Chương 17: Confrontations

They had just finished eating when Josh suddenly felt something powerful approaching.

"Get ready. This is not a drill. We have a god-seed incoming!" His roar immediately snapped everyone to attention. Doyle, who had already been drifting toward sleep, woke instantly and showed his training as he rolled into a combat kneel, his AR rifle already in his hands. He tapped the magazine into place, checked the chamber, and was ready in seconds. The others, being non-human entities, were not nearly as affected by food comas. Raeriku's gaunt figure expanded, claws sliding into position.

Warg dropped onto all fours, ready to spring forward. Grevar stomped the ground, the impact sounding like a drum across the desert. Howler let out a loud cry, his ears pointed forward as he prepared himself.

"Wait!" Josh raised a claw.

"This one might not be an enemy." The team relaxed their postures slightly, still ready to react if needed but no longer quite as tense. From the distance, they saw thirteen figures emerge from the darkness. All but one wore similar outfits, while their leader was dressed in a more flowing robe.

"I see you found me, Gu Zhao." Joshua nodded toward the approaching cultivator.

"I hope you are not coming as an enemy."

"No. Actually, I would like to go with that team-up idea." Gu Zhao walked forward with a smile, though his eyes kept moving between the agents before finally stopping on Doyle.

"You have a human in your team?"

"Yeah, he is a friend. If you are not coming as enemies, then you are welcome. The desert is cold, and we have a fire." Josh looked over the group properly for the first time and immediately noticed how exhausted they were.

"Were you running here?"

"For more than two whole days now." Gu Zhao gave Josh a small bow.

"I know this might sound awfully selfish, but we were attacked by a god-seed, and they have more strength than I can fight while also protecting my disciples." Josh frowned as he felt something in the distance.

"You had been followed."

"I am afraid so." Gu Zhao admitted it with a guilty look.

"All right, team. Defensive formation." Raeriku walked past the exhausted cultivators, and his three underlings immediately formed a half-moon formation. Their powers were no joke now that they had managed to clear out much of the surrounding area. They were still nowhere near the level Josh would have been comfortable with, but he was not about to let them fight alone.

"Doyle. Use these bullets." Josh created six magazines of ammunition and handed them over. They were explosive, giving out roughly the same amount of power as a hand grenade.

"High-explosive bullets made with divine energy. Do not miss." Doyle looked down at the magazines before slowly grinning. Josh checked his system and saw that creating that much ammunition had cost him sixty patron points. Looking at the seventeen thousand still remaining, he decided he was not going to hold back. He summoned thirteen stamina potions, similar to the ones he had seen in Gaix's world.

"Cultivators! This is a stamina potion. It is not advised to drink more than one a week, but it will put you back on your feet." He sent the bottles flying toward them, watching another hundred and thirty patron points disappear. The cultivators hesitated, unsure whether they should trust the strange potion. Gu Zhao simply caught one, opened it, and drank it, the effect being almost instant.

A visible change passed through him as though a cold wave had rushed through his body, washing away the exhaustion that had accumulated over the past two days. His shoulders straightened, his breathing steadied, and even the tiredness in his eyes disappeared. The other disciples quickly followed their master's example.

"I can tell why this is not advised to be used often," Gu Zhao admitted as he examined himself.

"It pushes the body beyond its normal limits." He nodded towards Joshua.

"Still useful in a life-or-death scenario, though." - - - - - - - - - - The attack came after a tense few minutes of waiting. It was not a wave, but a massive landslide of limbs and gnashing teeth, a chaotic mass of monsters rushing across the desert toward them. Doyle's rifle cracked twice. The first two creatures at the front of the horde suddenly lost their heads, their skulls bursting apart like watermelons as the explosive rounds tore through them.

"WHOA!" Doyle laughed from his perch in the tree.

"This shit is super explosive!" A massive roar shook the desert. The god-seed behind the horde clearly did not appreciate having its servants killed so easily.

"Ready?" Gu Zhao drew his sword and turned toward Joshua. Except the dragon was no longer there. In his place stood a human figure. Josh rolled his shoulders before drawing his own sword and switching its grip so the painted side was now forward.

"This side isn't going to call out the truth." The fae blade hummed with excitement in his hand.

"This should be able to cut anything."Josh grinned.

"Let's rock!" He jumped, the ground exploded behind his feet. Gu Zhao was not far behind, a smirk appearing across his face as he launched himself forward after the suddenly human looking dragon. Thankfully, with the cultivators and the agents working together, and Doyle making sure no one was jumped, the fight turned out to be quite equal… if equal meant completely one-sided. Warg and Grevar were totally into the fight, clawing, ripping, and kicking the weirdly mismatched monsters.

Their own bodies collected wounds as well, but the bloodlust made them care little about them. Grevar could tell that they were more powerful than the opposing side, his strange talent proving extremely useful. Raeriku was a whirlwind of claw strikes. The Wendigo showed exactly why he was feared by so many, not merely wounding his enemies but outright killing them when given the chance. Howler was acting as a denial force. He did not stay at the front or get bogged down in any fights.

