Invasion 3

Crimson’s stomach growled as he released another heavy sigh. Crimson was away from the city because of some mission, and when he got back, the emergency occurred before he could get back to the school.

Crimson is now patrolling around a street all alone when suddenly,

“Wha?!”

Two consecutive exploding sounds resounded, catching Crimson’s attention. He hurriedly looked for the cause then saw two clouds of smoke several kilometers away from him. It came from several distances above OCEDA, which is in the same direction as Royal Chaos Academy.

Crimson immediately decided to head out towards the clouds of smoke. His eyes glowed, and in a manner of seconds, he was already several meters away from his previous position. He ran through the streets as fast as the speed of sound.

Meanwhile, with Raven.

After clearing her holograms back to her phone, Raven hurried towards a Portal point, a device created with the same function as Dright’s Blessing capable of linking locations through dimensions. Unlike Dright's portals, it isn’t portable. Only several places have these devices installed. Aside from this, only Royal Phantom members are aware of the existence of this device within the school.

Since the invisible forcefield of the academy was up, Raven cannot exit the school either by the gates or by climbing the walls, she had to rely on the device.

When Raven reached a certain door locked with a scanner similar to the gate, Raven held her phone in front of it. It glowed red for a moment, then changed to green soon after, opening the door. The room was dark. There were no windows, lightbulbs, nor school equipment.

As Raven entered the room, the door closed automatically. She walked straight ahead, and once she reached the middle of the room, the tile she is stepping on glowed a dull cyan colored light. It was the Portal point. A few seconds later, a portal as tall as Raven appeared in front of her. Raven hopped inside it and dashed right after. She got teleported on an alleyway that is a bit far away from the two enemies causing chaos. The reason why she landed on this location is that it is where another portal point is linked.

Raven felt tremors, and she heard loud noises. Raven hurried towards the nucleus of it, but then it suddenly stopped when she was only a few meters away. Raven kept running, and as the front gate came to view, she saw a certain red-haired boy’s back, holding one sword in each hand. Both the swords have thin blade colored in black with the edges colored in dark red. He is tapping one of the swords on his shoulder.

It was Crimson Bladdielle, Raven’s classmate and the 2nd best student of the combat course. Crimson is standing while the two enemies that Raven should be dealing with is lying motionless on the concrete ground. Cold sweat ran down Raven. Unlike her and Dright, Crimson is not a part of the Royal Phantoms, and he probably isn’t aware of the delayed explosion mechanisms.

“Geez… what are these things?” Crimson, curious about these unknown creatures he encountered, crouched and poked one of them. Then suddenly, he heard a familiar girl’s voice coming from behind him.

“Get away from those!” Raven shouted as she got closer every second. Catching Crimson’s attention, he searched the source of the sound.

“Raven?! What are you doing here?!” Surprised, Crimson exclaimed.

“We don’t have time for that!” Raven, who is now only inches away from Crimson, retorted. She grabbed the back collar of his uniform and dragged him as far as she could.

“What’s going on Raven?!” Crimson asked as he broke out of Raven’s grip and ran along with her.

At the same time, Crimson pressed a button located by the swords’ hilts. It deconstructed the Zeds into small cubic particles, transforming into an entirely new object, white cylindrical objects with a black diamond button in the middle.

The two swords, which are now these small cylindrical objects, automatically hanged themselves on his right waist, along with two other similar items, four in total.

“I’ll tell you later! Focus on running!” Raven answered. Since the area by the academy’s front gates was broad, there aren’t any buildings or objects to take cover. Raven led Crimson to the alleyway where she came from since it was the closest.

Crimson looked at the two enemies he knocked out, then he saw some changes. They are now glowing bright red, and Crimson’s instincts told him it was bad news.

“Raven, jump as high as you can!” Crimson said as he thought of an idea.

“Huh?!”

“Just do it!” Crimson said with an intense look.

Unable to retaliate, Raven jumped as high as she can, which was about ten meters above the ground. Taking this chance, Crimson activated his blessing, sped up significantly, and jumped towards Raven, carrying her in his arms.

