Guilty Crown: ROB's Wheel c68

After calming Inori down, Alex summoned his blades.

“Now, let's practise.”

The younger pinkette nodded at him.

“Summon your hand blades.”

Without saying anything, Inori summoned her crystalline blades.

“What I suggest doing is creating specific fighting patterns. Even when a person is mad and proceeds to swing around most of the time, those ‘random’ swings are not THAT random.

It's more like instinctual self-defence to protect vital body areas.”

He proceeded to show it to her.

Right swing, left swing, right stab, pull back.

“As you can see, I use my legs as well. What I showed you is basic. Now watch this—”

Once again, Alex moved, but this time, Inori’s eyes widened slightly as she noticed something else.

The way he moved was more like what she saw on the television!

“...What is that?”

“Hmm? What is what?”

“The way you move reminds me of what I saw on the television. It's like moving according to the music!”

“Oh, that's it's dancing.”

“...Dancing?”

“Now that you mentioned it.” Julis chipped in as well. She had a slight smile on her lips. She recalled all the time she saw him do combination swings. It was almost like dancing.

“Because of lightning enhancement, my body demands to move more than necessary. Discharge excess lightning into the air.

Creating static.” He motioned to the air around him. There were indeed some sparks there.

“This enchants my performance even further as lightning flows faster in this area. Making me faster and faster.”

“...Hnn…” Inori aimlessly nodded as she tried to copy more of Alex’s moves.

Seeing this, Alex proceeded to get to the main point of this.

“Since you are interested, let me show you what is a ‘Kata’.”

“...’Kata’?”

The girl repeated his words and moved her head to the side.

“Yes. In simple terms, it's fighting moves and stances. In a sense, it's dancing meant for fighting. If you master this, you will know how to dance AND fight.”

She immediately stopped copying him and instead waited for his instructions.

“Two points you must be aware of is to make yourself look like a smaller target, and your swings need to reach your enemy. It's something like this.”

Alex stood slightly sideways and summoned his blades once again.

This time around, he stabbed several times before spinning sideways and lowering himself before swinging from a lower angle.

“Making yourself slower could be either showing half of your body or getting lower so your opponents’ hands would miss.”

Julis, who watched this, could only grimace. He plans to turn this girl into some sort of angel of death, killing enemies with the virus while dancing her way—and singing.

She doesn't know how she should feel about that.

The Pink Princess didn't even realise that this was precisely what happened in the original show. Only it was Mana who did the dancing and singing while almost ending life on the entire planet.

~~~

After practising some more, the group returned to their new flat. Once they finished the evening snacks, everyone went to sleep.

While Inori was asleep, Alex and Julis returned to their dungeon diving.

“You know, I do wonder if anything changed here.” The pinkette asked him as she looked around.

“I doubt anything has changed. The only thing that could change is the number of enemies depending on our levels.” Alex said that while stretching out.

He then summoned his phone and went to the card deck.

Selecting a blue card, he made it manifest.

Appearing above the phone, Alex grabbed it and focused his gaze on it.

The card shattered and merged with him.

“I was wondering where this card went. You did say that you got another Sacred Gear.”

“Yep. I was waiting for the next training session.” Closing his eyes for a second, he focused, and a bunch of blades popped around him. They all were extremely basic looking and with different sizes.

“... That's quite a broken power,” Julis commented with wide eyes.

He made swords just pop out from the ground!

“The best part is that these weapons are Holy. In other words, lethal to devils.”

“Oh…”

“And they can hold secondary traits, too. Like fire, lightning, water.”

“But?” She can sense an incoming ‘but’.

“My nature, since I have lightning, all of these have built-in Lightning as a trait from the beginning,” Alex said as he pulled out the sword from the ground.

“Not bad, that makes the baseline three elements if you want. Not many weapons have such a thing.” Albion commented as he looked around the swords.

“But then again, you plan to use these as ammo for the bow instead like proper swords.”

“True.”

As Alex confirmed it, he summoned his Starling Blue in Balance Breaker form and then started to make an arrow from a sword.

Mana, like lightning, crackled around Alex’s free hand. What he created was more like a drill than a sword.

He then placed it on the bow and pulled the bow string. Blue energy surrounded the arrow as the arrow shape expanded and became more linear.

Then, with a casual release, the arrow rushed at his target tree. There was a boom the moment the arrow left the bow. Such force signified the sheer force of the arrow.

This was an arrow from two Sacred Gears working together!

The moment the arrow slammed into the three, it created a massive crater in the tree trunk. The force was not enough to slice through it.

As the arrow shattered, it couldn't hold together.

When Alex saw this, he got an idea for future arrows.

Like, for example, shatter shot, or like heat-seeking shatter shot?

He could quickly collect all the tickets! And unlock some more worlds to work in.

Well, it depends on the gatcha gods.

“Impressive, but it feels like you have a bone to pick with that tree.” Julis jokes, seeing that only that tree was receiving punishment, nothing more.

“I intend to cut it down, not in the ordinary sense but with my powers as practice. This bow and sword mix makes it close.” As Alex said that, he continued to practise as he created another sword arrow and then proceeded to shoot.

This time, the arrow midway shattered and turned into several smaller arrows, creating a bunch of smaller craters in the tree trunk.

“I see. In that case, I am going to read some stuff on magic. While those devils are annoying, they have– knowledge.”

“Sure.”

As Julis went to read, Albion decided to coach his host. He might know something about utilising the ideas his host wants to work with.