Instead, he simply did what Doyle was doing… making sure no one could land a lethal attack. He clawed at legs, bit arms, and retreated before anything could catch him. He was like a precision nuisance, always there whenever an attack of opportunity presented itself. The team looked like a complete mess, but somehow they were a strangely cohesive one. In perfect contrast, the disciples of Gu Zhao fought with style and skill.

Their movements were elegant, and now that they were no longer fighting against overwhelming odds, every one of them managed to hold their own. Josh was not a fighter. Hell, he had never really learned to use a sword. What he was good at was being a pain in the ass for the monster god-seed. He tried not to embarrass himself in front of Gu Zhao, failing miserably, but he kept jumping in the way whenever the strange entity tried to reach its monsters, forcing it farther and farther away from them.

The longer the fight lasted, the more desperate it became to reach its followers, which kept giving Gu Zhao openings. Of course, a god-seed could not be killed that simply. It might even have been impossible within this place. But they were winning according to the rules of the test, and that was what mattered.

"NOOO!" The monstrous god-seed suddenly jumped and used a massive amount of divine essence to empower its last two underlings. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. As it leaped forward, Doyle decided to empty an entire magazine into its face. The two empowered monsters charged toward their enemies, preparing to tear them apart, completely forgetting that both Josh and Gu Zhao were behind them.

The god-seed was suddenly teleported away in the middle of its jump the very moment his last two underlings died. Two screens appeared before Joshua and Gu Zhao.

"God-seed eliminated." Josh pulled out his sword and was about to give Gu Zhao a high five when Doyle's voice came from the tree above them.

"I got experience for the god-seed?!" Doyle's temporary system window was overflowing with text. Fifty-seven level-ups, followed by a skill called Divine Shot. The skill empowered a shot from any weapon, allowing it to deal void damage. Doyle's entire body shook, then he fell straight out of the tree. One of the disciples quickly pulled him out of the bush, but the agent did not look quite the same as before. His skin had taken on a slightly grey coloration and appeared hard, almost like tempered rubber.

The grip of his AR rifle had been crushed beneath his hand, leaving a clear imprint in the material, and he had suffered no visible damage from the fall.

"How did I not feel that fall?" He pushed himself upright, only to accidentally launch himself forward and slam into the chest of the martial artist standing in front of him.

"I think he jumped a few levels in cultivation," the disciple joked.

"No, he has no Qi," Wang corrected him.

"Crazy. So that's just his own body?" Warg looked almost jealous.

"Damn." The mood slowly shifted from excitement to recovery. Once the adrenaline began to fade and they realized that nobody had died during the encounter, the entire group hurried to treat the injured. The agents shared bandages and modern medicine, while the cultivators used their Qi to heal themselves and assist the others. Josh teleported the dead monsters away into a bug-infested section of the desert so their scent would not attract another raid to their camp.

Once that was done, he sat down on a large rock and finally allowed himself to relax. Gu Zhao arrived only a moment later and sat beside him.

"So this is your true form?" he asked.

"Well, yes and no… It's a bit complicated." Josh leaned back and watched the night sky.

"I was human, but when I first really used my divine power, my body couldn't handle it and I ended up with my avatar's body. Ever since then, I've used draconic shapeshifting to look human. It's kind of weird that my old body is now the one I find alien…"

"The wider world is more crazy than I imagined." Gu Zhao chuckled quietly to himself.

"I will never forget this." He stood and bowed deeply.

"I, Gu Zhao, will forever consider you an ally."

"So formal." Josh smiled and pulled him back up.

"We do this in my world." He offered a hand.

"Grab and shake it, like so." Gu Zhao looked at the offered hand for a moment before clasping it. They shook hands, then sat back down together, quietly watching the night sky. - - - - - - - - - - While the mortals went to meditate or sleep and recover, Joshua and his newfound friend simply sat together and enjoyed the moment.

"We better have a way to stay in touch once this dumb test is over," Josh muttered.

"I could use some advice from someone in my class."

"Something tells me you don't understand how old I am." Gu Zhao chuckled.

"What you told me about yourself makes me believe that you are not older than fifty years."

"Thirty-six, but who counts?" Josh shook his head.

"I am past nine hundred. We are really not in the same class."

"Oh, you want me to beat you?" Josh playfully cracked his knuckles and puffed out his chest, making both of them chuckle.

"Right, right. Different god rulesets." Gu Zhao nodded.

"I agree. I would also like a friend. I haven't had one in several hundred years. I stopped making friends because losing them became worse with time. You are clearly different."

"I take that as a compliment." Josh nodded.

"So… now we just have to hunker down and hope we don't get jumped by another duo who thought to join forces. Otherwise, we are good."

"There is a saying not to call a demon by its name, as it may appear." Gu Zhao gave him a playful shoulder bump.

"We call it jinxing it. And I agree. I better shut up fast." Josh laughed, then did something he barely believed he would ever do. He remembered what it had felt like to lose a soul shard and carefully pulled one out. It was shaped like a tiny scale.

"Here, this is a soul shard of mine. Better not lose it."

