CHAPTER 40: DEVIL APE!

"I. Said. Down!!!"

With a deafening roar of his own, his cells trembled, as he squeezed strength from deep within his body, unleashing power like a raging tide.

He blasted the Devil Ape back and then spun as he threw the massive beast straight into a crowd of smaller monsters, clearing a path like a bowling ball hitting pins.

But the fight was taking its toll.

The berserk monsters didn’t feel pain.

They didn’t feel fear. They just kept coming.

He knew he couldn’t keep this up forever. He had to end this.

Back in the comfort of the golden lit stadium, the world had gone silent.

The massive, three-dimensional hologram image at the center of the arena, which had been broadcasting the student’s progress suddenly flickered and then like a tv station that had lost its signal, it’s started to display white static noises.

A silent moment passed.

Then, chaos erupted.

"What happened?!"

"Did the system break down?"

"Bring the feed back! I need to see the battles!"

The senior students in the stands shot to their feet, they were confused as they whispered amongst each other. Their vouces filling the stadium.

The instructors on the high table were also in shock. They shouted and commanded at the technicians, demanding an explanation and a fix.

Only two figures remained calm.

Sub-Dean Scarlet and the Seventh Elder. Their expressions were not confused. They were expressionless instead.

Their eyes met for a single, fleeting moment, and in that silent exchange, they seem to have come to some sort of understanding about what had just happened.

"Interference," the Seventh Elder murmured, his voice a low rumble that was barely audible over the din. "And on a scale this large... only they would be so bold."

Scarlet’s face was indifferent but a murderous aura erupted from her like a tide.

Her knuckles turned white as she gripped them tightly against the chair arm rest.

She knew exactly what this meant. The surveillance was a high level relic and for it to be blocked means it had been blocked by another high level interference relic.

This, combined with the earlier lockdown of the portal, meant only one thing.

The Ancient Ground of Dark Matter.

Without a word, she stood up. The students and instructors fell silent as they felt the shift in the atmosphere. The air grew heavy, charged with a terrifying, oppressive power.

She raised her hand and a massive trident appeared in her hand.

"Whoosh!"

Sub-dean Scarlett vanished from the high table and reappeared in the sky above the center of the stadium, where the portal had been.

Suddenly, she stabbed forwards at the empty space.

"CLANG!"

A sound like a hammer striking an unbreakable shield echoed through the stadium.

The tip of her trident, which would usually stab a hole through mountains and rip rivers to shreds actually stopped when she was trying to rip a hole through space!

It was as though the space was as a diamond wall!

Scarlett’s heavenly face changed slightly.

"Impossible."

Suddenly, her aura surged and in the blink of an eye l, the entire stadium felt their gut clench as an immense pressure enveloped them like gravity.

Waves of void energy surged like a river as she stabbed even further, the muscles in her arm bulging as a wave of crimson energy exploded from her body.

"KREEEEE!"

The trident ground against the hardened space, letting out a high-pitched, agonizing screech. Tiny, almost invisible cracks appeared in the air, but they sealed themselves shut as quickly as they formed.

She could not break through.

Her eyes widened slightly. She recognized this phenomenon. There was only one thing that could harden the walls of a dimensional zone to such an impossible degree.

A Blood Moon Frenzy.

But that made no sense. A natural Blood Moon Frenzy only happened once in a hundred years. The last one had been less than twenty years ago. Then, the final piece of the puzzle suddenly clicked into place in her head. The interference relic... the lockdown... the hardened space...

"They didn’t just infiltrate," she whispered, her voice laced with a cold, terrifying fury. "They artificially induced the Blood Moon Frenzy."

She returned to the high table, her face as dark as a storm cloud. The other instructors, seeing the look on her face and witnessing her failure to break the seal, finally understood the gravity of the situation. Their students were trapped.

Mr. Pearson’s face was as pale as a ghost. The faces of the recruits he had trained for four long months flashed in his mind. The arrogant, the timid, the brave, the weak. Levi. He thought of the boy who had defied all expectations, the boy who had risen from the bottom to become a monster. He couldn’t let them all die like this.

He turned to the Seventh Elder, his voice desperate, as he urgently pleaded. "Seventh Elder, please! You have to do something! Your power is far greater than the Sub-Dean’s! You can break the seal! You have to save them!"

Before the old man could even reply, Scarlet’s voice, now colder than the void itself, cut him off.

"No."

Mr. Pearson spun to face her, his desperation turning to anger. "What do you mean, no?! They are our students! They will be massacred!"

"We only train monsters here at the Chaotic Star-War Academy," Scarlett replied, her crimson eyes locking onto him. "If they cannot survive this, then they were never worthy of the resources we spent on them."

Her words were like shards of ice, devoid of any human warmth.

"This is no longer just an examination," she continued, her voice absolute. "This is their true graduation trial. Those who survive the Blood Frenzy, those who crawl out of that hell on their own, will be considered the true geniuses of this generation. They will all be immediately promoted to the Elite Class."

"That’s insane!" Pearson roared, his fear for his students overriding his fear of her. "You’re sentencing them to death! They are just children!"