Chapter 28- ...You Bring Your Own

~Mira~

Mira gulped as she looked at the monsters she had helped create. She was terrified, rooted to the spot, unable to even move. Her legs were shivering. The waves of aura being released by the pair was enough that any weaker humans would probably be unable to even stand within thirty meters of the beasts.

‘An aura’s dominion’ her tutorial sponsor Rakesh had called it. Except it was a phenomenon that only occurred when monsters above level 300 challenged each other. The fact that the lizard could even release something similar to it told her that something had gone very, very wrong with the elixir she had made and Arthur's own output of the strange reverberations was even more absurd.

The lizard was only supposed to be as strong as a level 150 monster, 180 at most, but the aura it was releasing told a very different story. This was not a beast that was going to die in the next few minutes. And despite its terrifyingly imposing presence, it was Arthur that really commanded her attention.

‘Who the hell is he- no- what the hell is he?’

‘And why the FUCK is he not sticking to the plan!’

He was only level 39 for Christ’s sake, barely a tenth of the level he was supposed to be at before he could start imposing his will on the world, and yet here he was, somehow doing it right in front of her very eyes.

Mira was not a religious person. She didn't believe in any higher power or grand fate of any sort, but as she stood there, a feeling of awe and reverence came over her.

It didn't matter who won the fight, the world would be shaken off its axes if any of these two beasts were allowed to reach their true potential. The lizard was supposed to be dying, poisoned by its forced growth, and yet by some twist of fate, the beast in front of her had somehow used her elixir as a catalyst to evolve its race to rank E.

What should have been a difficult fight for the two of them to overcome had now become an impossible challenge that would certainly result in their deaths.

At least it would have if she was going off the predicted strengths she and Arthur could have produced whilst working in unison, and yet the current Arthur in front of her seemed like he could do anything, even kill the monster her unique identify skill warned her against.

Draconic Liverthion ( Evolved  Rank E) Level 219 - A Unique physique created this beast when by all rights it should have died. A true monster. RUN! ??? ??? ???

Identify (unique) has reached Level 6

The monster's description weakened the hope that had barely even begun to exist in her chest. Arthur would definitely be able to kill it if he gained 20, no, maybe even 10 more levels, but as things stood, she doubted he was the lizard's match.

Mira knew this was a fight that she couldn't get involved in, the fighters were in an entirely different weight class to her, their strengths tending towards the physical whilst hers did towards the esoteric, and all she’d do is get herself killed if she tried to help Arthur.

The poisoned arrows she’d prepared for the fight would be useless as well as her area of effect poison skill. Arthur would be caught within its impact range, and she couldn’t for the life of her, figure out why he had decided to just go into the fight on his lonesome instead of waiting for her to soften up the beast like they’d planned for.

All she could do was wait.

Wait and pray that Arthur could pull off a miracle.

Arthur came to a stop in front of the monster, barely half a meter away from it and looked up to see the beast’s pale yellow glare from two feet above him. The stench of rotten meat wafted down and enveloped him when the creature opened its mouth to reveal a row of wickedly sharp teeth.

It snarled, the sound like a dying motorbike in his ears.

The lizard towered over Arthur, in both height and stature, its heavily muscled frame no doubt quadrupling Arthur's own considerable weight. It was like the biblical tale of David and Goliath, except any observer would know that this story wouldn’t have such a happy ending.

Arthur looked completely different from his usual calm, collected self. He looked like an animal in the wild, all traces of intelligence gone, a feral grin now plastered onto his face.

He looked like he was enjoying this.

Mira didn’t know why Arthur was acting so strange. Perhaps it was a side effect of consuming so many potions for the first time, her other potion had seriously fucked up too, or maybe it was the primal instincts of the lizard brain taking over in this tense situation, but Arthur no longer seemed to have any control of his faculties.

He was now just as much an animal as the lizard in front of him, maybe even more so, and he’d just been issued a challenge. Arthur did the only thing natural that occurred to him in his strange state.

He accepted.

Stepping forward Arthur closed the distance between the two, crossing some sort of invisible boundary as he entered the monster's personal space. As if following some sort of pre-planned fight choreography, the lizard struck with all the finesse of a careering truck, no skill involved in the attack whatsoever.

Just raw physical power. It was a devastating attack.