“Wha?! What are you doing?! Put me down!” Surprised, Raven tried to break free with a red face, unaware of Crimson’s intentions. But then she suddenly remembered Crimson’s blessing that makes him faster than Raven by a hundredfold, making her calm down and let him carry her.

“Feels weird, being carried by someone shorter than me…” Raven thought.

Crimson didn’t say a word, and after they landed, he dashed as fast as he could. Three seconds later, Crimson stopped. Raven broke free by herself as they have reached about two hundred meters away from the school gates, which was further away from where Raven originally intended to go. At the same time, the two enemies exploded. Since both of them blew up at one time at a close distance, it was several times stronger. The buildings within its reach got caught by the impact, causing damages. Crimson and Raven weren’t caught up in the explosion since they are now quite far away.

Meanwhile, with Lia and the others.

The shield protecting the academy has a soundproof mechanism within it, causing the students to hear the most minimal sound from the outside, but the explosion earlier was so powerful, it made everyone in the academy to hear it along with a strong tremor.

Most of the students panicked, and some immediately looked for the source.

“W-what was that?!”

“Look! There’s a humongous smoke coming from the gate!” A student shouted and pointed at the gate’s direction. This caused most of the students to gather around with their friends and discuss several things regarding what just happened. The cafeteria is located on the first floor and the walls enclosing it were clear glass.

The smoke also caught Lia’s attention as it was her first time seeing such a spectacle. This made her hop down from Quare and head towards a glass wall at the cafeteria with the same expression she always has.

“W-wait, Lia! Where are you going?” Quare asked while standing from her seat and chased Lia, who ignored Quare’s question. Meanwhile, Rheyya just sat there and watched the two.

Lia ran, then suddenly-

“Umph!” Lia made a cute noise as she crashed her head on the wall of glass, causing her to fall to the floor. Lia wasn’t able to perceive the wall since it was very clear almost as if it wasn’t there.

“L-Lia?! Are you okay?!” Concerned, Quare quickly assisted Lia to stand back up. With the same expression, Lia rubbed the part on her forehead that took the impact as she stood up.

“I’m okay… What is that?” Lia said while pointing to the enormous smoke by the gate.

“That’s a giant smoke caused by that strong explosion earlier.” While walking towards Quare and Lia, Rheyya pointed out.

“Let me take a look at that,” Rheyya added while pointing at Lia, who is rubbing the part the took the impact.

Rheyya placed her palm atop the part that bumped on Lia. Soon after, a faint yellow glow took place below Rheyya’s palm then it disappeared right after she lifted her hand.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore…” Lia said while checking around the part that got the bump.

“Thank you, Rheyya” Lia added, expressing her gratitude.

“Is that your Blessing, Rheyya?” Quare asked.

“Yes. I can heal any wounds as long as I can touch it.” Rheyya answered

“Then why weren’t you able to use it on your wound yesterday?” Quare asked. If she can cure wounds, why didn’t she heal her wound yesterday?

“I was the person that your brother saved from the Oblivoid attack. I used my blessing to cure most of my wounds. I wasn’t able to cure that one wound yesterday because I reached my daily limit of usage of it. If I exceed that limit, then it would be incredibly taxing to my body, which was quite disadvantageous in that situation.” Rheyya explained.

“Nevermind that, I wonder what’s happening outside.” Rheyya changed the subject.

“Come to think of it, Raven-senpai sure is taking a while.” Quare pointed out. It has already been 20 minutes since Raven set out, which made Quare worry.

“She wouldn’t be outside caught up with all the commotion, would she?”

Meanwhile, with Raven and Crimson.

Raven and Crimson went back to the academy gates and observed the damages. The scene was dusty, and the nearest buildings have several visible havoc. A crater was left on the spot where the two exploded. The school gates got dented, but it was nowhere near getting destroyed. Several moments later, robots, drones, and automatons got deployed to the scene and started repairing the damages.

“Raven… What’s going on? What are these things?” Crimson asked Raven with an intense look in his eyes.