Fear Factor

In the center of the tide of hideous abominations, a bright gray flame could be seen through the cracks of the wave. Light seeped through the cracks of their terrible bodies as they continued to pile up on top of the source.

They were all flung away in an instant.

Kai was feeling slightly dizzy by now. He had been spinning non stop quicker than he ever had in his life for more than a minute by now, yet the tide of abominations did not let up.

He had not even gotten the oppurtunity to drink a Mana potion yet, the assault of the ugly tentacled blobs had been too relentless.

Kai wasn't complaining though. He had reached level twenty-two in the last two minutes from the large amount of crescent moon abominations he had killed.

Even though they were extremely weak in comparison to him, Kai had to have killed dozens upon dozens in the short time he had been fused.

He threw the fourty-two unnasigned stat points he had gained into Strength, bringing the monstrous stat up to three hundred and seventy-five.

After that, the process of spinning and slicing got even easier.

Quite frankly, Kai was having fun.

For whatever reason, nothing above crescent moon had bothered to attack him.

Maybe it's because of the flames...

Which was a possibility. While the crescent moon abominations turned even more mindless than they already were at the sight of the flaming Kai, quarter and gibbous moon abominations seemed to be smart enough to avoid the flames.

Meaning Kai got to undiscriminately kill abominations much, much weaker than him.

He was now the master of fire, screw the original-

Wait, in Ninjago, his name was also Kai...

He froze for a moment, stopping his mass slaughter as he fell deep into thought. Was Kai secretly the master of fire all along?

"Haha!"

Kai laughed as he got back to spinning. It was a nice surprise that he could have thoughts like that in the current situation. It meant he hadn't gone completely crazy just yet.

Still, something needed to change. Kai was perfectly capable of holding back the weak crescent moon abominations, but it was the higher rank ones that were causing the real problems.

Kai just needed something, someone to take over-

A horrible feeling dug it's way into his heart. It was terrifying, raw, unadulterated fear.

But as soon as it struck him, it was gone as quickly.

What the hell was that? Kai thought as he felt a bead of sweat fall off his forehead.

He then realised that he had stopped spinning because of that feeling.

Crap!

Kai panicked as he quickly started spinning again, hoping to gain some momentum as to not let any abominations slip through.

He kept spinning and-

...

No abominations attacked him?

Slowly bringing his spinning session to a halt, Kai couldn't help but be confused as he noticed the lack of abominations.

What?

Lying on the ground all around him was a large, vast expanse of abomination corpses, all mutilated by his claws and had their life drained by his abominable blade.

But there was also a large amount of abominations mixed into that pile that were dead, yet had no injuries. There was also some writhing on the ground in pain.

What the hell is going on?

As Kai looked around curiously, he felt another wave of fear. Only this one wasn't in his heart, it kind of felt like it was trying to penetrate his back.

Turning to look behind him, Kai couldn't be more shocked than what he saw.

And across the battlefield, a brown haired man that hadn't stopped shooting off wooden tendrils, stakes and balls and controlling the large army of abominations couldn't help but grin wildly.

"My insight really is incredible. Where would we all be without me?"

Failure couldn't hold back a laugh as he kept pressure on the opposing army, but his focus was mostly focused on a beautiful black haired woman that was now the focus of all those mindless abominations.

The woman Kai had rescued stood in the centre of a wave of oncoming abominations, unmoving except for the fact that her whole body was trembling.

What the hell!

Kai couldn't help but panic when he saw her about to get completetly overun by abominations. Kicking his body into action, Kai started to sprint towards the woman, but froze in shock after a moment.

The purple earing that was stuck into her ear shone a deep shade of purple, a terrifying aura emanating from its small body.

Kai couldn't help but pale as he gazed upon the earing. Actually, what the hell was going on?

Failure kept laughing as he observed the situation unfold.

"Oh, I knew that old thing would eventually be useful. Ah, I'm so happy I got to see it back in action one last time."

The earring Failure had given to the black haired woman was not a simple one. It had once belonged to a Goddess, before she had actually ascended though.

While she may have been incredibly powerfyl and an incredibly capable fighter, unrivaled in her certain niche, it was for all the completely wrong reasons.

She was not super strong or super fast, or super smart, or even super lucky, she had no incredible traits.

No, the reason she had grown so strong was because of the earring that black haired woman Kai rescued was currently wearing.

Of course, if the earring was truly that incredible, why would she give it up?

While the item was incredibly strong at lower levels, the effects weaken as you level up. She did eventually get one of the gods that specialised in crafting to create a stronger version for her though.

