120 The Wasteland World - Inhabitants

Thanks to Daniel's enhanced brain, he was able to wake within minutes after being knocked unconscious.

When he woke up, he found himself tied to a thick tree branch. His head was hurting, and he was able to feel his pulse on the part of the head he had been hit on.

The tree branch on which he had been tied was being carried by two thin men, which carried him without showing a hint of fatigue.

"I hope that hit put some sense into your head.. You have to start watching your back.." Said Sewah from inside Daniel's head.

Daniel shook his head, almost as if trying to remove the dizziness from his body. He then responded "I didn't feel any attack.. Even with my surrounding awareness.."

"This is where things get interesting.. They took everything you have hehe.." Added Sewah while giggling.

After hearing Sewah's words, Daniel opened his eyes in shock. He immediately tried to touch his ring finger with his other hand, and around it, he found no rings. His swords had disappeared as well.

Daniel tried to look around as inconspicuously as possible.

He was being carried on a mountain road.

Ahead of the two men that were dragging his body, was only a large and muscular man.

Behind the two men, was a long line of people which possessed physical characteristics similar to the kid. Their skin was greyish in color, and their body was covered in black spots, which after seeing up close, Daniel confirmed them to be some sort of skin condition, and not any form of painting.

The large number of people in the back were dragging the carcasses of the big number of small-sized monsters they had killed, while sitting on the shoulders of the muscular man to the front, was the kid Daniel had tried to save.

It was at this moment that Daniel realized that he had meddled with a scripted hunting strategy.

As it was now, he was feeling very anxious. The ring which contained everything he owned, along with a the pocket dimension which contained hundreds of thousands of people, and all of his closest friends, had been taken away.

He quietly dangled from the branch, and waited for a chance to present itself.

This chance appeared about an hour later.. When a gigantic flying monster appeared in the air, and dived towards the group of hunters at full speed.

Daniel wasn't aware of this, but the hunters were prepared for this kind of situations, and had picked this mountain path because it had numerous hiding spot every hundred or two hundred meters, in which they could hide in case this happened.

The hunters dashed towards a well hidden cave, and entered it.

The flying monster landed directly on the entrance of the cave, and tried to stick its head in, in order to peck the hunters with its five meters long beak.. but the entrance of the cave was curved, so, the monster was only able to break a portion of the stone wall.

The pieces of rock detached from the stone wall and fell on the entrance, covering it completely, and causing the airborne monster to give up on the party of hunters and fly away.

Inside the cave, a few blades of light penetrate the deep darkness.

At the front of the group, facing the blocked entrance, was the muscular hunter which acted as the spearhead of the group of hunters.

He had let the little kid down from his shoulder, and approached the blocked entrance.

Then, he punched the large pile of rocks.

*BOOM*

As his fist touched the large pile of rocks, a loud crashing sound was heard.

A large amount of light penetrated into the dark cave, as the passage was opened once again.

The large and muscular man turned to look at the kid, but the moment he turned around, the kid was not there anymore.

Suddenly, he heard shouts coming from behind him.

The two men that were holding Daniel tied to a large branch, were now holding the branch alone, and right underneath, was a cut rope.

The man felt a shiver run down his spine. He dashed out of the cave, and looked around.

On a hill, just a couple dozen meters away from the cave entrance, Daniel was standing behind the kid with his hand flat against the boy's neck.

The large man tried to take a step towards him, but as Daniel saw the hint of a movement, he slashed his hand against a nearby boulder. The moment of the slash, his hand became light blue and extremely bright.

Even though a few meters distant, the boulder was cut cleanly in half.

With a visibly worried face, the muscular man looked at Daniel and said "T'ret rah h'rraji?"

Daniel was oblivious to what that sentence meant, but he didn't need to know the language to understand.

He pointed at his ring finger with his hand, and made a circular movement.

The signal was clear.. He wanted what was around his finger back.. Immediately.

His hand started to glow once again, as he put it nearback on the kid's neck once again.

"H'ar!" Shouted the man in slight panic. He then turned towards the group of hunters, and shouted what looked like a name "Kih'rha"

A twenty-five or so year old man approached the muscular man. On his body, Daniel could see his two rings, and the two swords that belonged to him.

"Nir'ha egdij jah'ar" Said the muscular man with an orderly tone.

"Jiguah!" Responded the young man with surprise, and a hit of anger.

"Yeh!" Shouted the man in response.

The young man lowered his head in obedience, then, he removed the rings from his fingers and threw them at Daniel.

The muscular man looked back at Daniel, and after raising his arm, he made an unequivocable gesture that meant "Your turn."

Daniel shook his head left and right, then, he looked at the young man, which was now looking at him furiously, and tapped his hand on his waist.

