"Isn't that a familiar of the dormant rank?" Lucus questioned Mada in a confused tone. "This isn't exactly what you would call help."
Mada began to speak with a smile clearly visible on his face. "The fact that torrcoons are normally dormant ranked familiars is something that I can't deny Lucus, but this one is different. Today you both will witness a torrcoon of the blessed rank."
"Wait, did he just say a torrcoon of the blessed rank? If you're just grasping at straws, this isn't the best time." Trayner spoke as he swapped looks between Mada and Lucus.
Lucus stood with one hand on his chin watching Mada and the familiar closely. Whenever Lucus took on this pose, it would mean that he was stuck deep in thought.
"Could it be a guardian's ability to transform itself? Or maybe you've found out something more permanent?" Lucus responded in a higher tone than usual, showing his excitement.
Mada ignored their questions for now and just lifted up one arm with his palm open towards the familiar. As he fully stretched out his fingertips, a faint teal light could be seen emitting from the palm of Mada's hand. The light was caused by three circle shaped markings that had appeared at the center of his palm. The markings on Mada's palm were of the same design as the markings on the Familiar Eye, except for one thing. The thing that made their marks so different was that while Mada's mark had three full circles that touched at their edges and formed a sort of triangle, the familiar's mark was of three crescent shapes that touched at their arches, making in some way the same design.
"Now Pori!" Mada yelled at the overweight creature, as wind began to flow around its body causing the familiar to float.
Lucus and Trayner both looked at each other with anticipation, after sensing a dense shift in the air. For good measure, both Lucus and Trayner again took a few steps backwards making sure to get a good distance away from the familiar. The energy that Pori released was at least three times stronger than what it was when the familiar was first summoned, showing the difference between itself and other dormant ranked spirit animals.
As wind swirled around Pori's body, a visible orb of light could be seen covering the familiar, while also illuminating the area. The light shined brighter and brighter until it became almost blinding to look at. Every member of the group except for Mada was forced to look away from the orb.
"Ahhh, what the hell!" Trayner yelled while shielding his eyes from the burning light.
As he tried to force himself to continue watching the familiar's transformation, Trayner was surprised to see Mada staring at the ball of light with no problems at all. What Trayner didn't know was that this wasn't Mada's first time seeing this intense light, nor was it his first time calling upon this familiar's hidden power. Mada had missed his chances to see Pori's full transformation the other two times that he had relied on this power, so in his head he thought maybe the third time would be the charm.
As the familiar's power peaked, a beam of light shot up into the sky. The energy of the orb began to dissipate following the beam, causing the orb to get smaller. As the orb shrunk, Lucus and Trayner began to show signs of excitement. Finally being able to see some of the torrcoon's new features, both boys were in shock.
The torrcoon had looked like an absolutely different creature after its transformation. While at first Pori was fat with small bat-like wings, now its body was slimmer and more defined, resembling a cat's. The wings of the familiar had also made a huge change as well, Pori's wings had grown to twice the size of its body and now resembled a set of dragon wings, allowing the familiar to hover in the air with no effort at all, flapping its wings softly.
"Woah, that was an enormous boost in its power. Now this is what I call help!" Lucus yelled with excitement as he rushed towards the transformed torrcoon. "Damn, so it was just a transformation after all! I didn't really expect for it to be the other case anyway, but how does it work!?"
Before Mada could respond, he watched as a large yellow ball of energy collided with Lucus's side, sending him soaring into the trunk of a tree. At the same time another ball of energy came towards Mada, but he was prepared. Mada swung at the ball of energy in a chopping motion causing it to split into two separate pieces, sending each piece of the energy ball crashing into the ground, causing two explosions.
"So, why would 'The Holy Body' have it out for Tayaire Zibiru?" Mada asked while staring at three men that were standing on tree branches.
"Damn, if I hadn't reinforced my body in time, only the gods know what would have happened." Lucus said as he began to lift himself off the ground, using the tree as a support.
Right before the energy blast had made contact with Lucus's side, Lucus had felt an extremely sharp pain in his gut. This pain was caused by his ability to feel the future. Whenever positive or negative events were to happen in his life, Lucus would get a unique sensation in his body fitting the circumstances. At that moment the pain in his body screamed death, so when Lucus felt that unique pain, he instantly used spiritual energy to defend his body.
