"If you don't know how to use your Soultraits, open the status screen and speak the name out loud. Your Soultraits will be triggered and you may instinctively feel what you can do with it," Liam explained hastily before adding yet another instruction to the weary looking humans.
"Use your Arcanium to increase your Strength and Agility!"
Even if it was not polite to tell others what they were supposed to do, Liam did so nonetheless.
If the students were already strong enough to fend for themselves, he would not be required to save them. And, it was quite obvious that the students were already struggling to eliminate a single huge rat.
Liam was slowly getting tired which was also why he accessed the Arcane System to quickly purchase something.
[2x 『Energizer(F-Rank)』have been purchased. 2 Arcanium have been deducted!]
Two small reagents filled with yellow liquid materialized in front of Liam and he had to act quickly to catch them in midair. He barely caught it in his left hand while maintaining a firm hold over the battle-axe.
It was difficult to hold everything together but there was no time to complain about the trivial discomfort of holding too many things at the same time. If that were to be his only problem, Liam would be quite happy right now. He used his teeth to remove the lid of the vials before he gulped down the bitter liquid.
After that, his Stamina consumption seemed to decrease rapidly and it felt like his energy was increasing.
Liam shot forward again, using the corpse path to block the strongest rats from making their way up to the students. They were currently forced to experience their first kills, the first lives they took while wielding cold weapons whose sole purpose was to take lives.
It was only obvious that the students were beyond shocked but the psychological burden that was forced upon the students was too hard for many to handle.
Thus, Liam acted as the temporary spearhead of the ground and filtered out the massive threats. He blocked the strongest and taunted most rats to pull toward him, leaving less vicious ones for the students to tackle. His mission said that he had to protect the natives to the best of his ability and that was exactly what he was doing right now.
However, that didn't mean he would go out of his way to protect them. Sacrificing himself by jumping in front of the rats that swarmed at him from all possible directions was not something he would do.
He had to be alive to protect others, and he was not willing to risk being injured just to protect them either.
Rather than sustaining injuries, or going out of his way to protect the students, it was much better to let himself loose and improve his compatibility with the weak-ass physical strength that restricted him from going all out.
It felt like an eternity since he had been so weak and useless. Even ordinary Circleless monsters were able to fight against him head-on. In fact, they were all stronger in terms of stats. Even the strength of the ordinary huge rats seemed to be higher than his. Liam was only fortunate that he was not in need of an extremely high-strength stat to drive his razor-sharp steel weapons into his opponents.
'I will just finish this fucking mission and then leave them for good…' He thought while taking a glance behind his back to see how the students were faring.
Too late did he notice that he had long since walked down a different path than he told himself. It was not necessary for him to protect everyone, yet he chose to fight the rats outside the school building rather than turning the school into an impenetrable fortress.
This would have made things so much easier and the sacrifices would have been mere humans, strangers from a completely different realm.
Yet, seeing the way everyone looked at him with hope and a glint of reverence as he massacred dozens if not more than a hundred rats right in front of their eyes made him feel he was not abandoned.
It was as if time had slowed down right in front of the students. They could only see the rapid movements of the masked man and the raindrops that continued to fall onto the ground in a steady downpour.
Blood, body parts, and intestines littered the ground and the schoolyard was slowly filling up with corpses, that had now begun to pile up.
"Let's go inside!" The teacher shouted all of a sudden. He had just killed his second ordinary huge rat and was slowly getting the hang of the situation. His blank mind was slowly filled with well-construed thoughts and a rough understanding of their predicament along with steps to avoid it flashed through his mind.
It was too dangerous to stay outside the school building because the horde of rats seemed to be infinite. Even if it may not be much better inside the school building, it would certainly be better than staying idle in their current position, out in the open.
However, nobody moved in accordance with the teacher's words. They were all staring at Liam, who was slowly overwhelmed by the number of opponents that flocked in his direction.
The teacher could tell what his students were thinking because he was exactly wondering about the same. The unknown human who wore the mask of a devil was powerful. It was obvious to everyone that the masked man was someone with extensive combat experience, someone who was not afraid to kill for his own survival.
Even if the teacher didn't want to acknowledge it, they needed this strength…they needed the masked man!
"Sir, follow us inside…we can hold them off much better once we're in the school building!" The teacher shouted while turning to the school gate. He dragged a few students up from the ground, ignoring their miserable state of utter fear, and rushed inside with them.
At least that was what he wanted to do as all eyes followed him when a Blazing Tooth Rat emerged in front of the teacher.
'Is that how I am going to die?' He wondered, cursing his misfortune that was tailing him since a young age when something flew past him with a humming voice.
A moment later, the Blazing Tooth Rat squealed out painfully as a battle-axe with a large blade lodged itself deep inside the shoulder of the monster, pinning it to the ground.
Liam rushed past the teacher with nimble steps and pierced the Blazing Tooth Rat's heart.
[+0.5 Arcanium]
Afterward, he pulled the battle axe out of the monster, just to respond to the teacher in an impassive voice.
"Alright…let's go!"
**
If you like the novel add it to the library and leave some powerstones for the poor Author!
