With humanity learning how to travel the stars, and exploring beasts on other planets, there became customs and unspoken social rules about beast hunting. The idea was that if you, or your team were to have gotten the last hit on a beast, then you’d be the one to keep the crystal.

Earl, a boy with a scar on his chin, and deep purple hair, was invoking such a rule, to which Erin greatly disliked. Just because it was an unspoken rule created out of fairness, did not mean that it was always used for such a reason.

There was someone in Erin’s team who took a step back, trembling, and on the verge of crying.

’Why... Why is he here?!’

The face of Earl had invoked a horrible fear in Peter, and it was a face that he was unfortunately familiar with. He had to choke up his crying, not wanting to draw more attention to himself.

Peter didn’t know why the same boy who had cut into him, and bled him like a pig before being butchered, had saved his life, but for what? He doubted it was for a good reason. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"We fought the beast ourselves," Erin shot back, taking a step forward, "You stole my kill, I didn’t need your stupid help!"

"Did you really do it yourself?" Earl replied, then nodded towards his teammates.

The other four members all took a step closer to Erin’s team, each with a menacing look to their eyes. The air grew with tension, and a fight was about to detonate in mere moments.

Quinn took a step forward, prepared to form his earth gauntlets. He had seen Earl before in an unfriendly manner, and it was clear as day that they were trying to force them to concede.

Erin glared at them back, and similarly held her rapier at her waist. If only she didn’t need to worry about the sunlight, then this fight wouldn’t be a major issue. However, this was the hand she was dealt.

"If you won’t play nice, then I guess we have no choice..."

Earl flung his hand up, causing a pillar of earth to shoot at Erin and Quinn. She jumped upwards, careful to cover herself with the umbrella, while Quinn pushed back against the pillar with his own ability.

’This guy’s ability has to be stronger than mine,’ Quinn thought to himself.

Earl’s ability outmatched Quinn’s, causing him to get shoved a bit into the sand, but once he recovered, he was about to run after Erin. That was when a skinny boy with a small afro, and dark brown skin had thrown a punch at Quinn’s side.

He couldn’t dodge it in time, and took a devastating hit to his ribs. Quinn stumbled back, but quickly formed his mud gauntlet to shoot at his new opponent.

Tri-spikes were fired at the boy, but he had simply smacked them away. Blocking them with his own gauntlets.

’He’s strong despite having the same figure as me. Does he have some sort of strength ability?’ Quinn thought, stepping back, ’His gauntlets don’t look impressive. They can’t be above basic tier, right?’

The boy jumped high, about to land a devastating hit, when Quinn formed an earth wall. His punch formed a crater on the wall, crumbling it, but that gave enough time for Quinn to drop to the floor, and create a giant earth fist to punch up right underneath the boy.

The boy landed a distance away, and smiled at Quinn.

"Garret," The boy said, before getting back into a fighting position, then lifted up his watch, "Also, I have a level 4 strength ability."

"What?"

"I only thought it should be fair you know my name and ability," Garret replied, "Just so you know, I prefer to fight fair."

’How fair is a surprise attack?!’ Quinn barely thought before Garret charged at him.

The two traded blows, sending sand outwards. Despite Garret’s thin arms, each punch held far more strength behind them than Quinn could normally match. He had to use the earth below him to wrap around his legs, helping him stand his ground.

’Think! What can I do to get an upper hand?’ Quinn said in his mind.

An idea popped in his head, and Quinn quickly collected a bunch of mud from his mud pouch. He then formed it around his hands, then aimed at Garret.

BANG

A condensed beam of mud had shot into Garret’s chest, and he was flung right next to Fex. Coughing up his spit, Garret looked up to see a very relaxed pale looking boy.

"Hello!" Fex waved, before tying string around Garret’s arm.

However, when he tried to yank him into his other opponent, Garret ripped the string off.

"Whoa, I didn’t expect you to be strong!" Fex replied as he jumped out of the way of a flaming whip.

"Get out of my way!" Amy yelled at her teammate.

Fex had been caught in a fight with a girl named Amy Yellop. She was shorter than Fex, and had short light purple hair as well as golden chestnut skin.

The girl threw her flaming whip out, causing both Fex and Garret to duck underneath it. He took the hint, and Garret immediately jumped back to his fight.

As she was lashing her whip around, she was also throwing several blades of wind out with her spare hand. However, Fex was dodging them all quite gracefully.

"Just get hit already!" Amy stomped onto the ground.

A giant rock landed next to her, and right as she was about to complain, an idea came to mind. She wrapped her whip around it before throwing it at Fex who had simply leapt over it.

"Grrr, you were supposed to be easy! Why is a level 1 beating me?!"

"Who? Me?" Fex sarcastically pointed at himself, before running up to the girl.

"Eek!" Amy yelped.

She tried to throw her flaming whip at him, but he had jumped over it. Before she knew it, he was already staring deep into her eyes.

His own began to glow red, and he began to speak in a low voice.

"Stand down."

Without knowing what got into her, Amy fell to her knees.

Knowing that his fight with Amy was done, Fex dusted off his hands, and turned around to help someone else. That was when he heard sobbing behind him.

Glancing behind himself, he saw she was choking up with tears in her eyes.

"Wow, why are you crying? I just told you to stop," Fex remarked to the girl.

Ignoring her, Fex turned towards Quinn, who was still in a fight against Garret.