"Kai."
"On it!"
Following his superior's unsaid orders, Kai tapped away at his computer and a blue light soon showed from a wall in the cave
[Gizmo Reconstruction: Saved Item - Portal Receiver.]
He activated his ability simultaneously and another teleporter that looked like the one in the cave appeared at a random location in the sky.
When he was done, he nodded at the squad leader.
"Okay, let's get out of here!" Harry yelled with urgency in his voice as he ordered for his subordinates to go through the portal.
———
There was a reason the squad members were running out of the cave...
The red eyed man/ creature treaded around the cave looking for something. And when it found that something, it bent over to pick it up.
Holding up a rock, only a little bigger than a grown man's palm, the Infected pointed it to the direction of the squad 3 members and then,
[XXX Pressure Cannon XXX]
Disks of wind first formed around the man's hand and the rock, like Saturn's rings to it's planet, and less than half a second later, the rings started falling into the stone and the area around the Infected's arm became some sort of vacuum, sucking in air.
At this point, all the squad members had gone through the portal safely, except for the team leader and Kai, who were only one feet in themselves. When Kai finished packing up his equipment, Harry followed behind him.
And at that instant, the Infected let go of the rock. But contrary to it falling down on the floor, the rock instead, shot deeper into the cave at a speed even faster than a falling meteoroid.
BOOM!!!
Flying out of the side of the mountain, the small rock was now encased in a wind sphere thousands of times bigger than the rock itself and blew up the entire half of that mountain into oblivion.
But the sphere didn't stop there. It also went through the other mountain where Squad 3 previously were, disintegrating everything it touched.
After a few seconds, the massive ball of destruction dissipated.
The Infected looked at the path of chaos it had created with his head tilted to the side. But two seconds later, it turned it's head in another direction and jumped.
That imposter couldn't have acted alone.
———
"Damn it! Who the heck was that guy?!" A man called Valentin cursed after Squad 3 jumped out of the portal.
"At ease, the Infected was probably going to wake up anyway. So he's paid his price for his foolishness." Harry said. "By the way Kai, I thought you set up cameras and triggers all around the highlands, how was that man able get that close to the mountains then?"
"I... don't know. But if I had to make a guess then, I'd say he probably had some kind of interference technology, or at least a cloaking one. The equipment I set up inside the cave were of a higher grade than the ones around. So whatever method he was using lost effect only at the end."
Multiple members of the team sighed in frustration as Kai finished his explanation.
"I was the last one to go through the portal, so I know what that thing can do. I'll place a report straight to the Castellan about the situation. But keep in mind that we might be asked to prevent that thing from getting to the province."
[A/ N: Changed the title, 'Mayor' to Castellan.]
The others nodded in agreement.
Soon a holographic screen appeared before Harry as he phoned the governor of Ogmore highlands.
———
"Whoo! These young ones really pack a punch. Y'all wanna take my title so bad huh?"
In the middle of a strange and apocalyptic looking place, a man leapt from the top of a dilapidated sky scraper onto another desolated building. As soon as he rolled over the roof of that building though, an arrow came piercing through the air behind him.
He placed his hand on his waist and pulled one of the many shuriken tied on it. As he threw it over his shoulder, the star shaped weapon curved with finesse and sliced the arrows head off.
However, more arrows were upon him. And with two palms full of shuriken, he threw them in the air, making them spin and slice down the many arrows aiming for him, with one shuriken slicing into two, at least three arrows at once.
"Hahaha." Sweat drops glistened as they flew out of his long and spiky jet black hair, into the sky.
The man flung eight kunais at once, in the direction of the arrows. Moving at jet speed, the small knives struck their targets with ease.
Four archers, from their hiding spot burst into bits as the kunais stabbed their vital points.
An object came at him at a slower speed than the arrows, but this object was more dangerous than those arrows itself.
BOOM!
The man was hit as a bomb exploded in the air beside him. But unexpectedly he remained unfazed and kept on running.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Bomb after bomb, he took them all without flinching. "I've got an explosive proof armour on, stop wasting your precious resources." He slid on the roof of the building he was on, dodging a couple of poisonous dart.
"I bet the poison in that thing wouldn't even be able to take two digits of my HP." He mocked his shadow assaulters.
This man then jumped into a building, breaking through the window, and finding multiple people in it. The people he was looking at in front of him were all holding melee weapons like swords, mallets and spears.
"I commend you for lasting this long, but challenging everyone on the server at the same time is too arrogant, even for the top player." A person from the group said.
"Arrogant?" The dazzling man in the golden coloured battle suit made a confused expression, but soon he wore a look of contempt and laughed. "If I'm really like that, isn't it because I've earned it? Or did you chumps think you had a chance in 'H' town that you would win?"
He ceased from making an obvious derogatory remark, as the game's admin. might punish him if he did.
