Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

The Final Countdown

An underground dweller, living beneath multiple layers of the Forest of Death, unearthed itself. It was a foul looking being, eyeless, covered in hair loosely, each one as thick as a thorn on an echidna's back. Its flesh looked as relatively white and fleshy but it was just a matter of deceitful appearances as the being lived well below the rocky layers of underground making its fleshy bits as hard as diamond themselves. Its gapping mouth was covered with round rows of teeth, each fang was the size of a banana and capable of rotating a full 180 if it ever needed to grind something tough or replace a missing row of teeth.

The dweller carefully flipped its exposed upper half around, waggling like a surfaced whale but only because the soft air pressure on the surface felt odd for the eyeless abomination. It waggled for a while more, trying to understand why it wasn't grinding any rocks or encountered trouble moving forward, why it sensed no vibrations on the ground of smaller underground insects or animals as it rarely hunted surface dwellers.

"Idol: Applegate Crescent" an energetic male voice yelled out as a concentrated wave of slicing gusts bent in a crescent shape which appeared highly unnatural considering the angle of turning and an odd direction which the blast was fired from. The pressure of the windblast blew the underground dweller's upper body completely off before the cutting winds tore it to small shreds.

"That was unnecessary", a brown haired boy with blue facial markings, resembling feathers of a peacock remarked. Judging from his face it did not appear like he lamented the death of the grotesque abomination however his tone did suggest distaste for his teammate's actions.

"I think Gentib did us all a favor, I mean look at how ugly that thing is", a red-haired girl remarked pointing at the still tingling lower body that was so rock hard that the upper half being blown off forced it to forcefully expel its inner body like a tube of toothpaste.

"I mean, it could've been dangerous, it looked dangerous", the young man, previously called Gentib, shrugged before stroking his spiky brown hair making them spike up even more than they've already have been. "And it's not ugly, Relta, I'm sure to this creature's mother it was the most beautiful thing in the world. There are no useless things in this world, they all have a purpose and all are beautiful in their own way. I was merely worried it may be dangerous to us".

The third member of Team Scuti sighed as the deceased underground abomination disappeared from their vision completely and got swallowed in darkness. It was inevitable that soon some massive pincer wearing insectoid will snap the remains in half before sucking them dry, that was just how dangerous and cruel this whole forest was. The unholy economy of energy where life was worth only as much as how much energy would one have wasted in extinguishing it.

"Sometimes I am thankful that I was given the burden that I bare and not you, Gentib", the third boy with the facial markings sighed. "One positive of slowly dying with each passing second of combat is that you pick your fights very carefully and weigh every existence against that of your own".

"You know, Gorm, for a guy who is slowly being killed by his fighting style, you really picked the wrong profession", Gentib looked at his friend with some worry in his eyes.

"No one forced me to accept the Sky Gift, I had that stone put inside me because that was the only thing that made me special. I wanted to be a hero, to make my life mean something and, unlike you, I am not some sort of a talent who can master enough techniques for multiple personas or like Relta who has an abnormally large chakra level for her age. Hosting a chunk of radioactive rocks inside my body was the only way I could fight alongside the likes of you", Gorm replied with a pain ridden expression as his teammates sadly looked at each other before looking on ahead.