Giant Scorpion (Part 2)

Hearing what Jerrod was saying, Grant was pleasantly surprised. It seemed that his expectations had been too cynical. If the leader was willing to fight and possibly die just to give enough time to the rest of the survivors to flee, then it was unlikely that he was abusing his power.

Grant decided that since they had proven that they weren't total scumbags, he might as well provide them with his assistance. After he gave Ally a cursory pat on the back to get her attention, he gave her a small smile before he took a step forward, and jumped off the wall. Ally had complete faith in Grant after seeing how he had trained her kids into such strong fighters, so she didn't try to stop him before he jumped.

When he landed at the base of the wall, he immediately started sprinting towards the scorpion. Jerrod was going to say something to Grant in order to stop him from doing anything reckless, but before the words could even leave his mouth, Grant had already vanished from the spot and was in front of the scorpion.

Jerrod's jaw dropped to the ground when he realized that Grant moved literally half a mile in a fraction of a second. He had assumed that Grant was strong because he had come to the settlement alone and he was carrying that massive sword on his back, but he hadn't expected this level of strength. He hadn't even seen him fight yet and already he was looking at Grant like he was Ares, the god of war, from ancient Greece.

Meanwhile, Grant had arrived in front of the scorpion. At first, the three people fighting the scorpion hadn't noticed him, but when he unleashed his Dragon's Roar skill and got ready to engage the monster, they all felt lighter and stronger which made them look around in curiosity, which led them to finally notice Grant's presence.

They were all surprised for two reasons, who the hell was this guy and how the hell did he get her so fast? They would periodically glance back to at the wall when they had a brief moment to see if the wall had been cleared yet. Because if the wall had been cleared, that meant that the evacuation process had begun.

The second reason they were surprised, is because they suddenly felt stronger. They had never experienced anything like this so it caught them completely by surprise.

Seeing the looks on their faces, Grant didn't bother to introduce himself, all he said was, "It's a skill of mine. Don't zone out. Focus on the enemy or you will die."

After hearing what he said, the three looked at him like he was some foreigner who was speaking a different language.

Scott was the first one to react, "I don't know who you are or why you are here, young man. But if you can provide us with assistance I would be grateful!"

"Assistance? You're mistaken. I am more than enough to kill this oversized monstrosity. I only used my skill to lower its stats to make it easier to kill. A side effect of me using the skill for that purpose, was that your stats got boosted since you're considered allies, for some reason."

Grant wasn't being arrogant because he thought he was better than these people, although he was. The real reason was he wanted to give them one last little test to see how they would react. If some overly arrogant individual appeared out of nowhere and started talking down to them, how would they react? That was the question he was trying to get answered.

Surprisingly, none of them seemed to react negatively to his words. Maybe because of the skill he had used, maybe because he appeared out of nowhere almost like he had teleported there, or maybe they genuinely did not have huge ego's that could easily be offended.

"If you are capable of bringing this scorpion down, we would be extremely grateful. If it's for the weak and helpless behind us, we are more than happy to lay our lives on the line."

Grant was starting to dislike these people, not because they were evil or something, but because they seemed to be too nice! It almost felt like some nefarious plot was at work to confound and confuse him.

After what happened with Ryan, he had just assumed that people would allow their newfound strength to influence them in negative ways. But it appeared to be the complete opposite for these people.

Grant just shook his head to clear away all the useless thoughts. He could think more on that later.

With his mind clear and ready for a fight, Grant told the other three to back away so that they would be out of range of the poison attacks. Once he was sure that they were clear of danger and wouldn't interfere with him, he launched himself toward the scorpion.

While he was charging forward, the scorpion launched an attack at a downward angle using it's tail, clearly trying to end the fight quickly, but Grant threw on the breaks and stopped right next to where the tail impacted the ground and sliced clean through the tail before it could be retracted.

The scorpion immediately started thrashing about, squealing like a pig, before it gathered itself and tried to snap at Grant with it's claws. Grant easily dodged the attacks by side stepping or ducking under the claws.

As he dodged the attacks, Grant slowly approached the area where the scorpions eyes and mouth were.

He wasn't moving slowly because he had too, he was moving slowly because this was his first real chance to put to test all of the things that Skit and him had trained on.

Reaction speed, anticipating enemy attacks, feints, and so on.

Clearly the scorpion hadn't been Enlightened Tier for long so it wasn't that strong, and without its tail it couldn't launch poison attacks so basically all threats had been neutralized and he could do all the "testing" he wanted.

From the perspective of Scott, Carly, and Toby though, it looked like Grant was fighting an extremely difficult fight. They were completely caught off guard with how easily he had managed to cut off the end of the scorpions tail but from that moment onward, all Grant seemed to be able to do was dodge the scorpions attacks. He didn't look to be making any significant progress in actually killing the beast.

They even started discussing between each other if they should help out or not.

However, before they could move to assist Grant, two people landed next to them.

"You don't need to help him. He is just fine. I assume the only thing that posed a threat was the tail since it was the first thing he neutralized."

"Yeah, Mr Carrot... although we're not matching anymore... looks like he's actually having a pretty good time!"

Richard and Robin just stood their with stars in their eyes, gazing at Grant's movements with reverence. Since they were stronger than the three next to them and had seen Grant fight before, they could easily tell that Grant, although he may not be stronger stat wise, his movements were far sharper and more refined than they had been before.

Robin was a little sad that Grant wasn't wearing his track suit anymore, but she knew that he had probably out-leveled it's usefulness and rolled better armor.

Seeing that the two new arrivals seemed to know Grant, they decided to probe a little further, "You two know that guy? Why are you so confident in him? He certainly appears to be strong, but he looks like he's struggling?"

Richard looked at Toby like he was the dumbest person he had ever met in his life, almost like the question was an insult to everything he held dear.

"Yes, we know him. You want to know why we are so confident in him? Well let me ask you a question first. Do you acknowledge that me and my sister are the strongest people you've met to date?"

"I will agree that you two are certainly the strongest people we have met. But what does that have to do with anything?"

Richard just laughed at his question before continuing, "Well, our strength and everything we know about The Path and fighting monsters, was taught to us by him. He's the reason we're alive and stand before you now."

And almost as if they had preplanned it, the moment Richard stopped talking, a large squeal was heard before a loud thud rang throughout the area.

When the group of, now five individuals, looked back towards the scorpion, Grant was already pulling his sword from its head. He was doing it with the most casual movements ever, as if it was a simple task to end the life of the scorpion.

When he turned around, he didn't look the least bit exhausted and instead lit up when he saw the new additions to the group.

"Richard and Mini Carrot!"