413 The Mana Lord Induction Ceremony!
"Who is in there?"
Once this question was asked, the temperature seemed to drop rapidly to a freezing level as the 2 Mana Lords felt the chill.
Despite praying against this fervently in their hearts, Sebastian and his 2 companions felt their mood falling on hearing this. Just this question alone already busted them, and being busted in enemy territory like this was definitely bad news.
"What to do…" Sebastian was already sweating in his imagination.
Despite the brief chill that bombarded their senses, on getting no response despite feeling the 3 energy signals more than ever now, the 2 Mana Lords did not give a damn as their massive tentacles waved, enabling them to swim.
In a few seconds, they were already before the massive leaf, then they inclined their bodies in a way to let their head look inside it.
While the pair of eyes of these 2 predators was moving closer, Sebastian's brain operated with massive speed at an extremely high frequency as he tried without much success to solve this problem.
Through his senses, he already discovered that both of these Mana Lords were orange tier predators, but their massive sizes sang a different song to him.
How can orange tier predators be so huge?
His disbelief at the situation was what prevented him from acting to eliminate them immediately. From the look on both Strong and Tungsten's eyes, they were also out of ideas and were waiting for him to make the first move.
Sebastian suddenly felt that he was under a lot of pressure. He concentrated even more to get a perfect idea, but only silly ideas filled his head.
In the end, a few nanoseconds before the massive Mana Lords looked, he made his move. "It's now or never".
[You have activated skill: Doppelganger and Invisibility!]
[You have created a doppelganger.]
[You have made 2 transformations.]
Blink!
The massive eyes of the Mana Lords finally looked inside the hole.
What they saw surprised them, instead of the 3 creatures that they expected to see inside here, they rather saw a baby Mana Lord towering at a size of 20 meters and 2 massive stones lying beside it.
Their eyes widened on seeing this baby. There was nothing wrong with him, he was completely fine, only his size was unrealistic.
The 2 Mana Lords erupted laughing the next moment.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt"Nice try intruder, but our babies start life at approximately 25 meters tall from head to tail, so you trying to imitate us is kind of cool but stupid nonetheless".
"Also, those 2 massive stones, their size feels kinda off".
"Besides, stones in Manapedia do not contain life. Even if I shut all my senses, I would still be able to detect the life in them from miles away".
"So, decide between yourselves to come out or we'll do it".
"…"
"Activate Plan B!"
[You have activated unique skill: Water Transmutation!]
[You have created a magic manifestation: Silenced Sniper Rifle!]
On hearing Sebastian's whisper, Strong and Tungsten erupted with power as the stones immediately shattered, turning them back to their original selves as they both pounced on the 2 Mana Lords.
Sebastian's plan B was since keeping themselves hidden would not work anymore, he would improvise and just capture his target from these 2.
Though orange tier Mana Lords didn't really make the cut in his opinion, he believed that with a little bit of planning and patience, he could make it right.
So his plan B was attacking the 2 Mana Lords, swiftly killing one of them while capturing the last one then finding how to get out of this world as soon as possible.
Through his sound control skill, he already relayed his plan to his 2 comrades.
This was the reason why they both attacked as soon as Sebastian attacked. Before their attacks could materialize fully though, one of the Mana Lords nonchalantly extended 3 tentacles forward and slammed them at them each.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
3 tentacle attacks, 3 slams, and both Strong and Tungsten's attacks were nullified, Sebastian's magic manifestation was dissolved back into pure mana, then the tentacles struck them unconscious with a second blow each.
Before Sebastian fell into unconsciousness, only one thought dominated his mind. "How are these 2 Red tier predators?"
Once the 3 sharks fell unconscious, the Mana Lord who attacked chuckled as he picked the 3 sharks with his tentacles before turning to swim away.
His friend followed as they discussed laughingly again.
"They thought they were clever, but that transformation trick, I have to confess that it was really clever of the Megalodon".
"I don't care about his petty tricks". The other Mana Lord chipped in. "All I am excited for is that these 3 present 3 other powerful visitors in the induction ceremony, they'll surely make it spicier and one of a kind".
