NOVPUBAaron, seeing that Chloe was distracted, took the opportunity to rush at her again.
He opened his mouth wide, exposing his rows of sharp silvery teeth, and getting ready to chomp down on this lioness.
He could already imagine how she would feel his stomach and rid him of hunger for many weeks to come.
Chloe also regained her focus but saw that Aaron was a few meters away from her. Soon he would bite her in half, she didn't know if the magic barrier would be able to protect her from this and she wasn't willing to test that theory.
She flapped her wings, intending to fly backward but flying backward was never as fast as flying forward, Aaron was already too close.
However, a golden light flashed from the corner of her vision, this time she didn't turn to check, rather she focused on moving out of the way to avoid Aaron's bite.
*SLASH!*
The sound of metal cutting through flesh echoed out, but it wasn't Chloe's flesh that got torn.
Aaron screamed as he flipped on his side instinctively. Losing control of his left fin, he wasn't able to fly properly and uncontrollably dove past Chloe.
He missed her entirely.
When the big shark flew past her, Chloe was able to see a bloody gash that stretched from Aaron's cheek to the center of the left side of his body.
Whatever had cut such a gash into him had also cut away his left metallic fin.
Aaron crashed head-first into the ground, eating dirt and swallowing wet soil.
"I at least expected you to defeat him, even if you couldn't kill him," Kael's voice entered Chloe's head again.
She turned around mid-air to see a golden lion hovering close to her. Kael.
One of his wings was dripping blood and had spatial distortions around it.
Chloe understood now how Kael had dispatched Aaron. Kael could be considered a creative combatant. She herself had never thought of using her wings as weapons before.
"Kael…" Chloe said then stopped after she processed what Kael just said. Defeat him?
"Yes," Kael confirmed, reading her surface intentions, "You might not be as strong as he is but I expect exceptionality from all my consorts,"
Chloe was speechless, what did he mean by consort? Was he seriously considering her his consort, now, and not a prisoner?
"He's down, land the finishing blow," Kael ordered.
Chloe turned around to see that Aaron was still alive. His body was very large and although that gash was very deep, it wasn't enough to instantly kill him.
From Kael's tone, she could tell that he wasn't in a good mood, but since he was here, it meant he came out on top.
Right?
'How is that possible? He's not even tier 4 and they were all stronger than him.' Chloe thought.
The more she thought about it, the more incredulous it sounded. That Kael fought two tier 4 cheetahs and one shark comparable to a tier 4 cheetah, and came out as the winner.
Chloe mindlessly descended to the ground and landed on Aaron's fallen body.
From the telepathic distress waves he was emitting, she could tell that he was in serious pain.
She located his eyes, those pitch-black orbs that lacked empathy for anything.
Chloe constructed a black wind spike and without mercy, she plunged straight through Aaron's eyes and into his brain.
The winds forced their way into the small channels of his eye socket, finding his soft brain and turning it to mush.
This was something she had always wanted to do but couldn't because of how Aaron kept moving away. His eyes were too small for Chloe to successfully land a good hit.
Aaron's large shark body went limp after Chloe shredded his brain. A dead shark in dry land, that's what Aaron had become.
'If a human archeologist saw this…hehehe,' Kael thought to himself.
Kael flew down and landed beside the shark's body, "Eat," he suggested.
Kael bit into the underside of the shark and ripped out a large chunk of shark meat.
Chloe stared at him for a moment, unable to talk.
"Where are the rest? The cheetahs and the other shark?" Chloe finally asked after some time gazing at the golden lion.
"They won't be troubling us anytime soon," Kael responded in between eating the shark meat. The fact that Aaron had once taken on a humanoid form didn't bother him.
If it was before, it may still cause him to hesitate, but these days, he was more lion and less human. The stronger he got, the higher his tier went, the more humanity he lost.
This wasn't a bad thing for Kael as he wasn't benefiting from having a sense of humanity in the first place. In this world of survival, his humanity was more of a liability than anything else.
So he ate the shark meat as though he was eating any other food. No hesitation, no qualms, just a lion and his food.
The fight had cost him a lot of energy which he had to recover if he wanted to continue looking for the heavenly beacon.
"B-but…how?" Chloe asked, shaken.
Kael looked up, pausing his feast, "Are you eating or not?" He asked.
Chloe lowered her head, Kael didn't feel like talking about it now, so she decided to ask about it later.
She ripped out her own piece of meat from the shark's body. She was less inhibited by ethics compared to Kael. From the start, she saw Aaron and the rest as meat that could fight back, nothing more.
While eating, Kael browsed through the memories he had gotten from the octopus. He got the general gist of what happened and what they had been talking about.
It turned out that some octopus leaders had found a strange structure and were requesting for all other octopuses to immediately come and reinforce them.
It seemed the squids had also found this structure and were fighting the octopuses over it.
However, Kael interpreted something else from these memories.
The squids and octopus factions couldn't access this structure, whatever it was. They couldn't move it, enter it, or take it as their possession.
For them to require reinforcement to claim the structure as theirs, it meant that this structure was pretty big. So big that they couldn't just move it away.
If it was a place that had to be entered, it made sense that they would have difficulty entering it. After all, this place is supposed to house the heavenly beacon that originally belonged to the lions.
None lions wouldn't be able to access it with significant brute force.
'North,' That was the direction he would have to follow to get to the structure.
Kael shared his findings with Chloe, asking for her opinions and thoughts about it.
All other memories were useless so Kael trashed them to the back of his mind where he would gradually forget them.
Kael and Chloe ate in silence, once they were done, they would continue their journey.
########
"That lightning pillar, what was that?" Adolf asked with his head resting on the ground and his two front paws crossed in front of him. n𝚘𝚟pub.𝚌o𝚖
His fiery red body was impressive and his dark red mane enhanced his presence. Unfortunately, he was in the presence 9f other impressive lions so his aura wasn't noticeable to anyone.
"Probably a tier 4 lightning-based creature, only they can do something like that in here," A Lion which had a mix of blue and white fur said nonchalantly
White electricity constantly danced around his eyes and paws as he rested on his side. He was one of the two Electric Lions in this group.
His character was quite rare as most Electric lions would be erratic, wild, and restless. He was just calm, like clouds before a storm.
"Imagine that battle, my goodness!" Orion, who sat beside Xu Ying, exclaimed while digging his claws into the soil. He really wished that he was there to 'witness' that fight.
"Prince Xu Ying, the matter of the structure the squids found…" Alora said to Xu Ying. She too lay on the ground in her pristine white lioness form.
Not long ago, the group had intercepted a squad of squids. The spirit lioness among them was able to extract their memories and share the news with everyone else.
"Ah yes, Alora, you're always focused on the mission, good good good," Xu Ying complemented openly, causing Adolf to roll his eyes.
"Of course, we have to check it out. It may just be what we are looking for.
The question is whether the two heavenly beacons are in the same place or not.
If one Heavenly Beacon is at that structure the squids were heading to, it would be good. But what about the other one? What happens to the other beacon? How do we even find it?"
Xu Ying spoke intellectually, avoiding biases as much as possible.
Alora smiled faintly, she had plans, deep plans.
"Maybe both can be at the same place and if they aren't, we'll just settle for what we find," Alora said and the others except Xu Ying nodded.
Only she knew what churned at the depths of her mind.
