Divine Beast Ascension

533 Rot Team vs Rhyner Team

“Hit him once for me!” the team leader and former captive shouted with a vengeful glare. While saying that, the leader raced toward the women on his team who were guarding the downed fox.

The brawny man was irked to look up and see Oli challenge him so openly. But he was also forced to put up a proper defense against him. “RETREAT!”

“Oh, you’re more shameless than I expected!” Oli laughed, exchanging a blow with the Rhyner Team leader. “Why not stay a bit longer?”

The brawny leader parried a blow from the taller Oli’s mace and moved to back off. However, he suddenly felt something grab hold of his ankles. Before he knew it, shadowy tentacles had sprouted out of the snow and latched onto him. They weren’t too difficult to break or escape from, at least that would’ve been the case if Oli wasn’t confronting the man’s every move.

Karos was one of the first people to follow the order. He was too fast for Yeter to catch him and could outrun anyone there. The other two members of the Rhyner Team also started backing away.

“Hey, Karos! Get over here and help!” the Rhyner Team leader billowed. Using both hands, he was able to keep parrying or blocking Oli’s attacks for the most part but he was unable to escape with more tentacles always appearing to replace the broken ones. “HURRY!”

Karos was visibly irked but he silently complied with the order. This led to Yeter chasing him through the snow and aiming for the team leader too. But Karos would arrive first with enough time to attack Oli in tandem with the leader.

“Hm! Are you a leader or a lucky bastard put in charge?” Oli joked, throwing his spare mace straight at the incoming lynx without worrying about dodging.

But Karos was faster and more agile than anticipated. Though it slowed Karos’s charge, the lynx narrowly ducked past the flying mace and maintained his lunge attack on Oli. It was textbook. A perfect use of the cat’s incredible dexterity.

.....

“Sorry, pussy cat, but I’m taking either him or you!” Oli shouted with an unflinching grin.

While Oli increased the number of tentacles grasping for the leader’s feet, Oli kept Karos in sight from the corner of his eye. He could see how annoyed Karos was with the team leader. But Oli understood that Karos was just following orders. And considering how Karos had shouted to apologize the night prior before the panther incident, Karos had at least given them a warning to keep the team from being completely caught off guard.

But while Oli didn’t want to hurt Karos, such was the reality of the Mortal Championship. If one wasn’t willing to fight their friends, then they might as well never enter.

When Karos got close, Oli tried something new. He had never done this himself and had only seen other people use such a tactic. However, Oli was confident enough to bet on at least a minor success.

Suddenly, a small explosion of dark-death essence pulsed through the air with Oli at the center. Both Karos and the Rhyner Team leader had no choice but to tank the essence explosion, grateful that there wasn’t much brute force impacting them. However, they quickly realized what was really happening.

Their essence armor had started to dissolve and weaken under the wave of dark-death essence. It also made the tentacles stronger, allowing them to more firmly grip the Rhyner Team leader’s ankles and now his legs.

Karos rolled in the air mid-lunge, shaking off most of the dark-death essence with a burst of lightning before it could cause any serious damage. But it slowed him down again and forced Karos to pull back his lunging attack in order to not suffer the consequences of long-term exposure to the death essence. Thanks to the training Karos and the candidates from Iron Territory had against Kraz, Karos understood the repercussions of letting death essence control a battlefield.

Of course, Oli’s dark-death essence was still only half death essence, so it wasn’t as potent as Kraz’s. But Karos didn’t know that. All Karos knew was that Oli was the team leader King Zelsh had appointed and that Oli was Zelsh’s own pupil. And with Oli revealing his dark-death essence now, it was much safer to assume it was fully realized death essence.

“KAAA-ROOOS!!” Yeter’s barreling charge split the snow in two as he finally caught up to the lightning cat.

“Yeter, play with the team leader!” Oli suddenly shouted in laughter, baffling many of the cultivators around them. “I think this kitty is a better challenge anyway!”

“You bastard–”

“Fight me, village boy!” Yeter whinnied mid-charge, excited to take on someone strong enough to be appointed a team leader.

Karos felt awkward about the whole situation. Not only had he saved the team leader that he didn’t get along with, but now his speed had been countered while an enemy leader actually called Karos an even greater threat than Karos’s leader.