"I thought that one actually took you out." Trayner said in surprise to Lucus as he prepared himself for the confrontation.
Trayner reached for the small rod on his hip, making sure not to break eye contact with the men in the trees. The moment that he fully got his hand around the rod, Trayner began to infuse his spiritual energy into it. The rod began to glow in an electric blue color and started growing in size. The small rod that Trayner held had grown from six inches to around five feet and eight inches. At the staff's full length, it had a black handle area with electric blue engravings on both ends, causing it to seem like a completely different item.
Two of the Holy Body members in the trees had stretched out their arms towards Mada and the others as the man in the middle began to speak. "We do not seek to do harm to you or your people, but if we have to defend ourselves, we will kill you."
Lucus stood at the tree tired and panting. He had some blood trailing from his mouth, but it wasn't enough to be concerned about. Though he had blocked the enemy's energy blast, Lucus had still received some damage from the impact. Lucus felt a continuous jabbing pain in his chest as the man spoke. He slowly reached his arm up and stretched it out towards the men in the trees. In an instant, Lucus had released a red beam of energy that caused everything in its path to be disintegrated.
The three men all seen the red beam of energy charging towards them extremely fast. With nowhere to run the man in the middle had stretched out both of his arms, encasing all three men into their own translucent yellow barriers. As the beam passed, the yellow barriers began to crack and shatter as if they were made of glass. Due to Lucus's state, the man in the middle didn't expect for his blast to be this powerful. The man had chose not to use a large amount of spirit energy to make the barriers because he thought that the energy beam from Lucus would be weak, after seeing that this was not the case, the man became enraged.
As the man in the middle released his barriers, he ordered the two men on his sides to each shoot out a blast of energy of their own. Mada had expected this response after seeing Lucus's rushed attack, so he quickly instructed Pori to get rid of one of the blasts as he delt with the other. Pori began to suck in a large amount of air, causing its body to grow twice in size. Pori then blew out the air, using the pressure of the air to send the ball of energy flying back into the opposite direction. At the same time, Mada quickly returned a blast of his own making the two energy blasts collide into each other, causing a large explosion. With the smoke from the explosion clouding his vision, Mada could only use the aura sense ability to keep track of his enemies. Even though this was a step down from him using his normal eyesight, Mada gained a small feeling of comfort being able to see that Lucus and Trayner weren't hurt by the explosion.
"This is an unusual amount of smoke for a simple blast collision." Mada thought as he tried to make his way towards the weakest member of their group, Trayner.
The smoke from the explosion covered everything on the path, clouding everyone's vision. Trayner was having a hard time depicting who was friend or foe due to him not being able to distinguish between the different auras.
"Shit, what's up with all of this smoke?" Trayner thought as he transversed through the clouded area.
Trayner could tell that the others were still alive because of how many bright auras there were. There were six of them in total, including himself, but he still couldn't tell who was who in the smoke.
"If we don't clear this smoke quickly, it could put us in a dangerous position!" As Trayner yelled these words he was grabbed by a set of hands.
Trayner began to twist his body around and landed a perfect kick into the man's stomach, which made him stumble back several feet. The man was in fact one of their enemies, but for some reason it seemed like he wanted to capture Trayner instead of killing him.
"What are these guys playing at? He had the chance to kill me, so why attempt to grab me instead." Trayner thought as he swung his staff, aiming for the man's head.
…Once the man regained his balance, he noticed Trayner swinging his staff. It didn't take long for the man to react as he lifted his arm to block the staff. The moment the staff hit the man's forearm, he grabbed the end of the staff and pulled it with all his strength. The man had pulled the staff so hard that it had pulled Trayner along with it, this had given the man the perfect opportunity to land a clean hit on the boy without killing him. The man had delivered a devastating punch to Trayner's abdomen, causing him to instantly lose consciousness.
"I'll have to commend you when you awaken. You truly are your fathers child." The man said as Trayner's unconscious body fell to the ground.
