An – This is one of two extra (viewed by patrons first) chapters. So please join me in thanking Marvin Biegel and Gary Reed for their continued patronage 🙂
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Zilan inwardly frowned, feelings of annoyance caused his breathing to become unsteady. However, these sentiments lasted but a moment before the second level of the Gift of love took action, calming him down and bringing him to the optimal state necessary to tackle dangerous situations.
“Hehe, you have five minutes to acclimate yourself to the environment. You can consider it a head start if you want, hopefully you’ll use this time wisely.” Snickered the red squirrel.
Zilan didn’t bother responding nor did he have any major reactions. He just calmly ran in a randomly selected direction.
With time ticking away, he knew that coming up with a feasible, full proof plan would be impossible thus he could only think about his current options before eliminating those with poor chances of success.
“Since this is a survival based test then finding an easily defensible yet hard to attack area would be great but unfortunately chances of doing so in five minutes are too difficult.
Finding a suitable place to hide would also be good and even if it doesn’t work out, as long as it slows him down, effectively eating away at the thirty minutes he has then it would be worth it.
As for the last option which is to spend these five minutes using trickery to find out some things about the test from that sinister bastard. Such a ploy holds too many risks and too little rewards. Even if I do know the nature of the test, it does not necessarily put me in an advantageous position. In the end survival is key.”
With this in mind, Zilan quickly made his way around the somewhat desolate area. He inspected a few trees, found some caves as well as strange abandoned buildings, whose architecture was quite different from what he was used to.
Just like that a minute quickly passed. He was unsatisfied with the places he’d already found therefore, he could only lower his head and resume the search at an even faster pace.
Zilan didn’t know how large this place was but just from the little running around he’d done, he was sure that it definitely was not small. Traversing the entire place, even at his full speed would still take him a very long time,
Suddenly just as he crossed through a thick layer of vines and tightly packed trees, a medium sized lake appeared before him. If he didn’t know any better he’d think that the water body was actually a large collection of red wine. A testament to how deep its colour truly was.
“Must everything in this place be this colour? Even obsessions have their limit.” He couldn’t help but think.
If only he knew that this domain was actually created using the refined blood of all the red squirrels powerful enemies, what would Zilan think?
It wasn’t that the red squirrel was just obsessed with the colour red but rather he was deeply in love with what it represented.
Blood!
The blood of his enemies. The passionate blood he sheds on the battlefield. The blood, that leaks out of his body in training.
These were the things the red squirrel longed to see and experience thus his infatuation with the colour red.
The lake before Zilan looked stagnant, completely still, with not a single ripple or movement to be seen. He also, couldn’t see too deep inside it which made him not only suspicious but also slightly excited.
The reason for his excitement? This was because he had an idea, one that wasn’t too hard to pull off but could potentially buy him some time. He wasn’t confident that it would throw off the red squirrel but he was content knowing that he’d at least found something within this five minute ‘head start’ that at least gave him a better chance of survival.
Thus with time not on his side, Zilan proceeded with his plan.
Meanwhile,
Little red was laughing from excitement. His intuition told him that this time he’d be able to experience something new.
Of course, he didn’t bother spying on Zilan during the five minutes. After all, this was his domain, there was nothing he didn’t know and nowhere he couldn’t reach.
The entire place was essentially a part of his body.
“Haha, kid your time is up. Let the game begin.”
With the five minutes up, little red didn’t waste any time whatsoever. His blurry figure darted across the map towards the place his senses detected Zilan.
In order to properly have fun, he needed to know exactly where the kid was before he could think on what amusing methods he could employ.
His mind was already deliberating on what he should start with when suddenly, he noticed that he’d run into a problem.
“This kid, where’s he gone? This should be the place yet I don’t feel any presence of life.”
A few meters away from the lake Zilan had noticed, little red stood. His senses spread out but for some reason he couldn’t pin point the Half Breed kids location. This was obviously due to a formation, Zilan had drawn onto himself.
It was like his signal was constantly darting around the map, causing little red to smile.
Yes, smile.
“Haha, good, good! This is how it should be but don’t think these little tricks will stop me.”
With a wave of his smoke pipe, the earth began to crack all over the world and the sky seemed to part.
Quakes, tremors and storms soon followed spreading through the world.
However, just as it seemed the entire domain was about to collapse, everything abruptly stopped. Not a sound could be heard for a period of time.
Little red then smilingly waved his pipe again. Another major movement ensued however, compared to the previous world shattering one it was still on a smaller scale.
Droves upon droves of strange mechanical bodies thus began crawling out of the ground and flying out from the cracks in the sky. Some resembled insects, others looked like buffalo, but most of them resembled ferocious predators. Tigers, lions, leopards, hyena, and even creatures like trolls, hydras, imps, ghouls, made an appearance.
From an unknown location, Zilan was inwardly cursing his heart out. “This motherfu**ker wants to kill me!”
“Kid, let’s see who’s superior. Your hiding skills or my little minions. Hahahaha!” cackled little red.
The numerous life like mechanical creatures ran across the world, destroying everything they encountered on their way.
They scattered, scouring the map for any sign of Zilan.
Near the still quiet lake, a group of thirty, five foot ghouls moved towards the shore. Their expressions anything but stiff as they actually seemed to communicate with each other in a language of strange tones.
As if coming to an understanding the herd of ghouls boldly ran into the lake, diving deep down.
Zilan stared wide eyed at the group of ghouls who’d appeared in his hiding spot. His body was currently covered in bluish-emeraldish scales, resembling that of a flow python.
Thanks to his reptilian constitution, he was able to effortlessly breathe under the water, allowing him to dive deeper into the lake, approaching its floor.
Too bad, the extremely sensitive ghouls caught on to the movements in the lake. They aggressively conversed amongst themselves before moving in.
Seeing this, in normal circumstances Zilan would panic or quickly would move to escape. However, in this instance, it was all part of his plan.
As the ghouls swiftly swam towards him, a layer of water suddenly covered his body and the next thing that happened was his complete disappearance.
He was able to completely blend in with the environment, to the point that no one would notice a thing once they looked at him. It was akin to seeing through him.
Of course, the ghouls didn’t know this thus when they reached the area and were unable to find anything. They quickly flew into a fit of rage attacking each other.
Witnessing this, Zilan was completely speechless. He didn’t know if he should just laugh or instead weep, cursing his poor luck.
This was because the largest fight to destroy each other, was actually taking place but an arm’s length away from his current position.
