Chapter 219: A Hidden Threat
The kneeling soldier’s eyes went wide, staring at the wall of ice a hand’s width from his face.
Behind him, all down the line, dozens of heads turned in the same direction, toward the point where that wall had appeared, desperately trying to understand who, or what, had just saved them.
"Up there!" someone shouted, and as if moving in unison, they all lifted their heads, their gazes landing on the figure of a man who had appeared above the area without anyone noticing his arrival.
The captain’s gaze snapped toward him, and his eyes fixed on the emblem on the man’s chest, a flash of recognition hit him instantly.
It was the emblem of the Awakener Academy.
It was Victor Blackwood, the instructor tasked with leading Selena’s group here.
During the journey, he had learned that the situation in the city had become far more critical than expected, and that a powerful beast had already broken through toward the defensive lines. The carriage would still need some time to reach the city.
He knew he couldn’t wait. So he left on his own, deciding to go ahead by himself and let the others catch up later.
He was an A-rank, which meant he could fly at speeds far greater than those of the carriage moving along the ground.
Now that he’d arrived, his gaze swept over the outskirts, much of it already in ruins, before settling on the rhino like beast, which had only just recovered from the impact of that ice barrier.
It seemed furious, its numerous eyes all locking onto the human flying high above the area.
It let out a roar of rage and challenge, its body beginning to glow with a violet aura.
Victor’s eyes narrowed at the sight, his senses picking up on a series of changes taking hold within the beast, and it wasn’t long before those changes began manifesting outwardly as well.
Under the stunned gaze of everyone watching, the beast’s body began trembling with greater violence, its massive frame slowly starting to deform.
Its bones creaked beneath its skin as its body stretched, shedding part of its former bulk and taking on a longer, leaner shape. From its back, amid violent spasms, something began pushing outward, until two enormous wings emerged from the flesh, slowly unfurling behind it.
Within moments, the creature no longer resembled the massive, rhino like beast from before. Its new body was leaner, but somehow even more unsettling, wings stretching out behind it while its many eyes remained fixed on Victor.
It almost seemed as though the beast had simply adapted to the new situation.
The beast’s mouth, now far thinner and more elongated, curled into an unsettling grin full of teeth, dripping with saliva, as it let out a powerful roar directed at the man who had just appeared.
The roar was loud and powerful enough to hurt the ears of everyone nearby, but before anyone could recover, the beast lunged. The ground beneath it shattered, and a violent gust of wind tore through the area, sending debris and nearby people flying, leaving behind nothing but a ruined crater where the beast had stood.
Seeing this, Victor wasted no time. A barrier of water instantly formed in front of him, one that, the very next instant, took a powerful hit.
It was the beast, already airborne, already right in front of Victor, mere centimeters from his face, its claw stopped cold by the water barrier.
Seeing it up close, Victor’s stoic expression twisted into disgust as he moved his hand once more, this time not to defend, but to attack.
"Tch. What a revolting thing. Get out of my sight." he said, and instantly the water barrier twisted, wrapping around the beast’s claw.
Just as it tried to pull back, it found itself trapped, and before it could do anything else, the water transformed once again, this time into ice, or more precisely, into dozens of ice spikes that drove themselves straight into the creature.
The beast roared in pain and, without hesitation, bit its own limb clean off, tossing it aside.
At first glance, it might have seemed like an overly reckless move for such an attack, but looking closer, one could see the entire severed limb had been covered in ice from within, which had already begun bursting out from every direction, tearing through it from the inside as much as from the outside.
But the beast didn’t falter, because in the very next instant, another limb had already grown back in its place.
Seeing this, Victor’s expression grew somewhat more serious. He realized this Hollow was proving far more troublesome than he’d expected.
As the battle between the instructor and the beast began in the sky, in another part of the city, the carriage carrying the second year students finally arrived at its destination.
The moment the carriage came to a stop, Selena and the other four students climbed out quickly. There were three boys and two girls, all of them already aware of the situation awaiting them.
During the journey, they’d received enough reports on the state of the city to organize themselves in advance, so there was no time wasted on idle talk or unnecessary questions.
After a quick exchange of glances, the group immediately split into pairs, each heading toward the front they’d been assigned.
Selena and the other girl took the western route.
Their target was the front closest to the forest.
Both girls were fast enough to move quickly through the city.
Selena took the lead, partly because she was the one tasked with handling the situation on this front, and partly because she was the stronger of the two, and was actively holding back her own pace to stay in step with her companion behind her.
Throughout all this, she failed to notice the pair of cold, emotionless eyes already fixed on her, watching her with nothing but malice, patiently waiting for the first opportunity to make a move.