Chapter 137 – Righteousness doesn’t equate to power, challenging power beyond ones understanding.
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"What are you doing here?," the voice continues to ask, "we're looking for a group of players have you seen them?"

"Why are you looking for them?," Jack ignores the man trying to make himself seem more important than everyone else and looks to the crowd with him.

A red-haired young man steps forward, Jack recognises him, "I was sent to find some help as we were attacked by a group of those robed guys trying to rob us. Are they near here? Have you seen them?"

Jack nods, "Yeah I saw them back that way," he says while pointing behind him, "saw some robed guys heading that way," he says while point the opposite direction towards the loud sounds in the distance.

"Why didn't you try to stop them?," one of the unknown players asks clutching sword tightly with a visible shake, "if you delayed them even slightly then we would have made it. This is your fault."

"What's my fault?"

"This sword… it needs blood, you denied it the chance now feed it yours!," the unknown strikes forward immediately with a blood-red glowing sword.

Jack is about to react but then doesn't move, a knife shrouded with green energy approaches from the side and intercepts the blood-red sword deflecting it away from Jack.

The blood-red sword digs into the ground kicking up a large amount of dirt as a small crater reveals itself, the player is angrily glaring at who intercepted him, the red-haired young man that Jack was just speaking to.

"You're too quick to blame, save the energy for the enemy."

"He's an enemy, he was even kicked out of our group," the player says while crouched down like an animal, "he needs to be punished," he redraws his sword when everyone else moves and restrains the man.

"I'm not sure you should let that guy roam free," Jack says while looking at the tied up man, "he seems rather impulsive."

"It's up to Petr or Lucas, I think he knows them," the red-headed man says sheepishly looking at them.

"Ah might explain somethings then, where are those two?," Jack mutters nodding his head.

"Not sure; there's another group of us heading this way from a different direction but judging by the angles they won't come across anyone, we'll stay here and wait for them. They were going to look for Petr or Lucas's group but no one really knows where anything is."

"Well don't stay here talking to me, go tend to the people that just got robbed. I'm curious to know if the players will actually lose their life as one of the robed people hinted at that earlier."

A few people are uncomfortable where they stand upon hearing that news, a few look as though they want to ask questions but aren't brave enough to step forward.

"I doubt that's the case otherwise they wouldn't release the game. This isn't some sort of anime or movie, this is real life," the red-headed man says while eyeing off a particular muscle-headed man.

"Right, well make sure you try to find out. You need 5 coloured beast cores to advance to the next stage, I've already seen some people leave for it," Jack says while beginning to walk away.

"Ok thanks, what's your name? Mine's Aage."

"Me? I'm Jack…," Jack says while stopping his steps as someone is blocking his way intentionally, "Yes?"

"Let him go Paul," Aage says to the large well-built middle aged man blocking Jack's way.

"No, he has to stay here and lead us to where the people got away to."

"Don't do this," Aage says.

"I have to, Lucas said I had to watch to make sure you didn't mess up and this is one of those times. This guy is a suspect in helping the enemies so we have to take him along until we can confirm he's not."

"There has to be another way, I don't think we can keep him here if he really tried to escape."

"He might be able to escape but we have his appearance and location information, that's good enough to track him down with the help of the Eastern Front."

Jack squints his eyes, "Are you really making that sort of threat?"

"If I have to, just come with us for a bit," the bruiser says, "won't take long."

Jack internally sighs and looks up into the sky, the white orb has worked through roughly 10% of the sky so there's still some time, "I'll entertain you for now but I'm not going to be held here, I'm free to go whenever I wish. I don't need your permission."

"Provided it's reasonable," the bruiser says motioning for Jack to turn around, the two of them walk back to the group and proceed towards the scene of the battle that just occurred. The players waiting at the battle site react to the large group coming towards them but immediately run over to them upon seeing who it is. Jack doesn't say anything and hangs back from the crowd not making any quick movements as the bruiser is keeping a close eye on him.

Jack carefully eyes off the bodies on the ground inspecting it with his spiritual and divine senses as none of the players here would be able to tell the different inspecting the bodies and finding what that robed person said earlier is true. It seems like the body is slowly being devoured by tiny little insects that have are gathering in larger and larger amounts, there's nothing unnatural about the insects themselves but they're more like microbes given how small they are. If he weren't being watched then he would go over and attempt to store some of these microscopic insects but the less these people know about his abilities the better.

"What happened here? What happened to you guys?," Aage says while running up to the group, the red-headed man seems to be taking his new position quite seriously yet Jack can't help but feel somewhat unnerved by him.

"Aage, you're back? You took too long, we were trying to hold on but these two… they were idiots and decided to strike out without finding out who it is," the person who had a sword held to his throat says receiving some healing salve.

"They should have waited, damn fools," Aage says shaking his head looking at the headless bodies, "they'll have a heck of a time getting back to this region to pick up their rewards."