"You would trust me with something this precious?" Gu Zhao's eyes widened, but after a moment, he nodded and returned the favor, giving Josh a silky sliver of his own soul shard. Both carefully stored the other's shard within their divine spaces.

"I guess now we can call each other brothers." Josh tilted his head.

"I guess we do." - - - - - - - - - - - The next several days of the trial passed without much trouble. The remaining god-seeds avoided one another, and the various groups managed to keep most of their life forms alive. Of the nineteen god-seeds, only ten survived until the final day. Then a message appeared across their system windows.

"All god-seeds must protect their life-forms from a monster rush until the day's end, when the first trial finishes. Remaining time: 12: 00. Enemies per god-seed: 1, 200 Titan-class monsters." A massive cloud of dust appeared on the horizon, so enormous that even the humans could see it clearly and the ground began to shake.

"Oh, hell nah!" Joshua expanded his divine sense and immediately frowned. The approaching horde consisted of two thousand four hundred house-sized monsters.

"This will test us to the end." Gu Zhao gritted his teeth and drew his sword. Josh, however, turned around and began walking away.

"Where are you going?" the cultivator asked. Josh did not answer. A minute later, he returned in his dragon form with the US agents' car tucked underneath one arm.

"I am not fighting them." He opened his wings and took off toward the incoming horde.

"Where is he going?" Gu Zhao gritted his teeth. Even with their divine powers, these were monsters with extreme strength. He did not question Joshua's abilities, but this almost looked like suicide. He was just about to jump after him when the deer-skull-faced entity calmly sat down beside him.

"Don't worry about him. He knows what he is doing." Raeriku placed a cigarette between his teeth.

"He kind of borrowed a weapon."

"A weapon? What kind?" Gu Zhao looked toward the horizon. A sudden light erupted in the distance. It was harsh and blinding, almost as though a star had suddenly been born on the surface of the planet. As the light gradually faded, Gu Zhao saw a cloud unlike anything he had ever witnessed before. It looked like a mushroom. Josh landed a moment later and immediately pulled a thick wall of earth from the ground.

"Brace." he said casually as he sat down, checking his claw for dirt. The blast finally reached them. The explosion tore branches from trees, kicked dust and gravel into the air, and shook the ground beneath their feet. Then the system windows appeared, showing zero enemies. Gu Zhao stared at the message, then he slowly looked toward the distant mushroom-shaped cloud. For the first time since meeting Joshua, the cultivator developed a very bad feeling about his new dragon brother.

- - - - - - - - - - - Gaix and his party had arrived at what appeared to be a completely ordinary building on the outskirts of the city. It looked almost too boring to attract attention, which made the handful of guards standing around it even more suspicious. They were dressed like common thugs, but their weapons and the way they watched the street made it obvious that this was no ordinary business.

"It feels very similar to finding a bandit hideout," Gaix muttered as they quietly dealt with the guards.

"Are you sure your old party member wasn't a mob boss?"

"He had connections we never questioned, but I figured we separated without much of an issue." Rook huffed as he stepped over one of the unconscious guards. The group found the hidden entrance soon afterward and descended into an underground tunnel. They knew exactly where it was because Rubeon had used the Green Eye of the Abyss to spy on their former teammate and trace his movements back to the hideout. The deeper they went, the less the place resembled anything innocent.

Rough stone walls gave way to reinforced corridors, storage rooms were filled with weapons and crates, and the sounds of voices occasionally echoed from the tunnels ahead. There were plenty of low-level thugs, most of whom barely had time to realize they were under attack before being knocked unconscious. A few stronger ones actually forced the party to draw their weapons, but none could stop them for long.

Bastion's nose proved invaluable in finding anyone hiding behind doors or inside side passages, while Mira's echolocation allowed her to map out sections of the underground complex that they could not see. Eventually, they reached the main chamber. The room was large enough to hold several dozen people. Tables and crates had been pushed toward the walls, leaving a wide space in the center. At the far end stood a raised platform, where a familiar figure waited… Karatt.

The dragonkin looked older than Gaix imagined, but there was no mistaking him. His armor was worn but well maintained, and a massive sword rested against his shoulder. The aura surrounding him was considerably stronger than anything Rook remembered from years ago. Karatt slowly smiled when he saw them.

"So you actually came." Rook stepped forward.

"We came to settle this." Karatt laughed.

"Still pretending to be the noble little party?" He spread his arms as though presenting the entire chamber.

"You should have died in the dungeon. Nobody denies me or walks away." His eyes settled on Rook.

"You kicked me out once because you thought yourselves better than me. You thought I would simply disappear." He lowered his sword from his shoulder.

"Well you were wrong, trash!" Karatt's grin widened.

"You came here to die." Bastion's eyes were half lidded.

"Does this guy ever shut up? Now I understand why you dropped him from the party." he snickered "Man, this asshole must love watching his own mirror image." he added which made the red dragonkin look more red in the face though the change was hard to see in the dim light. Of course the foaming mouth was a dead giveaway that Bastion hit a sour spot.

"Kill them." Karatt shouted, spitting saliva as he charged.