"Back!" Instructor Jiao shouted frantically, waving for the students to get behind him. "Fall back! Retreat!"
"To where?!" Xin Xia wailed, even as she was shepherded away by a couple of our classmates. All of us knew that if the healer were to fall, then we were pretty much screwed.
"I'll open a path!" Lou Qian declared. She spun her scythe around, black energies trailing the deadly blade. Scores of zombies fell before her, and for a moment it appeared that we had a route out of this mess.
Then Instructor Jiao was cannonballed away, his body crumpling and bloodied. The grotesque had tackled him, using one of its colossal fists to swat him away. His rifle hung from his hand, broken and the barrel snapped.
"Instructor Jiao!"
"Somebody grab him!" Lou Qian commanded, taking charge. She gritted her teeth and glared at the grotesque advancing toward us. "And someone divert the grotesque's attention away from us!"
"What do you mean by that?" Cheng Yan demanded, hurling fireballs. A few zombies were incinerated by the fierce flames, but the grotesque barreled through the inferno with nothing more than charred flesh. As an undead, it was inured to pain and thus ignored the severe burns, continuing its charge.
"Qi Ren! Can you hold it off for at least a few minutes so that the rest can get away?" Lou Qian asked. Qi Ren, who was pulverizing a couple of zombies nearby, blanched.
"What's that supposed to mean? Are you asking me to sacrifice myself?"
"If you don't buy us time, then we're all going to die here."
"No way! Why should I die? Why don't you distract the grotesque then?"
"I…I have to open up a path!" for the first time, I saw Lou Qian hesitate, but she was able to come up with a quick excuse. "Just do it! Or we'll all die here together!"
Qi Ren glanced up and saw the charging bulk of the grotesque. He went pale and shuddered, knowing that she was right. However, instead of stepping up to the task, he seized one of our classmates, Nian Qing.
"You do it, Nian Qing!"
Then he hurled the poor guy at the grotesque. Nian Qing cried out, tumbling in the air, but I managed to catch him and stopped his momentum.
"What do you think you're doing?" I snapped at Qi Ren. "Are you trying to kill your own comrades?"
"Shut up! If nobody sacrifices himself, then we'll all die!" He stared at me, his eyes wild. Then he sneered. "Since you like playing hero, why don't you do it?"
I took a deep breath and assessed my options. I didn't like it, but I didn't have a choice. At the very least, I wasn't going to sink to Qi Ren's level and expect someone else to die for my sake. Besides, with my abilities, I could see a way to survive this.
"Go," I told Nian Qing and shoved him back toward the rest of my classmates. Pang Fei caught him and helped him up. My chubby friend looked at me.
"What about you, Zhi Ming?"
"I'll divert the grotesque's attention away from you guys." I was already springing away in the opposite direction. While the monstrosity lumbered toward my classmates, I took aim while making use of the dancing targeting reticules on my lenses. Once I got a lock, I squeezed the triggers of my evolver pistols. Twin beams lanced into the supposedly vulnerable points of the grotesque, causing it to stumble. Its misshapen head – made of fused skulls and writhing flesh knitted together – turned to glare at me, smoldering from the heat.
"That's right!" I snapped, firing and burning out a couple of eyes on that hideous head. Despite my precise shots, the grotesque still had dozen of blinking eyes all over its stitched body. Blinding it was a futile task.
However, I had succeeded in pulling it away from my classmates.
With a roar, the grotesque charged toward me.
I continued to sprint, hastening my pace. Occasionally, I would turn around and fire bolts of azure at the pursuing monstrosity, ensuring that its attention was fixed on me. Good. This was why I thought I could succeed in this task – my abilities were ranged. As long as I kept my distance from the grotesque, I didn't have to worry about getting pulverized by its massive bulk. Compared to the smaller zombies, the large monster was clumsy and inflexible. I could make use of my superior agility to evade its otherwise devastating attacks indefinitely.
That was the advantage I had over the close combat evolvers such as Qi Ren or even the prodigy Lou Qian.
"Over here!" I taunted, firing off another volley of shots. The grotesque snarled and pounded after me. Despite its clumsiness, it was fast – incredibly fast. Moving with a speed that belied its great bulk, it smashed aside debris and other broken obstacles and charged toward me. I zigzagged around toppled walls and shattered pillars, but the grotesque bulldozed through them all with seemingly little effort.
It was followed by the horde of zombies, moaning and shambling after me. A few of them were beginning to run, which was unusual. Looking up, I noticed that the sun was slowly setting. Damn it.
The zombies would be a lot more dangerous at night.
I had to hurry. First, I would have to find a way to shake off the grotesque, and then make my way past hordes of active zombies back to the human-held districts. As long as I could get past the shimmering barriers and walls lined with automated turrets, I should theoretically be safe.
Of course, I had to survive this first.
I put in a burst of speed, my burning muscles complaining at the exertion. Instinctively, I ducked and dove to the side when the grotesque hurled a huge piece of wreckage at me, the debris sailing over my head and shattering against a wall. Both structures collapsed, shards of concrete pelting me with enough force to cut and bruise. I ignored the stinging pain and weaved past another wall, only for the grotesque to ground it to dust under its distorted feet.
