Chapter 140: Separate
Lucian and the five immediately entered the rain, each of them enveloping themselves in a thin sheet of mana to cover their bodies and protect themselves from the poisoned rain.
The streets of New Geneva were empty. No civilians, no movement. Just green rain falling on grey stone and the occasional sound of distant combat echoing between buildings.
But the bodies were everywhere.
They lay in doorways, against walls, slumped on benches. Men, women, children. Green veins visible beneath their skin, faces frozen in expressions of confusion and fear. Some had clearly been running when they collapsed. Others had made it halfway to a safehouse before the poison took hold.
Nobody spoke for a long stretch.
Lucian broke the silence. "We need to reach the Grand Core Masters first. It’s faster if we split up."
He looked at the group. "I’ll go with Bruno and Wei Chen. Clara, you take Liang Feng and Ryu."
Clara’s expression shifted immediately. She stepped toward him with a pout. "I want to go with you."
Lucian didn’t budge. "You’re the strongest among the students. Second only to me. You should take the group that needs the most protection."
Wei Chen frowned. "How is Clara stronger than me? She didn’t even participate in the finals."
Lucian looked at him with a deadpan expression. "I beat you, right?"
Wei Chen opened his mouth. Closed it. "...Yeah. I guess you did."
"And she can easily defeat me," Lucian added. "So you can imagine what she’ll do to you."
Wei Chen stared at Clara. Clara smiled sweetly.
Clara jumped in before the conversation could continue. "Alright, alright. Let’s just go. We don’t have time to be arguing."
They moved out, navigating through the empty streets toward the northern border where the main fighting was happening. The sounds of battle grew louder — crack, boom, crash — mixed with the screeching of Zephyr Eagles and the thunder of the dominant beast’s lightning.
Then the eagles found them.
A dozen of them — D-Rank and C-Rank — swooped from the dark sky in a coordinated diving formation. Lightning crackled in their beaks. Their claws extended, gleaming with toxins.
Clara raised her hands in the air.
A cold current ripped through the atmosphere — so intense that the green rain within a fifty-meter radius flash-froze into glittering green ice crystals suspended in midair. The eagles, mid-dive, froze solid. Wings locked. Beaks open. Lightning dying in their throats.
Twelve frozen eagles hung in the air like grotesque decorations.
Clara closed her fist.
"Gravity Crush."
CRUNCH.
The frozen eagles imploded. The D-Ranks shattered into dust instantly — compressed into nothing by gravitational force that exceeded what their frozen bodies could withstand. The C-Ranks survived, barely — cracks spiderwebbing across their ice-encased bodies, slight injuries bleeding through the fractures.
Wei Chen, Liang Feng, and Ryu stared.
Liang Feng’s eyes were wide. Ryu’s dragon pupils had contracted to pinpricks. Wei Chen’s hand rested on his sword hilt, and for once, he had no sarcastic comment.
He nodded slowly. "I see what you mean."
The injured C-Rank eagles broke free of the ice. Three of them. Enraged. Lightning erupted from their beaks as they dove — CRACK-CRACK-CRACK — three bolts of concentrated electricity screaming toward the group.
Liang Feng raised both hands. "Earth Wall!"
Stone barriers erupted from the ground in rapid succession — boom, boom, boom — three walls, one after another. The first lightning bolt punched through. Crack. The second punched through. Crack. The third was already firing—
Lucian pulled Aethon from his shadow storage. The runeforged blade’s inscriptions flared to life the moment his fingers wrapped around the grip.
"Elipse Sword Art — First Form: Crescent Moon Slash."
Beside him, Wei Chen drew his own blade in a single fluid motion.
"Celestial Severance — First Form: Starfall."
Two slashes erupted simultaneously — Lucian’s crescent of dark light and Wei Chen’s compressed sword intent. They intercepted the lightning bolts midair. The strikes destroyed the lightning, the combined sword intent tearing through the electrical energy like paper, scattering it into harmless sparks that rained down around them.
The three C-Rank eagles pushed through the dissolving lightning and dove directly at them, claws extended, beaks snapping.
Clara raised one hand. "Gravity Push."
An invisible wall of gravitational force blasted outward. The eagles were hit mid-dive — thwack-thwack-thwack — and launched backward through the air like ragdolls, wings flailing, screeching in pain and disorientation.
"They won’t stay down for long," Lucian said. "We separate. Now."
No argument this time.
The group split into three. Lucian, Bruno, and Wei Chen went east toward the Task Force command posts near the eastern wall. Clara, Liang Feng, and Ryu went north toward the main war front. Six figures vanished into the green rain in three different directions.
The eastern district was slightly better than the streets near the tower. Task Force officers had established a defensive perimeter around a command post — a reinforced concrete building with mana-barrier emplacements on the roof. Officers in rain-soaked uniforms moved with urgency, some of them already showing green veins on their necks.
Lucian approached the entrance. An officer raised a weapon.
"Identify yourself!"
"Lucian Grimaud. European All-Star Academy. Rising Star designation." He held up his IAR card. "We need to speak with your commanding officer immediately."
The officer lowered the weapon and led them inside.
The command post was chaos — screens showing beast positions, communication devices blaring, officers shouting coordinates. The commanding officer was a heavyset woman in her forties, Late Core Realm, barking orders.
Lucian cut through the noise. "The rain is poisoned. Organic neurotoxin. Skin absorption. You need to get everyone under cover and tell them to maintain a mana barrier over their skin at all times."
The CO stared at him. "We know. We figured it out ten minutes ago when half my people started collapsing."
Good. Lucian didn’t have to convince her.
They moved to the next post. Then the next. Each time, the message was the same — some had figured out the rain was dangerous, others hadn’t, and the officers who hadn’t were already showing symptoms.
Bruno handled most of the talking at the later posts. Wei Chen stood guard outside, scanning the sky. Lucian tracked positions with Blood Sense, mapping the beast positions, the eagle swarm patterns, the locations of friendly forces.
They were between posts when Lucian stopped.
Two figures landed in the street ahead of them.
Lucian’s expression hardened into a frown.