The young man, which immediately understood what Daniel meant, turned to look at the muscular man, which in response, nodded at him.

After receiving the nod from the muscular man, the young man removed the two swords from his waist, but instead of giving them back to Daniel, he held them high up in the air.

Daniel grabbed the back of the kid's neck by what looked like a fur made out of a monster's pelt, and threw him towards the muscular man.

Before the kid could reach the muscular man, he had already arrived in front of the young man.

Unfortunately, the young man was no pushover. It was in fact him who had knocked Daniel unconscious, and the moment Daniel got close, he brandished a rudimental axe and attacked him without thinking about it twice.

The hunter's way of fighting was extremely efficient, but they were mostly used to fighting monsters.

Their power was impressive, and on par with ninth rank martial cultivators, but they lacked training for one on one fighting.

One of the ways of fighting Daniel had learned from the many masters he had fought against, was hand to hand combat.

The young man slashed his large axe against him, but he was easily able to dodge to the left with his torso. He then grabbed the wrist that held the axe, and twisted it clockwise, causing the young man's arm to become tense.

He then tried to dislocate the young man's arm by hitting the back of his shoulder, but his body was too hard. Instead, it forced him to fall on the ground face first.

Immediately, he put a knee to his neck and kept him down as he twisted his arm behind his back. Then, he took the swords from the young man's hand.

Once he finished recovering his weapons, he put them back into his spatial ring.

The view of him making his sword disappear out of the blue shocked the hunters greatly.

They were so shocked, that their reaction could be only compared to the first time men discovered how to make spatial containers. Their eyes were wide open, their brows arched in surprise, and their breath was held in their lungs.

The one who had retained his calm the most, was the large and muscular man, which dashed towards Daniel from behind, and before Daniel could react, grabbed the back of his neck.

Feeling the extreme power emanated by the man's body, Daniel had no choice but to stop fighting back.

The muscular man's power and speed were impressive. After witnessing them only once, Daniel was convinced that, if this man appeared in his world of origin, he would be considered the man with the most advanced body in the history of his world's humanoid species.

The essence he emanated was the usual death-like essence, but it was purer and felt much more dangerous. Not even the injured man, or the monsters that had devoured it, possessed as much speed and power as this man showed.

The only monster who Daniel guessed could have probably hurt this man, was the dragon he had met in his original world, and the airborne beast that had attacked them on their way back.

Surprise was present in the muscular man as well, as when he touched Daniel's body, he felt an odd and different form of essence being emanated from him.

What surprised him the most, was that despite having reached this kind of power, Daniel was completely devoid of the familiar death-like essence.

The young man immediately got up from the ground, and looked at Daniel with eyes filled with humiliation and rage.

Then, as the muscular man was holding him still.. The young man grabbed his axe and prepared himself to cut Daniel in pieces, but then, the voice of the muscular man stopped him.

"Ja'la."

The young man showed an unsatisfied expression.

He let the handle of the axe slide a few centimeters lower, and then, he hit Daniel's head with the bottom of the handle.. Knocking him unconscious once again.

It is important to point out one thing.

A martial cultivator's organs are enhanced during the first rank of cultivation, and every other rank after that, they are further enhanced. That makes their organs a lot more efficient and resistant, and would usually make a cultivator's life easier if they were hit on their organs.. But that didn't mean that their organs would not receive damages.

Daniel's brain would easily recover from a head injury after a mere few minutes, but consecutive head injuries would certainly knock him out for an exponentially longer time.

In this case, the power of the hit was powerful enough to knock Daniel unconscious for five hours.

-----

When Daniel woke up, he was once again stripped of his weapons, but still had his rings.

Daniel's guess was that, for the hunters, the rings had nothing to do with the "magic" he had shown.

He was currently chained into a specially built cage that these hunters used to keep monsters in, and was able to easily resist the strongest of Daniel's ki attacks.

His surroundings were shroud in darkness, and only a few flames in the distance gave a hint of what was around him.

His cage was inside a small sized cave which seemed to be a study, or lab of sorts.

On one of the sides of the room, was a table. On the table, where items that looked like alchemical ingredients, instruments, and books in foreign language.

On the other side of the room, was a second small table with various books and papers strewn all over.

In front of his cage, was a passage which, based on the chatting noises that came from it, lead to the rest of a larger cave.

After a few minutes, the chattering noises stopped, and from the dark passage, and old man appeared.

This old and wrinkly man was similar to the other humanoids. The only difference, was that his black spot could not really be considered spots anymore, and instead, had merged into an extremely clear birthmark that covered half of his body.

The old man stopped in front of Daniel and looked attentively at him.

In response, Daniel sat on the ground in silence. He opened his palm, and made a clean and juicy looking fruit appear in his hand. Then, he stated to munch on it.