The first to reach Tokito was some cannon fodder, much like lackeys. I didn't know what goes on in the minds of cannon fodders. They know they're sent to die but still run at the enemy anyway. Anyways, the guy had some kind of hardening ability—his skin turned grey—as he punched at Tokito.
With a grace that belied his current size, Tokito sidestepped the attack before retaliating with a swipe of his claws. A screech echoed as claws met what I thought was stone but was actually metal. Still, the metal-skin guy was sent reeling backward with a pained cry.
The other cannon fodders, seeing that, all attacked at once, as Tokito displayed a brutal, efficient fighting style. One of the fodders managed to get behind him and tried to attack, but as if on instinct, one of the six tails sprung toward the fodder. A sickening crunch echoed from the point of impact where the tail met the fodder's chest before he was sent flying.
"Note to self, the tails are stronger than his body," I mused.
After that, the other tails didn't stay passive either. It was like they grew longer and attacked all nearby cadets. In less than a minute, the opposing group had all gone down except for the one holding their flag.
With no fanfare, the nervous wreck willingly handed it over.
So, by the end of the debacle, Tokito came back with the other group's flag. After thirty seconds of the flag not being in the hands of any member of their group, the flag turned blue from the original gold. The lot of them that weren't dead turned to sparkles and disappeared.
"Wow, that was so cool," the group members cheered as Tokito transformed back to human.
"Nice save there, Adam. I'm glad you're the one holding the flag," he smiled as he gave me the second flag.
"You were... good too?" I replied, caught off guard by the compliment.
"Hahaha," he laughed at my tone before continuing. "When you said you could mess a little with gravity, I was expecting something more like being able to slightly increase gravity in a certain area. No one would have thought of repulsion right off the bat."
He was right—when thinking of gravity, one would mostly think of reducing or increasing gravity.
After the little unforeseen event that became fortunate for our group, we continued on our way until we were sure we were far enough that the boundary wouldn't cause problems anytime soon.
Virtual entities had no need for sustenance, so we found a rundown house that could serve as shelter for the time being.
----
Three days passed in a flash, and it was already our fourth day in the virtual world. We had fought four more groups and got the flags of three of them. The last group had managed to escape with some casualties. Though we also lost four of our members. But throughout all this time, we hadn't encountered any of the significantly stronger teams yet.
'Guess they put stronger teams far apart,' I mused.
In total, we had six flags currently—ours, that of the first group we got, the one from the second group, two from the third groups we encountered, and last from the fourth group.
I was holding onto two of the flags—ours and an extra one—while the rest were divided between the remaining members of our group, except for Tokito, who didn't hold any.
The boundary was also gaining distance on us, and the first place we had spawned was already gone by the very next day. Hell, even the place we stopped yesterday was probably gone by now.
"Prep yourselves, we'll probably start encountering way stronger groups from here," Tokito spoke solemnly. He was right—we just have to pray not to encounter anyone from the top ten, and we're good.
There's at least a thirty percent chance we could encounter those from the top ten, and a seventy percent chance otherwise. Surely there's no way we could be that unlucky, right?
"Wait," Tokito whispered. "There's a group about a hundred meters away at our two o'clock."
Yep, Tokito has beast-like senses—especially that of scent. Guess it kind of makes sense too, since his transformation was that of a dog hybrid—or rather, fox.
We cautiously approached the area Tokito sensed the group, but there was no place to actually hide, since the place was devoid of structures entirely. It was more like a park.
The bad thing?
"We've been waiting for you. We've already sensed you a few hundred meters away," grinned their dark-skinned leader.
They had sensed us way before we did them. And they had nine members.
The more surprising thing was that they had five flags, which means they had also defeated at least two groups.
"Seems we're in trouble, guys," Tokito smiled wryly. "The dark guy is a three-starred Rank 3. There are four others that are between mid-one and two-starred Rank 3s. The others are all Rank 2. Adam, protect the flags. Lara, with me. The rest, do whatever."
After saying that, he started to transform, and Lara combusted into flames. Meanwhile, I scanned our opponents—they were definitely formidable if they were able to acquire five flags while still having nine members.
Or maybe it was just because of a certain reason, or some unique bloodline. What was I saying? Almost all bloodlines were unique. I kept my eyes on the entire group, ready to act the moment anyone came near me.
Tokito and Lara had already attacked. The dark-skinned guy seemed to be able to turn part of his body into slime to become impervious to damage. But that was until I saw Lara punch her arm through the chest of a cadet—she was not supposed to be able to do that. And instead of him turning into sparkles, mist erupted from his body as it turned to slime before reforming back.
'The hell?' I thought. I looked at Tokito again—this time he was fighting five on one, and they all seemed to be turning into slimes.
"It's all the same person," I murmured in awe.
One tried to sneak up on me, but a simple "repel" was enough to send it flying back. The other three members of our group were having a hard time dealing with the slimes. I thought of leaving them behind, but in the end, I had to intervene. After all, someone had to carry all the flags we were gonna get.
So I moved. The first one I targeted was the slime trying to choke one of our members, whose ability was to stretch his neck. You heard it—his only ability was to stretch his neck. How he managed to get into this academy was beyond me. Granted, after all the hype, the entrance exam was rather lackluster—but still.
I kicked away the slime from the boy's body. Next was a boy with a buzz cut who had the ability to make illusions but had to concentrate to make them, which was the only drawback of his ability. With a precise "repel," I blasted off the slime's entire midsection.
And last but not least, the biggest idiot of them all—a boy whose ability was electric shock. He could electrocute anything with a touch. But the idiot was electrocuting the semi-liquid slime while it was on his body, thereby electrocuting himself.
"Stop electrocuting yourself, you idiot!" I was almost tempted to shout. In the end, though, I didn't. Instead, I quickly knocked the slime off him.
'I need to end this farce,' I mused. It had gone on for too long.
These slimes were almost completely impervious to damage, though in the real world it would have been easier to get rid of them.
"Lara," I called out.
She shoved away the slime she was fighting and turned to me.
"Evaporate them," I simply said.
She nodded and turned back. As for Tokito, the four he was fighting had accumulated into one body and had become one. Even though he was continuously slashing it into pieces, it was just like cutting water. Not to mention, the flag was now inside its slimy body.
The best way to end this instantly would be to get the flag—but the hardest part would be getting it out of the slime. I reasoned for a bit before an idea came to me.
I ran while still holding both our flag and a blue flag in my hands.
"Move away," I spoke as I was almost close to Tokito. He moved away as if on instinct, and I charged toward the enormous human-turned-slime. Then I did something that made me rethink the mental faculties of the past me from five seconds ago.
I jumped into the enormous slime. The inside was all murky, squishy, and stuff—but I endured. My goal was to get that flag inside it, so I moved—or rather, swam—toward the gold flag in its center. It tried to spit me out, tried to suffocate me, but I didn't relent. And soon, my hand that had the gold flag clasped onto the flag inside the slime.
Then—"repel," I thought.
From around my entire body, a force of repulsion burst out, repelling anything that wasn't my uniform or the flags in my hands—which, by default, was the body of the entire slime.
"Haah... haah," I took deep breaths as I dropped to the ground. The slime was blasted into so many pieces I couldn't count, and all the members of my group were staring with awe.
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