"You may have won," High Praetor Taqu continued to speak, "But you're still dead last out of all 100 races. This will be reflected in your starting conditions."
Starting conditions? Kaden's brows furrowed, wondering what it meant.
"You have survived the 14th New Race Tournament, and for that, I commend you. But like I said, this is only marks the beginning. I'll see you in one year." The video feed cut off.
And just as the screen turned black, a giant boom reverberated from outside. The house shook intensely. Windows shattered and things all over the house fell down from the shaking.
There was the crackle of broken porcelain from behind the couch. A vase had been wobbled off the edge of a table and broken into a thousand pieces on the floor.
Kaden got up in a hurry, running over to what had been a window, but was now just a hole in the wall.
He looked outside and what he saw frightened him.
A four legged creature stood a few hundred meters away, towering into the sky. It was at least 100 meters tall, with thick and rugged pale green skin.
It's giant long neck swung into buildings, tearing them down like a wrecking ball. When it's feet hit the ground, everything shook and buildings and cars were crumbled.
"We have to leave," Kaden said, feeling like he had a lump in his throat.
The creature wasn't that close to their location. But at it's size, it could move over here in mere seconds.
The old man just nodded gravely and got up to get ready. He didn't need to see what was outside to know that something was very wrong.
Kaden ran to his room, throwing on whatever clothes he could find. He didn't have much to begin with, and there was no sense in bringing a ton of useless stuff in an emergency.
Lastly he took a backpack and ran to the kitchen, filling it up with water, food, and other necessities.
There was another shake and the light inside of the house flickered once before going out.
"Great," Kaden mumbled. Things were turning worse by the second, now even the power had gone out.
The old man came back out from his room and lead the way into the garage. He jumped into the driver's seat of the car while Kaden went over to the garage door.
Kaden pulled on a rope next to the garage door, slowly lifting it manually. When the door was open enough to drive through, he chucked his backpack into the back seat of the car and got into the passenger seat.
The car rolled out of the garage and onto the curb. They could either go left or right from here.
"Where to?" The old man stopped the car and looked to Kaden, his hands on the wheel.
"Away from that," Kaden pointed at the unfathomable large creature on their left hand side.
The old man's eyes widened as he saw the thing for the first time. He gulped and immediately turned right, speeding up as he started driving. There was no time to care for the residential speed limit.
Kaden felt immense relief as the creature slowly shrunk in the distance.
Thankfully they had acted quickly and gotten out on the roads early. Soon others would get their butts into gear and the roads would start to jam, making it almost impossible to move anywhere.
His thoughts went to Aria and the other foster kids, but fact was that he didn't know where they were. And he certainly had no time to go find them now, this monster could flatten the entire city in a very short span of time.
For now, what they needed was information, and a lot of it.
Kaden turned on the radio. Most channels were just static, but as he kept going through the channels he eventually found one with a clear signal.
"We're getting reports of large unknown creatures appearing inside of cities. Sightings have been reported in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Austin, Phoenix, Chicago, and Houston so far. If you are inside one of these areas, we urge you to find sh—" In the middle of the host's sentence, the signal cut out and the radio went silent.
But Kaden had already heard what he needed. There was one key factor he keyed in on. Cities, large ones at that. New York, Chicago, and the rest the radio host had mentioned were all very large cities.
They were in the Chicago metropolitan area themselves. Right now it seemed that those creatures had only appeared in the large urban areas.
Still it raised the question, what was to find outside of these cities? He didn't know, but he was sure that it was a hell of a lot better than that gargantuan dinosaur like thing.
"Just take us out of the city as fast as possible, preferably somewhere desolate," Kaden told the old man who promptly nodded.
By now a few minutes had passed, and other cars had begun to come out on the roads. Luckily they lived on the outskirts of the metropolitan area and were almost out already.
But traffic started piling up rapidly, and within minutes they were reduced to moving at a snails pace. Anyone with half a brain had left their home and gotten out on the road, trying to evacuate.
The city's warning system began as sirens started howling, warning everyone of a catastrophe taking place.
Kaden felt a sort of annoyance at this, knowing that it would only make even more people want to leave, congesting the roads even further. He didn't know when he had gotten so selfish, but he didn't like it.
Intermittently the ground still shook beneath them. It made for a tense few minutes as they sat in a traffic jam, just waiting for the other cars to move.
Impatient drivers towards the back of the traffic jam honked their horns, urging everyone to speed up.
Finally they got to a fork where the road split off into multiple directions.
"I'll just take the least congested route," The old man said, veering off to the left.
It wasn't normally the route that would take them furthest away from the city the fastest. But because of the traffic, it was a lot smarter to take that road.
Everyone else had taken the direct roads onto the highway, but they were still moving at a snails pace, stuck in the traffic jam.
In comparison, Kaden and the old man were cruising along without a problem. They were already on the edge of the city.
After a few more minutes they turned onto an almost deserted country road and Kaden began to breathe more easily.
They had been lucky to get out of the traffic jam while people were still willing to behave.
"Just what was that?" Kaden asked. His mind was still full of images from when he had first seen that giant creature.
"I'm not sure, but it kind of looked like a triceratops," The old man shook his head, focusing on the road. There was only a few other cars in front of them.
"Yeah…" Kaden muttered, also keeping a look on the outside. He was wary of any other creatures that might suddenly pop up. Somehow it was doubtful that those triceratops copies were the only things that Mr. Beetleface had in store for them.
"Where should we go?" Kaden asked the old man, it was stupid to waste more time driving around without a plan.
"We should go seek shelter at a military base. There's a map in the passenger compartment, find out where the closest one is," The old man said.
Kaden doubted the military would be able to do much in this situation, the country was simply too large with too many places to defend. Sure there might be military bases spread out around the country that could help, but how much would they really be able to do alone?
Still, the old man's idea was better than any he had.
He opened the compartment and a bunch of items immediately spilled out onto the floor. Taking a quick look, none of them were the map, so he sit his eyes back on the compartment.
It was absolute full to the brim, he rummaged around a bit, taking out tissues, a toilet paper roll, gloves, and various other items.
Finally he spotted it, buried beneath a box of tissues. He pulled it out and started looking for military bases close to Chicago.
"There's one here, right by Chicago," Kaden pointed at the map to a military base that was located right above Chicago. It was probably only a few kilometers off from their location.
The old man took a quick glance over and dismissed the suggestion, "Too close, keep looking."
Kaden nodded and kept scanning the map, checking for a close one that was also suitable. His finger soon came to rest at a particular spot near the state border.
"There's one here, Davenport. It's right across the border to Iowa." Kaden thought that it wasn't too close, while also not too far.
"Davenport hmm," The old man thought about it before nodding, "I think it's good. Davenport isn't too big a city, and it's only about a three hour drive from here."
"Let's go then," Kaden said, shoving the various items back into the compartment as he settled in for the long drive.