"I can't wait to see their reaction on waking up, and their performance too".
"I think they're the 10th Great White Sharks, right?"
"I don't know".
…
3…, 2…, 1. Start!
"Go!" "Go!" "Go!"
"Unleash your speed, Magada, you can do it!"
"Show them who's boss, Merner!"
"Kill them with sheer speed, motherf*cking Meme!"
"Yeah…"
"Woah!"
Blink!
Sebastian's eyes regained consciousness due to all the background noise.
[You have activated skill: Mega Electroreceptors!]
Before his eyes could focus clearly, what his electroreceptors transmitted to him already left him alarmed as his tail fin flapped instinctively, enabling him to spring up from the metal platform where he was currently held.
[You have activated skill: Rupturing Sonic Ram!]
Sebastian instantly rushed at the heavy metal bars but only a dull sound was induced from the collision as the metal bars barely suffered a dent.
Sebastian was dumbfounded. "What metal is this?"
His lack of success at breaking out enabled him to rapidly comprehend his current circumstances, at least, he was intelligent enough to infer this.
Sebastian calmed down rapidly, trying to ignore all the background noise as he blasted out with his combined super sensing. This time, his focus was on looking for his 2 companions but he was disappointed the next moment.
"No Strong, no Tungsten…, Great!"
It took a bit of time and mental conditioning before Sebastian felt calm enough to ignore his current circumstances and observe his surroundings.
At this moment, he was in a metal cage, and besides his cage were dozens if not hundreds of similar metal cages that held different kinds of beasts that ranged from mighty Death Dragons to even mighty evolved Blue Tang fishes.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmThe sight of these Blue Tang fish prey turned predator horrified him.
The metal cages were so many that Sebastian could not observe them all from his position. He guessed that Strong and Tungsten were also in one of these cages, he hoped so since it negated the reality of them being dead already.
Sebastian didn't even have the luxury to think of what happened exactly again. All he guessed was that the 2 Mana Lords hid their real strength through a skill or a magic gadget, he had to admit that he was fooled.
After observing the cages around him, Sebastian finally observed where he currently was. He easily deduced that he was still in the world of the Mana Lords.
This was not only due to the numerous Mana Lords that were currently here at this moment, making noise at the top of their voices, but also due to the familiar giant trees that seemed to come straight out of a fantasy movie.
These trees gave Sebastian vibes of the magic bean tree in the famous Puss in Boots cartoon, and it left him feeling weird and melancholic.
"F*ck you Sebastian, focus!"
The place where his and the other metal cages were held seemed to be on top of a massive boulder that looked like a mountain.
Apart from this boulder, other floating boulders filled different parts of this region of this world. Some of them even moved like they were under the influence of a magic being and the Mana Lords mostly floated on top of them.
As for who they were cheering for, Sebastian already observed them long ago, they were a group of predators that were engaged in a contest.
The contestants mostly comprised of Mana Lords, but there were also predators from other species among them.
Sebastian was confused. "I think the Mana Lord was talking of one induction something, what does that have to do with me being kidnapped?"
Immediately after he asked this, he froze as he just remembered that there was a paper attached to the front of his cage. Feeling alarmed all of a sudden, he turned to read it, the words were written in red.
{Welcome to the Mana Lord Induction Ceremony.}
{The Induction Ceremony is an ancient competition that is aimed at strengthening young and promising predators.}
{There are 3 phases of the competition, the speed test, the strength test, and the acknowledgment test.}
{There are no limits to the number of contestants allowed to take part in the ceremony, and it is limited to only purple tier predators.}
{You are a guest competitor in the Induction Ceremony.}
[Your goal in the speed test is to make it into the top 500, if you fail, you die.}
{Goodluck, contestant!}
Once Sebastian read to the last line, his face turned purple as he turned to look into the distance where the first group of Mana Lords was already rapidly eating kilometers of space into the distance.
The words reverberated in his head. "If you fail, you die…"
"F*ck!"
[You have activated skill: Mega Dash!]