The movement was fast, faster than anything Arthur had ever seen before, literally tearing through any wind resistance, and yet Arthur could see it.

And anything he could see could be dodged. But Arthur didn't move an inch. That would go against the unspoken rules of this fight that he was instinctively following. It would go against the spirit of a challenge as old as time itself.

Instead, Arthur raised his own hand to meet the monster’s blow, his 118 points in agility allowing him to react fast enough and block the savage swipe from hitting his face.

BOOM!

The resulting clash caused an incredible burst of sound and the stone cracked beneath, crushed to dust beneath his feet as the force was transferred into the ground he stood upon. And yet the bones in his forearm held.

They hurt, but they were not broken, and that was something Arthur could work with.

Mira observed all this play out, eyes wide open in shock as she used her arm to shield her from the dust cloud that somehow reached her twenty meters away. The tectonic reverberations from the lizard's blow had caused her weak knees to give out, she had invested very little into her physical body, and she’d thought that the fight was over already.

No human below level 130 could survive that blow and even if they did, it’d probably take them out of the fight. And yet when the dust had cleared, it revealed Arthur standing there, his arm raised from withstanding the monster's mighty strike.

An Arthur Ward that was perfectly fine, albeit the minor bruise that had begun to form on his forearm.

The monster too was taken aback by its opponent’s perfect physical state before baring its teeth in mockery of a smile. It took a step back, spreading its arms wide as if inviting Arthur to attack.

Mira watched with bated breath as Arthur took a slow step forward, his movements so graceful that they seemed to flow into one another like water in a stream. It looked like perfection in motion, no extra movement, no wasted energy, almost as if space itself moved around Arthur instead of him through it.

Mira blinked-

-and missed Arthur's attack, but from the spray of blood that erupted from the lizard's cracked teeth and the way it was now looking directly up at the sky, she realised that Arthur had delivered a devastating uppercut to the now staggered beast.

The sound of the punch reached her a split second later, a loud crunch that resounded in her ears and Mira stood there dumbfounded.

‘He just hit the lizard faster then the fucking speed of sound.’

What was more impressive however, was the fact that the monster was even alive after taking such a powerful blow and it too seemed no worse for wear, the cracked teeth quickly falling to the ground as they were replaced by a fresh set of deadly canines.

Mira's heart dropped at the sight. It looked like the Liverthion had some sort of skill to increase its regeneration speed, a broken ability to add to its arsenal of strengths, and Arthur's already slim chances of victory now looked downright impossible.

Arthur however seemed to take his foes' rapid regeneration in his stride like he had expected it, and did nothing except alter his stance a little, as if he was taking into account the new skills the lizard had displayed.

Mira had no idea how Arthur could hope to deal with such a game changing ability, but the man seemed to have everything under control, a look of grim determination on his face.

The fight that Mira was about to witness, as she would later think back to in the future, was a defining moment that would change her life forever. It was the moment that would make her fall in love with the art of physical combat, and though she’d never have the talent for it, she would forever appreciate those that fought with their fists.

The lizard appeared more cautious after it had felt Arthur's impressive strength, no longer standing so arrogantly. It leaned forward, its long arms almost touching the ground like an apes. There was nothing defensive about its stance, every part of it focused only on attack.

After all the monster had never known anything besides it and these principles had served it well until now. It wouldn't turn its back on them after the first time they were put to the test.

Arthur’s strike had jarred the beast, and it was weary of taking another such blow to the head. Some things took longer to repair than others, namely the brain, and it had realised that the monster in front of it could actually pose a threat to its life.

That's why it stood ready, poised to react to even the smallest movements the human made. Its preparation proved futile as it felt its jaw completely shatter as a huge amount of force pushed it past its breaking point, a strike far stronger than the first it had felt.

The lizard roared in pain and outrage, falling back from the blow, eyes closing in agony as it felt chips of bone interspersed themselves throughout the lower half of its face.

‘How? How did the challenger do that?’

It had been looking, OBSERVING the human for any movement and it was positive that the human hasn't moved its hands. It couldn't even begin to fathom how the wound it received came about.

Two more impacts, a shattered kneecap and a broken arm later, the lizard finally realised how the human was dealing so much damage. It was using its lower half.