"Ha," the man says rubbing the salve on his neck wound, "there's no way we can get our things back from those robed people. They overpower us easily, there's something about their energy that can simply over power us."

"Is that anyway to talk? You are really going to just sit there and take it?," Aage says, "going to let them get away with it?"

"There's nothing we can do, even if there were thousands of us. It'd only take 2 of them to overpower us, nevermind that there's 6 of them."

"Why are you talking like the outcome is decided? This is a game where anything can happen, you might have been defeated here but you'll have truly lost if you stay here and don't do anything about it. A game would never give us a scenario we couldn't handle, but if you're happy to stay here on the ground and not try to take the rest of this trial missing out on the rewards simply because you found an enemy you couldn't handle then…"

"Then?"

"You should simply quit the game, it has only been open a few weeks and it's only going to get harder and harder as people get stronger," Aage says with a smirk, "it's the easiest thing to do right? Just quit everything and stay offline with the rest of the people that can't handle this game."

"But…"

"If you don't want that then stand up and tell us about what happened," Aage says while everyone notices a visible difference in the person on the ground, he is slowly coming up to his feet looking out at the crowd with a renewed gaze even if he still seems defeated overall.

"Two of the robed people—

—what colour robes?," Jack asks.

"Blue and Yellow, I think the others were red and green," the man responds to Jack then returns to what he was saying, "they approached from that direction drawing attention to them as we were investigating some beast nearby," he says point in the direction the people left, "they just told us to leave our treasures and storage items here and we'll be able to live if not…," the man says clenching his fist.

Several eyes travel down to the dead bodies on the ground, everyone can feel the emotions coming from the young man's voice as he continues what he was saying. Aage nods his head too as though he's agreeing with everything so far.

"Those two fended off them initially letting you run away but soon after that everything turned for the worse," the man says looking at Aage, "there was just no way to fight against them as their energy would cause ours to retreat, we couldn't even call upon our usual skills… well Josh could because he had a small piece of his god's spirit on him."

"What happened using the spirit?"

"Josh was able to cause one of the robed people to bleed but it wasn't enough… and that made them mad, the other group of them that showed up after had to restrain him from attacking like a crazed person."

Jack takes note of this, this is the third or fourth time he has encountered people that have becoming incredibly enraged with no way to seemingly stop them. It almost sounds like a berserker-type skill yet those sort of skills aren't very popular outside of brawlers or people that don't like weapon.

"They were spouting something about righteousness and how the strong will prey on the weak… then well, they blamed us for the situation. The assholes attacked us first then robbed us, how can we be blamed?"

"So what are you going to do about it?," Aage asks, "are you going to stand there and cry about it. We need to move,"

"What?," the man with the neck wound says, another person pipes up from behind Aage.

"We totally need to go get our stuff back, we know their weakness."

"What is that?," one of the other players asks.

"Godly spirit power, you heard them talk, they were able to draw blood on those robed bastards. I haven't even seen one drop a single bead of sweat yet you made them bleed. That's incredible."

"I don't have any godly spirit power though, the quests offered by the temple aren't very good…," one of the players says.

"Someone is bound to have some! Let's go get the bastards!," someone yells out causing the crowd to begin to get excited.

"Yeah! Let's go show those bastards we can fight back if pushed!"

"Let's go get them now!"

"Death to those robe wearing bastards!"

The crowd starts to excite each other as they begin to talk amongst one another, Jack is somewhat surprised at the ability to excite the people for something that should have impossible odds and likely end in their death but it's not like he hasn't done similar previously. The crowds begin to shift about as they break down into groups and talk even louder giving Jack a brief respite from attention and slowly works his way towards the bodies.

These insects seem truly curious and perhaps they might even be similar to the dirt that has always been in his mind mysteriously…

Jack attempts to stealthily store one of the bodies away using his foot when the muscle-head, Paul notices his movements and yells at him.

"Come over here!"

Jack ignores the man for a moment looking at the bodies on the ground further pretending to inspect them, the muscle-head comes over to him with an angry expression on his red face.

"I said come over here, we need to talk about what's coming up."

Jack looks up at the man, "You were talking to me? I have a name."

"Don't care, now come over here."

Jack looks back down at the body, "These people's bodies are decaying too quickly, I wanted to know why."

"Who cares, it's not important and we're running out of time as those bastards are getting further and further away."

Jack breathes in deeply then exhales slowly, "Fine," he says standing up not enjoying his new found position as almost-captive, not that it will last much longer given some people's behaviours.

The two of them return to the crowd without much notice, Jack looks around for a moment then notices something through his spiritual sense and stays quiet as Paul speaks up.

"We need to find the other groups and link up with them, I am sure Lucas can find the spirit stuff we need," Paul speaks up drawing attention to him and Jack.

"We don't know where they are, they could be anywhere… plus what about the guy standing beside you? Didn't he fight against some giant beast nearly killing it? Can't he help?"

