Lord Of Martial Arts

The figure's emergence seemed to bring the world to a stop, including the battle between Darren and the human-shaped blood creature.

Still in midair, the two combatants broke apart, separated by the sheer, ominous significance of the newcomer.

Darren watched uneasily as his foe turned toward the newcomer, knelt down in submission, and went still.

No longer caring about finishing the duel, Darren flew back to join his companions, who were visibly stricken.

"He's far too powerful for us," one of them told him. "We're doomed!"

Brave as Darren was, he couldn't find it in himself to disagree. His heart pounded wildly as he returned to his human form.

"Maybe he just won't attack us," one of the others said doubtfully. "It's possible, right?"

Their impulse for nervous chatter died as the cause of their terror drew near. Unseen power crackled and radiated out from him, pressing against their very souls until they thought their hearts would burst within them.

Soon he stood a hundred feet off from the group, as fearsome and unapproachable as a god.

A dreadful moment passed as he stared them all down with a cold, emotionless gaze. Worse yet, nine black vortexes appeared behind him, roiling with titanic bursts of lightning. He was haloed by a display of world-ending power.

At last the men could stand it no longer, and one of them called out, "Sir, have mercy! Forgive us if we have displeased you!" Immediately there was a chorus of similarly terrified pleas as all those gathered bowed down in midair, trembling.

All, that was, except for Darren, who still retained some of his earlier courage, not to mention his pride. Staying upright, he withstood the blood figure's glare and returned it. A fierce, hot wind tossed his black hair behind him.

Knowing he had been affronted, the figure gave no warnings or second chances. Only a single word escaped from his mouth, hoarse and inhuman, "Die."

With that, he raised a hand and dropped it toward Darren.

It was a simple, almost indifferent movement, as if to smash an insect. Yet even that motion sent a lattice of black space cracks rippling outward. The whole space shuddered as peerless power swept through it, and Darren's companions were even more paralyzed than they had been before.

Darren's level of relative calm surprised even himself as he watched the blow come down to meet him like a moon falling from its orbit. "Is this the real Holy Will?" he murmured aloud.

No one thought to answer him. Nor did anyone have any thought of escaping.

Everyone within a hundred kilometers would be absolutely obliterated when the falling hand struck. There was no outrunning the power at this being's command. Their doom approached, agonizingly slow. Each second seemed magnified to the length of a century. Darren, at least, was resolved to not face it begging for his life.

"How dare you!" roared a booming voice.

As though rocked by the sound, the terrible blood figure fell back two steps, withdrawing his hand.

"Who is there?!" he thundered, looking around for the one who had spoken.

Darren and his companions quickly passed from that monstrous figure's mind. Compared to whoever had just struck him, they were of no importance at all.

The voice of his endless challenger came again, full of endless anger. "Leave this place! Leave at once,

e little particles which held a brilliant glow.

While his fellows murmured, the man flew over, and picked several of the strange particles, and brought them back.

"Wow, look at these," he remarked, holding them up. "They sure are colorful. Might be worth it to get our hands on more of them. They'd make great jewelry."

While he said this, Hobson took one of the particles in his hand.

He inspected it carefully, then pinched it between two fingers, and unexpectedly cried out in pain. The little stone had cut his finger, whereas he had thought he would crush it with ease.

"What are these things made of? How is it so hard?" Saying this, Hobson focused his internal energy on the particle and tried to refine it.

Before anyone could blink, there was a flash of light as energy exploded from the particle.

The others leaped back, shielding their eyes. Hobson himself was thrown away, crashing into a sand dune.

Darren and his companions stared dumbfounded for a short moment before Hobson burst out of the sand, looking none the worse for wear. "It contains Holy Will!" he shouted excitedly as he flew back to join them. "These are Holy Will Crystals!"

"What, seriously?" someone replied.

Then they all began rushing about, finding the holes they had created in the sand and searching through them.

Each man found a few crystals of various colors and set about trying to refine them, though more carefully than Hobson had his first one.

'These really are the Holy Will Crystals, ' they thought. 'They are so precious! What a discovery!'

Obsessed over their discovery, the men forgot their earlier frustrations completely. In fact, they even started digging more and deeper holes in the sand, hoping to find more crystals underground.

As the others dug themselves further down into the earth, Darren burrowed a little down into another sand pit by himself, where he found another one of the crystals.

He took it in his hand, but hesitating, simply feeling it instead of refining it.

"That aura," he said to himself. "It feels like Holy Will, but it's... weird."

It was the Fringe Holy Will that Darren felt, and it made him exceedingly uncomfortable. He wasn't sure where it was coming from.