The pale white bones rode the wind like arrows. They shot through the air at an insane speed, raging towards the students in the barrier.
The arrows were intended for Zavier, but since the members of the group were all huddled together in a bunch, it was the logical conclusion that the assailant's target was the entire band. Zavier, Alissa and Dahila were much too horrified to move.
If Valarie's barrier hadn't been their covering, there was no doubt that they would have all been impaled by the twelve three foot, sharp edged bones.
But fortunately for them, Valarie wasn't fascinated by the stardom of the assailant's abilities. Weaving through the ensuing chaos like a dissident gas, Valarie tore through the wind seething with suppressed rage.
She just couldn't understand why the attacker was intent on destroying her students. Valarie could forgive anything else, but there was no way she was going to go easy on anyone who would go after defenseless minors. Valarie sneered underneath her breath.
"Does he really think I will just stand here and allow him perpetuate such a vile act??"
Enraged by the sheer audacity of the masked man, she raged towards the barrier at an unnatural speed.
The earth trembled lightly beneath her as she landed between the barrier and the bone spurs with a graceful thud. In a blink of an eye, the lead teacher extended her left hand towards the bone spurs racing towards her.
Immediately, the impressive glorious form of an enormous golden palm appeared between her and the masked man. The raging bone spurs collided with the golden palm and instantly turned to dust.
The masked man had no time to regroup for another attack. Out of nowhere, with the ferocity of divine retribution, another massive golden right palm emerged from nowhere above him, bearing down on him with the intensity/urgency of natural disaster, and with the unexpectedness of a lightning strike.
It had all been a beautifully coordinated counter attack. And yet, despite the suddenness and speed of the golden right palm descending on him with deadly stealth, somehow, the masked man managed to evade the attack!
The entirety of these events had occurred at a terrifying speed and on a quantum level. Inadvertently rendering it impossible for Dahila and Alissa to follow the doings of the battle.
From their perspective, their lead teacher and the attacker might have as well been blurs and glitches at this point.
Only Zavier had the full scope of the entire battle. It had almost been as though both Valarie and the masked man were on a whole different level. Alissa and Dahila only caught on when the cackling voice of the assailant.
The masked man who had barely escaped Valarie's counter attack had retreated a good distance away. Marinating a poised and confident posture, from afar, he praised Valarie saying;
"Ah! There is that famous Adam family legacy! You truly are everything they say you are Valarie Adam!"
His words rang through the empty space that had been ravaged as a result of the destruction from the ensuing battle.
"Miss Adam, I really must confess; your talent is truly remarkable! I owe you that much to tell it to you plainly."
It was unnerving just how sincere he sounded. His words had no atom of ridicule in them. This only made it much harder for Valarie and Dahila's rational minds to psychoanalyze him. As of this moment, he was merely a shadow to them.
A shadow that obviously had a sense of honor. It was a chilling combination. The masked man took the battle to the next level by unlocking another disturbing ability.
This time around, Alissa and Dahila weren't left out of the loop. Clear as day, they all watched the chilling scene play out before their eyes. Just when the group thought they couldn't possibly be repulsed any further, once again, the masked man took them by storm.
What the masked man did next beat their imagination by a long shot.
The first disturbing thing was the sound.
It sounded like the gurgling of a very troubled stomach, only amplified to a more frequent and more agitating degree. When it gradually became louder and more sporadic by the second, everyone braced themselves for what would come next.
But there was no amount of preparation that could have possibly prepared them enough. The masked man's stomach began to bulge like a puffer fish.
Like a bloated corpse or like a balloon filled with foul gas, huge amounts of black smoke began to escape out of him from his mouth.
With his head thrown back at an unnatural angle, his bloated stomach, coupled with the insane amount of black smoke escaping from his open mouth, the masked man looked like a scene from a horror movie.
This was too much for Alissa, mouth agape, she watched the whole scene unfold before her as her brain melted with a mixture of dread and shock. Even the normally composed Dahila looked on with a flabbergasted look on her face.
