The Earth After Rebirth

The mountain was truly a big one. Hubris wasn't the one failing, his speed was too fast but the mountain was simply too great. As much as he covered more ground, Kiro felt like they were, at most, running in circles.

"Hubris, don't exhaust yourself, we don't know what we will run into next."

But that only fuelled his desire to get to where Kiro wanted to go. He didn't slow down, instead he picked up speed. Kiro shook his head at his unbelievable stubbornness.

They heard a deafening roar that stopped Hubris on his tracks. He looked around to see what it was, and one by one, the rocks started getting up.

They were well camouflaged. They had the same colour as the mountain they resided in, which was a great way to get unsuspecting travellers. Kiro and Hubris had already been surrounded by the time they noticed.

Ding!

[You've encountered a pride of stone lions. They always hunt in packs, they set traps for the unsuspecting and devour them before they've come out of their state of shock.

Stone Lion

Level 35

HP 5000-15000]

Kiro immediately jumped and landed at the back of Hubris. They were surrounded, he had no time to be coddled by his mount this time.

"Well, Hubris, you will be my Hiro."

"Master? I don't understand."

"We will have to fight back to back this time."

"I can take them by myself."

Kiro ignored his very arrogant statement. There were more stone lions than he could handle alone, besides, he was here to level up, he couldn't let Hubris do all the work.

The lions didn't attack immediately, they kept circling the duo while occasionally letting out frightening roars. They clearly had all the patience in the world, they also quite liked inciting fear before devouring their preys.

But they had met their match, as neither of the two showed any fear in their eyes. Instead their eyes were calm, cautious and waiting.

One grew impatient and lunged at Kiro, he swerved and slashed it with Ryu. That's when he noticed that, they weren't just called stone lions, they were actually made out of stone. All long, he thought it was just a lion with white fur.

Hubris let out a low growl, the pride was very sceptical attacking him. They concluded the weak link was Kiro, that's why one attacked him directly. But they were soon disappointed when one of their kin was sent to an early grave.

That didn't deter them from attacking. Two jumped from opposite directions, one had it's maw wide open, while the other trusted it's claws more. When they were close by a hair's breadth, Kiro activated vibrations which stunted them midair.

His lightning already activated, but he was too slow, Hubris had already reached them with his claws, shuttering them completely with just a fistful coated with hellfire.

"Quit stealing my kills!"

Hubris simply gave him an apologetic look, one that said 'you snooze you lose.' He didn't think these monsters were worthy for his master to fight them.

For Kiro, it was a strange sight seeing stones bleed a red, seemingly warm liquid. The more they killed, the more savage and defiant they became. Their pride was as big as they were.

Hubris pounced from stone lion to another, some were so weak that he was able to cave their skulls in, with just his paws upon landing on their heads.

Kiro and Ryu weren't losing either, he made kebabs out of a lot of them. They never stopped coming.

Lunging at him with it's maw wide open, Kiro could've sworn it was a black hole in there. It looked dark and like a bottomless pit. They weren't that big, but he was sure if he could be swallowed, he'd be lost in there forever.

He swerved to the left to avoid getting lost in a black hole and planted Ryu right in its stomach, he savagedly caused an incision that left its stomach free falling, completely detaching itself from its owner.

The back-to-back strategy wasn't working with Hubris because he would steal his kills, so he gave up fighting with him like that.

Activating blink, he flew to the nearest one and decapitated it with his lightning coated hand. It's head flew up into the dark sky and got lost in the stars.

"Heh, that's new," he said amused.

He used his staff as a crutch, to propel himself upward and met another stone lion that was attempting to attack Hubris while his back was turned.

He used bending kick to completely destroy it, one side raced into the deepest parts of the abyss, while another fell on the mountain floor with a thud.

He activated whirlwind, which caused a gale of wind that manged to uplift his enemies, with no ground to stand they started to panic.

Hubris didn't let the chance slip away, as he pounced from one stone lion to another, gutting them as he went. He unleashed fire balls when he realised he wouldn't be fast enough for all of them.

The more they fought together, the more in sync they became and the more they competed amongst themselves, neither of them wanted to lose to the other, so they stole each others kills.

Theirs wasn't a relationship of a servant and master, although Hubris would always treat Kiro with that much respect, but he also liked how casual it was most times. He witnessed first hand how caring his master was, despite having a heavy heart.

Kiro would speed to the ones Hubris attacked but couldn't kill in a single attack and finish them off. Hubris would do the same when he activated vibrations, he couldn't be at all the places at once, so he took advantage of that.

Ding!

[Congratulations, you've defeated a pride of stone lions. You receive 100k EXPs and 20k coins.]

Kiro noticed the significant drop in the coin giving by the system and wondered if the patch was closer than he thought.

"System, who killed more stone lions, him or me?" Kiro asked, lying on the mountain floor breathing heavily.

[...]

"Come on, be our referee, not like you have anywhere to be."

[This round goes to Hubris.]

"Sh*t."