“I wouldn’t underestimate Hiztor–”

“Yeter’s strong, he’ll be fine in a battle between earth cultivators,” Oli remarked while repositioning himself to face Karos, releasing the tentacles wrapped around the Rhyner Team leader. “Or is that coward better at running than fighting? Even then, I doubt he can escape a stallion like Yeter, unlike you.”

Nodding slightly, Karos eyed the Rot Team leader.

Interrupting Oli’s and Karos’s chat, Hiztor roared with fury, “YOU DARE IGNORE ME–”

“COMING AT YOU!” Yeter laughed while crashing into the Rhyner Team leader.

Hiztor furiously thrust his gauntlets forward, aiming for Yeter’s head and neck. He decided to end the fight in an instant to prove his superior might.

Chung! Chung! Thud!

To both Hiztor’s and Karos’s disbelief, Hiztor’s gauntlets were deflected by Yeter’s flimsy-looking essence armor. At the same time, Yeter had gotten too close for the unguarded Hiztor to evade. The charging stallion playfully tackled the Rhyner Team leader instead of stomping him underfoot, boastfully laughing while he did so.

Baffled, Hiztor shouted, “W-what?! Are you the actual leader–”

“WHY ARE YOU SO WEAK?!” Yeter teasingly complained while kicking up snow in a disappointed fit. “I thought you were the team leader? Karos, how did you lose to him?!”

Chuckling, Oli stated, “Because Karos uses lightning and was unlucky. That’s how, right? And let’s not even guess how much money his daddy had to pay King Rhyner to claim the leader position.”

“SHUT UP–”

“I’m sending you back to Galdo ‘Village’!” yelled Yeter, kicking and stomping in every which way Hiztor tried to dodge.

“Hiz… Nah, it’s not worth remembering your name,” Oli stated loudly, making sure everyone could hear him. “If you can’t even fight Yeter, then I won’t even look at you. I’d rather fight this kitty cat. Your name was Karos, right?”

Karos nodded in silence. He didn’t bother looking at Hiztor to see his frustration or his attempts to escape Yeter’s charge. Right now, Karos was trying to decide on something while also thinking back to the warning Yeter had given him before the qualifier started. Also, Karos had to assume something that seemed ridiculous to imagine. That Oli and his team had somehow defeated the panther that would’ve wiped out the Rhyner Team.

“... Your name was Oliver, correct?”

“That’s right.”

Squinting, Karos asked, “Can you let us go, please? As friendly regions, can we move past this and forget it happened?”

But Oli broke out in laughter. After a moment of holding his gut, Oli shook his head and pointed at the team Karos had ambushed. “Look at them. Do you find it strange that they have a fox from a snowy land? Every beast I know that hails from an icy home comes from the same region in the province. So where should that fox be from?”

Karos instantly realized what he and his team had done. Thinking back to the words he had just spoken to Oli, Karos felt like a complete idiot. “... I’m sorry. I was foolish for saying such a thing.”

“It’s fine. If your team leader just activates his orb, then we can forget this happened,” Oli remarked.

“NEVER!!” Hiztor barked while still trying to break through Yeter’s unusual essence armor. To Oli’s surprise, Hiztor’s essence armor was also holding up well.

Karos, on the other hand, nodded slowly. “I understand. We’re outnumbered here and can only lose since it’s impossible to escape with you all targeting our leader… Then allow me.”

A small orb appeared between Karos’s claws, which he held up for everyone to see.

“As team leader, I order you to put that away!” shouted Hiztor. “Throw it away! Don’t you dare use such a disgraceful tactic!”

“Says the leader that almost got one of us killed against that panther, even ordering him to throw the orb away and die as a sacrifice just so it wouldn’t use up our team’s free escapee…” Karos replied in a calm but demeaning tone. “Oliver, you’ve won. We’ll retreat, just as our team leader previously ordered.”

“NO!! WE CAN’T LOSE–”

Crack. ZZZZRRMM!!

The moment Karos broke his orb, all other orbs of the Rhyner Team simultaneously shattered. Each team member was consumed in a flash of purple essence and seemingly ripped away from reality. But everyone knew where they had gone.