***TEN MINUTES EARLIER***
Master Rook received a distress signal from some students. Initially, he was slightly annoyed since they were first-year students who didn't even go farther than 5 kilometers from the barrier, but then, after seeing who made the call, he was confused.
To ask for assistance was the first-ranked team, with thousands of kills on their backs, so he found it strange that such an efficient team could have such problems against monsters way weaker than them.
For this reason, he sped up toward the team, but he was several kilometers away, so he knew that it would have taken a while to reach them, and he only hoped that the kids could survive until his arrival. The man walked through the forest for a while, but after five minutes, he started getting multiple distress signals from the same place.
BIP BIP BIP BIP BIP BIP BIP BIP
"What the...?"
More than thirty people were asking for help now, and Master Rook's mind went blank at the sight of all those distressed messages coming through simultaneously. He had no idea what was happening. Naturally, he assumed it was a thaid's attack, since they were outside the city and there were multiple military patrolling the surroundings.
Still, if so many people were having trouble against some thaids, this meant that either they were a lot or that a high-level thaid approached the barrier, and that would have been very weird since the higher the level, the higher the intelligence. Thaids would have naturally stayed away from the barrier because they could see how dangerous it was.
However, it seemed unlikely that an intelligent thaid would have been able to pass the many patrols that roamed around or went unnoticed by the city's technology. This left him with more questions than answers, and it was up to him to figure out what had happened. Although Master Rook couldn't explain the situation, it didn't even cross his mind that to attack the kids was a team of people.
Not even two minutes after he received the multiple distress signals, a group of nine teachers walked up to him. He knew them all since they were his colleagues at the Red Palace, and he had been working with them for some time now.
"Jack!" Master Rook said. One of the teachers, Jack Callahan, another sword master, received the distress signal and joined eight other Red Palace masters to rescue the students. The teachers knew where the other masters were, so they decided to join Master Rook, the most powerful of them, in order to be sure not to let anything happen.
"Matthew!" Master Callahan replied.
"What the hell is happening?" Rook asked his friend.
"I have no idea, really. We received the distress signals a couple of minutes ago, and since you were nearby, we decided to come to you first..."
"Yeah, I was already coming here because of another distress signal sent almost ten minutes ago from team 765," Rook explained. "I'm going there right now."
"Ok, lead the way..." Callahan said.
The masters kept running until they arrived, where Erik, his team, and the five kidnappers fought against the thaids. From a distance, the teachers could see the situation. There were thousands of thaids' bodies on the ground.
There were even some thaids that were eating the bodies of their fallen comrades to satiate their hunger. Some monsters had been bisected, some had been decapitated, and others had simply had their brains pierced; others had missing limbs, and many merely had holes in one or two areas of their bodies.
As the creatures' stomachs and intestines were ripped apart, the surrounding area was filled with a putrid odor as blood and viscera spilled out onto the ground, and the ground was coated with blood and excrement that came out of the monster's innards. There were many thaids who had been killed in the fight, and despite the fact that it was a horrible sight, it also served as a testament to the strength of those who remained alive. It was a massacre. It was weird; there shouldn't have been anybody around these parts, where the low-level students roamed, able to do something like this.
"What the hell is this?" Master Carr, one of the teachers, said.
Master Rook replied, "It appears as though thaids had attacked them."
"Indeed, but these monsters are too powerful for first-year students. It would be possible for them to kill one or two individuals, but not thousands." Callahan said.
"You are right," Master Rook said. "Something is fishy here," he added while they kept running.
"Is that a Crombo's slime?" Master Rodgers said.
"It seems so..." Callahan replied.
The teachers became immediately worried about the presence of a Crombos around the barrier.
"If a Crombo was here, it means that someone strong enough to fight it must have been here too... It is impossible for a group of students to survive such an encounter." Master Carr said.
Master Flores then looked around carefully and saw that there was no corpse around. This meant that the students were able to escape. However, he also noticed that most of the bodies were concentrated around a small area, and that further behind that, there were fewer than thirty thaid's bodies scattered on the ground.
"I think there was really someone here. They probably protected the students, but a couple of thaids went past them, and the students killed them."
"It could be, but we won't be sure until we reach them and have them confirm the story..." Master Rook said.
"Let's go," Callahan added.
The masters kept running until they arrived at the place where Anderson used his power. The land was charred and scorched as a result of Anderson's attack, with what remained standing barely recognizable; trees within a one-hundred-meter radius were burning on the ground and had been blasted in many parts, and the few still standing were either going to fall to the ground or had been broken into two or more parts.
"This must have been Anderson Worthington's power," Master Rook said. He could clearly see that there had been an explosion, and since Anderson was a member of the team that had sent the distress signal, he was able to safely assume that this was all his doing. "I knew the kid had a powerful brain crystal power, but I didn't imagine it was this powerful," he added.
"You like this kid?" Callahan asked his friend.
"He is a promising student..." Master Rook said, leaving Jack in disbelief.
"Why do you think he used such a devastating power?" Callahan asked Master Flores, the smartest of the bunch.
"It must be because something followed him. I noticed the students had left some tracks before reaching this place, but now they had disappeared. So, either they did this to erase their tracks, hoping that whoever chased them would lose track of them, or he used the power to kill the thaids."
"But why didn't he use this power earlier? We saw how much damage it caused. If he had done that, he could have killed most of the thaids. The battle wouldn't have lasted longer than twenty seconds," Master Callahan pointed out.
"He can't control this power that well; I think he did it to avoid harming his friends. However, it is also true that if he had been left alone by the others, he would surely have died. So, this makes me think that he did this only because he could. The students probably took advantage of the people killing the thaids to run away, but these must not have been friendly, since otherwise he wouldn't have used his power. I think whoever came up with the plan tried to cover their tracks..." Master Flores suggested.
"That makes sense..." Master Rook said.
They then went on, and after a while, they reached Amber's gasses. Master Rook pointed out that it was her power, and Master Flores expressed his thoughts once more. However, his suspicions were confirmed this time. The only reason the students went this far by using these powers in seemingly random places must have been because someone followed them, and those must have been humans, since thaids would have left a mess due to their numbers. The teachers would have noticed if that was the case.
At that moment, after the fog and everything else, the masters started hearing the sounds of a battle from a distance.
"Someone is fighting!" Master Rook exclaimed.
"It must be the students..." Master Flores agreed.
"We have to be quick!" Master Callahan said.
And so they ran towards the sound of the fight. At first, they heard just screams, but as they approached closer, the voices became clearer.
"Stop! You will kill him!" Martha said to Laser, who was still torturing Benedict.
"SLICE! GRAB THE KID. I AM SICK AND TIRED OF THIS SHIT!"
"Aaaaah, I didn't kill anyone yet!" Slice said.
"I don't care; you had your opportunity. Why did you waste it by playing with the kids?" Zachary replied.
Slice then looked at Laser, who was still using his brain crystal power on Benedict, who was still screaming in pain. There was envy in his eyes.
At that moment, Master Rook understood who they were dealing with--the Crystal Cross gang.
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