The man had reached for a small horn that was connected to a necklace that all three men wore. Once the man blew into the horn a high-pitched whistle sound could be heard coming from it. After the man stopped blowing into the horn he began to reach down to pick Trayner up. The man hesitantly stopped as he sensed an immense amount of energy coming his way. He jumped back just in time to dodge Mada's kick, but this also allowed Mada to safely secure Trayner.
"I should have figured that, that's what you were after!" Mada said in a loud and dark tone.
Mada was easily able to locate Trayner within the fog due to his ability to sense the different auras around him. As Mada transversed through the smoke towards Trayner, he continued to use the aura sense ability to help him navigate through.
"Looks like Lucus is recovering." Mada thought as he noticed Lucus taking cover behind a large tree.
Mada moved quickly trying to get to Trayner but was stopped in his tracks as one of the Holy Body's members moved in front of him. The member of The Holy Body was a short man with long black hair that covered his eyes. He was dressed in a white uniform that had a silver badge on its right chest pocket, along with a white high-tech mask that only covered the bottom half of his face. This uniform was standard for members of the Holy Body.
"I will not allow you to intervene with our plans." The man said as he pulled two daggers from sheaths around his waist.
After seeing the man that had appeared in front of him, Mada instantly pointed towards the man and yelled with all his might. "Pori!"
Within an instant, the torrcoon could be seen diving through the smoke from the air. Pori charged at the man with its mouth open, charging a ball of condensed air in its mouth, then shot it out with extreme force at the man that was standing in front of Mada. The ball of wind shot from the blessed ranked torrcoon had knocked directly into the man, who had blocked the ball with his two daggers. Though the familiar's wind blast was blocked by the man, the force of the blast was enough to launch the man several feet in the other direction, giving Mada the room to slip by.
Mada continued to use aura sense to locate Trayner's aura signature. As he got closer to the boy's aura signature, Mada could see another person's aura moving towards Trayner's. Mada prepared himself for an attack as he coated his body in an immense teal aura. The aura had burst from Mada's feet similar to a flame and had covered his whole body up until the brim of his neck. This made it look as if Mada wore a full set of flaming armor over his clothing.
"I still haven't perfected the phoenix flame cloak, but seventy percent should be enough to level the playing field." Mada thought as he launched himself several meters into the air.
Mada had jumped with tremendous force causing a small crater to be left behind, along with a dozen cracks in the earth. As Mada reached a spot that was directly above where Trayner and the other man were, two fluorescent wings made from the flaming aura sprouted from his back. Mada began to fall in a kicking formation, using the wings on his back as thrusters, greatly increasing his attack's speed.
Mada wanted to attack without giving his enemy any time to prepare himself. He felt that with the smoke caused by the explosion, there was no way that he could miss this attack. Mada was indeed mistaken with his assumption though. The man that was once picking up Trayner's body, had quickly moved to dodge Mada's attack with inhuman speed.
The man regained his footing and stood up tall. He was truly surprised that he couldn't sense Mada's spirit energy until the moment he attacked.
"That's some control you have over your spiritual energy. You must be a hunter?" The man asked as he reached for the sword on his back.
Mada observed the man's features, feeling a sense of familiarity in how the man looked. The man wore the same uniform as the other men, only unlike theirs his uniform was black in color with a gold badge, and his mask had a gold trim instead of silver. He had long silver hair with bulging muscles, but in Mada's eyes, the man looked pretty boring apart from the scar on his forehead.
"What a wicked scar. Where have I seen this man before?" Mada thought to himself while strolling through his memory, thinking of all of the Holy Body members that he knew of.
"Wait that's not right, your Kuma! You're not a part of the Holy Body!" Mada yelled furiously as he stepped towards Kuma.
Kuma pulled the Flyssa from the sheath on his back while swinging it at Mada in one single motion. In less than a second, Mada was within centimeters of where Kuma was standing. Watching the sword heading for his neck, Mada swiftly dodged it by leaning his body in the opposite direction. After avoiding the fatal blow, Mada had chosen to counter by sending a solid punch into Kuma's ribs, followed by a kick to his chest which made him stumble back a couple of steps.
"Hmmm, seems like Tayaire's little dogs do have some bite with their bark." Kuma said as he walked toward Mada, brushing dirt off of his shirt.