Competition 2 (XI): Spiders

After their bloodlust induced fight, Alex and Anya had been left a little shaken. Even though they lived in a pretty hard world, it's quite obvious that the amount of brutality they had just shown to a couple of fellow humans had shocked them to the core, and it was not just the scope of the injuries received, it was the fact that they cause said injuries, and actually enjoyed the act. It wasn't them, and they both knew they had to figure out what was going, before they tear even themselves apart.

Surviving in the caves was something they were able to successfully handle for four days. And in that time the urge to battle and fight was so strong within them, it was almost like a drug they couldn't do without. This whole place had something really messed up with it, and at the rate things were going, they might actually lose their minds and start fighting each other, somehow, by a stroke of luck, or maybe bad luck, a team of fighters made their way into the vicinity where Alex and Anya had holed up.

"Surrender to us, and we will let you go!" a young woman from among the team of nine said.

"Why are we asking them to surrender, let's just kill them and get this shit over with!" someone else spoke up, not at all in the mood for diplomacy. Luckily for him, neither was Alex and Anya.

Alex and Anya dived into the fray, swinging their weapons with wanton rage and an appetite fro destruction. Alex ducked under a punch before unhesitatingly shoving a sword through his opponent's chest, a back step later saved him from having his head pierced by a spear. Alex swung east cloud, deflecting the longer reach of the spear and then used an under hand swung with west wind, slicing his opponent from bottom to top.

Fortunately the person who he was fighting had a good enough battle awareness to step back a bit, and only had to suffer his clothes being cut and a receiving a shallow wound. It was nothing he couldn't deal with however the wound was bleeding hard enough that anyone who saw it would think that his injuries were a little more serious than normal.

His opponent in his rage decided to make a rookie mistake as he threw his spear at Alex. Alex ducked back as the spear flew over his head, he roared out in indignation and anger as he pounced forward pushing his sword towards his opponents head with a superman punch, of course this time he had a sword in said hand rather than a fist.

His opponent was no pushover either, as he ducked to the side evading the approaching swords and stepping into Alex's guard and slamming a knee into his midriff. No matter how strong he might seem, Alex was still only just a fourteen year old boy, so he invariably hunched over to deal with the pain. But that was when the ground started shaking.

Whoever was fighting at that moment had to stop, and the earth shook so hard it was almost impossible for anyone to keep his or her balance. Even in his rage addled mind, Alex quickly realized that things were about to go horribly wrong. Anya crawled her way to his side, as they warily watched their surroundings, and then a few seconds later, the ground in front of them seems to have cracked open like an egg, and out of it crawled out legion upon legion of spider like monsters, each of the completely similar to the monster Alex and Anya had fought.

Anybody with half a brain would know that there was no fighting them, not with this amount of monsters. It would only take seconds for them to get overrun, and at the moment the spider monsters were taking a bit of their time to get oriented to harsh glare of sunlight, so everyone had time to find their square root, at least until one of the idiots that attacked them opened his mouth and yelled.

"Run!!!" and then the fool proceeded to run downhill. A few of his friends followed behind him, and sure enough the swarm of monster spiders followed too. Anya was about to run downhill when Alex grabbed her hand and shook his head vigorously.

"If we run downhill we will be at a disadvantage, they move faster than us, and they'll probably have the high ground. We need to get higher ground and find a place to hole up, there's more cover closer to us at the top than running all the way down."

With that said Alex did not even let Anya figure out what he meant as he grabbed her hands and dragged her towards the cave at the peak of the mountain, keeping away from the rapidly approaching swarm of monster spiders. Four of their previous opponents seemed to have similar ideas, so they also chose to run towards the peak rather than down the mountain.

Alex and Anya took a slow and stead pace, trying to not make an unnecessary sounds as it seemed as if these spiders had a really bade sense of sight, relying mostly on hearing, or whatever it is they used to see. Which was the fool who had screamed run and went down the mountain like he had hell right on his tail, had drawn the attention of almost all the spiders that had come out of the ground at that time. And while they were a lot, that was not all of them.

One of the spiders jumped in front of them, only to meet the unforgiven end of Anya's blazing hammer. Scythe part of the blade seemed to glow a deep red as her connection to the fire element was shown fully. Alex might be the one taking the lead, but he knew that she was faster and more stronger than he was, which means if they were going to escape this disaster, it would rely solely on Anya's abilities.

Another spider came from the side, and Alex shot forwards, his sword blade pointed at it's head as he utilized the south style of the four seasons of the weeping world sword style, turning the blade of his swords into conduit for flames and destruction. While he's unable to control qi in any form, his understanding of the essence of the sword has enabled him to show forth the power of this sword skill, at a level when he's not even supposed to raise a sword.

The flames on west wind and east cloud were just tiny wisps that hung on their blades as opposed to the blaze on Anya's hammer. However it was enough for Alex to cleave the spider in front of him in half, leaving it a smoking pile of cauterized flesh as he spun to the right and decapitated the head of another.

They both kept running to the peak and went round a particularly tall hill, only to discover a ledge behind it, and a drop to the abyss. Fortunately for them, there seemed to be a cave behind the hill, and so the quickly shuffled in, and watched with horror as scores of the spiders chasing after them fell off the hill and straight to their doom.

Anya and Alex moved back a few steps, before realizing that the what they though was a cave, was actually nothing more than a tunnel, and they were not alone as almost a dozen other contestants were hiding there. But based on the fact that there's a tunnel behind them, it stands to reason that there would be more fighters deeper within the cave. But at that moment two spiders climbed over the ledge, and shot towards Anya and Alex.

Anya reacted on time, sweeping her scythe from left to right and squashing both spiders against the wall, leaving Alex ample time to step forward and slice his swords through the skull of a third spider. It was obvious that this place was not safe, and that they might need to go a little deeper into the tunnel.

Alex and Anya turned around only to discover that the people they had met had already ran away into the tunnel, leaving them behind as bait and to fight the spiders alone. Anya was livid, but Alex couldn't really blame them. Until they arrived here, be was sure that this was a secure and hidden location, but as it stands there was no time to feel sorry, lives were on the line.

So with that knowledge in mind Alex and Anya went into the tunnel, moving with haste as they heard the sounds of more spiders discovering the tunnel. Alex realized that the tunnel was a little bit narrow, so at most only one of those spiders could get through at a time. For Alex that was good news, because at the very least that means that they would not be swarmed by the monsters.

However when they got to the end of the tunnel the sight that greeted them was not one they expected. There were hundreds of contestants here, how they got in, Alex didn't know. But the crazy thing was that they were all fighting each other, and all for a ruby the size of a head that seemed to be glowing with a peculiar flame. But it was not just fighting to possess the ruby, Alex could feel that same rage, and anger and bloodlust that has been plaguing him for a while.

And it was a hundred times stronger in here than it was outside. It would take a genius to realize that the reason everyone has been so crazy, was because their rage and bloodlust was being induced by that ruby. And somehow it had drawn hundreds of people here, and turned everything in one big and massive free for all brawl, a brawl that as of these moment, Anya and Alex were invariably swept in, also becoming prisoners of their own rage.