The lieutenant decided to verbalize his indignance towards the young magician.
"Couldn't you have helped?" He asked, turning sharply around a thick tree.
"Ah, I was just so mesmerized by your valor and confidence, and didn't want to interrupt your heroic moment" Klein waved his arms exaggeratedly, chuckling at the man's speechlessness.
"You...!"
'Mesmerized? Confidence? Does this idiot have eyes?' As the lieutenant's forehead veins threatened to burst, Klein spoke again.
"Don't worry, I had already cast a shield on you. You wouldn't have died" Klein's disarming smile effectively calmed the man down.
"Oh...? Is that so?" The lieutenant exhaled and as he continued to drive, he thought about it some more.
'Why am I getting angry anyway, I don't even know what he's capable of or not. Should we just treat him as a harmless civilian...?' As his thoughts began spiraling in that direction, he quickly stopped himself and shook his head after thinking about those wizards firing spells at that white castle.
By the time his thoughts and anger about the prior conflict left him, he managed to return to the company, which was making haste away from their location.
The lieutenant quickly drove towards them, joining them in an open plaza that used to be an open glade in one world and a gas station in the other.
Klein hopped out of the vehicle and stood on its roof. He observed the roughly three hundred people gathered there. Half of them from the metal bird or picked along the way, and half of them warriors in the same camo-attire Klein was wearing.
He saw the lieutenant give a report to his captain, who then had a brief discussion with the other squads.
In the end, they decided to remain there and prepare for the incoming disaster.
Klein turned away and faced the broken forest in the direction of the rumbling, which was now getting closer. The ground shook more noticeably, and he saw the first of the beasts enter the sight of the gas station.
The soldiers had already positioned the few APCs they had to form a barricade towards that end of the forest. The models that had turrets were manned and ready. The rest found cover behind the cars that remained at the site and inside the store of the station.
Some civilians had also entered the store and the remaining ones that couldn't simply went around and hid behind the station in the opposite direction to the imminent danger.
Klein crossed his legs and sat down on the roof, extremely conspicuously. Before the soldiers around him could get him off of it, a wild boar charged towards the gas station.
The first beast was shot down as quickly as it entered, the soldiers not bothering to see what kind of monstrosity it was.
Those who were focused on Klein quickly readjusted their mental state, ignoring the suicidal lunatic who was staring at their weaponry with stars in his eyes.
Quickly after the boar was shot down, a whole host of creatures charged towards the glade.
One was a giant serpent, whose form was large enough to tower over the trees.
Another was a ten-foot-tall ape-like creature with the mane of a lion, but what struck everyone there was how it was dragging around a tree trunk as casually as a club.
There was also a whole pack of wolves of the same variety Lieutenant Sid had killed earlier.
Along with many, many, other bizarre creatures that these soldiers had never seen maybe except for in the novels and games they used to enjoy.
"FIRE AT WILL!" Captain West's roar woke the soldiers up, who had almost given up upon witnessing the absurd situation.
The distance between them and the charging beasts was no more than one hundred meters, so they had to quickly and accurately kill all of them before the beasts could claim their lives.
BANG! BANG! Click. BOOM.
The sound of heavy artillery, interspersed with the explosion of grenades and RPGs drowned the roars and protests of the incoming horde, not letting up for a second.
Klein's casual demeanor changed when he saw how effectively the beasts were being handled.
'That...' Klein couldn't help but applaud inwardly. Aliens were far more terrifying in groups than they were individually, that was something he had no doubt about after witnessing the one-sided slaughter taking place.
As the scene quietened for a brief moment to allow for reloads and readjustments, the smoke at the end of the forest began to clear.
Aside from some of the larger beasts, such as the serpent and the ape, who had managed to survive the bombardment, albeit barely, there was now a pile of beast corpses obstructing the exit of the forest.
Those larger beasts who were wounded, still persisted onwards, almost making it to the APCs.
Klein stood and stretched his arms.
'Guess it's only fair to show off what we natives can do too' Klein smirked and met Captain West's eyes.
Klein winked at the grizzled army captain, gesturing towards his hip pouch.
A large serrated black knife floated out and sped towards the magician who grabbed it in one swift motion. Klein appreciated its craftsmanship for a moment before waving at the dumbfounded soldiers.
'Enforce', 'Blink'
He disappeared and reappeared in the air on top of the wounded ape, holding the hilt of the knife which was now slightly glowing, as he descended from the air, jamming it into its thick skull.
Before the soldiers or the remaining few beasts could process what had happened, Klein blinked again behind the snake which was many meters away, making a horizontal motion with the knife that was glowing even more resplendently than before.
Slicing its head off cleanly, revealing a fountain of red blood spurting at the sky.
Before its droplets could touch him, he had already disappeared for the third time, appearing in front of the last creature, which was a large armored rhinoceros, and mostly uninjured from the previous melee.
Klein threw the knife in a casual gesture.
The knife flew swiftly, stabbing the beast through the eye.
He turned around to his fellow camo-wearing comrades and smiled innocently.
"We make a pretty good team together don't we?"