Chapter 560: Unexpected Consequences (Patreon)

It was like color was draining from the world, and moving through the water was only possible through great resistance. Every E grade eating the big fish and every water particle was frozen in time, but that came at a cost. With that one use, Thalion's mana was reduced to ten percent, which frankly was a joke given that not even after a second everything returned to normal.

For a moment Thalion wondered if the other beasts had noticed the time stop, but oh boy, they did. Some soared away like rockets, while others turned toward him for a moment before also quickly swimming away. A few of the bigger ones didn't seem keen on just running and slowly closed in.

Thalion, in the meantime, was experiencing some sort of backlash that left him immobile for a few seconds. He could do nothing as the ten-meter-long sharks slowly began to circle him. Only slowly was he able to move again, like he had been frozen solid and was only slowly warming up again.

To Thalion, only slowly moving with his aura fully concealed, one of the sharks took its chance and bit into his midsection. To get bitten by a ten-meter-long shark wasn't to be underestimated, and Thalion winced as he lost a few kilos of flesh. He tried to move so that the shark couldn't bite into the same spot.

His scales had made it quite difficult for the shark to bite a piece of flesh out, and without their protection he would have lost far more flesh. They also stopped anything from biting its way inside him.

Now with blood in the water and witnessing the shark biting a large hole into Thalion's body, the others got excited too. Multiple reptiles and sharks shot toward Thalion, who was only slowly recovering. He tried to manipulate the water around him to misdirect at least the bigger sharks while he tried to speed up at least a little bit to make it harder for the sharks to rip him apart.

Even his skills were partly frozen like his body and didn't activate even when he tried to activate them desperately. Pain ravaged his body as large chunks of flesh were ripped out of it. The lizards had quite the trouble actually getting through his scales, but the sharks were a different story.

Even when they weren't able to bite through his scales with the first bite, they didn't let go and began to throw their heads from left to right. Thanks to his tough scales they slipped off slightly, which resulted in smaller wounds, but the pain was still bad.

Thalion could do nothing against so many opponents besides throwing himself around while trying to push them away by controlling the water around him. Sadly, all the beasts had quite a high water affinity, which made the weak shoves quite useless.

The wounds weren't the only problem as some of the lizards inflicted poison with every bite, which wracked his almost depleted mana pool. Thalion was already seeing red, and fury pushed away the pain while he fought tooth and nail.

Every second that passed allowed him to get faster and faster. Tidal Aegis tried to form a shield around him, but there were too many attackers, and a weak shield wasn't enough to stop a multiple-ton shark. Thankfully it didn't take much longer until he could fully use his skills again, and a single Tsunami Breaker destroyed all life around him.

The damage thankfully wasn't lethal, but he was looking horrible. The last part of his tail looked more like a kebab skewer. Now he could really use a healing potion. These injuries wouldn't heal in short order, and Thalion was already quite deep.

That a D grade would emerge to kill him was entirely possible. The fin on his tail was gone, which made it quite difficult to move through the water, but despite that, moving wasn't the best idea with these injuries. In many wounds one could see the light blue bones.

His health was at twenty percent, and Thalion deeply regretted not trying the skill in a safe environment first. Who could have thought that it would end in such a backlash? Thalion suspected that he needed a high time affinity before he could think about using the skill again. Otherwise he would harm himself far more than the enemies.

To his luck, the Outsider was also active in this form, which resulted in his wounds healing far faster than normal.

Normally it would have taken days to patch it all up, but with the Outsider Thalion was healed to such a degree that he could move without feeling immense pain with every movement after only two hours.

There were a few sharks who tried to sniff him out, but due to his high camouflage it was quite difficult for the sharks to find him, and should one get close enough Thalion was now strong enough to blast them. There was also a lot of blood in the water from all the marine life he had killed with Tsunami Breaker, which functioned as quite an effective distraction.

Through pained hisses Thalion made his way back up to the surface and then back to the base. He was done with swimming for now. The passive time skill was awesome, and the active one was garbage for now.

Thalion doubted that there would be a water level in the third system event, and even if there was one he should be fine. Perfecting this form and his time affinity could wait until the end of the third system event.

Normally he loved swimming, but right now he had had enough of the ocean. The stupid saltwater was burning his wounds, and he wanted to become the Eclipsari, concentration of the void, and rip a few spiders in half very slowly.

