinking about what should be happening next. Well as Adan pointed out, they should probably be going to find their other three angel buds. Brandon was still kind of feeling down about the loss of Xana, but he knew that she'd come back. Some way or another they'd find their way to her and their little band of fallen angels would get back to uno-hundred percento in no time. Speaking of stereotypical english person trying to be spanish, where was Compadre? After thinking about it for a while he realized that their Guatemalan friend must've been the person who Xana was talking about. Maybe he was kidnapped too! Brandon couldn't think of much more of a reason why he would be gone seeing as there was no way that that crazy Jamaican could ever be working for the enemy, (totally not counting the first night he had ever seen him.) Getting back on track, before Brandon could think about rescuing the people he didn't have idea where they were, he had to help focus on rescuing the people he didn't know their location but still had a chance at finding them through angel magic. As such, with new resolve in tow to go and help save their fallen friends, Brandon walked off the boat and left it for a bit. He returned after a tad with Xana's sword in hand. Couldn't be leaving this behind. With unusable sword in hand and determination as strong as heavenly sword metal, Brandon asked for directions from Jo and they were off. On a grand boating journey Brandon had begun steering the boat towards Jun Tae and Vincent...only he didn't that's who he was steering towards because he isn't god or role player.
Sal awoke to feel quite rested and relaxed. Man, he hadn't a sleep like that for quite a while. No hellish training and no having to conquer dark wisp monsters to claim powers he was probably fully capable of wielding as things stood. Oh well. He couldn't entirely blame Zachariel for her madness, but she was probably going a tad overboard on this stuff. And having a break now probably meant hell later on. He stretched out and yawned a bit as he woke up and looked around. Still on the bus apparently. Birdsville was their target destination and he was still with this odd group of people. There were three of them, though he only knew one. That being Lauren Walker. And she seemed to be quite a...unique person. Not just because of the theory behind magic camera shielding, but also because of some unshakable feeling he was getting from her. It was then that one of the people who were with Lauren spoke up to Sal. She said good morning to him, to which he replied to with a wave and then asked what his name was. She apparently hadn't learned from Lauren because she was...well, as he said before, unique. "Oh, well, Miss, my name is Salvatore Osorio, but call me Sal. Much easier." He then realized that he did not know the woman's name. Or what they were going to go do at the destination. "Might I ask your name Miss? Also if you don't mind me asking, what we're going to Birdsville for. I kind of just tagged along and am slightly sorry if I am causing any bit of disturbance." It was at that moment that the bus had stopped and they were at Birdsville. He stood up and said, "well it looks like we're here. After you." He smiled and gestured towards the door.
Brandon was quite happy with the way things had gone when it came to rescuing the island gang. Sure they didn't really have a real place to sleep, so people started just passing out on the boat left and right. Brandon wondered where he should drive this boat to, seeing as Inverloch was probably way out of the question now. Sure, stealing a boat wasn't that big a deal, but he didn't really want to go back there and have to taze the same man again for stealing his boat. Regardless, Brandon felt the need to fall asleep and rest up before actually going on his grand boating journey anyway, so he just passed out on the boat. Richard eventually found someplace on the boat as well and fell asleep, bound to waste the journey away.
Another day another mundane activity to be had. The boy, Christopher Jenkins, was merely sitting around, staring at his package that had arrived. Sure, this was the MMO that everyone talked about, but Chris knew how this would probably go down. It would be intoxicating at the very first week of play; all other functions would stop mattering when compared to this game. Then as time went on slowly a very real objective look on the game would dawn on him. It would become so very repetitive and just another part of his mundane routine. He would grow to hate it and wish to never play it once more. Then he'd get more into the mechanics of the game and get into the PVP aspects only to realize how horribly imbalanced they were and ultimately loathe the thing he went in depth into. This was the unfortunate cycle of the MMORPG Genre. Nevertheless, the bored man decided he'd give it a try anyway. One of his friends had gifted it to him, so he might as well play it. The only thing it would cost him would be time, and he really didn't have anything he cared to spend it on. And who knew, maybe it'd be the first to hold him past his initial impressions of it. Going down into his basement he took the disc out of the package and inserted it into his Wii U. He wasn't entirely into the whole console war and pc elitism that seemed to be going around the world, seeing as he was fairly content with his good old Nintendo product. Sure, it fell a bit prey to the downsides of the MMORPG Genre as well, but he was still able to find it as an effective time killer. Not to mention he could just play it wherever he was in the house. He just chose the basement because it was where all of his junk was exiled to. Not that he mined since it was pretty much the ultimate television gaming experience down there anyway. As he started up the game he looked around and realized something very important. "No food. Damn." It was true, he had forgotten his gaming snacks and would not be able to function at one hundred percent solely because he would not have a stream of food being endlessly bored down his gullet. There wasn't much this man cared for in the world, but food was definitely close to number one in importance. Leaving the game running, he walked upstairs and into the kitchen. Once there, he grabbed a large bag of pretzel sticks, threw one in his mouth having it hang out like a cigarette, and walked back downstair with it in hand. As soon as he had made it back down there his ears were blasted by the loud music that was exploding out of his speaker system. As such, Chris moved his way through the pain and lowered his volume all before the odd voice started talking. Thank the lord that didn't happen yet. Chris was apparently supposed to enter in some of his user information. He didn't really any purpose to entering all of his real information, but quite see the harm in it. He did leave the picture blank though; he hated being in pictures. Next up came the moment of entering a username. These things were always a pain to make since it would either be really hard to think of one, or the ones you did think of were already taken. Let's see what name would be good here. Kirito? What was this, a death game? How about, Chrono Phantasma? Now that just sounded arbitrarily confusing and convoluted. Username: Chronica He pressed confirm before trying to put any more thought into it and just floated his soul to where it should go. The voice then came back, belonging to an "Outsider Looking In" or OLI and presented him with two options. Really the way OLI was talking he was starting to make it sound more like a death game but, whatever. Chris then pressed the yes option and proceeded on with the tutorial.
