"Richard?!" Alicia was gaping at me, her mouth wide. "When…how…did you…?"
"I got lost. Sorry." I tilted my head sheepishly, and gestured toward the cliff where I just jumped off from. In the excitement, I had completely forgotten that I used to be afraid of heights. This was one way of getting rid of my acrophobia, which had plagued me since childhood in the other timeline. "I ended up wandering in the mountains for quite a while until I sensed the Crastrate."
"You bastard!" Dong Fang Yue Chu exclaimed, laughing. "You almost didn't make it in time!"
Holding him up, Lily nodded. "If you came a few seconds later, the monster would have torn all of us apart."
I nodded, keeping an eye on the monster while quickly casting another powerful spell. Earlier, atop the cliff, I was so distracted by my fears and hesitation that I couldn't concentrate on casting a proper spell. There wasn't much time to cast a spell anyway, not with the Crastrate advancing so close to my friends. But now that I had bought us some breathing room, I seized the opportunity to begin casting a powerful spell.
"Are you all right?" I asked. Then I shook my head. "Stupid question. Sorry. Can you guys move?"
"We're trying," Jin Hao replied with a grim grin. "None of us want to stick around."
"Good. Get out of here. I'll hold the Crastrate off." I glanced at the unconscious people. As I suspected, Craig was one of them, hoisted up by Sheila.
"Did you kill it?" Harvey asked, wonder in his haunted eyes. I shook my head.
"Nope. There's no way it would die from a single kick. It's a rank B monster, you know. A Fiend-class. Crastrates are very powerful."
Even as I explained, I suddenly realized something was amiss.
"Where's Stan and Wang Fei?"
Dong Fang Yue Chu lowered his head, while Harvey looked away, unable to meet my eyes. Suddenly understanding, I stared in the direction of the corpses and caught sight of both my juniors among the dead.
"…"
Dark fury curled up inside me, momentarily surpassing the heavy, immense demonic aura that had been suffocating me this entire time. Clenching my fists, I turned toward the sprawled Crastrate.
"I'm going to murder that fucker," I hissed. Summoning Sagittarius, I finally completed my spell and cast Alnasl. Fitting my flaming arrow, I took aim at the sprawled Crastrate. While I did so, I issued a command to my stunned friends without even glancing over my shoulder to look in their direction. My attention was completely focused on the monster. "You guys had better hurry before I nuke the entire place to oblivion."
"Are you sure you can defeat it?" Alicia asked anxiously. "It's a rank B monster! It's too powerful for you!"
"He's Vice-president Richard!" Harvey said confidently. "Of course he can defeat that monster!"
"You have too much faith in me," I muttered with a shake of my head. "The most I can do is buy you guys some time and stall the Crastrate."
"Are you sure you should be fighting that thing alone then?" Jin Hao asked skeptically.
"All the more you should hurry and get the hell out of here," I replied firmly. "Once I buy you guys enough time, I'll run away on my own."
"Hey, you can't handle that monster alone!" Dong Fang Yue Chu struggled to stand to his feet, gently shrugging off Lily's assistance. "I'll stand with you!"
"In your condition? Sorry to be blunt, but you'll only get in the way."
"Richard's right." Lily tugged at Dong Fang Yue Chu softly. "He can't afford to protect you and fight that monster at the same time."
Dong Fang Yue Chu gritted his teeth in frustration, especially as he sank against Lily when his legs gave way. He had been hurt badly. My fury rose another notch when I saw clearly how battered he was.
"Make sure you don't die," he commanded me. "President's orders. I won't allow you to die here."
"Just make sure you guys get to safety, and I'll follow you shortly."
As friends evacuated the area, I released my flaming arrow at the still form of the Crastrate. It didn't even get up as my arrow struck it, the whole place exploding into a roaring inferno that turned night into day.
But I was under no illusions that my Alnasl destroyed such a high ranking monster. If it was so easily killed, then it wouldn't be ranked this highly.
"?!"
A deafening screech filled the air, almost causing me to cover my ears in fright and pain. However, I remained resolute and stayed vigilant. Training my eyes on the dark shape amidst the inferno, I prepared another devastating arrow. However, the dark shape disappeared into the smoke before I could fire off a second arrow. I blinked in surprise. Before I knew what had happened, something sharp and heavy struck me in the abdomen and sent me flying across the valley.
Coughing out blood, I rolled to my feet and fitted Alnasl to the Sagittarius. Taking aim, I released the flaming arrow toward the snarling, triumphant monster.