When he was closing in on the harbor, he no longer left a red trail behind him, with most wounds fully closed. Only the scales hadn't fully regrown. Thalion shifted back to his human form when he was close enough to the surface. Telekinetic Dash brought him out of the water, and with a grumpy demeanor he walked into the base with the other humans eyeing him suspiciously.

There couldn't be that many with red robes in this base after all. Almost as if fate wanted to prove him wrong, he encountered three in red robes the moment he entered his capital through the portal.

The three vampiresses stood right before him and eyed him with quite the interest. There was still a bit of blood on his robe, and Thalion absorbed it with a mere thought, wondering why the Bloodseed hadn't done it already. Normally the gluttonous plant sucked in all blood in the perimeter.

"What!" Thalion almost shouted at the three as they looked at him. He was still quite pissed from the failure of the time skill, and he couldn't remember when he had been this uncontrolled because a little test went wrong.

They quickly lowered their gazes and hurried away, and Thalion decided that it was best if he got moving too. He breathed in and out a few times to calm himself a little bit before he said something he would regret.

To let emotions get to him like that shouldn't happen, which redirected much of his fury against himself. That didn't help his mood, but thankfully no one else in his base had to suffer under it as he shifted into the wyvern and swung himself into the air.

The spiders wouldn't be that lucky, that was for sure.

<--

That no one was allowed to join the third system event besides Thalion and Ricarda quickly spread, but especially two didn't plan on accepting that rule.

"I don't know what he is thinking. Oh, the third system event isn't going to be one for a team. Josh, I tell you this is going to be a great competition between the two of us. At least worth ten duels." Jack monologued loudly as the two walked through the jungle. They had told Ricarda that they would kill a few ants so her plants wouldn't be eaten all the time. Yet since they moved out from the base they couldn't stop complaining about that ludicrous order.

"Ten duels? No, that is too much. What about five?" Josh countered, cutting through a big leaf before him.

"Five? Five isn't enough. What about eight? Eight sounds like a good round number, doesn't it?" Jack grinned, following behind Josh.

"Fine! How are we joining without Thalion and the others getting wind of it? They're going to be so pissed should they find out." Josh muttered, lashing out at a vine that tried to grab his ankle.

"Hmm, I have thought about this dilemma, and I think it is best if we take a mission so that we are gone for a few days. The third system event probably won't be long, so we will only be missing for a few hours or a day at most. And only if one of us places first are we going to tell them. Otherwise we keep silent." Jack muttered, blasting the jungle before him with a telekinetic blast to form a path.

"Sounds solid. Anything else on the list? Otherwise I think we should stop dilly-dallying and get going to find a few ants." Josh said.

"No, nothing, but I always wanted to do a jungle hike. Is it just me, or is there something powerful honing in on us? My back is always starting to itch when that is the case, and right now I could really need someone scratching it."

"Wait, what are you saying?" Josh exclaimed, quickly shifting into his insect form.

"Is it just me, or is there a loud buzzing sound coming from that direction?" Jack muttered while fumbling with one finger in his left ear.

"What? Sorry, didn't listen. My chest is itching like crazy."

Josh was now scratching his chest like crazy while stumbling in circles in the small self-made clearing.

"I wanted to say that there is a buzzing coming closer fast." Jack shouted at Josh as if he was speaking to a senile old man. Then he frowned when seeing Josh's chest. "Josh, what is up with your chest? Is it just me, or is it glowing red?"

Josh in the meantime got pale as he noticed the dim red glow too.

"Do you think Lucan put a bomb inside me when I was sleeping? What other things are glowing red? Am I starting to burn? Maybe we should fly back and take a portal to the ocean?" Josh muttered worriedly. Normally his armor always held, but right now a red mark was pulsing on his chest.

Both didn't get any further until five insects broke into the clearing, two looking partly humanoid. Josh's eyes went wide when he recognized the one in the front.

"Shit, I completely forgot about the mark." He muttered when looking into the insectoid eyes of the First Daughter. Her aura was partly concealed, but it became obvious that at D grade she was an utterly terrifying existence no one wanted to mess with.

She had four sisters with her. One looked very similar to herself, with a mostly humanoid form, two legs, two arms, two sets of insect wings on her back, and a head the size of a human's but with the eyes and pincers of an ant. The other insects were a dragonfly and two kinds of bugs Josh and Jack hadn't seen before.

"Now where is Thalion?" the First Daughter said, eyeing Josh and Jack standing in the clearing, and this time not even Jack had a smug response.