Martial Era: Starting With The Strongest Talent-Chapter 62: It Was Indeed Too Good To Be True
The room was dark.
Not dim or shadowed. Just pure darkness, heavy and unmoving, with no sign of life within it.
Then...
Two eyes opened.
Golden pupils cut through the void, sharp and alert. The rest of the figure remained hidden, but that cold and calculating gaze alone carried weight.
"What a waste," a voice said quietly.
"The Dark Seed didn’t mature properly before activation."
A disappointed sigh echoed in the darkness soon after.
"Useless to the very end. Fortunately, other plans were already prepared for this kind of failure."
The eyes lingered for a moment longer.
Then they closed, as the darkness reclaimed everything.
Adam groaned.
The sound came out rough as he tried to push himself up. His head rang violently, the world tilting and spinning as if it hadn’t decided which way was up yet. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢
It’s been a while since I felt like this.
He stayed still for a second, forcing himself to breathe slowly.
When the spinning dulled just enough, Adam slowly pushed himself up and stood; however, he staggered and nearly fell as his balance returned, piece by piece.
Adam raised a hand to his head, pressing his palm against the ache. When the pain eased slightly, he lowered his hand, only to see his fingers coated in blood.
His brows knit together as he touched his head again, more carefully this time as he noticed a cut. It wasn’t deep enough to kill him, but deep enough to bleed freely.
He looked down, checking the rest of his body.
And froze.
A large, charred hole gaped in the center of his newly acquired armament. The edges were warped and blackened, torn through by sheer force.
Adam’s heart dropped.
Not because the armor was ruined, but because of what that damage meant.
His voice came out low, almost flat.
"I would have died without the armament."
Adam didn’t know how to feel about that realization.
The fact that his life had almost ended in a single moment forced something he’d been avoiding to the surface.
It made him reassess where he actually stood in this world.
Since obtaining Rapid E, Adam didn’t feel unstoppable. He knew he still had a long way to go and needed to act with caution, which he believed he’d been doing. After all, monsters, people, and situations had never truly threatened him.
Not until now.
And the reason was suddenly obvious.
He was a big fish... swimming in a small pond.
Just because he had been the strongest there didn’t mean anything beyond those borders.
Lakes, seas, oceans, those were different worlds entirely. Even if the people weren’t strong enough to kill him, their weapons were.
That truth had never been clearer.
Adam let out a slow breath and forced himself to calm down. Panic wouldn’t help. Reflection could wait. Right now, he had to deal with what was in front of him.
He looked around.
The explosion had devastated the area. Adam stood several meters from the epicenter, having been blasted back by the lightning, yet even here the damage was severe.
The ground was scorched black, smoke rising in lazy spirals. Trees burned where they stood, trunks split and charred. Nearby stagnant pools had completely evaporated, leaving behind cracked mud and mineral residue.
As Adam moved closer, the destruction became worse.
The goons he’d killed earlier hadn’t been so lucky. Their dead bodies had taken the lightning head-on, that it blackened their bodies, and extinguished their essence completely.
Adam glanced over them and muttered quietly,
"At least their bodies are still intact."
He’d seen what happened to Henry.
That explosion hadn’t left anything recognizable behind. The memory lingered longer than he liked.
What could make someone give up their life like that?
The thought surfaced, then faded. Adam didn’t linger on it. Answers wouldn’t change anything now.
His attention soon shifted to the rift and his eyes narrowed as he focused on it.
"It can’t be."
****
The people surrounding Abigail’s group froze as the explosion thundered across the sky.
The sound wasn’t normal.
It rolled through the swamp with weight, deep and violent, carrying pressure that made the air vibrate. The leader of the group looked up sharply, eyes widening.
"What was that?"
The worst part wasn’t the noise itself.
It was where it came from.
The center of the swamp.
Right where the Water Lily was supposed to be.
A chill crept up his spine. This wasn’t right.
"I don’t have a good feeling about this." Before he could think further, one of his men snapped his head back toward the clearing.
"Boss. They’re getting away."
The leader turned just in time to see Abigail, Dickson, and the rest of their group already retreating, slipping between the trees.
They’d used the moment of distraction perfectly.
The man beside him hesitated.
"Boss... what do we do?"
The leader stayed silent for a few seconds, weighing his options. Then he shook his head.
"First, we get out of this swamp."
His men nodded without hesitation. They felt it too.
Whatever had just happened wasn’t something they wanted to be anywhere near; water lily or not, their lives were more important.
Because of that, chasing down a rival group suddenly felt meaningless.
Abigail and her people no longer mattered.
Without another word, the leader turned away, and his group followed, abandoning the area and heading for the edge of the swamp as fast as they could manage.
****
Every clan heir in the swamp felt it.
The ones fighting each other.
The ones racing toward the center for the Water Lily.
Even those lurking on the edges, waiting for an opening.
The explosion rolled through the Sirens’ Swamp with overwhelming force. The ground trembled. The air vibrated. Essence went wild.
And instinct screamed.
Years of combat training and real battle honed their senses enough to recognize one truth instantly.
Something was very wrong.
One after another, they stopped what they were doing.
Fights were abandoned mid-strike. Plans were dropped without hesitation. Whatever prize they’d come for no longer mattered.
Without discussion, the clan heirs turned and rushed out of the swamp in droves.
No one wanted to be involved in something they didn’t understand, especially when every fiber of their being warned them it was dangerous.
But not everyone was retreating.
A group was moving in the opposite direction.
Fast.
Straight toward the center.
It was Manager Vanessa and the acolytes she had assembled earlier. They moved with purpose, formations tight, expressions grim.
What had started as a hunt for the Water Lily had clearly changed.
This was no longer a resource mission.
It was an investigation.
Vanessa led from the front, her pace relentless, the epicenter drawing closer with every step. Without slowing, she spoke through clenched teeth.
"I knew it was too good to be true."
The acolytes didn’t reply.
They just kept running.