"I'm just here to watch," Jack says then adjusts where he's standing, no one in the crowd finds this movement of his strange.

"You'll do more than watch if asked!," someone in the crowd yells.

"Who's going to just watch?," a heroic voice can be heard behind the players. Jack positioned himself so that he won't be immediately in view but it seems he didn't deflect the attention away well enough.

"That guy that nearly killed that beast..," the crowd reacts to the new voice as if noticing it moments later, "Petr! Lucas! You two are here!"

Petr and Lucas smile before a large crowd of players and smile widely, "We wouldn't miss anything like this, now what's going on?"

"We were robbed, they killed some of us and then ran away, we found their weakness though," one of the players says running up to Petr but Lucas intercepts him blocking the way.

"That's great, what is it?," Petr asks ignoring what Lucas is doing pushing the player back.

"Something about godly spirit energy…," the player says quietly.

"Oh that stuff, I was collecting thousands of it thinking it was useless as the godly energy is plentiful elsewhere including here. You're saying it has a different use?"

"Yes it is able to cut their skin," Aage says, "this person can confirm it," he says pointing towards the player with the cut throat scar that has now been halfway healed.

"Oh is that true?," Petr asks with a sinister inquisitive voice.  It seems like no one can see the underlying emotions in his eyes but Jack can see it simply, arrogance.

"Yes, Josh and Tyev used it but only Josh was able to hit. Tyev missed as his opponent was too fast."

"Good job bringing us that information, when Josh and Tyev revive they'll get a large reward from all of us including me."

"Thank you," the player says bowing his head.

Petr scans the crowd and stops on Jack for a moment then ignores him, "Now, I say let's go teach those idiots a lesson they won't forget, they shouldn't mess with players," he turns around abruptly and flips his cloak in the wind causing the players to follow after him.

Jack doesn't move but feels a push forcing him to walk forward, he walks away from the muscle-head and goes through the crowd of players spotting a familiar face wearing unwieldy equipment for this jungle environment.

"Pst," he says ducking to to the other side of the young woman, she turns her head the wrong direction, "over here."

Marta turns her head the other way, "Oh you, I thought I heard someone on my other side."

"Ah weird, well how are things going? Have you managed to slay any beasts?," Jack asks trying to not be too loud as the crowd works its way through the jungle making a pathway in this strangely lit space.

"Two, but I had some help with the second. What about you?"

"Umm, none. I haven't really had time since I keep getting dragged into things but I have a couple of the cores."

"It's weird how they don't come up with system information, almost as weird as this place itself… why is there a jungle like this under the ocean? Didn't we enter some sort of building?"

"Well that's the sort of game this is…," Jack says scratching his neck, "weird things happen all the time. I don't think there's much to really find here except to advance to the next stage so you should focus on getting the beast cores."

"Thank you for the guidance, I'll consider it but for now I have to help everyone attack these new foes," she says while reseating the katana hanging on her waist.

"Fine but I suggest you don't try too seriously as you have no idea what these people are capable of," Jack says not sure what to make of this young woman.

"I shall take your words to heart," Marta says nodding her brown hair, "now we must prepare for the battles to come."

"Right," he says seemingly unable to persuade her further, Jack looks behind and spots the muscle-head closely behind which means that he cannot leave right away but given what they're about to do…

The crowd nears where a large amount of noise is being created as flashy explosions and energy waves are blasted into high into the seemingly endless sky where the giant orb is about 30% of the way through. Jack slows his steps allowing himself to head to the back of the crowd so he can watch the scenes unfolding. Paul makes his presence known by pushing Jack to continue with the crowd yet it doesn't take long for them all to stop.

Petr heroically stands out the front, "You evil doers have killed our comrades and taken our goods! For that!,"

"Huh?," a red robed man grunts as he releases another fire skill engulfing the beast lunging towards him.

"For that!," Petr says undeterred holding a crystal in his hand.

"Is someone saying something?," the red-robed man asks turning towards the yellow-robed person near him.

"I think I heard someone," the yellow-robed person says while causing a rock face to appear and slam shut on the beast crushing it between two flat surfaces.

"You heard someone?"

"For what you will be punished," Petr says launching a white beam of light from his hand.

It lands on the red-robed man who looks at it for a moment before it causes a hole to appear in his robe, he angrily glares at the source of the the beam of light.

Petr smiles and launches several other beams, they combine into a larger one that he has to use both of his hands to hold steady.

The red-robed man frowns and gathers a large amount of fire qi but the green-robed man steps in the way, "I'll take care of these flies, you save that for the upcoming hordes."

The green-robed man steps in to block the beam that doesn't even penetrate his clothing, a green shimmer field can be seen coming off the man but that's not all as he gathers a large amount of green energy in his hand.

"Go away flies," the green robed man says launching his fist forward sending a large gale of wind engulfing the crowd and more, as it rips up the landscape behind them as they're thrown back further and further away. "Flies are gone," the green-robed man says then returns to the battles.

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