Chapter 84: Gloom over the city gate- 1
The students in the twentieth group completely calmed down after learning the exact coordinates of their deployment.
As the massive column shuffled into the cold shadow of the southern gatehouse, the thick atmosphere of panic finally dissolved, and many of them even began chatting happily among themselves.
Being deployed directly to the main gate meant they did not have to march a single foot into the treacherous forest where the apex predator was currently hiding.
Although the frantic rumors stated that the monster had already attacked and slaughtered thousands inside the lower sectors of the city during the night, none of the low-tier students believed the creature would ever dare to launch an attack when so many armed people were gathered together in one spot.
In their minds, the monster had only managed to kill the ordinary civilians because absolutely no one had imagined such a terrifying thing could ever happen inside the safe city walls.
They simply had not been guarded against it. Now, since the high administration and the entire student body already knew about its hidden existence, the chance of it coming to this specific gate to launch an open attack was slim to none.
And besides, the tactical terrain around the southern gatehouse was far too open for any sort of stealth attacks. The area was surrounded by flat stone plazas, clear ditches, and massive clearing zones.
Defending an open space like this would be incredibly easy with a large number of people packed tightly together.
Brandon Cole, however, showed deep dissatisfaction on his face as he walked at the front of the line, his hand resting tightly on his iron gauntlet.
"Because of you useless trashes, I cannot actively contribute to the real fight against the academy’s primary enemy," Brandon muttered loudly, ensuring the students closest to him could hear his irritation.
"The top ten groups get to hunt the beast in the dense thickets, while I am stuck babysitting a bunch of zero-soul cripples and rabbit summoners."
Though he kept up his arrogant front for the crowd, inwardly, Brandon completely calmed down. In truth, he was also a bit in deep apprehension against that unknown monster.
He had read the initial scout reports about the total eradication of the outer ring beasts. With the current low-tier tracking unit under his command, he was not confident enough to actually fight a high-tier apex predator in the wilderness without sustaining massive structural damage to his soul core.
Now, his tactical situation had vastly improved.
He not only had his own massive team of two thousand first years, but the administration had also officially deployed the regular city guards to stand alongside them.
Including his student unit and the armored professionals, there were currently more than ten thousand abled men gathered near the massive iron structures of the southern gatehouse.
Brandon felt a sudden surge of excitement at the prospect of leading and organizing such a massive group of armed people.
Even if he did not directly encounter or fight that forest monster face-to-face, he could easily gain massive military merit simply by successfully guarding the gate during a high-alert crisis.
Furthermore, this deployment was a perfect opportunity to build some valuable political relationships with the officers of the city guards. Brandon’s long-term dream was not just to stay a common academy student.
He desperately wanted to graduate and become a highly respected captain of the Supreme City Guards. Guarding this post was the first major step toward that rank.
Kenji took a completely inconspicuous spot near the far edge of the gatehouse structure. He leaned his back flat against the cold stone wall, his posture relaxed as he held a standard-issue academy iron sword and a light wooden shield in his hands.
His designated duty for this shift was simply to act as a basic sentry and alert the senior soldiers if anything anomalous appeared in the clearing. Even though outwardly he showed a lazy, completely unmotivated expression to avoid drawing any attention from Brandon, inwardly, his mind was focused sharply.
His advanced perception was constantly scanning the magical flow of the area, calculating the layout of the structural walls and looking for any hidden traps. Far away from his isolated position, on the opposite side of the grand iron gate, Amran was also guarding a small stone corner.
Different from Kenji’s absolute calm, Amran was visibly shivering while looking around the open plaza in a state of panic. His hands were gripping his wooden staff so tightly that his knuckles had turned completely white, and his glasses kept sliding down his sweating nose.
He looked like a boy who expected the world to end at any second.
"I did exactly as you said," Amran muttered in a frantic whisper, his lips barely moving as he stared blankly into the empty air right in front of his face.
"I registered for the auxiliary unit. I came to the gates. Can you please just leave me alone now? Get out of my head."
For a few quiet moments, nothing changed in the immediate area. The standard students walked past him without noticing his quiet whispering, assuming he was just another coward losing his mind before a battle.
But then, the frantic, panicked expression on Amran’s face suddenly froze. The trembling in his hands stopped entirely, and his meek posture straightened into a rigid, unnatural alignment.
The terrified light in his eyes vanished, replaced by a dark, hollow glaze as his lips slowly curled upward into a wide, maniacal grin.
"Of course," Amran whispered back to himself, his voice dropping into a raspy, dual-toned voice that sounded completely non-human. "After we eat some fresh human brains."
The entity inside his flesh chuckled silently, a low vibration that did not travel past the stone corner. The trap was perfectly set.
Kenji’s eyes shifted across the crowded plaza, his gaze briefly passing over Amran’s distant figure. His hazel eyes narrowed slightly as his combat instincts picked up a very faint, almost imperceptible fluctuation in the local energy currents near that specific corner.
The air around the southern gatehouse was beginning to grow remarkably cold, and Kenji knew that the bloodbath he had predicted was about to begin right before the sun could even reach its peak.
He tightened his grip on the hilt of his iron sword, his muscles coiling under his tattered clothes as he prepared to face the real enemy behind Ayla’s frame.
Kenji’s eyes locked onto Amran’s distant figure across the crowded plaza.
The air between them seemed to grow increasingly dense, vibrating with a foul, underlying frequency that bypassed the normal sensory limits of the low-tier students milling about the gatehouse.
Kenji’s combat instincts, forged through countless cycles of death and rebirth, were screaming at him. Something was fundamentally and completely wrong with Amran.
The boy’s physical posture was entirely unnatural, rigid like a marionette whose strings had suddenly been jerked tight by an invisible hand.
As if sensing the hyper-focused weight of Kenji’s gaze from across the stone expanse, Amran slowly turned his head. Their eyes met.
Through the thick, smudged lenses of Amran’s glasses, Kenji did not see the panicked, cowardly greenhorn he had always see.
There was something fundamentally wrong in that boy.