Ah, Lauren Walker was the girl's name. That last name sounded familiar, but it was probably all in his head. Regardless, she had asked his name and he would give it to her. "Well Lauren, my name is Salvatore Osorio. Though please, call me Sal." With introductions out of the way between the two, Sal and Lauren eventually made it to the friend she was talking about it and he got re-garbed and ready to get a move on. At first he was thinking that he would just stay around here and wait while the town rebuilt itself. Then Lauren said something about going to Birdsville and was going to leave. At first Sal thought to just say his goodbyes and stay in town. Then he realized he'd get really bored...and probably found out for illegally breaking into the only hotel in the city. Sal told Lauren and her friends that he'd be accompanying them and as such the new gang started their way off to Birdsville Victoria Australia...on a bus. Well that was a nice change of events. Once on the bus, Sal thought about how the others would find him if he wasn't staying in the same place. Then he remembered they had a magic compass to follow to any of the fallen. And they might be dead anyway. So he really wasn't doing any harm leaving the town. Eventually Sal passed out on the bus to Birdsville and drifted off to sleep.
Sal was...admittedly confused and astonished by the response he was given from this woman...like, he didn't even know if children thought this way, much less full grown adults. She also offered to get new clothes for him, which he was frankly fairly thankful for. These old ones were doing their job fine, but a change of wardrobe was always needed. After all what was he, some role playing game character? "Thanks you Miss, I'll definitely take you up on that clothes deal." As such the two began walking to where the woman said he would get his clothes from. As he was walking there were two things that persisted in his mind. One of them was to simply set the woman straight. "Also, listen, the camera isn't what saves the people who are being filmed by it. What saves them is...absolutely nothing short of luck really. You see, cameras don't have magical powers to protect people. Cameras simply just take the image that they're able to capture and stream it as a live video feed to the television stations them to broadcast and the people tuning in to see. Therefore, the people who go out there and get recorded use proper planning and luck to survive the storm they're in. I mean, if the cameras recording the person is what saves them, then what saves the people who are holding the cameras and pointing them at the people?" Then there was the second thing that persisted, "also, if I may ask your name Miss?"
There was an odd sound coming from the man. It was one that occurred when someone was usually spending their day away in a blissful rest state. A sound usually used in television shows for comedic effect, to garner enjoyment off of a fictional character's frustration at the noise. In real life, however, the noise was usually associated with both annoyance and breathing issues. Yes, the man was indeed snoring on this day because yes, he was indeed asleep at this very moment. The sound of the wind rustling around and the birds chirping through the park did eventually manage to wake the weary man up, only for him to immediately shield his eyes from the burning light of the sun that greeted him. It was definitely not this bright when he fell asleep. Damn anticipation keeping him up all night, making his tired for the next day to come. He was out for a walk to the park and figured that a good five minute rest would do him some good. Man that was quite the rest though, he felt invigorated for only having been asleep for such a short time. He sat up on the bench he was sleeping at and covered his face as he let out a yawn. After a little bit of stretching out, the man looked down at the watch he was wearing. He proceeded to look to the sky, clearly brighter than it had been before, then he looked towards the bench he was sleeping on, and then finally his eyes made their way back to his watch..."Ah shit." Johnis clearly was not having the greatest start to his mornings. He overslept, like really overslept. He just wanted to take a short walk around town, kill some time so that the mail could arrive and his anticipation wouldn't be brutally murdering him. He did not want to kill ALL the time however. The mail was probably already here, and Sut was probably already awaiting to play the game...or not playing it at all. He wasn't sure how excited she'd actually be to play it, but come on, it was supposedly the greatest MMORPG of its time and who could miss out on that? Plus it gave her another chance to show him up, which she was always willing to take (even if it was in a field that was clearly not her forte.) He made his way back home with the speed that rivaled that of a diving peregrine falcon and made it home safe and sound. After opening the door he walked around a bit and wondered where Sut was. After a bit of searching around the place Johnis ended up in the kitchen. He saw something in there that left his mouth a gape in sheer awe. It was here. The package was here~! Johnis excitedly skipped over to the box that was filled with nothing more than what was promised. Etiam. The game that was going to shatter all dimensions of gaming and rise to a new tier of- hey wait a second. The box was open...why was the box open? Oh man, Sut had beaten him to it. How could he have let this happen? Welp, looked like he was just going to have to meet her in game or something. Not like it was going to be hard or something. Her user IDs usually had Ashwin Bear somewhere in there. Boy did she love that bear. Despite the slight let down of not being able to