A Story of Evil

Chapter 44: The Testing

"In position Sol."

"Same here, just show up and I'll handle the rest."

"Are you sure about this? I mean, I do have better accuracy compared to you."

"Just trust me okay?"

"Fiiine."

The two remaining Void titans used Pandora's Box to create the same map that would be used during the culling. They've been doing it ever since they reconciled and, were rapidly showing results. They began by testing out their speed, trying various hiding places and, looking for possible areas to trap their enemies.

After this they began fighting the monsters that would be found in the maps. With Sol actually doubling the number of monsters just to give them more of a challenge.

[Remember, you can only use your skills for short bursts of time. You don't have the proper mana veins yet.]

It was Pandora giving them the instructions directly. Since it was her power which made the map creation possible, it was only natural that she could use some sort of telepathy on them.

"It's not like I know my powers anyway." Alice said waiting for King Jubilee to come back and analyze her just so they could see the whole skill set.

"You can whine about that later; those things are catching up to you." Sol was using the scope of his sniper rifle. Giving the orders from an elevated area.

"Sure thing boy genius."

Sol activated [Spatial Awareness] right off the bat. The boy couldn't use it for even five seconds, only casting the ability to come up with a plan against the monsters which Alice faced. It was ten Nature Direwolves, all having a superior level of physical attack compared to the normal direwolves.

The beasts found no difficulty catching up to Alice yet, as soon as they did, the first bullet was finally fired. It went straight through the cranium of one direwolf, giving Alice a much-needed space to evade the other incoming attacks.

She hid behind the body of the collapsing monster and, as soon as she was momentarily out of the other direwolves' vision, she shifted her weight, leaping back at the monsters and shooting at point blank range.

Seven more direwolves followed but they weren't any match. Alice released smokescreens, hindering the vision of the wolves and, with her cloak, they weren't able to sniff her out. She began running outside the range of the smokescreen. On the spaces between her fingers were ten cylindrical grenades.

Just as Sol said, Alice's feather-like steps were too light to make any noise. Adding it up with the howling of the direwolves, her steps have become completely inaudible.

"They really can't hear me huh." She said, finally reaching the end of the smokescreen and, removing all of the safety pins on the grenades throwing them within the smokescreen.

Three more seconds passed before the explosions finally came. The smokescreen immediately dissipated, being replaced by black smoke, dust and direwolf flesh that inevitably got caught by the damage. Yet the fight was far from over as three wolves lunged out of the thick black smoke.

However, not a shred of fear could be seen on Alice's face. Instead she went into stance and, soon enough, the middle wolf got taken down. Sol successfully sniped once again, leaving a gap in the middle where Alice sprinted through. She then stabbed both blades of her weapons on one monster, making it thrash its body around while, the last one was also snipped down as soon as it landed to the ground.

"Nice try." Alice commented, pulling the triggers of her gunblade and killing the last direwolf.

[All the monsters in the area have been eliminated. Pandora's Box will now reset.]

"Not too shabby." Sol said, walking towards Alice as the room quickly went back to a pure white box.

"Yeah you're not so bad yourself." Alice said, offering a high five which Sol took.

"How did you use your powers though?"

"Oh it was just momentary. I only activated it for five seconds at the beginning of the fight."

"What? Then how about the two wolves you killed in the end?"

"It's all thanks to prediction Alice. With how fast they were coming at you, there was no way that they weren't going for a melee attack. I just moved my aim to where they'd be in a few more seconds and fired there."

"You just have to be that smart huh?" Alice said in a grumpy tone.

"Are you jealous?"

"Want me to kill you?"

"It's just a joke. Take it easy."

The two were slowly preparing themselves for the fight that was to come. Solomon wasn't on edge too much because, he knew they had a strong chance of winning. In fact, he knew that they would win.

For the boy, it didn't matter what domain they faced. It didn't matter what power they possessed. It didn't matter what equipment they would bring. There would always be a way out of the situation. And that was what he was preparing for. Speeding up his decision making and situation analysis in order to optimize his and Alice's movements.

A lot of lives were hanging on that victory after all. Aside from Alice's life, Cain, Eve, and miss Olivia's lives were also at stake. Arthur was still alive after all and, Sol knew from the days that passed that, King Jubilee will not hesitate releasing him should the boy fail in any way.

"We only have two days before the fight." Alice was staring at the ceiling, with a bottle of water on her other hand.

"Yeah, frankly this week has been nothing but surprises for us but, disregarding all the craziness, I'm glad we have this extra boost." Sol looked at his hand, clenching it like he was holding on to his own fate.

"It isn't much though. We still can't use it properly. If we could, I'd just dive in the middle of every titan camp and slaughter them by myself."

"Aren't you getting a bit arrogant?" Sol said with a grin on his face.

"How is this arrogant? Didn't we both say we'd win in the Culling even when didn't have our powers yet?":

"Yeah, that is true." At this the two of them laughed. Remembering their first conversation in the cafeteria.

The two were still thinking about the crazy and hellish week they spent within Pentagon. They thought of those that needed to be sacrificed along the way. As well as those that would be sacrificed during the Culling itself.

The match will go on for a whole month at best. Sometimes it drags on for two whole months but, there were provisions made in order to stop these from recurring. Within this time period, the two were going to murder more people for the sake of their goals. Alice couldn't care less of course. But as for Sol, he never actually visualized it himself. Killing another person with his own hands and, this proved to be his greatest weakness.

"Should we try another round?" The boy suggested after resting for ten whole minutes.

"Yeah, oh and we'll add more direwolves, it's not challenging enough." Alice mentioned, stretching her legs to warm them up.

"You're the boss." Sol mentioned, taking his weapon and preparing for the fight.