~~~

“Is it just me, or are there fewer wolves now?” Julis noticed something when they saw the first pack of wolves.

Alex snorted, seeing this.

“Of course. The dungeon read my thoughts.” The teen now was confident that the dungeon was petty, too! It's not just sadistic but petty as well!

“Wait, I thought it adjusted because of our powers!” Julis exclaimed with a frown.

“It is. When I got my lightning, I could climb trees and travel using them. Same with your fire. The dungeon’s forest area was immune to fire.

When you joined, the amount of beasts joined too. Now that I want to grind for tickets, the dungeon decided to lower the enemies because it wants us to focus on the bosses.” Alex explained his theory.

“That's just—”

The girl almost huffed but then just sighed.

“Whatever, let's just start the grind.”

With a nod, Alex summoned his bow and created a sword arrow. With a casual release, the arrow split into seven pieces and nailed the not-suspecting wolves on the forest floor.

“Nice. That's what I call efficiency.”

“Yeah.”

And what he got was six common tickets and one uncommon. This grind will take him ages.

After dealing with this pack, they proceeded with travelling.

They decided to just travel the length of the forest to the other side.

With East and South done, they must deal with the West and North. So that's what they are doing.

As Alex suspected, the number of enemies has dropped to six regular wolves and one leader alpha.

This situation reminds him of his early dives. Not that he remembers exact numbers how it was at the beginning. It was long ago.

A while later, they saw the canopy of the massive tree. They have approached the centre of the map.

The group went to see the tree trunk.

“Check it out.” Julis pointed at the place, which looks like a main arena next to a tree.

“The ground is glowing.”

“It appears that the ground is like an indicator for your kills. It shows that the Rhino and the fish are dead.” Albion floated up and inspected the image from a higher vantage point.

“This means we need to kill the boar and the snake for it to fully ‘awaken’.” Alex nodded at what his dragon partner said.

“And how do you suggest we take on the Snake in the ‘river’?” Julis’ air quotes the word ‘river’. In her opinion, it was more like a lake or a small ocean than a river. Oh, and it's full of small car-sized piranhas.

“I can fly, but knowing this place and how it works, my fire attacks will be useless to it,” Julis said with an eye roll. Since she had an advantage over Rhino, who was in the South, the North would most likely have a beast that Alex would have an advantage over.

“Yeah, I suppose we need to see if I can get the ability to walk on water or fly.”

“True, so for now, let's focus on the boar in the West and then start plotting the snake’s demise.” The girl suggested her plan.

“Fair enough. Then let's continue going West.”

~~~

It took over a month to reach the mountain range where the trees end, and the mountain which reaches the clouds start.

“...Amazing. It's like the Alps but—bigger!” Julis exclaimed with wide eyes.

“Yeah. I do wonder if there are any sort of monsters around this place.” Alex commented as he looked at his phone.

He only got 120 common tickets from the hunts and 20 uncommon tickets.

This amount, mixed with the one he had before, means he has 136 common tickets altogether and just 20 uncommon ones.

However, he got some drops, which could increase the amount of tickets he got.

But this is just it. Alex needs to kill the Calydonian Boar to get a rare ticket. He wonders what he could potentially gain from that kill.

The loot should be different from that of DxD-verse.

“We won't be climbing those, yes?” Julis brought him back from his thoughts.

“No, the Boar is sulking between the mountains and the trees.” The White Dragon Emperor explained to his girlfriend.

“Thank God! We don't have the gear to deal with that!”

“Yeah, knowing this place, it wouldn't be easy to climb those mountains anyway.” As Alex commented, they proceeded to look for the legendary Boar.

The creature was supposed to be created by Artemis, but then again, this thing was probably stolen from her by the dungeon's creator.

Who knows how it works? Could it potentially spawn again?

Maybe after he kills the main floor boss and then? That could be the case.

After walking for several hours, the pair could feel it.

“...Did you feel that?”

“Yes. That thing is close.”

“The earth is shaking just from that thing walking!” Julis commented on what she was experiencing.

“Yeah, and you saw what the tusk of that thing could do.” Alex reminded her of the scar he used to have on his body.

Sure enough, the group noticed a massive brown pig with large tusks; the tusks had carvings on them. The whole thing looks hand-tailored to be this deadly.

“That’s one big pig. Haven't seen such a big pig for a while!” Albion commented as if thinking how he would eat this thing.

*ROAR*