SSS Awakening: I Can Class Change at will

Chapter 549: Run!

Running a quick calculation in his mind, Moon’s face turned pale. ’If these two hundred exploded at once...they would leave no portion of this arena unscathed. Even a Surpasser would be heavily injured from the combined attack...’

"Alaric!" Moon shouted. "Run!"

He didn’t wait to see if the monster of the Second Sanctuary heard him.

Moon activated Air Step in the same breath, launching himself across the arena using the solidified air, he reached Kael’s pillar in a single explosive motion. He landed beside the redhead, grabbed his arm, and pulled.

"Hold on to me!"

Kael’s expression contorted with confusion. He didn’t understand the command or the urgency. But he knew Moon long enough to trust that questions could wait till later.

He grabbed Moon’s hand.

The two rose off Kael’s pillar in a diagonal arc, cutting away from the concentrated cluster of dark organization elites still fighting on the arena floor. Moon aimed for the eastern side of the venue, putting horizontal and vertical distance between them and every remaining black-clad figure in sight.

Alaric heard the warning mid-strike, his sword still deflecting one of Ace’s daggers, his mind preparing several follow-up moves to counter Ace’s counters.

Before their meeting last night, Alaric would have dismissed the warning entirely. Moon was a Three-Star Evolver interrupting a fight between two powers far above his. A shout to run was the kind of thing an inexperienced fighter did when he didn’t grasp the actual dynamics of the battle.

But after last night, Alaric knew better.

Moon had earned a different kind of respect. The kid had figured out the super lives. He had killed a Supreme Rank beast in the S-Rank gate.

When Moon told him to run, there was a reason.

Alaric broke the exchange.

His body erupted with golden light. Radiant Step activated, and he shot backward in a blinding streak, putting fifty meters between himself and Ace in a single motion. His hand snapped to the communication device at his ear.

"All units, disengage. Fall back to eastern staging. Do not remain in the arena. Repeat, all units disengage."

Across the venue, his team members responded instantly. They broke from their engagements at once, using every mobility skill and evasion technique in their kits to pull away from the dark organization’s forces. Some carried helpless civilians along the way. Others carried wounded competitors. All of them moved away from the arena’s center at maximum speed.

The other bracket competitors saw the retreat of Alaric and Moon.

The moment those two figures started running, the rest of the bracket followed. Competitors leapt off their pillars in every direction. The hundred or so Evolvers who had been fighting for their lives moments ago were now unified in a single collective instinct. Run away from the masked men.

Watching Alaric and Moon run, Ace’s smile began to slowly fade.

His head turned slowly across the arena, taking in the sudden mass exodus that had erupted across the arena.

"Oh no... no... no, why would you run now?" Ace raised his hand. "We were having fun!"

Alaric’s body shuddered mid-motion as Ace’s voice reached him. He didn’t slow down or look back.

Ace stood alone in the center of the arena. His smile was completely gone now. His dagger hung loose at his side. The elites of the dark organization were still fighting scattered engagements around the venue, but the center of the arena had emptied of competitors, operatives, and civilians alike.

Only he remained.

He let out a slow, disappointed breath.

"Seems like I have to do it myself."

His hand lifted, his fingers spread into an open palm. Suddenly, every corpse of every dark organization elite began to rise.

The bodies lifted slowly from the arena floor, floating a meter above the ground. Blood dripped from their wounds in drops. Their limbs hung limp beneath them. Dozens of them, then over a hundred, all rising across the length of the venue.

Ace let out a small sigh.

"You know, this really is the boring part. I never liked cleanup."

His hand snapped forward.

The corpses shot through the air. They accelerated instantly, flying across the arena like a barrage, aimed at every retreating figure. The bodies moved faster than the fleeing Evolvers could sprint, their trajectories curving to track their targets.

Moon’s heart sank as he watched them come.

’He has telekinesis? Some kind of item effect? Just... what is he?’

The question didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that a hundred corpses were flying toward them at speeds that would catch them.

"Everyone, scatter!" Moon’s voice erupted across the venue, amplified by mana until it reached every fleeing competitor. "Move away from each other! Spread out! Those corpses are timed bombs! Keep at least fifty meters between yourselves and them!"

The competitors below shuddered at the words.

Fear crept across their faces as they turned mid-sprint to look at the incoming corpses. The bodies were catching up faster than they could outrun. Panic broke through what discipline the bracket had left.

"I can’t outrun them! I can’t—"

"Just keep going, keep going!"

"There’s no point! They’re going to hit us anyway!"

"I don’t want to die—"

Then someone shouted from the back end of the retreating force. "Follow the Light Sword Saint! Get close to him! The Light Sword Saint can shield us! He’s strong enough! He has to be!"

The idea spread through the bracket like wildfire.

"Alaric will protect us!"

"Yes, get to him! He’ll take the hit!"

"Behind him! Stay behind him!"

The scattered retreat collapsed into a herd.

Competitors who had been spreading apart just moments ago began converging back together, all of them angling toward the streaking figure of the Light Sword Saint. They wanted a wall to hide behind. They wanted someone stronger to soak the damage they couldn’t survive themselves.

Moon watched from the air, his expression growing cold.

The idiots had abandoned every scrap of survival logic he had shouted at them. Instead of dispersing, they were clustering. Instead of making themselves harder to hit, they were creating a single concentrated target.

Any explosion aimed at Alaric now would take out the entire cluster.