"Tch! Fine then, we'll relish in all of your precious items once we're done with you." The apparent leader ran for the dark haired and golden suited man, with the rest of the challengers following from behind.
"Come at me you noobs—" But just as the man pulled out a pair of golden Sai knives for behind his back, a ring suddenly sounded in his head.
[A/ N: Sai knives - A pair of dagger like weapons. The same Raphael, the one with the red headband uses in the series about green mutant turtles.]
"A call? Now?" He parried away an attack, dodged another and stabbed a man in his chest. "Kisha, please answer this for me."
"It's important." A feminine voice whizzed through his ears.
"Come on, I'm in a match right now, are you still mad at me?"
"..."
"Okay fine, I'll raise your pay, and apologize to your sister for what I tried to do to her. I'm sorry, okay!" He narrowly dodged a slashing sword.
"... Okay. The call was from the squad in the outskirts, I remember you saying to redirect them to the President, so you didn't really need to pick it up."
"You...!" Hearing his angry voice, the woman cut the call.
"You recorded my promise didn't you? Well good. You're as pretty as your twin anyway so don't regret this." William yelled and with annoyance started fighting even more seriously than before. He was going to end this fight quickly and then punish his sneaky assistant.
Meanwhile, another high official on Ansel was acting like a child.
"Sir, I don't think this is appropriate."
Katherine, Lucius' personal assistant stood close to the lake behind the edifice with a slightly transparent body. Her rainbow coloured eyes stared up to the top of the roof, at a long silver haired man.
The bright sun's rays struck Lucius' tall and slim body from behind him, so one could only see a black silhouette with a yellow outline if they looked from the direction Katie was.
"Don't worry Katie, I'll be fine!"
Lucius yelled from the top of the roof. This 'despotic ruler' was only wearing his underpants and a white singlet.
'I'm not worrying about you. But these ones' Katie looked into the pond and the creatures living in it.
There was an animal she was looking at especially. An unnoticeable smile curved across her translucent face as she stared at the small white axolotl sleeping under a log at the bottom of the pond.
After tying up his hair into a bun, allowing few strands to fall down his face, Lucius proceeded to accomplish his goal.
"Canon ball!!!" Yelling at the top of his lungs, he jumped from the roof of the third storey of the building down into the pond.
'Hmm, a call.'
As soon as Katie got the notification of an incoming call in the floating screen in front of her, she answered it.
Meanwhile, as Lucius' body got dipped into the water, time suddenly seemed to stop. The splashes of water froze, not literally though, they just stopped moving.
Lucius was in the water with his arms around his legs, curled into a ball and with his cheeks puffed up to hold in air.
'What the?' Lucius thought. 'Oh come on Katie!' He tried to shake his body to move but Lucius later gave up since he couldn't do it.
After sighing in his head, Lucius started to hum a song. He was going to give Katie an earful later for ruining his super splash.
"Sir." Katie called out as she floated above the lake. "It's the watch team you sent to supervise the Infected. The leader wants to speak with you."
"Mmh mmh mmh mmh?" Lucius' voice was muffled in the water.
"Yes, personally." Katie answered and begun to raise Lucius up from the lake.
"Sorry sir." Katie coughed nervously as she looked at Lucius' still puffed up cheeks and folded eyebrows.
"Mmh mmh. I mean, what do you want?" Lucius asked as Katie put him back on the ground.
"Sir..." Harry mustered up the courage to speak. He had suddenly been connected to the highest figure on the island so it was understandable that he was feeling a little nervous.
However, he took a breather and soon begun to summarize what had happened in Ogmore's highlands, as fast as he could.
After explaining what he could. Harry awaited Lucius' answer.
"Lead your team and just stall his advances till you're tired." Lucius said as he cut the call. And with Katie's help, floated back to the roof of his building.
———
"So... What did he say?" The others were aware that his voice call was redirected to the President of Ansel instead of the mayor. The PRESIDENT!
They desperately wanted to know what his orders were.
"Uhh, have fun?" Harry didn't know how to explain the President's short answer. But after looking at the weird glances his teammates were giving him and thinking over the President's words again, he finally understood what the Dean was trying to say.
"He said to just hold that thing back till reinforcements come. He also told us not to die here, and that if anyone did, it'd be on me." Harry being the leader of their group had spoken to the higher ups a few times so he was familiar with the way they used their sentences.
The squad nodded at his words. If it was to just to stall the infected, then they were sure they could hold out for long. Although not super sure, they were sure.
And as they turned around to figure out what direction to go, they suddenly heard an explosion from a far distance.
BOOM!!!!!
"Wait, don't tell me...?" Harry muttered as the group looked behind them.
"Of course that dog crap wasn't the only one out there."
"We should go, fast!" They finally understood the magnitude of the situation as they realized that there were other imposters in the highlands. But as for the matter of how many of them remained, and how well they were doing against the Infected... well, they'd just have to go and find out.