The base version of the incredibly powerful earring was put in an auction, but was stolen, stolen again, and again, and again, until eventually the newest criminal who had stolen it attempted to hide out in the forest.

That was a long, long time ago though. Failure kept the earring as payment for killi- apprehending the criminal. Sadly, there had been no one with the right mindset to wield it, so it just sat collecting dust in the treasury.

Until Kai brought that woman in that night, that is. Failure saw the potential instantly, she was the perfect person to wear the earring.

Ah, Failure still remembered the description of the beautiful purple accessory like he had just red it yesterday.

Fear Factor (Epic): Fear, one of the most common emotions. Fear drives you to push beyond your limits. The more scared you are, the stronger you become. Increases your stats in proportion to how scared you are. User can also inflict their fear upon chosen enemies, stunning them and even killing them if the fear is strong enough.

Failure kept a childlike grin on his face as he got prepared to witness an incredible show. With how scared that woman was, she could probably be comparable to Kai in terms of strength.

In fact, maybe even stronger considering Kai was on a timer, meanwhile the woman ran on fear.

And she seemed to have that in abundance.

Purple bolts of lightning flickered in the woman's eyes as an abomination reached out for her with its disgusting tentacles.

Just as the tentacle was about to wrap around her arm, the woman lifted her and up and sliced down.

... Severing the tentacle with the edge of her hand.

Kai's heart was in turmoil. There was no way the woman he rescued was secretly incredibly strong, right?

That thought was quickly pushed away as he realised the insane boost of strength came from the earring.

Around her, countless abominations were flailing like fish out of water while some were just downright dead.

It was incredible. Kai no longer had to hold back the endless wave of abominations. The woman he rescued was now in the middle of all of them, able to kill them all with ease.

Kai was not going to act like he had any idea what was happening and what the earring even did, but he was just happy it done what it did.

Of course, he knew that Failure knew what the earring was capable of, considering that it was him that gave it to her, but Failure had his own problems to deal with.

And Kai had some newfound freedom.

Now, he would actually be able to test his strength. He was liberated from the duty of holding back the abominations, so he could challenge one of the quarter moon abominations.

He could of course challenge a gibbous moon one, but Kai knew not to push his luck.

He could also help out Noelle or Wa'rak with dealing with their current predicaments, and that was a tempting idea in his head.

But he knew that Wa'rak would probably not accept his help, and that Noelle had to deal with Rashik on her own.

He wasn't going to act like he had any idea to the amount of trauma weighing her down, but Kai knew that all trauma had a source, and if you deal with the source it helps to deal with the trauma in return.

So Noelle had to deal with Rashik all by herself, otherwise she would never grow or escape her past.

But now that he had some free time, which wasn't actually that free considering that his Mana was rapidly being drained every second, Kai drank three Mana potions back to back and another two health potions for good measure.

Now, he had reached the daily limit for Mana potions and could still drink two more health potions.

With about another minute added to his transformed state, Kai spared a few moments to look around and analyse the state of the battlefield.

Noelle was fighting Rashik, her scimitar was glowing with power, making Kai slightly confused.

Sofia was near the back, constantly firing off arrows, either killing or weaking the abominations they hit.

John was still tanking blow after blow, by now, he was unable to be moved by crescent moon abominations and even quarter moon abominations had trouble impacting the burly man.

Wa'rak had just finished his brutal clash with the mimic and was glowing for some reason. His paw was still inside the dead abominations head, which gave Kai a small shiver up his spine.

The black haired woman was effortlessly dealing with the abominations that were relentlessly attacking her. Her body moved with refined finesse and her only weapons were her hands, they both cut through abomination as well as any sword could.

Failure was off the to side, constantly pressuring all abominations present with his magic. From wooden spikes shooting out of the ground and impaling large amounts of abominations to tendrils wrapping around the legs of stronger abominations and holding them in place so to allow beasts and humans alike to attack them.

And Aldred was still engaged in the duel with the Demon.

But something was off about it.

Huh... Why does the Demon only have one weapon left?

Was Aldred actually winning that easily? Kai assumed that when Failure said at the start that Aldred had grown a lot stronger, that he was bluffing. Was the charismatic man actually not lying?

But then something strange happened. Something shot out of the Demon's chest and wrapped around the double headed axe.

Why does the weapon have an eye?

Then, Kai noticed what type of eye was one the weapon.

Before he even got the chance to properly react to the fact that there actually was a second full moon abomination, and that it was inside the Demon's chest all along, the Demon launched forward and swung the axe at Aldred.

Much faster than it was previously.

And the full moon abomination weapon cleanly cut through one of Aldred's legs, severing the limb.