Chapter 56: The Fight Aftermath

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Noah did not know how long he had lost consciousness after fighting Emerald, drinking his blood, and regenerating his legs.

However, his dim consciousness woke up in a strange place, completely filled with darkness.

Noah, however, remembered a bit of this place.

This was the same place he saw the Blood Progenitor for the first time when he had to fuse his soul with his.

And where the abyssal, Ancient One, emerged to save him from being completely eaten by the Blood Progenitor soul.

He opened his eyes as he found an enormous crimson crystal floating in the middle of the darkness, emanating an eerie and bright red light.

"The Blood Core?" wondered Noah, touching it with his astral projection.

Flash!

Suddenly, the Blood Core gleamed brightly, as its power was transferred into Noah once more.

However, Noah quickly took his hand off it, as the power was too overwhelming, if he kept absorbing more of its power, he would surely die due to an overdose of power.

"This… Why am I dreaming of this? Can I unlock more of the Blood Core's powers through this strange dream?" wondered Noah.

However, suddenly, Noah felt an overwhelming presence behind him.

He glanced at it.

Abyssal darkness is even deeper than the darkness that surrounded him emerged.

Dozens of dark tentacles moved grotesquely, as a single crimson eye opened wide, glaring at him directly.

Noah felt immense fear.

An instinctual fear.

Even bigger than just dying.

This was if… even his soul was at the risk of being shattered into pieces.

His whole existence could end by just facing such an entity.

Just what… was this?

Noah glared at it, however, and braced himself.

He wanted some answers, and now that it had called upon him, he wanted to ask it what this entity was exactly.

"I am… thankful for what you did against the Blood Progenitor… But… who are you?" asked Noah, gnashing his teeth as his entire astral projection shivered.

The entity's crimson eye kept glaring at Noah until somehow, a strange noise that Noah could barely understand was released from its entire existence.

"Vessel…"

"Ah?" asked Noah.

"Not yet…"

"What? What do you mean?"

"Not yet… not enough… not prepared…"

"Not yet? Not Enough? Not prepared? Prepared for what?" asked Noah desperately, as he began to fade away.

"You are not ready…" said the entity, closing its crimson eye.

Flash.

Suddenly, Noah's eyes opened, as he found himself glaring at the ceiling of the caves he was hunting mutated beasts with his party and later on killed Emerald.

He found that his body was aching and a bit, but that he was indeed fine.

He quickly stood up, to see that the corpses of Emerald and everyone else that they fought against had disappeared.

And that he was surrendered by his group.

"You're finally awake, it really made us worry a bit…" said Arthur.

"Noah-sama!" said Iris, hugging Noah tightly, as Noah slowly moved her away.

"I am fine, why wouldn't I be? Now, where are the corpses?" asked Noah.

"We have already saved them inside the Dimensional Storage Ring, and we have also cleaned the blood and any trails lefts," said Timassa.

"They dropped… Ability Cores… Master…" said Jon.

"Master…. Okay?" asked Adamantine.

"I am okay, get off me, don't cling on me…" said Noah, moving away from the clingy Iris and Adamantine at his side.

"Noah-sama, you're just as lively as ever!" said Iris while blushing.

"Hungry…" said Adamantine.

"Anyways, did they dropped Ability Cores? How many? And who?" asked Noah.

"Emerald and another of the party members did, none other did… After all, they are rare," said Arthur.

"Emerald's… Ability Core?" asked Noah.

"I-Indeed… It is an A-Rank Core," said Arthur.

"That's… (I would be able to get a ton of Skill Points with it! …However, there could also be the chance to absorb it and get… perhaps, Emerald's powerful Skill, Elemental Jewel Creation or Danger Detection, both are incredibly useful…)" thought Noah.

"Give me Emerald's Ability Core, whoever killed the one that dropped the other Ability Core can keep it," said Noah, as Arthur nodded and immediately gave Noah the Ability Core of Emerald.

"How long have I been asleep?" asked Noah as he glanced at the Ability Core, saving it in his pocket.

"Around an hour… However, we still should be able to get back to the surface and reunite with the class… But about Emerald…" said Arthur.

"It doesn't matter, perhaps more students will be missing as well… After all, this is what the higher-ups most likely wanted out of this…" said Noah rather nonchalantly, as he walked towards the pit that led to the surface.

The party followed him from behind as Noah began to think about what he had just done.

"Emerald emerged out of nowhere to kill me, despite having never interacted with him in my entire life… He even knew to an extent what I truly was… However, he lacked knowledge about my abilities, and that was enough for me to pull off a victory. His Danger Detection seemed to be even more powerful than I imagined… I wonder if the Crystal Family will try to investigate the death of Emerald? After all, he was praised due to his talents... If that is the case, things might begin to get even worse… I need to quickly reach the peak of E-Rank at the very least, kill Fernand and then get out of this accursed school…" thought Noah.

If Noah managed to make an official Guild and could amass enough power and strong members, he would be able to gain reputation, and even those that were to try to target him would become warier and not immediately try to eliminate him, which could give him more time to grow stronger in the meantime.

Thinking about such things, Noah reached the rest of the class, as he noticed that around four more people were missing aside from Emerald.

The teacher greeted Noah as some of the students glanced at him and his group with awe.

"So they're alive?"

"I guess they can kill ants, what a surprise…"

"Wait, where's Emerald and his party?"

"True, they are not back yet…"

The teacher decided to wait for the missing students for a little while, but in the end, they were sent back to the military school after an hour of waiting, several students seemed confused about this, and why we're even more missing students.

The teacher could only grimace as he tried to calm down the students, saying that things would be better next time, and that investigations for the missing students were on course.

As Noah glanced at the technologically advanced city down below through the flying bus, a group of military men gathered around the wastelands, investigating the place.

An old man with a stoic face, muscular build, and a short gray bear with a large scar on his left eye, was glancing at the scene.

The dismembered bodies of two students were lying near the forest of this area, these wounds were not made by mutated beasts, although their corpses had already begun to be eaten by smaller mutated beasts.

"Sergeant, we found two more corpses… but no signs of Emerald's group," said a soldier that ran towards the man's side.

"I see… So the filtering has begun… Even Emerald was filtered, despite being praised as a talented prodigy…" said the man.

"And according to our scouting, the last time they were seen was when… they entered the underground cave sections, the same group were the Useless Students Party entered, which they later came out of it without any wound in their bodies… but we have not even found Emerald's group corpses, sir," said the soldier.

"So they even saved the corpses… Huh. Noah and… Iris, Jon… who else? Adamantine, the girl that survived the dungeon… and… Timassa and Arthur as well… All of them have become oddly close according to the reports, right? Perhaps… Noah has awakened some kind of ability? I cannot fathom to think that a useless human like him would be able to accomplish so much out of nowhere… But what kind of ability? And why did Emerald targeted him? Emerald's Danger Detection most likely has something to do with this… but what did Emerald found dangerous in Noah to target him so boldly?" wondered the sergeant.

"There's something fishy about this…" said a soldier at this side.

"Nonetheless, this is what the higher-ups want after all. So it is not like we should worry so much… The filtering is essential to get the soldiers we require, casualties are expected," said the sergeant, walking away from the corpses of the young students without any kind of remorse for their deaths.

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Author's Note: If you're enjoying this Novel make sure to check some of my other works, such as Epic of Summoner: Supreme Summoner System in the Apocalypse!

It's a Novel about an Interdimensional Apocalypse where the main character is thrown into it! Using his amazing Summoning System, he crawls his way to the top and survives the turbulent and chaotic era!

I am sure that you won't be disappointed at all if you like Action and LitRPG elements! Check it out if you can!