boot up the game when it arrived, Johnis was still stoked to set it up anyway. Taking the disc with him, Johnis went up to his room and booted up his Mac, ready and willing to play the game. Johnis loaded up the game on his computer, put on his headphones and went into the "zone." The game launched and Johnis was immediately bombarded with a series of visuals and sounds. The soundtrack to this game, so far, from just the intro, was amazing. It was a clear sign of good things to come and he had really wished he knew who the composer to this stuff was. Oh well, he'd follow up on that later when he remembered. For now, though, he was going to enjoy the eye candy that were the visuals of this game. Oh man, all the glimpses at the world that were provided to them, they just fueled his indecision all that more, and boy oh boy did he want to get to the character creation. Eventually, he was greeted by some odd voice that told him that he would soon be going into the world of Etiam, and that it needed to learn a little more about the player. He simply complied with the wishes of the weird voice and customized the profile to match Johnis. The only thing left to decide on was what his username was going to be. [Skyheart]...no, that username just sounded really dumb. [Shirokaze]...no, too weeb. Who knew that choosing a username would be the most difficult part about this game? [Stardust Walker]...there we go. It was a pretty random name, in fact it sounded like that of some weird protagonist, but hey, Stardust was always a cool word and ya know, Walker was a name he had a high affinity for for some reason. "You will be a part of this world," the skeleton spoke, its lipless mouth matching the syllables perfectly, "But I am not. I am merely an Outsider. An Outsider Looking In." The letters "OLI" appeared over the skeleton in red. "An outsider...and your teacher. I will grant you form in this new world...but only if you are ready. Are you ready?" Johnis was greeted with the same voice as before, only this time there was a face to go along with it. A sort of weird mechanical skeleton thing that appeared in front of him. It was good to know that there was going to be an instruction program, because truth be told, despite Johnis looking into all the classes and races he actually had no idea how the game actually worked. He was presented two options by this silver horned Skeletor, [YES] or [NO]. As if there was any doubt in the boy's mind, who basically said "take my money" when he first heard about the game, he pressed the [YES] option and proceeded on with what was to come.
Richard had ended up being paired up with Henrik to go search around the island. The journey with the physicist was quite the silent one, as he seemed to be not the most sociable of people and Richard was...well, he was Richard. Had he been tasked to do this by himself he probably would've taken a nap somewhere along the way and totally forgotten what he was here to do in the first place. Their main task of trying to find just what was on this island was given to them and so the two anti-social people made their own perceptions and saw that there was something interesting about this island. After their long term perimeter check of the island, it was determined that it was absolutely deserted...except for maybe a shit ton of birds that happened to be on this island. What were they being bred here? Richard and Henrik went back to the other two to report their findings. "Yeah, so I'm pretty sure that this island is uninhabited and that we're basically stuck here unless we find our own way off." It was at that moment that some boat appeared off the coast and appeared to be approaching them...well that seemed mildly convenient. Richard then decided to flare at the approaching boat and fired off a stream of hellfire mist towards the sky to act as their signal. Granted using white mist was probably not the greatest idea in this situation, but hey, it was all he could manage at the moment. ---Prior to this Boat appearing--- Brandon and comrades had all eventually got out of bed and was ready to go. Jo already had her compass out when they all met up, she didn't even want to waste time pulling it out. Now that's the go getting spirit. After everyone was given the proper first aid equipment to help alleviate any of their wounds, no matter how minor the alleviation might have been, they all comedically piled back into Adan's car and went on to Operation Get The Fallen Operational, aka Operation GTFO. Driving through around the continent following the directions of the compass the gang was eventually met with a rather odd obstacle to overcome...the ocean. Well that was something he was not expecting to deal with. The gang simply scratched their heads as to what to do with this impasse when Brandon figured out exactly what they should do...for once. Taking the wheel forcefully from Adan, Brandon (aka a driver who gives the question "does this kid even have a license" purpose) and drove all the way back to Inverloch. Once there they ended up getting to a port at the town and all sauntered out to get a boat. Unfortunately renting a boat was pretty expensive. Especially in times of crisis. Stealing a boat, however, now that was completely free. With Brandon trying to sort things out with the owner of the boat they wanted, who was aggressively telling Brandon his name (which he kept repeating but only proved to make the man angrier,) Brandon eventually decided that he was not the most cooperative of people. As such, Brandon turned himself into a human, er, angel taser and stunned the guy, taking his keys and rushing everyone onto the boat. With Brandon being head captain of the boat, which somehow he was much better at than a car, they followed the compass all the way to an island.
