Summer Break

Chapter 32

No sooner than Tess removed the bracelet restricting her core, did she feel a surge of power. Tess stumbled a bit as she ran from the surge, but regained her footing and kept running.

"So this is the power of a dark silver core, my power," Tess thought to herself.

Despite how powerful she felt, she knew it wasn't enough, and activated her beast will.

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"NO!" Arthur thought as he felt Tess' power surge.

In this moments distraction the beast swatted him with one of its paws, knocking him to the ground.

"This isn't good, she still has two more stages to go through, she's not ready for this." Arthur got back up and dodged another swing of the beast's paw. "She's not ready for her beast will yet. What if it goes wild and hurts the others." Arthur slashed his blade up the length of the beast's leg. "This is my fault, if only I turned us around sooner, if only I was stronger. If I had finished this beast already she wouldn't have felt so desperate." Arthur needed to finish this now, and sliced open the beast's throat, but it still didn't let up on its assault. Arthur glanced back to see an emerald green light, and knew now that Tess' beast will was active. "It's not too late yet, I can still save everyone, I can still save Tess."

The beast swung its paw again, but Arthur was done dodging, as it was wasting time. Arthur focused wind mana into his left arm, to block the beast's strike as he remembered what Pasta told him about his fight with the Wykes family, how he used sound magic.

Arthur swung his left arm at the beast's paw. The two collided, but Arthur didn't move. Instead the beast's paw was knocked back, looking disfigured.

"Did I just unlock sound magic?" Arthur questioned, but shook the thought from his head, knowing he had more important things to think about.

Using piston stamp Arthur shot himself up into the air towards the beast as he focused mana of all four attributes. Targeting where he had already sliced the beast's throat, he swung his blade, and sliced the beast's head clean off.

Not wasting time, he spun around to go help the others, but stopped as his eyes widened and a smirk formed on his face.

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As Tess activated her beast will she found herself floating in an endless expanse of black while within a silver glow, and in front of her was the elderwood guardian. Within seconds it's vine tendrils shot forth, as Tess' own vines shot out to meet them. The vines wrapped around one another, neither willing to let the other go.

"I'll keep this brief," Tess started with a commanding voice. "This is my body, not yours. So if you're going to stay here, it's time you started to pay rent."

The elderwood guardian roared and shot even more vines. This time they made it through and wrapped around her and began to pull her closer to it. It's red eyes glaring menisally as its mouth opened showing it's two sets of monstrous teeth. This was a sight that could give anyone nightmares as it pulled Tess closer to its mouth. Despite the fear she felt, Tess pushed in down, she needed to focus.

"Go ahead, take over and go crazy again. Then we'll both be dead."

The elderwood guardian stopped and stared at Tess, now looking curious.

"So you don't know what's going on out there? We're fighting an S ranked beast, three actually. And unless you give me your power, it's going to kill us all."

The elderwood guardian closed its mouth, and a single vine came forth, then touched Tess' head. Immediately Tess felt as though the elderwood guardian was pulling up all of her memories since entering the dungeon. At first it looked deep in thought, but soon became enraged as it came to the memories of the three beasts. She wasn't sure why the elderwood guardian became so enraged, but she hoped this was a good sign.