The four of us spent a few more seconds feeling dumbfounded, before I confird that the scavengers were truly running away. Worse, they had a head start. We had moved far enough away from the ball room that they were barely visible at the edge of my soul sight. It would take us at least fifteen minutes to get back to the ball room, and by that ti, they might have already slipped out of the academy and fled into the depths of the Market.
A mont later, true to my fears, they left the ball room through the hallway connected to a portal, causing them to vanish into thin air.
I asked.
asked Anise.
asked Sallia, as she glanced at our unconscious prisoner.
said Felix.
I said, trying not to feel frustrated.
said Felix.
The four of us started sprinting towards the ball room. Previously, we had been at least sowhat worried about the noise we might make while moving - but now, we had no such fears. As we ran, I continued to think about our situation, before I asked my friends another question.
asked Felix.
said Sallia.
said Anise, after so hesitation.
said Felix.
I said. I felt a bit regretful about the fact that we were losing a golden opportunity to explore this building while encountering minimal resistance… but my friends were right. That wood from the universal tree might be our best chance to survive long term. Even if abandoning the building I had been so eager to explore felt bad, we had bigger priorities.
After that, we didn’t say much else as we kept running towards the ball room. Once we finally arrived, I spent another thousand Achievent splitting off a new clone, dropping from about 275,453 Achievent to 274,452.53. I sent my clone through the hallway that teleported people in and out of the universal tree wing of the school. My clone fearlessly dashed forward, before my clone’s vision of reality lurched.
When I arrived on the other side, I imdiately had my clone activate soul sight and scan the area. Then, I gritted my teeth in frustration.
They weren’t here. I couldn’t even see them in the distance. They had probably already passed through the admissions office and out of the second portal in the building. They weren’t waiting in ambush for us - they had already left the area, and quite possibly the building. They didn’t care about their friend that we were still carting around, or other treasures in the building, or getting revenge upon us. They had simply run for their lives, heedless of the fact that we were a group of four people confronting a group of twenty eight.
Then, I noticed that while the scavengers had fled, they had still left a few gifts for us. There were several strange tal cubes on the ground - and all of them had red lasers peeking out of them. I stared at one of them in curiosity, before I shared my vision with Felix.
said Felix.
I did as Felix instructed, and a mont later, I felt a small tremor in the school. I sent my clone back through the portal a mont later, and saw several new craters in the hallway.
said Felix.
I said. As I had my clone start scouring the area for more explosives, I tried to suppress a surge of frustration.
The landmines weren’t very good at actually hurting us - they were too obviously scattered throughout the hallway. Then again, maybe that was the point. The scavengers didn’t care whether they got any of us or not - they just wanted to waste our ti while they ran further and further away.
Several minutes later, I found two more clusters of bombs - one that was actually sowhat cleverly hidden under a loose floor tile, and the other also obviously laid out in plain sight. Once I finished tripping all of the laser-activated land mines, my friends and I crept into the hallway, where I could let my trap-sensing skill do its work. Despite my frustration, I didn’t rush - that was how I might get my friends killed. No matter how much I wanted to teleport right in front of the scavengers and start harassing them and sabotaging their supplies, I needed to make sure my friends were safe first.
By the ti we finished navigating through the hallway and admissions office, and then excited the building, I couldn’t find a trace of the invaders with my soul sight.
I said, before I sighed.
They had taken the splinter of wood with them. Our best hope. Felix’s chance to create a powerful item that could save us. It was gone.
said Felix.
I blinked in surprise, and then activated my soul-sight again. I hadn’t noticed it the first ti, since I had been so dead-set on locating the scavengers, but there was sothing quite unusual in our surroundings.
There were several weaker and moderate-strength monsters moving towards sothing in the distance. It was almost as if they were all being drawn by sothing.
A wave of confusion assaulted my thoughts, before I laughed.
I said.
said Felix, before he chuckled. said Felix.
I grinned, and led my friends towards the sa place the monsters were converging. There was still a chance to get the bark from the universal tree.
My cheer lasted for the next five minutes of travel, as we got closer and closer to the heart of the wave of monsters. Then, I noticed sothing twitch in the sky. I looked up.
It was the giant worm that had swallowed the moon-sized billboard. It was no longer wrapped into a ball as it evolved. Instead, it was looking at us.
No, it was looking at sothing just a bit ahead of us.
Regular monsters weren’t the only creatures that had been dragged out of their usual patrol routes to deal with the scavengers.
The giant worm in the sky had also noticed them.
I felt a surge of fear as it dropped out of the sky like a teor hurtling towards the earth, before it crashed into the market about half a kiloter away. The giant worm had returned to the surface of the nursery to stop the scavengers.
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