Despite my best efforts, the grotesque was gaining on me. I whirled around and shot it in the face, but it shrugged off my bolts and continued to rampage. I jumped to the side, just narrowly avoiding its beefy fist that pulverized a damaged wall.
Tucking my head and knees into my chest, I managed to roll away amidst the storm of broken concrete and rubble. The grotesque stomped on my position, but I managed to hurl myself to the side and stagger back to my feet.
"Huff…"
I raised my head to glare at defiantly at the monstrosity, but it continued to assault me. I shot it in the face, but the bolts didn't even blind it – not with the many eyes blinking all over its crudely melded flesh.
Then a fist caught me. Despite me crossing my arms to block the blow, I felt the wind cruelly knocked out of me. Disorientated, I tumbled helplessly through the air, flung several dozen meters away. I finally crashed onto the ground and almost blacked out from the impact.
"Gah…ugh…"
Coughing out blood, I tried to rise to my feet, only to stumble. Even though it seemed that my bones were fairly intact and I suffered no fractures, my internal organs continued to shudder from the vicious blow.
Gritting my teeth, I snapped off another couple of shots, but the grotesque brushed them off as if they were nothing. Hordes of zombies were reaching us now, clumsily running and lashing out, but I was still too far from their reach.
That wouldn't last.
I cartwheeled over another punch from the grotesque and landed on its wrist. Swinging up both my guns, I fired almost pointblank into its face. I could almost smell the burning flesh and was almost blinded by the smoke, but I didn't hesitate. Launching myself forward, I planted a foot on what should be its forehead and then propelled myself behind it.
Whirling around, I hammered a barrage of bolts into the accompanying zombies, dropping them. Unlike the clumsy grotesque, they could turn around and chase me more easily, so it was better to get rid of them first. Then I took off.
It took a while for the grotesque to swing about. It might be surprisingly fast when traveling forward in a straight line, but its swollen bulk made it very far from maneuverable.
I began jogging back toward where I last saw my classmates. They should have gotten to a safe distance by now, with Lou Qian leading them back in the direction of the city. As long as I could continue to evade the grotesque and link up with them, I should be able to return to District 4 safely…
"Stay where you are!"
"Eh?"
Looking up, I caught sight of Qi Ren gesturing at me frantically. A cruel grin spread over his face and he pointed in my direction.
Too late I remembered that his ability was the earth element. I tried to increase my speed and sprint ahead of the now cracking earth, but I knew I was too late. The ground split underneath my feet, breaking apart into jagged, teeth-shaped sinkholes. Behind me, I heard the grotesque bellow furiously as it lost its balance and plunged into the abyss below. All around it, zombies flailed about and fell, following the warrior-ranked mutant into the darkness.
I was barely able to stay ahead of the crumbling ground, but when I saw the expression on Qi Ren's face, I knew that he meant for me to fall into the abyss with the zombies and grotesque. Murderous intent gleamed in his eyes as he looked down on me, unable to suppress his laughter.
"Why?!" I yelled, fury and despair building inside my chest. He continued to look down upon me condescendingly.
"Because you're trash," he sneered scornfully. "This is the law of the world right now. The strong eat the weak. And trash like you have no right to live."
Behind him, Cheng Yan and several of my classmates watched, just as amused. In a distance, Lou Qian stood, saying and doing absolutely nothing. Her expression was so cold and indifferent that it chilled my heart. Only Pang Fei was shouting, but Qi Ren's cronies held him back, guffawing unrestrainedly as they clobbered and forced him to his knees.
Nian Qing was out cold, his head bloody from a blow. Xia Xin was sobbing uncontrollably in one corner, unable to watch me fall to my fate. Lei Shu was gawking in disbelief, as if he couldn't believe what was happening. Instructor Jiao was also unconscious, his body thrown to one side carelessly. Fortunately, Lou Qian was watching over me…but she didn't extend the same concern to me. Clearly, like Qi Ren, she also considered me trash.
That made no sense whatsoever. I didn't understand. I wasn't "trash" exactly. I was average, right smack in the middle in terms of level of strength and skill. I wasn't the strongest evolver, admittedly, but I wasn't the weakest either. In a class of forty, I was usually ranked around twenty-something, low twenties or high teens. There was no reason for them to condemn me as trash and deride me for being useless. I had always contributed to class activities and practices, and I had always worked hard and diligently. Yeah, they made fun of me for being a four-eyed nerd, but I had never given them any reason to perceive me as trash.
So why…? A contrived plot device so that I was justified in taking revenge on them later when I inevitably survived and became overpowered? So that I had an excuse to kill them for attempting to murder me?
Or maybe this was a hallucination caused by me reading way too many edgy web novels, and my classmates weren't actually doing this. An illusion caused by the exhaustion of fighting the grotesque, or conjured by a concealed mutant somewhere else. Such things weren't heard of.
However, one thing was sure. I could feel the earth disintegrating under my shoes. That physical sensation was real. Desperation grew even as I continued running back toward the mocking facades of my classmates.
Then the ground crumbled beneath my feet. I stumbled and fell, unable to recover my balance as I toppled backward into the expanding abyss below.