Free Web NovelChapter 112: _Survive Now, Rom-Com Later
"Duck!"
The second Gabriel yelled the word, Ambrose’s senses snapped back to reality. He took a hard jump to his left, narrowly avoiding being hit by one of the falling creatures.
However, he fell butt-first to the sandy ground, grunting as he raised his head. Another creature was already upon him, jaws opened to reveal rows of razor-sharp fangs.
Ambrose’s heart lurched. Time seemed to slow down for a beat—
—Until someone rammed into his side, shoving him away from the beast’s strike. He skidded through the sand, gasping when he was far enough from the creature.
Hovering over him like a shield now was Viktor, his hands on his shoulders and intense stare locked on his face. "What are you doing freezing in a battlefield like that?"
Ambrose was barely able to concentrate, the permanent link pulsing between them. Viktor’s warm breath hits his face, his icy blue eyes more mesmerising up close.
[ALERT: Save your ass first before you turn this into a rom-com.]
Aura’s notification made him finally roll away from Viktor. He jumped to his feet, instantly pulling out his frost dagger. "Thanks." He muttered as the system showed him stats reports.
The way the beasts had landed forced the team to scatter—Ambrose and Viktor standing at one end, Devon already firing blasts at the other and Valentine and Gabriel using a more evasive approach.
This time the beasts came with a wider variety. Some were humanoid with pale, mouldy blue skin and faces that glitched as they moved. Others were like crocodiles.
A few had tentacles, trashing their appendages around faster than Devon’s fire could burn.
[Humanoid-type beasts are all at A-Rank. There are exactly 15 of them.]
[Other beast types: B-Ranks.]
Of course.
Another situation he definitely wouldn’t be surviving if it weren’t for the presence of the others.
"Use as little aether as possible!" Gabriel barked just then. "Avoid large-scale attacks that’ll make the whales see us as a threat."
He halted, pointing a finger at a wave of crocodile beasts headed for him.
The gesture drastically increased gravity around the beasts, smothering them to the ground before turning them into a gooey pulp.
Ambrose’s eyes widened.
Those were tens of B-Rank beasts. Cut down in the blink of an eye.
"Damn, that’s supposed to be ’little’," Viktor stepped in front of Ambrose, snapping his neck. "Stay behind me, would you?"
He inhaled once, his eyes shutting for a couple of seconds. Two of the humanoid A-Ranks darted in their direction. Their glitching out faces made Ambrose’s legs wobble.
Fortunately, Viktor’s eyes opened just when the beasts got four meters away from them. Ice pillars erupted from beneath the A-Ranks, encasing them in and keeping them rooted like statues.
He lifted his right hand, balling it into a fist. The ice pillars grew even colder, freezing the creatures from the inside out. A wave of his hand shattered the pillars and the creatures with them.
On the opposite end of the battlefield, Valentine stuck to slipping between shadows, avoiding engaging entirely. He noticed the beasts facing most of their attention on him.
"Adorable," he mumbled, leaping gracefully into the air. He pulled out a special S-Rank plasma sword, slicing off the head of one of the humanoids.
He proceeded to make a soft landing on the back of another, tearing into its spine and cleaving it cleanly out. Dark blue blood sprayed out of the beast like a geyser but he stepped away from it.
"You all want a piece of death, eh?" He clutched the handle of his sword with both hands, searing the jaw of a crocodile-type beast clean. "Death brought a toy today—try harder."
Slowly, the team culled the numbers of the beasts enough to find a way to hurdle back together. They all stood, backs facing each other and fighting positions set.
"We’re doing as you said, aren’t we?!" Viktor snapped at Gabriel. "Why are they still attacking? And look!"
He pointed at the inverted ocean above them. They were just in time to witness another wave of beasts joining the fray, these seeming even stronger.
Colour drained from Ambrose’s cheeks. ’Ehm, Aura. If you’ve got any bright ideas for us surviving... now would be a good time!’
To his relief, the system actually flickered a screen in front of him. A bunch of numbers ran across the screen before settling into data he could comprehend.
[If the whales are the antibodies and you and the others are the germs who need elimination—what if there’s a way to make yourself invisible to the white cells the antibodies are sending?]
’Can we skip the med school analogy? I sucked at biology after high school.’
[The main point, sweetheart, is that you and the rest of the team need to make yourselves undetectable. Especially your aether energy output.]
Ambrose’s eyes lit up.
Well, shit.
"Gabriel?!" He shouted, reaching back to grab the man’s sleeve. "Can you use your space manipulation to hide us? Make us—phase between the fabrics of space time maybe?"
The SS-Rank frowned.
Around them, Viktor and Devon had already begun holding back the beasts with a combined blast of ice and fire, terraforming the landscape for hundreds of yards.
But it still wasn’t enough.
"Manipulating space," Gabriel began, "in this dungeon would—"
"You don’t need to do anything grand," Valentine chimed, arching an impressed brow. "The Guide has a point. So far these beasts have been attacking me mostly because of my first attack."
Viktor blinked. "So—we should just dump you here and keep on—"
"Viktor!" Ambrose and Devon scolded in unison, the latter speaking with a grunt right after. "The rest of us have also been fighting. The entire dungeon system sees us as threats already."
"What the hell are we supposed to—"
"Everyone, withdraw your aether!" Gabriel’s gaze sharpened, his back straightening as he stretched out his arms.
The rest of them did as he said as the Esper clenched his fists. Gravity reversed, making most of the beasts float off the ground. Some even ended up heading right back into the inverted ocean.
With that perfect distraction, Gabriel pulled his hands together—the fabric of space reacting with his movement. A few of the S-Rank whales scoured the ground for the pesky Hunters.
However, all they were met with was a seemingly empty spot, their vision unable to peer past the spatial shroud Gabriel placed.
The silence lasted barely a second. Everyone held their breath.
Then—
THUMP!
Ambrose froze.
Beneath his feet, the sand... moved.
Not shifting. Pulsing.
Once. Twice.
Like something massive was breathing beneath the ground.
A low, distorted hum bled into the air, vibrating through bone and aether alike.
Aura dinged.
[WARNING: Core response detected.]
Ambrose’s throat went dry. "Gabriel," he whispered.
Another pulse hit... stronger this time.
Far below them—something had just woken up.
