Gravis waited in the middle of the rough terrain while Skye perched itself on some massive stone several hundred meters away. Skye was looking forward to this whole thing just as much as Gravis. Good food was about to arrive.
Initially, Gravis didn't particularly like to scam people into death, but now, he didn't feel bad at all. The Darkness Guild had clearly shown that they hated him. They did their absolute best to make him as angry as possible, which only reaffirmed his decision.
Before Gravis had even arrived, he had already expected as much. Every previous guild that he had visited had an ideology very similar to their element. How would the ideology of darkness be, then?
Gravis had expected them to be sneaky, aggressive, dirty, selfish, and similar things. Darkness took everything it wanted as soon as the light was nowhere to be seen. It didn't matter what others thought or if they even wanted to be in darkness. As soon as the light vanished, darkness took everything.
Yet, just like with every other element, Gravis could also see part of himself in darkness. Due to his will, he was also ready to take what was necessary, even if others didn't like it. He just tried to make it as cleanly as possible. This whole visiting of guilds thing was a good example. He could have just scammed the Earth Guild, which was a very attractive possibility in his mind, by the way, but he first wanted to check if there wasn't a more fitting target.
Gravis had already noticed that he had similarities to very many elements, but he didn't think that was because of his Elemental Synchronicity. It was probably just because the elements were showing the different parts of humanity. There were nice people, selfish people, stubborn people, people who couldn't control their emotions, righteous people, and many more. He was sure that he would see the same diversity of people in the secular world, where no element was trained. The elements just made these different attitudes more pronounced.
Even after several minutes, no one showed up, which surprised Gravis a little. He had been sure that they would all run towards him as soon as he made the announcement. Maybe not because of the tempering, but because of his wealth. He had made very sure that his announcement included an intentional loophole.
He had said that the disciples, plural, just have to pay a pill up front, and they would fight. With that, he was baiting them to attack him at the same time. That would be a lot of easy money in their eyes. In comparison to the Fire Guild, the Darkness Guild probably didn't care about fighting fair. It was all just about resources.
Gravis waited for two full hours, where nothing happened. Standing like this for an extended period was no issue for his body, but it was boring and annoying. By now, night had already arrived, and the only light came from the moon and the stars. The surroundings were deathly silent, with the exception of Skye's breathing. Skye hadn't slept for the last couple of days, so it used this time to get some shut-eye.
Gravis was also bored, so he tried something that he hadn't tried before. He had actually never tried to manipulate darkness. Most of his fights had been under the daylight, and when he actually fought in the night, he often didn't need his Elemental Synchronicity to come out victorious. Gravis closed his eyes and concentrated on the darkness around him.
WHOOSH!
As Gravis concentrated on the darkness, a picture of his surroundings appeared in his mind. It was like he was looking down from up above. It was a little bit weird for him to see so much from a different perspective. On top of that, everything looked kind of grey. Yet, with this map, he was able to see several things that he didn't before.
Gravis opened his eyes and stealthily looked into a specific direction. He saw nothing there. Yet, the map in his head showed something different. The map only showed the surrounding 200 meters, which wasn't particularly big, but he still saw many people inside. Gravis had thought that the Darkness Guild hadn't arrived, but in actuality, they had been here for a while.
He counted around 50 people. Not as many as in the Fire Guild, but still a good number. They all ranged from the sixth to the eighth level of Energy Gathering, which reaffirmed Gravis' suspicion that they were planning to attack simultaneously. He also saw several of them giving their pills to one person, who put it inside a sack.
After a while, they slowly crept towards Gravis, while the person with the pills walked directly to Gravis's front. Gravis was able to keep the darkness map, and his eyes open at the same time. It felt a little creepy when his map showed him several people surrounding him, while he saw no one but that one guy with his eyes.
The only person not hidden was the person with the sack of pills. He walked over with a friendly smile until he stopped five meters in front of Gravis. He lifted the sack. "In here are ten body tempering pills. Please check," he said as he threw the pills over.
Gravis caught the sack, looked inside, and saw precisely ten body tempering pills, which made him quite happy. He closed the sack and looked back at the person. "Checks out. You are allowed to attack," he said.
The guy grinned and readied his dagger, acting like he was alone. The guy was moving relatively slow so that the others had time to come closer to Gravis. The distance between them and him closed until they all stood directly beside Gravis. Right now, Gravis was surrounded by around nine people, just one meter away from him, ready to strike.
"You ready?" asked the guy with a friendly smile.
"Ah," Gravis said suddenly with surprise, which nearly made everyone around him attack. "Let me just do one thing. It is kind of dark here, so I'll make some light."
"Wha-"
BANG BANG BANG!
Gravis released his lightning all around him to "make some light", but "something" was too close to him, making his lightning jump onto it. The things that were too close were the darkness disciples. Gravis was at the seventh level of Energy Gathering, and his lightning was a little more powerful than natural lightning at the eighth level. In order to resist it, someone needed a fitting lightning resistance or a body equal to the eighth level of Energy Gathering.
Of course, none of those disciples surrounding him had that.
Like this, nine loud claps of thunder rang out, and a cloud of ashes suddenly surrounded Gravis. The ashes were the incinerated bodies of the darkness disciples. The eyes of the guy in front of Gravis opened wide in shock and panic.
SHING!
Gravis cut the disciple in front of him in two with his saber. He could, of course, also use his body, but he didn't want to appear too imposing. That might scare others away.
Clank clank clank!
The sounds of weapons hitting the hard floor appeared around Gravis. The lightning had not incinerated the weapons, so they just fell down. Like this, Gravis had earned ten pills and a lot of Energy.
"Wait, what happened?" said Gravis in surprise as he looked around him. Of course, he knew exactly what had happened, but he needed to keep the act up. He acted like he didn't know what happened. Usually, this wouldn't work, and people would suspect that he had known that he was surrounded since the beginning, but Gravis knew that they wouldn't doubt him. Because…
"Tch, so this is the heavenly luck that Heavenborn are blessed with," whispered one disciple to the other.
"I told you that it isn't that simple to kill a Heavenborn," whispered the disciple back. "We need to create a battle situation where luck won't save him. Those idiots practically begged for death."
A third disciple whispered back. "Let's think of a better plan."