Chapter 371: Chapter 369
Chapter 369
As Ray stood there, staring at the System notifications flashing across his face, he suddenly instinctively recalled the beast rankings taught to them at the Corps.
The lowest rank was the Monster rank, followed immediately by the Awakened rank; the Advanced rank was next on the ladder, then the King rank; the Emperor rank; the Legendary rank; the Tyrant rank; and finally, at the pinnacle of the ladder, was the Demon-rank beast.
Just a few minutes ago, Ray had been wondering how he was supposed to deal with twenty King-rank beasts when just a single one of those bastards was enough to rip him to shreds if he wasn’t careful.
Now the System was saying he had to escape from something a step above that?
.... And not even just a step above; it was on the cusp of evolving into the Legendary rank?
He was beyond cooked at the moment, and he knew it.
But escape?
How were they supposed to even es—
That was when the sudden familiar feeling he had experienced twenty minutes ago, when they had first been brought into the chamber, returned with overwhelming force.
It was as though something was calling to him.
He had a feeling that whatever it was stood behind the Spider Queen.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to see it earlier because of the hundreds of spiders in the chamber obscuring his view.
Now that the hundreds of spiders were dead, and Nebula was actively taking out the rest due to sheer grief, anger, madness, or something even greater than the Tribrid could understand...
Now that the number of King-rank beasts was reducing at an astonishing rate, Ray finally caught sight of what had been calling to him all this time.
"Ba....thump.... Ba...thump...."
His heart raced loudly.
And it wasn’t only his.
Even his cohort standing right beside him—he could hear their heartbeats racing along with his as they made eye contact with what stood behind Nebula.
Due to the fact that she was over twenty feet tall, and there was a gap between her eight colossal legs, they were able to catch a glimpse of what stood behind her.
The call... the pull urging them to come over... was so familiar that they had initially failed to recognize what it actually was.
It was tall and composed of the same material as the rest of the Obsidian Spire and even the chamber they were in.
In fact, the arch didn’t seem to have been built... instead, it was almost as if it had simply grown out of the floor, with no seam separating it from the rest of the ground.
In the middle of the arch, a swirling blue vortex could be seen spinning with an ethereal glow.
As if silently calling upon the Aspirants to step inside.
With widened eyes, they collectively called out,
"The Gate."
Indeed, the gate out of this damned world was standing before them.
The same gate they had come to the Obsidian Spire for was just two metres behind Nebula, who was still rampaging.
Their faces flashed with excitement as they stared at the gate, and almost collectively, they were about to take a step forward until they abruptly halted.
Freedom.
Escape.
Freedom was right before them, but alas!
They couldn’t reach it because of the damned Spider Queen standing between them and their salvation.
Hope was truly a feeble poison.
Having it wasn’t bad, but taking too much of it could kill someone.
The hope that had brought them here was going to get them killed in a bit.
Now Ray finally understood why the System had calculated their chance of survival that way.
They simply were not going to make it.
There was no other way they could do it without facing off against Nebula.
That was, if they wanted to escape the damned place.
And one more thing,
Ray cast a quick glance behind him at the unconscious Van and Caster.
His hands balled into fists.
’Even if we somehow found a way to get into the gate and escape, what’s the assurance that Van would be free from her mental clutches? The only known way to erase her control is if we defeat Nebula.’
He thought for a few seconds and turned around to see that the King-rank beasts’ numbers had been reduced to around ten.
’... Or would the Corps have a Meta-human capable of erasing the link? Ugh.... What if it killed Van in the process?’
He ground his teeth as he weighed his options one after another.
But no matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t see any other way aside from clashing with the damned Spider Queen.
But that was a freaking death sentence.
"Felix...." Kai softly called out.
The werewolf turned to the handsome Legacy with a raised brow.
Only to see Kai looking at the ceiling.
Following the trajectory of his gaze, the werewolf spotted the cocoons that looked to be housing something.
Based on their shape, they didn’t seem to be housing any more spiders.
Instead, from what he could tell, they were shaped in a way that suggested they contained humans.
"Humans...." Felix whispered silently.
He closed his eyes for a second and listened attentively to the sounds reaching his ears.
"... Only a hundred are alive.... Barely."
Kai looked up once again.
There should have been about two hundred cocoons, yet if Felix said only a hundred were alive, it meant the rest were already dead.
A heavy silence settled over the group as that realization sank in.
Turning to Chloe, who was literally trembling at the sight of what Nebula was doing, he placed a palm on her shoulder.
"Ray is having a hard time deciding, so here’s what we would do. We are going to fight."
Trisha paused and stiffly turned her head in the Legacy’s direction like he had just said something outrageous.
And that was because he did.
"Are you crazy?! Do you see what it’s doing? For it to so easily slice King-rank beasts in half means it’s at least of the Emperor rank. And you want us to clash with that?"
Trisha paused, sucked in a sharp breath, before continuing:
".... I don’t know about you, but I’m already low on MF. And even if I had a full pool, there’s no way I’m doing that."
Kai nodded, watching as Chloe’s body slowly stopped trembling.
He cast another quick glance at the cocoons overhead.
"We don’t have to kill it. Just fight long enough until an opening is created where we can escape."
His voice remained calm despite the impossible situation before them.
Felix’s brows knitted together immediately.
His arms crossed over his chest.
"Explain."
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