**
Everyone watched Liam as he rushed past them. The rats hesitated for a moment because they could instinctively tell that the apex predator who killed dozens of them within minutes wouldn't flee just like that.
Their instincts restricted them, and they gave the humans the opportunity to stare at his retreating figure for a while before they followed him subconsciously.
The humans didn't even know that their legs carried them toward Liam, the mysterious masked man who had come to their rescue.
Everyone's movements were much less tense than before and the fear that had enveloped them for the last few minutes was dispersed. It was just a momentary state in which their mind grew blank but that was enough to make them rush behind Liam who had entered the schoolyard by now.
He stopped and looked behind as if he was waiting for the last students to reach him.
'The Gate cannot be closed anymore…obviously,' Liam thought contrary to the students' expectations that they were safe inside and it was just a moment later that he rushed back.
The last student was just about to enter the schoolyard through the open Gate when Liam pierced out with the longsword.
A shriek escaped the young female student who had bite marks all over her leg as the longsword's blade whizzed past her head. The blade missed her ear by a hair's breadth. She nearly fainted due to shock as a squeal of pain rang through her ears from behind.
[+0.5 Arcanium]
Liam pierced the heart of the Blazing Tooth Rat that had pounced at the student with the intention to tear her apart.
Afterward, he halted in his tracks while taking a deep breath.
The right side of the metal fence was still holding itself strongly. As for the left side, Liam's earlier spear had missed its target and instead had broken the lock which was also why the Gate was wide open.
'If the Gate doesn't hold the rats back, I might as well create a wall of corpses!' Liam told himself while taking a deep breath.
The remains of Arcane Power that surged through his body were churning wildly and Liam was ready to use it all in the following fight.
Most Ordinary Huge Rats tried to avoid him the moment they recognized the opponent they were about to face but Liam didn't give them the opportunity to slow down, let alone to evade his attack.
Even if the rats wanted to evade his attacks, they had nowhere to run or hide from him either way. Their brethren were to their left and right, and they were being pushed forward without mercy from behind as well.
Their numerical advantage which was their biggest strength quickly turned into their biggest disadvantage as they were all packed in a small space, rendering them unable to fight properly and defend themselves.
The rats' stats were useless if they couldn't make use of them!
Liam killed close to a dozen rats in a rampage of precisely aimed slashes and thrusts and everyone in the schoolyard couldn't help but stare at the reliable broad back of the young man who fought behind the Gate to stall the rats for a few more seconds.
Liam's back was packed with tightly coiled muscles that were clearly visible through the white shirt in which he had been thrown onto Haltan.
It looked almost as if Liam's body was carved by a master sculptor, creating a living statue of marble infused with the experience of a War God.
Some students were influenced by Liam's words and actions. They rushed toward Liam and started to help him by piercing through the flesh of the huge rats that would have escaped Liam inevitably.
Five students ended up lining up next to Liam, fighting with all their might, using the steel spears their savior brought to them.
'Better than nothing, I guess,' Liam thought when he noted the support he was given by the young humans who had never killed in their life.
It infused him with renewed vigor and caused Liam to move faster, smoother, and detect the trajectory of every single monster in his sight.
The efficiency with which he killed the rats accelerated tremendously, while the eyes trained on him widened in shock.
Liam's demeanor had changed as the adaption process with his weakened body increased drastically. He fought valiantly despite the imminent threat of death looming over him, and the scythe of the Grim Reaper tightly pressed against his neck was more than enough to force him to adapt to his body's condition and overcome the issue.
Thus, a sudden change in his presence could be witnessed by everyone.
His black devil mask felt like a shadow cast in the shape of a face. It loomed in the darkness and only surfaced to cause destruction and chaos. The mask was inky black in color as if it had absorbed even the last speck of light that touched it and its eyes were hollow sockets that unveiled the liveliness of the galaxies that seemed to be sealed in the eyes of their mysterious savior.
None of them had ever seen eyes like that of their savior. They were alive and drew everyone's attention onto them as if they had bewitched all the living beings that dared to look at them.
However, Liam's eyes were not the only parts of his body that set him apart. There was a jagged horn that rose up from the left side of his forehead. It was a symbol of power and terror, a testament to the otherworldly nature of the mask, yet, nobody could even remotely imagine that the horn was actually part of their mysterious savior, not a decorative piece of the mask.
If they knew about his origin, the students might act differently and that was not something he needed right now.
The fight at the Gate of the schoolyard continued for another minute in which Liam witnessed how the human students finally began to start using their Soultraits as well.
It was obvious that the students' stats were higher than his own even if he was much stronger than before. However, their movements were still sluggish and they couldn't kill mercilessly, let alone efficiently.
More students came to their classmates' aid but most of them ended up vomiting on the ground and trembling uncontrollably after they realized that they had just killed other living beings.
Others were crying bitterly, snot running down their noses as they pierced the spears into the violently writhing masses of the rats.
'They started to spread out? The fence is not enough… we need to move to a different place…'
You may also Like
Paragraph comment
Paragraph comment feature is now on the Web! Move mouse over any paragraph and click the icon to add your comment.
Also, you can always turn it off/on in Settings.
GOT IT