"Hmph, since it came down to this, then don't blame us for not holding back. Everyone, attack together!" The 5 of them rushed forward to attack the Thomas, but their attacks were not aimed at fatal areas. They clearly understood that this was an official selection of the association, the higher ups won't care if they stole anything and so was fighting, but they were not allowed to fatally threaten the opposing party's lives.
In any case the killing of a fellow Adept was considered a huge crime in the eyes of the Human Alliance.
Thomas immediately dove to the side. His Demonic Sense was as sharp as ever, giving him the ability to see the trajectory of their attacks. As Thomas dodged the first three attacks, he swung his blade at the leg of the closest one.
However, the group in front of them was proving hard to deal with, even more than the eight Adeps that attacked him in the old factory. Just as the blade was about to hit one of them in the thigh, a throwing knife flew out and hit the tip of the blade with a colliding sound.
"Ding!"
As metal met metal, the attack was interrupted. Yet, due to Thomas' terrifying strength of him that even the testing machine gave a strange reaction, Thomas used his other handto punch the male wilding the spear. Immediately, the youth holding the spear suddenly felt his entire arm of him go numb, as the heavy punch infused with Anima Energy smashed itself against his arm, causing his whole hand to shake and his body to move a few feet back.
"They aren't showing their Anima Abilities." Until now, Thomas didn't see any of them using their Innate Anima Abilities. Anima Abilities were the greatest secret of an Adept as Anima Techniques could be learned by other who had the technique manual while Abilities could only awake once and couldn't be reproduced.
The youth was astonished and cried out to his friends, "We must be careful, this guy's physical strength is abnormally strong. It's best if you don't get into arm's reach of him!"
Hearing the warning, the other two four immediately became more cautious, and tried to move away from Thomas as a throwing knife was thrown at his leg, left hand and right shoulder.
Thomas clench his hand, a ghostly glow appeared over his entire left arm.
[Titan God's Hand -13 Anima Energy]
Instead of expending too much energy to produce a big Titan Hand, Thomas focused all the power into his left arm of him, making the Titan God's Hand envelop his left arm.
With the immense boost of power, Thomas grabbed the first knife and threw it with the strength of a Titan with the wood handle turned towards the Knife Throwing Adept.
Pan! The wood handle hit the youth in the forehead and he immediately lost consciousness. However, Thomas wasn't fight just a single person, and he could only watch in shock a short-haired girl's Dagger stabbed into his thigh.
"Ah!" Thomas cried out in pain as his face drained of color, and sweat dripped down his forehead.
Yet a greenish glow surrounded his body, the bloody injure on his tight his stopped bleeding almost a single second later. Of course it still hurt as hell
Unable to fight Jian Chen personally, he cried out to his friend of his, "Harriet, what did you do?! He's bleeding, now all the beasts are going to be attracted here!"
The girl's face also lost all color as she apologized. "I'm Sorry! Tony take Luis with you, we must leave."
"No you won't." At this point Thomas had just stood up while holding his thigh when he saw the five adepts were escaping. At this point he was searching through the System Store before he found something.
[Consumable Skill Scroll
Low-range Steal Scroll: When activated the user can steal a single item in the area of Six Hundred Meters from the User. Item will vanish once used once used. Price 90.000 Credits]
On his palm a single yellow scroll appeared, without even blinking Thomas ripped the Scroll and a selection window appeared before his eyes.
A list containing thousands of items appeared before Thomas. It was so many items that even he found hard to read. His initial plan was to steal the hunting bag of the five Adepts, and upon seeing what was within the their bag he smiled.
Golden Horned Rabbit's Heart x5
Low-Rank Goblin's heart x22
Green Blue Flower x19
Soul Sealing Bottle( Containing 12 Mid-rank Demon Souls)
When he made his choice, the yellow scroll turned into a small pile of dust and a brown backpack appeared in front of him.
Thomas ran to the opposite side while hearing several furious screams from the direction of the five Adepts.
[It can't be!]
Thomas nearly lost balance when he heard Ares Screaming in his mind. Yet he thought that it must be something important since even Ares was acting like this. "What is it?"
[There is an astonishing Evil Force Within this place. I can feel it through that hole in the sky, an dense and endless plane filled with all sorts of evil energy. You must not go closer to the city ruins, I think it has beings way more powerful than your human friends can imagine.]
"Alright." Despite wanting to ask more about what Ares could feel Thomas took a detour as he prepared to hunt a little more before returning.
Time passed and there was only thirty minutes until the end of the test. Thomas was also carrying a completely full bag on his back. Although he still stuck with wearing the battle suit, it had already been dyed red from blood. In the meantime he had met over six Teams of Adepts and fought a lot, luckily the soldiers at Vallar Gate provided some rations for them to replenish their energy.
Suddenly, Thomas could hear the sounds of a distant battle. With his acute ears, he could heard the faintest of sounds.
Thomas stood up from where he was sitting, and looked off to where he heard the sounds, "I feel lots of energies clashing, there's a fight going on over there."
[Not just energy, some must have died over there.]
"Is it a beast?"
[You should look for yourself.]
.....
A middle-aged Soldier was watching a light screen showing in real time the situation in the forest through several thin drones that recorded every scene in the outer part of the forest.
At the moment, A grim teenager with short blond hair, whose shirt was stained with blood, carried a long scimitar as he arrogantly walked on the forest.
"I wonder how many monsters Thomas has killed during this time" Thought the youth as he carried over three full bags with the body parts of monsters. He is the second one out of the 50 Adepts whose age is close to Thomas.
The soldier recalled some information about this youth, he was a brother of a famous Elite Adept in the Bluewind City, Frank Dion.
Frank became an Adept last year when he was sixteen years old much like Thomas. However, the Selection of that year had ended a few weeks earlier so he didn't have the chance to participate. He had to wait a long time to participate in this selection, although this time other two Adepts had caught the eye of the Association.
However, one of them is a long-range Adept whose fitness level isn't that high and was only scouted due to him being the heir of the famous Kyle Group. A few hours earlier, his Agent told him about another youth that has caught the eye of the famous Elite Adept Katherine Shade, and he was able to nearly beating the former before even becoming an Adept.
To this experienced soldier who was watching everything, only Thomas and Luccas are showed a similar talent, the others are all way older than those three.
"Hm?" Frank suddenly heard a commotion coming a few meters at his left of him, his senses of him told him there was something wrong.
A group of over ten people were running as fast they as huge yellow shadow followed right behind killing anything in their path.
The aura of that creature was so powerful that all other creatures had fled the area way before them, from the blood on it's claws and mouth, it had already killed a few participants already.
The middle-aged soldier nearly fell off his chair when he saw such a beast, even the most experienced and powerful peak Adepts would suffer facing a 3-star demonic beast.
Immediately he sent a message to the general. "General, we must evacuate these children, there is a fully-grown 3-star demonic beast in there!"
Even after alerting the other soldier, he was a little low-spirited. He knew very well how long it would take for the soldier to arrive at the beast location, in less than twenty minutes.
To all the participants here that were there, staying twenty minutes with a 3-star beast is the same as a death sentence!