Like a dark smoke rising from an altar, the black smoke steadily rose up in the form of an airy sturdy pillar and gradually enveloped the atmosphere above the terrain until everywhere outside of the barrier was enveloped in a haze of darkness.
Like a plague, the black smoke had singlehandedly rendered visibility impossible. Alissa moaned softly in fear. Virtually unable to see anything, Dahila steadily edged her way towards the feeling of nervousness. Only Zavier retained his ability to see.
With his time-space eye, Zavier picked up a series of quick sporadic movements stumbling in the blackness like a ghoul gliding through a cemetery in the nighttime. But just because he could see it didn't mean he could discern its intentions or purpose.
It was only at the last moment that the truth of the whole situation dawned on him with a staggering suddenness. Zavier cried out with all his might and at the top of his voice;
"Look out Valarie!! He's right behind you!!"
In the urgency of the moment, Zavier had completely neglected to address Valarie with her appropriate title as 'aunt.' But that was the least of anyone's worries at the moment.
The masked man's plan was simple and yet elegant. He had taken complete advantage of the ensuing blackness to carry out a sneak attack on Valarie. He was well aware of the fact that h had already established a pattern in his attacks.
It was more than obvious at this moment that his first priority was the students locked safely in the barrier, so he knew that Valarie's full attention would be on safeguarding the barrier.
Consequently, this meant that her guard would be down and she would be open to a sneak attack from the back.
So, like an African masquerade creeping under the cover of darkness with diabolical intentions, the creepy masked man actually managed to sneak up on Valarie unannounced.
But unfortunately for him, he failed to account for one thing; Zavier's warning. And it came right in the nick of time, just when he was about to pounce.
In the ensuing moments, again, the masked man was met with another unfortunate oversight; Valarie's reaction time. The lead teacher deftly swung her arm in the direction Zavier had hinted in his warning cry and struck out with her huge golden palm.
Valarie had already proven her dexterity with the golden palm time without number, but once again, somehow, by a twist of fate, the masked man managed to escape Valarie's wrath.
The masked assailant's speed was commendable. At the last moment, he flew backwards. And in his bid to escape Valarie's notoriously potent golden palm, he crashed through two large trees, destroying them in the process.
In spite of the destruction he left in his wake, the mysterious masked attacker didn't seem to have sustained any real damage.
Zavier who had been following the battle looked closely at the masked man and discovered that there was a unique layer of special energy wrapped around the masked man's appearance.
Dahila's gaze shifted from the sounds of destruction all around her, to the young man with her in the barrier. She looked curiously at Zavier as he stared hard in the direction of the battle.
By this time, she knew that somehow, Zavier had found a way to see the full details of the battle outside despite the encompassing darkness. She was in desperate need of accurate information, so she swallowed her pride and inquired of Zavier.
"Zavier…"
She called his name coolly, not wanting to seem apprehensive like the clearly terrified Alissa.
"What's the situation out there?"
She cocked her head in the direction of the battle. Zavier shook his head disappointedly and gave her a fair and objective assessment of the fight.
"Not good Dahila. The masked man's bone density is too hard. His entire skeletal system is just too dense for Valarie to breakthrough his defenses in a short time…"
Halfway into his speech, Zavier suddenly stopped. He shifted his gaze from Dahila and looked beyond the barrier, towards the scene of the battle. Zavier suddenly grew tense as his eyebrows furrowed.
Dahila quickly noticed the change in his state and picked up on his agitation. Unable to hide her nervousness this time, Dahila asked Zavier frantically;
"What is it Zavier?! Talk to me! What do you see?"
Even as Zavier replied her, Dahila felt her bones quake at the bad news. His voice barely above a whisper, Zavier answered her coldly;
"He's coming…"
Zavier cursed aloud.
"Damn it!! He's heading towards our direction!!"
This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