章 42: The Mock Gate (2)

As I was pondering to myself, my teammates approached me, while Diana greeted me with a smile.

"Good Morning Ares, please take good care of me."

Following Diana, my other teammates decided to introduce themselves to me as well.

"My name is Eric Gunner, and I am a Guardian from Beta class." He said with a stoic face.

Eric had black hair with black eyes, and he was huge, as he was a guardian, so of course, his weapon was a shield.

"My name is Penelope Benjamin, and I am a mage from Alpha class. Please take care of me," she introduced herself with a smile on her face.

Penelope was a beautiful girl. She has pink hair with red eyes, and a well-developed body for a teenager, and she was using a high-quality staff that magic casters usually use, as her weapon.

"I will be in your care as well," I said to them with a smile on my face.

After introducing ourselves, we decided on the formation that we would be using in the Gate, and it was as follows.

Eric will take the front to protect us from any ambush or sudden attacks with his shield, and just behind him on his left-hand side will be Diana, who is our ranger, and will deal with the enemies that are far away from us. And I will be on the right side of Eric and deal with the enemies that approach us, at last, Penelope will be standing in the rear, and she will be dealing with enemies that are approaching us from behind, and she will also be supporting me and Diana.

Of course, we will only be using this formation while fighting large groups of enemies.

As we finished our discussion, we heard the professor's voice,

"Alright, I informed you everything you need to know. I will be teleporting everyone now, so don't die early and disturb my sleep." He said and activated the crystals to teleport us.

Soon, all the crystals lightened up and we were all teleported inside the mock Gate.

***

As we were inside the Gate, we noticed that the gate was a huge cave type. And we have enough leeway to move around. The best part was that every group was teleported together, so, we don't have to run around to find our teammates.

After examining the gate for a few moments, we decided to move forward.

And not long after we started moving ahead, Diana, who had better sight and senses, noticed a presence and spoke,

"A monster?"

Hearing her, I used my Hawkeye skill to confirm her words, and after scrutinizing for a moment, I spoke.

"It's a goblin, an E-rank monster, have you guys fought a goblin before?" I questioned.

Hearing me, Eric and Penelope shook their heads as if denying.

"I fought them, sometimes they swarm the forests in my kingdom," Diana uttered.

"I don't know much about the goblins you meet in the forest, but we have to be careful of the goblins we meet here," I spoke and took the lead, and after walking for a few seconds I halted in my steps and signaled them to stop as well.

They were confused seeing me so cautious about mere goblins.

"It looks a bit makeshift, but it's still a lethal trap," I said and withdrew my sword while pointing it towards the trap.

"Is it a goblin's doing?" Penelope questioned.

"Yeah, as you can see, goblins are particularly clever with things like this," I answered and destroyed the trap with my sword, as soon as the trap was destroyed. A whole group of goblins attacked me at the same time.

But even before their attacks could land on me, all their heads flew at the same time in a mere second. The goblins didn't even notice my attack speed and the same goes for my teammates as well, of course except for Diana, as rangers have better sight than normal people.

"If you don't fall for their traps, they get pretty mad and will ambush you all at once, so keep in mind that goblins in gates are dangerous," I warned them, and we started moving ahead.

***

THIRD PERSON POV~

"Our Team 21 is strong enough for us to be in the top 10, right?" A big guy with orange hair carrying a shield said to his other three teammates.

"That is true, as we are all from a special class, and we don't have any dead weights from alpha and beta classes in our team." A man with long black hair answered his teammate as they moved forward.

As they were conversing, a girl with short brown hair that was in the lead, halted and warned them.

"Wait! Something is off here,"

"huh, what's wrong?" Her other teammates questioned her.

"There are traps that have already been destroyed," she explained.

"Maybe another monster with intelligence destroyed it?" A girl with black hair questioned, and the other two teammates nodded in agreement with her statement.

"No, they wouldn't have been this meticulous." The short brown hair girl explained.

"So you think it's the other students doing?" Her teammates questioned.

"T-There, l-look over there!" the black-haired girl spoke stutteringly with a horrified look and pointed towards a certain direction.

As every team member turned their attention to the place she pointed at, they were shocked as well.

"Goblin corpses?" A guy with a shield spoke, while still in shock seeing the mounds of goblin corpses.

"All the corpses' heads are decapitated." Another guy beside him spoke.

But the short brown hair girl was terrified, not because she saw so many decapitated corpses of goblins, but because she realized that the person who can pull this off, was the only student that she can think of. And everyone in the academy knows about him.

"A-Ares, The Executioner." She muttered in a low voice. As soon as she muttered, she heard a girl's voice from behind her.

"Oh, she is quite smart, isn't she?" the girl spoke.

she turned around startled and noticed her teammates were already dead and were turning into particles, without even making any sound..., and the girl that just spoke was smiling at her, and beside her were her two team members doing the same.

She immediately recognized who this girl was, as she is quite popular among first years.

...It was Diana Eliora, and after seeing Diana, her face turned pale and she was even more terrified as she knew, Diana was a part of Ares's team, then she started scrutinizing left and right around Diana as if searching for someone, and soon she heard the voice of the person she was searching for.

"Hello, Is it me you're looking for?"

As she heard him, she felt a cold metal touching her neck.

*Gulp. She gulped out loud and uttered,

"SHIT-" Even before she could finish her sentence her head flew, separating from her body...

***

"You are quite ruthless, Ares," Diana spoke.

"Well, we don't have much time to play around with them, do we?" I replied.

"Yeah, you are not wrong there." she agreed, while Eric and Penelope just nodded their heads.

The group of students we just killed happened to be in the wrong place, as I was moving forward, Diana stopped me as she sensed their presence, so we decided to take care of them before moving forward.

As we don't want to be attacked by some group of students while we are dealing with other monsters...

After killing those group of students, we finally moved onward, and while doing so we encountered a lot of E and D rank monsters which we dealt with pretty easily.

But when we entered deep inside the gate, we encountered a group of B-rank monsters.

The B-rank monsters were huge orcs, and they were in groups as well, they were fighting intelligently which was unusual for orcs.

I was able to deal with a few of them by myself, but Diana, Eric, and Penelope had to work together to deal with them.

The orcs were working together and were trying to surround us to restrict our movement, If this goes on, we will waste most of our energy even before dealing with the A-rank monster.

As I was pondering, I found an orc shaman not far away from us, It seems he was the one leading them. He was surrounded by the orc mages and the mages were protected by other orcs that are using shields and axes.

"Diana, Penelope cover me, I will be dealing with the orc shaman that is leading them, and Eric, block the attacks that are directed toward Diana and Penelope, while they are covering for me," I commanded.

"Roger." They all spoke in unison and nodded their head in agreement.

Hearing them, I encircled myself with electricity and directly rushed towards the orc shaman using my snake step technique. While I was moving forward, the orcs in the front tried to impede me but were attacked by Diana's arrows and Penelope's fire magic. Though they didn't die with their attacks, at least they were distracted for a split second, and that was good enough, as it created a gap for me to move around.

I directly arrived in front of the orc shaman ignoring the mages that were surrounding him and pierced my sword into the orc shaman's stomach.

But that didn't kill him as his skin was quite tough, the orc shaman had a grin on his face seeing that my shallow attack didn't work on him, and he was about to attack me with the staff he was carrying, as soon as he lifted his staff to attack me, I smirked at him, and muttered 'Static Electricity.'

****