Again, the night seemed to turn into day as Alnasl struck the Crastrate with the force of a star, lighting the entire site up with a blinding explosion. I crashed heavily onto the ground as the shockwaves buffeted me, grimacing as I clutched my wounds. Blood streamed through my fingers while I fought to stem the bleeding.
"Aw, damn." I gritted my teeth as I weathered the pain from three long, deep gashes on my torso. "What a mess."
Breathing heavily, I staggered to my feet. All around me, the Jing Tian Academy students were turning around to look at both me and the inferno that resulted from the explosion. The second one was bigger than the first, for some reason. Probably because I unleashed a lot more mana in panic after taking a serious hit.
Not that I wanted to hold back, but I needed to regulate my mana consumption or I would end up too exhausted to flee after buying time. Actually, I had no intention of escaping. From the very moment I had jumped off the cliff, I had already begun casting a long, powerful, incredibly complex summoning spell, but obviously the Crastrate wasn't going to wait for me to complete it. If I hadn't intervened when I did, I wouldn't have any friends left to save.
Killing the Crastrate in vengeance was little comfort if all I did was watch it kill my friends in front of my eyes.
"Stop looking and go!" I roared at my friends. "Hurry up and get out of here! I don't know how long that thing will need to get back onto its feet!"
My words shocked them into movement, and they hastened their footsteps to widen the distance between themselves and the campsite. Harvey, in particular, was wearing an expression of disbelief. After all, surely nothing could survive a devastating attack like my Alnasl?
I wished Alnasl could take the Crastrate out. I really wished it did. It would make my job so much easier. As it was, I could see the Crastrate standing in the center of the explosion, huge fumes of smoke pouring off its body.
"Shit!" I swore. "It's already back up on its feet!"
Dismissing Sagittarius because of its evident lack of effect, I summoned Gemini instead. I held off summoning one of the larger Constellation spirits for now because I wanted to complete my ultimate summoning spell as soon as possible, and didn't want to interrupt it with a relatively long summoning spell in between.
That might sound weird, but I guess an analogy was in order. Think of casting spells as something similar to downloading files. I was currently trying to complete the download of an incredibly massive file (a program with all sorts of awesome features and functions), but to deal with a virus attack, I had to pause the download of that file to quickly download a smaller antivirus program to stave off the virus attack. So the downloading process of that massive file gets intermittently paused and resumed every time I ended up downloading another smaller file to deal with the immediacy of a virus attack. Perhaps it was easier if I explained the casting of my summoning spells in this manner.
However, the Crastrate wasn't interested in my explanation. It was already rearing up and hissing ferociously.
"That thing's truly a monster," I murmured to myself as a chill ran down my spine at the sight of its hideous, eyeless face and inner jaws.
I was relieved to see that I had at least damaged it, though. A gaping wound had been etched into its body by my fearsome attack, with yellowish green blood spilling from it. I watched as the blood slowly dripped onto the ground.
As soon as the Crastrate's blood touched the ground, smoke began hissing as the ground dissolved upon contact.
Just like Craig before me, I found out that the Crastrate had acid for blood. I couldn't say I was surprised, though. I had already read about that terrifying feature in the monster encyclopedia at home. And again, it resembled the characteristics of an alien monster from one of my favorite sci-fi horror movies.
Unfortunately, it took me a second to realize that I had just made a fatal mistake by switching my gaze from the monster to its blood. By the time I glanced back at the Crastrate, it was gone.
"Shit! Where did it go?!"
I sensed a dark blur to my left. Instinctively, I twisted my body and crossed my blades to defend myself. Something of immense power struck and broke through my guard, shattering Castor and Pollux and sending me flying across the air again.
"Ugh…!"
Before I could even finish crying out in pain, the Crastrate was already above me. Flipping around, it hit me in the gut with a single clawed talon. How it didn't eviscerate me or cleave me in half, I would never know, but the magic of a protagonist's plot armor miraculously preserved my life. In any case, I was thrown back to earth, slamming into the ground in a single enormous explosion of dirt and soil. The ground beneath me shattered and I found myself driven deep into a crater. Coughing, I felt red-hot pain shooting across my body as the impact left some cracks on my fragile skeleton.
Blood began oozing from my mouth and numerous wounds across my body. Coughing both blood and dirt out, I winced in pain and cursed.
"Fuck! That blow broke my ribs!"
Tendering rubbing my chest, I slowly got back up to my feet. Swaying unsteadily, I forced myself to summon Gemini again.
