"Would you stop looking like that? It was a bad match up! There was nothing you could have done," Allora said to Grim. Her placing a hand on his shoulder, with her towering height, seemed to annoy the white-haired man.
He swatted it away.
"What do you mean there was nothing I could do? There was. I just didn't get the time. Things were moving too quickly," Grim grumbled.
Allora shook her head.
"I've never felt my admiration for someone evaporate so quickly. As an ordinary Faction member, I thought you were unshakeable. You and Pherdanta especially. I didn't realise you'd whine so much."
Grim clicked his tongue.
"I didn't ask you to adore me! And besides, there's never been a situation where my abilities weren't handy."
"There has been. Many in fact," Pherdanta chipping in caused the two to shiver.
Baddan was standing some distance from them chortled.
"There has not!" Grim turned and defiantly declared. "Pherdanta, you have swords for every occasion. That's cheating."
"It's a perk of being a Swordswoman."
"Oh please, I've been adding to your cache since old times. I even gave you that white scimitar days ago!"
"So what? I put it to good use. You should do the same with your fangs and claws."
Grim sighed, smiled darkly as he looked at the woman.
"You insufferable little... princess," he changed the last noun to his sentence when Pherdanta gave him a cross look.
He also seemed to remember midway that in a few seconds, Pherdanta could easily throw him overboard when his guard was forcibly dipped in the wake of her abilities.
With another sigh, Grim looked at the ocean.
He wasn't really that upset, but he did begin to wonder if matchups were going to dictate a majority of what happened with the battles going forward. His abilities could be pretty versatile, but how useful was that in overly complex battles.
He was quite concerned, and rightfully so, after all, at the end of the day, he wasn't used to fighting in the real high leagues yet. It hadn't been that long since he acquired his new abilities and the period he had had them could easily be considered as a growth period where he was evolving in a controlled environment – with the boss being the source of the control.
Well, not anymore.
Quite surprisingly, the pitter patter of rain began.
Droplets fell onto the umbrella-shaped barrier, and their hue was quite dark, as though they were darkness liquefied.
Well, with the constant heat that fell and rose, it was hardly surprising that rain would be a norm – born from the poisonous water. The fact that it hadn't rained since the anomalous conditions surrounding this voyage was the strange part.
The distance the distance the vessel had covered in the last hour seemed to denote another step into deeper, more treacherous sailing conditions.
The silence that followed, with everyone being partly mesmerised by the raindrops, was broken by Allora who had sat on the deck.
"How far are you two into your Stages?" she asked Grim and an imperceptible Pherdanta. "The boss is determined to have you two in particular get a lot of cumulative mana experience."
Grim tapped the rising hull playfully.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm past the halfway point into the Master Stage by a bit. I believe, according to the number of my Tasks so far... It should be 34. Six more Tasks and a Trial, and I'll be an Incandescent Stager. Thankfully, for the Tasks ahead, I have already amassed a fair amount of experience."
"I'm 36 in. Close too. Kenno is at 39," Pherdanta said succinctly.
Allora grimaced.
She was not even a Second Phase Master yet, and couldn't create a Genuine Incarnation, though she was close.
"I wish I had gotten the confidence to get my Class sooner," she said.
"What's the rush? The boss has promised to leave us all the weaker fodder so that we continue to amass experience. We're practically being stuffed, and our only Task is to use our nutrients well," Grim while giving Allora a light kick.
She gave a small smile.
"I suppose. Bad analogy though."
This was the main idea of Replicus' plan for the Unlimited. They were to take out the common combatants and grow.
Reaching the Incandescent Stage – which began from Level 31 to 60 – was something Grim and Pherdanta desired immensely. Their powers would grow too as a result, even though they were already formidable.
But Tasks stood in the way.
By keeping count of how many one had endured so far, one could tell how far they were into the Stages, after all, the fact that they were only 100 of them was public knowledge. Some counted them as levels, but it was accurate all the same.
It was possible to store cumulative mana experience indefinitely, though it would only be useful when Tasks were completed, the required experience for the next level deducted each time.
"What Task do you have?" Allora asked Grim, somewhat nervously.
It wasn't common to ask such a thing. She didn't dare ask Pherdanta.
"Well, I have to hunt down 50 aquatic beasts of the 15th Tier and above, using only my first beast form, Avhanar," Grim said while shaking his head. "It's sick, I know."
Allora saw it the same way. That was a tough Task and it couldn't have been done on the voyage since in the first half, they had been in a hurry to get to the Central Boundary, and now, the waters were too poisonous.
Allora wondered if that was why Grim had been so excited after claiming to have sensed the presence of strong monsters days ago, right after she got her class. Unfortunately, it had turned out to be Baddan.
"Seems being human is quite... devastating," the Sky Watcher spoke from the side.
"Well, I barely count as one," Grim snorted, which made Allora and Baddan chuckle.
There was flaring red shade imprinted onto the deck from the skies.
It grew increasingly broad and broader as the ship went.
Everyone grew tense and looked to its source.
It coming from just ahead.
"We've caught up!" Allora said.
Indeed they had.
Tens of ships were a distance beyond... but they weren't moving.
"What the hell?" Grim focused his eyes.
The view became clear.
The ships of the other Factions were surrounding a towering, dull red pillar that swayed vigorously left and right. It was very, very broad in girth, astoundingly so.
'Wait. It's a flame!' Grim thought.
A red flame above the sea.
"It's..." he set to alert his fellow Unlimited and Baddan, but he paused as he saw something more and then felt his skin crawl. The others did too.
Grim saw an enormous ship within the flame.
It was nearly twice as large as those that had been given to the Factions, and overall designed vastly differently.
It was worn down, its hull and keel smoking, the effect of the poisonous ocean water very effective upon it – chewing it through. Burn marks, likely from the Scorching Tears also showed from it, along with blotches of blood stains.
The ship was already sinking, leaning from behind as it slowly descended.
The red fire around it made the scene greatly disturbing.
However... the red turned out to not be a true flame at all.
It was Undeath.
The masked man... had he finally been caught?!
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