Three days later, on a different side of the forest…
At the center of a clearing stood a youth with black hair, slightly pale skin, and an indifferent look on his face as he gazed at the dead jackler, a hyena type beast. His black leather jacket bearing the school emblem fluttered in the wind, revealing his black shirt and a black pendant hanging loosely across his neck.
"I guess it's time I meet up with the others" Damon muttered as he pulled out his two short swords from the body of the beast. His eyes narrowed as he looked towards the general direction where his team should be camping.
His team had offered him the position of team leader, but he rejected it without a thought. Just like Blake, he was a solo player that felt the more people he moved with the more burden placed on his shoulders. But unlike Blake who 'cared' a bit for his team, Damon didn't give a shit about them.
From the first day, he had split up from the team and began hunting beasts, only returning at the end of the day to check if they had been wiped out. For the past five days, this had been his daily and till the last day of the competition, nothing was changing.
When he was a few meters away from his team's campsite, Damon instinct was telling him that something was very wrong. He quickly hid in a corner for some time before activating darkbringer's stealth skill and approached the campsite.
'Why is everywhere so quiet… Isn't that the smell of blood?!' As he got closer, the smell of blood got stronger and his hunch of something being wrong was confirmed.
When finally got to the campsite, he scanned the area from a distance for safety reason, but what he saw shocked him to the core.
'My God!' Damon was rooted to the spot as he saw the corpse of his gruesomely murdered 'teammates'.
The corpse of the only girl in his team had blood spurting out of the areas of its two missing limbs and head. The corpse of the team leader had the upper part of its body missing and close to it was the corpse of a team member who had been ripped into two.
The entire ground was dyed red, brain fluid, limbs, and heads were scattered all around, this was nothing short of a massacre.
'Their only 3 bodies here, did the last one escape?' When Damon came out of shock he quickly realized that a member of the team was missing, but when he turned to the far end of the campsite the hope of his teammate escaping the massacre was shattered.
He saw his teammate's eyes wide open as it was being chewed on by a wyvern!
"Grrr…" When the wyvern felt something staring, it quickly turned to Damon's direction but didn't see anything.
'Shit!' When the wyvern looked in his direction, Damon was shocked that it could sense even when he was in the stealth state. Seeing how it had massacred his team without receiving a scratch on its scales, Damon knew he was no match for it.
Seeing that the wyvern was staring at his location with increasing intent, Damon clenched his hand on the necklace artifact given to him by his father and poured in mana into it. With a low hum, the artifact produced a dark glow before completely wiping out his presence.
"Hrrr…" Feeling the stare gone, the wyvern continued to munch on the limbs of the student.
The wyvern had lost its sentience and ability to reason, becoming something lesser than the shadow of its former self. It was filled with rage for anything that moved and was completely driven by bestial instincts, it's reasoning could be said to be lower than that of a common beast.
…
Back in the magic school.
The live feed had recorded every single thing that happened from when the students were being dismembered to when the last student was being eaten alive.
Right now, many students were throwing up at the gruesome scene, most of the members of the normal class began thanking their gods that they were not in the elite class, and those who were planning to challenge them began having second thoughts.
Even after watching the gruesome scene, the horror kept replaying in the heads of the students, the atmosphere of the entire school was gloomy.
The situation wasn't looking good on the side of the professors.
When the wyvern appeared, it didn't give them enough time to react, even the defense mechanism set up to buy them some time to come rescue the students was shattered like a sheathe of paper by a single strike by the wyvern.
"Where did a king rank beast come from!" Principal Lovren slammed his fist on his desk in anger almost shattering it in two. Being unable to save the students as they screamed for help made him tremble in rage.
They had planned on rescuing the kids from the wyvern, but since they were all dead their new objective was to hunt it down before they recorded more casualties.
"Vadik take some professors with you and hunt down the beast." Principal Lovren commanded with an enraged tone.
'I hope he is still alive.' Professor Vadik nodded before leaving for the warp array with professor Anderson and professor Langston.
…
After losing the wyvern's attention when he activated the artifact, Damon struggled to stop his body from shaking as he left the area. He had no idea of where he was to go, but he wanted to be as far as possible from the wyvern.
A few minutes after Damon had escaped the area, a warp gate opened up and the three professors walked out.
The wyvern's anger was rekindled when it noticed the humans interrupting it's feeding. with flames of rage burning in its eyes, the wyvern threw the half-eaten corpse at the trio before lunging towards them.
Still maintaining his indifferent expression even in the face of battle, professor Vadik conjured a wall made of shadows as he scanned the area in search of his student, Damon.
"We can go all out he isn't here." After making sure that Damon wasn't in the area, he didn't care anymore for collateral damages.
The half-eaten corpse was thrown with so much force that when it slammed on the wall made of darkness its bones were crushed turning it into minced meat, following the corpse was the wyvern, but before it could slam into the barrier, it was gone and so was professor Vadik.
Zzzg! Zzzg!
Before the wyvern could understand what happened, several arcs of lightning struck it, but that wasn't enough to put down a king rank beast.
It turned to the source of the lightning, Langston, and lunged at him with renewed rage, but Langston had no plans of moving as he stood on the same spot welcoming the attack.
Just before the wyvern was a few meters away from Langston, a meter-thick rock wall erupted from below with thick spikes protruding out of it, but by the time the wyvern saw it, it was too late for it to react.
Bam!
It slammed into the rock wall, but the strength and vitality of a king rank beast was not something a simple trick could extinguish. Its steel-like scales minimized the damage it took, leaving only little wounds that immediately close.
Before it could even roar in rage, Langston wrapped in hundreds of lightning arcs like a thunder god, was already behind it.
Zzzg Zzzg
The buzzing sound of hundred lightning arcs resounded in the area as they all converged towards the wyvern.
HISS!
It hissed in pain as the numbing charges coursed through its body, but that was when professor Vadik appeared out of nowhere and conjured 5 darkness tendrils that held the wyvern down while draining its vitality.
With the trio's perfect combination attacks the wyvern wasn't given any chance to react and it knew if things went on like this it would die a helpless death.
Out of instincts the wyvern gathered all its energy and tore out of the darkness tendrils and ignored its numb body because its objective had changed to running for its life.
Calling up the corrosive liquid in its body, the wyvern sprayed an acid breathe at the professors who managed to block it with barriers from their artifacts. The attack wasn't meant to kill them but to stall them, it quickly spread its wings and took into the air moving towards the direction of Blake's camp.
When the drax had advanced to the king rank it had unlocked the ability to control poison and the ability to control wind which boosted its flight speed.
(AN: When a beast reaches the king rank they 'awaken' their elements depending on the beast. Also, poison control is one of the advanced paths of the plant pathway, so we will get to meet it later in the book.)
Except for Langston, the professors were speed-type magicians meaning they couldn't give chase and since Langston wouldn't be a match for it on his own he didn't border chasing it.s
Taking out his communicator, professor Vadik contacted instructor Zirrack. "It's all up to you."