All 7 of the individuals standing in front of Alex looked wary. The 5 that came to attack were one thing, but even Pearl and Whisker felt wary for some reason. They didn't understand what was going on.
"Bait?" the young man with the scornful look asked from the back where he was staying with the others.
The leader said nothing, quietly making sure that the breakthrough that was happening was Alex's. He could feel the roiling energy in the sky that everyone called the heavens. There was no doubt that he was in the middle of a breakthrough.
If he wasn't wrong about what he sensed, then it was even correct to say that the person in front of him had only begun breaking through. So he couldn't understand why it was that he chose to accept the challenge just yet.
The girls looked warily on all sides. "He's joking. There's nothing here waiting to jump on us," the one with the blue ribbons said. The quiet one slowly nodded.
"I think he means himself," the man with his hair in a bun said. "Are you going to attack us yourself, Your Majesty?"
Alex spoke, but the words weren't for the men. "Pearl, step back," he said.
"Brother, but—"
"It's alright," Alex said. "Besides, you were never supposed to be the one doing the fighting here."
Alex didn't open his eyes the entire time, but Whisker thought it was him that his gaze was drifting toward.
"Whisker, I am allowing you to use all you can in this fight," Alex said. "You know what to do."
Whisker did, and he hated it.
He didn't want to fight. He knew how much of a coward he was when it came to directly fighting. For someone who couldn't die, he wasn't sure why he hated conflict so much.
Still, as he felt the wave of reassurance that had flowed until now from Alex disappear, he knew he had to step forward. The aura in the sky had suddenly grown stronger and everyone could tell that Alex had started focusing on his cultivation even harder.
A final wave of command came from Alex, both to Pearl and Whisker.
"Whatever you do, don't let them leave with our secrets."
Pearl nodded and stepped back, going next to Alex so he could protect him when needed. The puppet walked back too and Whisker relinquished all control over it.
"Use the puppet to take care of brother," Whisker said before standing in the midst of the battle. He could hear his tiny heart beating loudly in his eardrums, staring at the people who could squash him with a sneeze.
The five players were quite confused as well. The leader especially was the most confused. The challenge had been accepted and the fight was underway, but Alex wasn't fighting him. Was he supposed to fight a rat?
He looked at Whisker and found it hard to believe a rat like that could have a Saint Realm cultivation base, but even then it was just a rat. On top of that, it was so weak that he could beat it at once.
"Get it over with already," the girl with blue ribbons said. "We need to leave soon."
The man shrugged. "Fine, I will—"
He lost his thought process when he saw what was happening in front of him.
A book that was next to Alex floated right in front of Whisker and suddenly brightened in a crimson glow. It opened, its pages flipping slowly and then the glow got brighter.
Flashes of red streaked his vision as things appeared around him. Each thing that appeared gave an aura of something that scared him. What scared him most was that there were more than just a few of them.
The man watched in horror as an assortment of crimson beasts filled the area around him, each one stronger than the next. What scared him the most was that the beasts that surrounded him were all in the upper Saint Soul realm, with quite a few even being in the Saint Transformation realm.
He could sense 3 that were in Saint Transformation 3rd realm, the same cultivation base as him.
Blood drained from his face in terror. He could not understand just how something like this could ever exist. How could beasts that weren't beasts be so strong?
The Blood Beasts from the Blood God's Manual were normally strong, but over the past few years that Alex had spent cultivating, the improvement in his own blood aura thanks to his cultivation base had made it so that the beasts were also stronger than normal.
Alex had reached Saint Transformation 3rd realm in terms of Blood Aura back when he had left the Beast Paradise. Now, over 12 years later, after going from Saint Core 7th realm to Saint Soul 3rd realm, his blood aura had improved to nearly Saint Transformation 5th realm.
Nearly.
Whisker felt a connection to Alex and through that connection, he felt the connection to all the beasts around him. Each and every one of them remained there, waiting for him to give them a command.
And he gave the command.
The silent command flowed through only 10 of the beasts, no more. But each one of the beasts was in the Saint Transformation realm. And as soon as they came together, they formed a small array, that immediately improved the aura of each beast that stood there.
Hell Emperor's Divine Battle Array was quite the array formation.
Terror spread through the five as they couldn't understand how the strong beasts got stronger. Neither did they realize when the first one attacked.
A giant eagle with crimson wings unfurled threw out its feathers of blood at the man. Blood splattered all over the man and around him, battering him with something he was too late to stop.
The other four thought of interfering in the fight, but other beasts around them made them scared to even think of doing so.
The man barely managed to put up a defense when a blood monkey appeared next to him, punching him in the face.
Moving the defense around, the man looked behind him at something else that came for him, but the slam from the monkey shattered his defense in just that one strike.
The man wanted to look back, but the snake in front of him stopped him from doing so. In the end, he was beaten by two beasts before more joined in.
The man tried to fight back, but none of the attacks did anything to most of them, and the three beasts that were stronger than him continued beating him until his talisman buzzed.
The man had lost so pathetically that he didn't even know what to do. And yet, the attacks didn't stop.
"I lost! Stop! I lost already!" he shouted a few times before the attacks halted and he had time to breathe. "Don't hit me, I lost."
Whisker looked at the man confusedly. The match was a little too fast and he had won so easily. He didn't know what to do now.
But Pearl did.
Pearl walked forward, his eyes seeing the man with his hair in a bun. "You were the first to agree with fighting my brother, were you not?"
The young man felt his stomach sink.
"Come and fight us," Pearl said, and the young man didn't even have the right to refuse.
