"What the—?" Marcus blurted out in shock.
The moment his hand clasped Reid’s, Berserker’s Wrath activated, the engravings on his body coming to life.
But something was different this time.
Normally, the ability would push him toward rage, flooding his mind with an uncontrollable urge to fight. This time, however, it was calm—as if the raging storm had been subdued into a steady flame.
"What’s happening?" Reid was equally confused.
[It seems you’re stabilizing his core?] Even Evo sounded unsure of what was happening [I think your friend got awakened and has formed a core]
"A core?" Reid asked in surprise.
[Yes, but unlike the core you form when using Synergize, or even the one your mother formed when she awakened, his isn’t merged with a Forged-Beast,] Evo clarified. [Whatever he’s merged with seems to be asleep.]
Marcus felt power flowing through him. It might’ve been his imagination but he felt a lot stronger in his ’base’ form, almost as if he was breaking past Gold rank.
Reid narrowed his eyes, focusing on the glowing engravings. "Evo, you said something’s asleep inside him? What does that mean?"
[It means that whatever granted him this power isn’t fully conscious yet. Its will has been constantly corroding him, trying to force him into losing control,] Evo explained. [But your presence seems to be stabilizing it—almost like... a catalyst.]
Reid frowned. "Why me?"
[No idea,] Evo admitted. [But if I had to guess, it’s connected to whatever force gave him this ability in the first place. There might have been a reason connected to you.]
"You good?" Reid sighed and asked, seeing how lost in thought Marcus was.
"Yeah," Marcus muttered as he pulled Reid up.
"What’s up with the tattoos?" He asked again, the nausea caused by his low soul power was now gone "I don’t think I’ve seen them before."
"Well, they’re not exactly —" before he could complete what he wanted to say, a loud crash interrupted.
The team immediately turned towards the sound, alert, only to drop their guards when they saw the cause.
"Groan!" Owen let out as he got off the ground and started dusting himself off.
"Oh, you’re back?" Owen said, stretching as he noticed the team gathered.
Unbeknownst to him, Ethan and the others had deliberately chosen not to wake him when they regrouped, letting him sleep peacefully up in a tree.
Now, he blinked groggily, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he took in the assembled group.
"What’d I miss?" He asked as he shook the sleep off.
"Everything," Lisa answered, her eyes twitching. Their supposed leader had been napping while they handled the real work.
Owen yawned and stretched again, entirely unbothered. "Well, you handled it without me didn’t you?"
Lisa’s eye twitched harder. "That’s not the point, you could’ve tried searching for us after we got teleported away."
"Well I did, I looked around and you all were missing," Owen admitted with a shrug "figured you’d all make it back eventually, so I found a nice tree and took a nap."
Silence.
Lisa’s fists clenched. "You—you absolute—"
"I mean, think about it," Owen continued, with a yawn "you all got teleported in a forest that’s the size of two cities, running around like a headless chicken wouldn’t have helped, so I conserved my energy."
"Why does his lazy logic make so much sense?" Marcus whispered to Reid who just shrugged.
He was tired enough as it was, so he had no energy to deal with this.
With a weary sigh, Reid walked over to one of the logs near the campfire and took a seat, rubbing his temples. Lisa also just gave up and joined him on the logs.
Above the flames was a huge pot with something boiling inside.
"What’s cooking?" Reid asked.
"I’m making some soup" Ethan was the one who replied, causing Reid to look at him in surprise.
"Yep, that was my reaction too" Clara said and also took a seat on another log.
"Then why’re we using camp fire to cook?" Reid asked again. He was sure one of them packed a portable cooker.
"Well, Clara insisted on an authentic camping feel" Ethan answered.
"Was that necessary?" Reid raised a brow, "I feel like a portable cooker would work a lot faster."
Clara grinnen "Of course! You gotta embrace the experience, Reid. What’s the point of an adventure if you don’t get a little rustic?"
Ethan stirred the pot and took a quick sniff. "Alright, it should be done soon. Hope you guys like rabbit, mushroom and wild herb soup, ’cause that’s what we’ve got."
Marcus frowned. "Are you sure those mushrooms aren’t poisonous?"
Ethan smirked. "Positive. I ran a scan on them, no toxins detected."
He proceeded to take out some bowls from his inventory, serving the soup in them.
Owen took a seat as he accepted a bowl from Ethan "anyway, since we’re all here now, we should probably figure out what’s next."
"Now he wants to strategize," Lisa grumbled under her breath.
Clara chuckled, taking a bowl of soup from Ethan "we should go over what happened to everyone. Getting randomly teleported wasn’t exactly fun."
"Yeah" Reid agreed and turned to Marcus "But first, let’s start with Marcus’ new tattoos."
Marcus slowly sighed before explaining "they appeared when I died."
Silence fell over the group. No one else, apart from Clara, knew what had happened since they had been teleported together.
"...You what?" Lisa was the first to break it, her voice sharp with disbelief.
Marcus exhaled through his nose "Yeah. I died. Or at least, I think I did."
Reid’s expression darkened. "Start from the beginning."
"Clara and I faced one of those things in the video feed we saw during the briefing" he started "it was a lot stronger than we thought."
"At first we thought we could take it," Marcus sighed "but we soon discovered that all our attacks were useless against it."
His fingers unconsciously clenched around the bowl as he continued. "It moved so fast I barely saw it. One second, I was standing, and the next... its claw was through my chest."
Silence fell over the group. The crackling fire was the only sound, the weight of his words settling in.