This time, I was ready for it. Once I sensed movement on my right, I immediately swung Castor and unleashed a wave of jet-black energy that blew up the entire territory on that side. Spinning around to face the stunned Crastrate, I swung both swords down for a fatal, bisecting slash – and struck solid metal.
No, it was not solid metal.
It was the Crastrate's head.
The Crastrate hissed at me, opening its mouth to reveal an inner set of secondary jaws within. I struggled to continue the slash, but both of my twin swords refused to budge.
"How the hell is this possible?!" I whispered, fear beginning to overwhelm my rationality. The thing was unscathed, even after Castor's energy strike, even after having two swords stabbing its head. It was totally unhurt, save for the wound I dealt it earlier with Sagittarius. Even if it survived my flaming arrow, Alnasl, it was ridiculous that it could withstand my Castor spell and a direct blow from my Gemini twin swords without sustaining any damage.
Just what the fuck was this thing?!
I pulled back on reflex, an action that probably saved my life because the next thing I knew, I was instinctively crossing my twin swords to guard against another attack. The Crastrate's relatively slender yet ridiculously strong arm smashed Gemini into bits again before slamming into me and throwing me off my feet.
This time, the Crastrate was no longer as merciful. It tackled me in midflight, slashing me over and over again. Its spiked tail rammed into me, piercing through my abdomen and exiting through my back. Stunned, I clutched at the tail that impaled me, as if trying to yank it out. However, I clearly lacked the strength to do so.
The creature smashed its inner jaws right into my face, shattering my glasses and spilling blood across my vision. Choking, I lifted my arm weakly to strike it, but it slashed my face with its claws and hurled me off its tail. I spun around in the air like a broken rag doll before hitting the ground, bouncing a few times before I finally came to a stop.
Weakly, I tried to get up. However, I only succeeded in erupting in a coughing fit of blood. Covering my mouth in a desperate attempt to stem the coughing, I was only vaguely aware of a metallic taste on my tongue. Raising my head weakly, I caught sight of the Crastrate approaching me.
There was absolutely nothing I could do.
It gave me a vicious kick that sent me rolling helplessly on the ground. Just as I stopped rolling, I threw up even more blood. Supporting myself with my arms, I made another futile attempt to get up, but the Crastrate gave me a second kick that sent me flat on my back. I lay on the ground, stunned for a moment, but my shock was effectively ended by a crude, abrupt stomp on my abdomen.
"GAAAAAAAH!"
I screamed in pain. The Crastrate seemed to study me for a moment, its eyeless, smooth black face boring into mine before pulling its lips back and revealing its inner jaws.
At this moment, I felt a wave of despair. Simultaneously, I could feel a tsunami of fury and defiance building up in my gut. Especially when I caught sight of the dead – of Stan, Wang Fei, Elliot, Nicholas and so many others.
"Fuck you!" I snarled through blood-covered lips, and I finally completed my first major summoning spell. "Taurus!"
The enormous bull appeared out of nowhere and slammed into the Crastrate, knocking it off me. He tackled the Fiend and smashed it into the ground, causing another massive explosion.
It might seem weird that I took so long to summon my first Constellation spirit, but there was a good reason for the delay. Throughout my battle against the Crastrate, I was forced to repeatedly and continually cast physical reinforcement and enhancement spells. That was the only reason why I survived being clawed, stabbed, slashed, and stomped by the Crastrate while so many others succumbed to its deadly attacks. Plot armor was one thing, but I had an explanation for it. It was unfortunate that the reinforcement spells didn't stack, but the problem was that the Crastrate constantly shattered and broke through my protective reinforcement spells, forcing me to cast a new one from scratch in order to withstand its barrage of attacks.
If you remembered my analogy about downloads from earlier, it was pretty much the same. I had to continually pause the summoning spell for my Constellation spirits to repeatedly cast new reinforcement spells to survive the immediacy of the Crastrate's attacks. As much as I wanted to unleash my Constellation spirits on the creature, it would all be for naught if I died to its attacks. I wasn't going to risk skipping the constant physical reinforcement spells or I would end up like my late schoolmates.
Straightening up as best as I could, what with the severe injuries I had sustained despite my physical reinforcement spells, I glared at the downed Crastrate defiantly. Above me, Taurus got ready to charge at the Crastrate again, pawing the ground as he snorted aggressively.
Being in a similar mood, I grinned with blood-flecked lips.
"Now my counterattack can finally begin."