The Earth After Rebirth

He was using the poor guy as a sandbag. He was still resistant, occasional throwing of punches here and there and trying to avoid Kiro\'s attacks. But he was too slow to succeed in either of the two things.

"Oh wow so you need to be fast to beat opponents that are slow and all muscle heads."

"You always say the dumbest things. Of course being just fast isn\'t enough, if he wasn\'t strong his hits wouldn\'t be making such great damage." The smart of the two commented, admiring Kiro all the same.

He was naturally right. Kiro was faster and stronger, the great giant couldn\'t hope to keep up. Though this didn\'t make him want to work on his speed.

He was more stubborn than that, this only served as a failure to him, a failure that he wanted to face head on. This meant he needed to increase his constitution and strength even more and to greater heights.

This was the kind of guy he was. He never succumbed to other people\'s ways, if his ways didn\'t work, he made them work anyway.

As he took the beating, he hadn\'t given up yet. He knew resisting was futile but he did it anyway. He didn\'t regret challenging Kiro, in his mind this was going to happen sooner or later.

He was happier the wake up call happened way earlier into the game rather than later when he thought he was the king of the world.

Kiro was sitting cross-legged on Ryu, they dashed around, giving Viktor a taste of a very bitter medicine. The fight had been going on for a few minutes and he decided to end it with a bending kick.

He completely caved his skull, the cracking sound was heard throughout the arena. The great giant did something amazing, he talked with a skull in the process of being shuttered.

"Haha. Monkey King is it? Thank you for showing me how weak I am. Let\'s fight again..." He was cut off by the light, his arm outstretched, trying to reach Kiro with a fist bump. But it never quite happened as he was whisked away by the light.

Kiro didn\'t know this, but this nuisance he was trying to get rid of, he\'d created a bond with that would follow him everywhere when he thought he could beat him. They\'d have more fights with each other than the in-game monsters.

"What a weird guy. May we never meet again." He proclaimed, feeling satiated now that he\'d beaten the arrogance out of him.

\'I guess I should get out of the battleground.\' He thought while yawning.

Ding!

[As promised, the winner of this battle was Kiro and so Valhalla you\'ve all been disqualified from participating further into this war. You also forfeit your number one spot. Number one is now taken by Dragon Tail.]

Valhalla wasn\'t even given the chance to complain, the light took them faster than they could react. They complained in the stands, they didn\'t exactly agree to their leader\'s abrupt decision, they also didn\'t think he\'d lose, so they didn\'t raise their concerns sooner.

"No point in complaining now. Leader, next time, be more responsible." The vice advised.

"Sure, sure." He said not showing signs that he\'ll stop being irresponsible any time soon.

Dragon Tail watched the matches in a much better mood. They didn\'t know what benefits number one would get but they figured it\'d be an edge they needed and everything else against After Dark.

The next matches weren\'t eventful, they were average and less. People\'s attention span were no longer in focus with the matches, instead they were discussing amongst themselves. The guilds they thought would win.

"I thought it\'d be Valhalla for sure. It\'s disappointing the leader decided to do something so stupid."

"You\'re still disappointed with The Monkey King having shown his crazy skills?"

"After Dark and Chasing Madness are great and all, but they aren\'t as well rounded as Valhalla. You watched them too during their time at the forest, didn\'t you?"

"I guess that\'s true, but the unpredictability of The Monkey King\'s team is something I trust in deeply. If these two clashed in an all out war, I bet you my entire life that they\'d win."

Isla was sitting rather close to them, the only thing that separated them was a fence after all, so words were easily conveyed.

She couldn\'t believe her guild was tossed aside in these talks, but she wasn\'t mad either. It was often the underdogs that made people surprised in good way. Plus, she expected this coming stage here to compete against After Dark.

"Oh, don\'t worry about it. We entered the war to defeat them didn\'t we?" Saanvi commented seeing her friend\'s very worried expression.

"Yes, but can you see how strong Ki is? Just him. Isn\'t he being favoured by the gods of this place a little too much?" She wasn\'t too worried, she just couldn\'t believe that every time she thought she caught up, Kiro took a giant leap.

"Don\'t forget, before we even knew them, they were already miles ahead of us. The world announcements were also almost always about them."

Saanvi pondered her last statement, being favoured by gods was looking more and more plausible when she said it out loud.

"Wow, okay. They are favoured."

Isla nodded in agreement, glad she wasn\'t the crazy one who saw things that weren\'t actually there. People would most likely label her an envious rich brat if she had this opinion alone.

Stage two fights were finally over, people waited for what was next. As it stood, there were 99 guilds left. Since Valhalla eliminated one and then got themselves eliminated by something totally unrelated.

Ding!

[Congratulations to the guilds that managed to beat the two stages. The next and last one is information gathering. You\'re tasked to enter Tartarus once again, but this part of Tartarus is unchartered.

So you won\'t only travel through land unknown, you\'ll also be required to make a map and write notes on everything happening there.

While there\'s 99 guilds here, survival of even two of you isn\'t guaranteed. If you all die, the last one to die will be the winners obviously. Though if the last ones don\'t have information they\'ll forfeit to those with more information.

This part of the forest has been explored before but none have returned alive. They don\'t know what it is, whether they die or can\'t find their way out. Your job is to find out why. While there is no time limit, keep in mind that the whole event is supposed to take only a weekend of real time. Happy hunting!]

Everyone had a confused look on their face. They thought for sure, the next stage would be players fighting out and killing each other.

"Ahh, how boring, we only need to map through a forest?"

"Do you have wax in your ears or are you an idiot? Did you miss the part that nobody returns?"

"I heard it, but it can\'t be that bad? They probably just sent in NPCs right?"

The guy next to him sighed and didn\'t answer him. He couldn\'t believe there was someone who didn\'t know that there were NPCs in Asgard at 200 levels, meaning they were stronger than any player. If they sent those and they didn\'t come back, they were all screwed.

If it was something that detrimental, then this final stage was just gathering as much information as possible and preferably dying last.

The system told them they had only an hour before they were transported to different entrances of the part that wasn\'t known to the general public of Asgard. Each guild would have their own entrance.

There were initially 100 entrances, but since there were only 99, that one was closed off. It was automatically closed by the system.

99 entrances of just a part of the forest. This was how big Tartarus was, it was a world of its own, with an ecosystem different from that of Asgard.

"Be careful, okay?" Kiro told Isla and Saanvi.

He knew something was off about the game, so he didn\'t know how their deaths would affect them while in this uncharted land. He\'d been to another realm after all, although he managed to not die he was sure something bad would\'ve happened if he did.

So his worries weren\'t unwarranted here.

"Worry about yourself." Saanvi shot back.

"Hey, why are you fighting?" Hiro stared at Saanvi demanding an answer but she never gave him one. She simply rolled her eyes and walked off.

"What\'s eating her. Well, to be fair, something is always eating her." Kiro joked.

"I heard that number two." She shouted from the stands.

It didn\'t even give Kiro the chance to talk back, and they were suddenly in a very dark, tree densely populated area.