Having already cleared his landing spot with telekinesis, Belle, who was landing, noticed something. He tried to react quickly but realized he was a bit late. Immediately as his legs touched the ground, it sank in, followed by his body at a fast rate. The Ascendant rhino monsters seemed to have noticed that the first attack pattern wouldn't work on him and had come up with a new strategy.
"That shouldn't be him doing that, right?" someone asked from outside.
"I think it's the rhino attack. They are said to be intelligent, so they must have deduced that following the pattern won't work," another person replied as Belle kept sinking, with only the ape head still above ground. Belle had seriously miscalculated the attack. The brains of the rhino were not like those of most monsters. They realized Belle could sense the earth and dodge their attacks. Instead of attacking, they waited to catch Belle off guard. If Belle were any normal person, they would have been ninety percent closer to winning the fight.
As he found himself sinking, Belle calculated his next move. He couldn't escape using telekinesis, and he didn't want to reveal that he had terra kinesis. He had used it before to keep people guessing who among them had used it since they were in a group. But now, since he was fighting alone, he couldn't use it anymore.
"What should I do now? Using any other power will bring a lot of attention," Belle said, unaware that he had already drawn a lot of attention to himself, as he calculated his next step.
"Moles, the mutated mole beasts, burrow into the ground," Belle immediately thought of something. He transformed into a mole with three eyes and disappeared from the people's view into the earth.
"He turned into a mole?" someone asked, unsure of what they saw.
"Yeah, with the way things were going, he will soon be buried by the rhino attack. A mole can burrow into concrete, so it won't be hard for him to dig out from somewhere else after being buried. I don't think he is as brainless as his sister makes him seem," the woman in her sixties said, causing many people to quickly understand Belle's plan.
Far away from Adam and the rest, a mole burrowed its way out of the earth. Belle had tried to buy himself more space while doing so.
Gallop, gallop, gallop. Belle heard the sound of rhino monsters racing towards him as soon as he finished burrowing out of the ground.
"With the way they are all attacking him, something is wrong," Roberto said.
"Yeah, at first, I thought the rhino monsters were attacking him because they saw him as a threat. But now, it seems they no longer see him as a threat. He has actually quadrupled the distance between him and the rest of the kids. Even the rhinos should know he can't be fast enough to attack them while they take this time to attack the others. They just seem to have this craving of tearing him apart," Biles said.
Seeing the rhinos rush at him, Belle immediately wanted to burrow back into the earth and escape what should have been a stampede. But then, he found the earth so hard he couldn't burrow into it like before.
"I see, the Ascendant rhinos can also do that," Belle thought to himself. He canceled that plan and transformed back into his ape form, leaping high enough to barely dodge the stampede.
Boom! Something like a blob of light flew very fast, landing just at the center of the rhinos and detonating, wiping out the entire group of rhino monsters, including the Ascendant stage rhinos that had attacked there. The priest had just arrived. Although he was surprised to see a mole turn into an ape and being attacked by all the rhinos upon his arrival, he quickly realized it must be someone from the academy with transformation powers and had sent the blob of light to help out. One surprising thing was that they seemed to work in sync immediately upon his arrival.
"Deacon," Adam said, bowing respectfully as the priest landed beside him and the rest.
"It seems the academy didn't rush fast enough to save the beautiful-looking kid," the priest said, scanning the group with his eyes.
"The academy didn't send anyone. That's him," Adam said, pointing at the massive ape approaching them. The priest was shocked; he hadn't followed the fight to know what happened since he had quickly rushed over.
Belle walked towards the group in his ape form before transforming into a featureless human, except for his mouth. The fight seemed to have made him enjoy the transformation power.
Seeing Belle walk over like that, many people had one question on their minds: why did he choose to look like that? Finally, someone asked that question, and it was Greg." why are you looking like that?"
"I turned into an ape. Don't you think I might have lost my clothes?" Belle said, causing a bit of laughter among the crowd.
"okay it now makes perfect sense to me" Greg said the give an awkward smile, he seems to have thought of something.
The transformation had really destroyed Belle clothes, so he couldn't turn back into a human and walk stark naked.
"Hello, I am Charles, the school disciplinarian. I noticed the blob of light, so I came over," Charles said, thanking the priest for his help as he finally reached Belle and the rest. He bowed respectfully to the priest.
"No problem. I will be leaving now since you are here," the priest replied, turning to look at Adam for a moment before transforming into a beam of light and disappearing.
"You guys should return to the starting point. There is no need to hunt rhinos anymore. The exam is officially over," the academy disciplinarian said, looking at Belle with a lot of question marks in his head. He wondered if Belle was wearing some kind of human skin costume, as he could only see a visible mouth on his face.