The concept of using one's hind legs offensively in battle was such a foreign notion to the former four legged lizard that it threw the beast into a state of confusion for a short while. In that time, as it was pummelled further, this time by elbows of all things, it understood one thing.

It would never be able to move with such grace. Its joints and physiology just weren’t made to cater such profoundly beautiful movements.

The realisation broke down its already crumbling spirits and the monster felt a strange emotion take root in its chest.

Fear.

He was far, far stronger, had higher vitality and constitution, but he was simply outclassed by the weaker challenger.

Mira watched in disbelief over the next few minutes as the fight slowly left the lizard's eyes, its regeneration gradually beginning to slow down with every additional blow Arthur dealt. It couldn’t keep up with the damage.

The Liverthion’s broken, twisted hands fell to its sides, no longer defending the body that had taken so much punishment, not that they had managed to do much in the first place.

Arthur didn't let up, striking out so fast and clinically that Mira couldn't even see his movements, each of them flowing seamlessly into another, only the damage inflicted as it slowly accumulated on the beast.

After nearly ten minutes of the abuse, the lizard fell to the ground unable to remain standing, its shinbone broken with a devastating kick to the lower leg. The beast's entire body now resembled a living wound, its rapid regeneration long outpaced by the intensity of Arthur's strikes.

Mira let out a breath she didn't know she was holding.

It looked like she’d brought the stronger monster to this fight.

~Arthur Ward~

Arthur couldn't remember much of what happened during the fight. He had walked towards the lizard, which he now realised had been very, very stupid of him and then- blank.

An entire portion of his memory was missing.

He recalled vague feelings of motion and violence, the occasional twitch in his legs that told him he had delivered one too many kicks, and his completely mangled fists, that perhaps it hadn't been the best idea to enter a slug-fest with a monster almost 200 levels above him.

Everything seemed to have gone well though even if he couldn’t recall anything, as its broken form lay before him, in a spreading pool of purple blood.

“It's still alive you know,” Mira said from behind him.

He jumped in surprise, having forgotten that she was even here.

“I’d kill it soon if I was you. You might’ve won this round, but when it wakes up, you’ll be in a weakened state after the potion’s effects wear off.”

Arthur blanched at that. He’d completely forgotten that he was fighting with borrowed strength. Strength that was rapidly draining out of him, as he felt fatigue start to claim his body and a sense of numbness began to spread from the pit of his stomach. It felt like he’d eaten some extremely spicy food.

“You kill it, I don't want all the levels.” Arthur managed to groan out as he quickly sat on the ground.

“Are you sure?” Mira asked.

“You know you’ll still gain some even if I kill it, right. You dealt way too much damage to not absorb a portion of its soul when it dies.”

Arthur managed to nod his head weakly as his vision began to darken. The poison mage just shrugged, before sending an arrow point blank through the lizard's eye into its skull. Mira wouldn’t miss from so close.

As he was passing out, Arthur saw the familiar blue of system messages flicker in his vision, and he felt oddly reminiscent of the first time he had seen them in a similar situation to how he currently was.

You have reached level 40…

you have reached level 41… ….

you have reached level 60

You have 168 unspent stat points.

Darkness claimed him.

~Mira~

Mira looked briefly at the unconscious form of Arthur Ward before looking at her status. She had gained 12 levels from the kill and was now level 85. Mira would have to be very careful in the near future to not involve herself in any fights.

She still had a lot of things she needed to do before she reached level 100 and unlocked her class. Plus she'd been forbidden from doing so by Rakesh whilst in the tutorial. She wasn't allowed to do so, unless she had absolutely no other choice. There was supposedly a lot the school could teach her to make her get a better class at level 100 and she’d be stupid to turn that opportunity down due to impatience.

She looked down at Arthur still-form and felt a thrill of fear race through her. Today she had witnessed a fraction of the power Arthur would one day hold, and it had told her how much she was lacking right now.

If she wanted a chance of fulfilling her goals, she would need to narrow that gap down.

Arthur's current status-

level 60

Unallocated Stat Points: 168

Strength- 121(110)

Vitality- 160*

Endurance- 50

Constitution- 182(140)

Agility- 118

Intelligence- 323

Willpower- 90

Charisma- 95

Health- 1940/3200(352(160)/hour)

Ether- 3140/3230(323/hour)

Stamina- 39/500 (50/minute)