While Sophia and Axel were dancing within the ballroom of the 3rd floor of the frontmost building of the Unified Human Academy. As the anxiety in him reached its peak. Even Sophia, by now, felt that something was wrong. Even she felt a sense of impending danger. But all the other students remained oblivious to the crisis that was about to unfold, except for the ever-so-perceptive Jaden Redmar, who had been keeping an eye on Axel from the very start. Fınd the newest release on novel·fire.net
All of a sudden, in just a fraction of a moment, Sophia felt that she could not move. Almost as if she were frozen in time, followed by Axel Nomrad and the others. And it wasn’t a wrong statement; they could indeed not move for a millisecond. Because for that duration, the principal had halted all his calculations, which allowed the movements within the dome to occur. So, everything was frozen in time.
Though that was only for a very short amount of time, a time so small that a normal human could hardly notice it. But the powerful ones like Sophia and Axel felt the anamoly as clear as day. Their bodies revolting against the restriction with all of their might. The beautiful play of the melodies, stopping abruptly, was perhaps a better indicator of what was happening.
Right after that fraction of a second, a cacophonic sound of glass shattering resounded everywhere. The sound was so intense and disturbing that all the students felt the wave of space breakage affecting their very souls.
Blood came out of the eyes, nose, and mouth of every single student as they all dropped to their knees. They clutched their heads in pain as the constant sound of ringing assaulted their minds. All the pairs that were dancing together helped each other to get up to their feet. But the weaker students were more affected by it than the stronger ones.
Axel, who already knew this was about to happen, was prepared. Though he felt his head spin, there was no blood on his face. As for Sophia, she was already strong enough to withstand it. But even so, she could not keep standing straight and fell into the arms of his dance partner. Axel helped her stand straight. He drank a potion himself and gave another one to Sophia.
Sophia’s mind was already working on full power. A hundred thousand years of experience she had through the countless lifetimes wasn’t a joke. She had dealt with so many unexpected scenarios through all those lifetimes that she had lost count. Barely anything could surprise her at this point.
But unlike on the trial, where everyone else was a normal human and she was the monster in disguise. So, she always had an unfair advantage there. But here she did not. She was strong for her level, true. But compared to the powerful monsters that roamed through this world. She was nothing but an insignificant person that could be crushed at any given moment, and she knew that as well.
So, she was as cautious as she could be. She had already deduced Axel knew something. Something which she did not. Barely a few seconds had passed since everyone was hit by the aftereffect of the domes breaking.
Axel, with no warning whatsoever, shouted at the top of his lungs, "EVERYONE GET DOWN NOW........"
Without waiting to see if anyone had heeded his warning or not, he pinned down the increasingly perplexed Sophia and protectively hugged her.
Booooooooooooooooooom!!!!!
An explosion more terrifying than before followed; everything went white as the entire building they were in shook violently. Sophia was unable to react to Axel’s sudden action. Most of the students in that short amount of time heeded Axel’s warning, listening to their instincts, and ducked down, mimicking his actions as much as possible.
Countless debris and dust flew everywhere, but everyone did their best to protect themselves using every means at their disposal. Sophia also, on instinct, used her darkness to cover the two of them. Even though Sophia did not understand in the slightest about what was happening, she embraced him just as tightly as he had embraced her. Their whole bodies pressed against each other.
After an unknown amount of time, when Axel felt that the chaos going on outside had calmed, he tried to separate from her slowly, though she seemed to be quite reluctant to let go of the tight embrace she was holding him with. Axel also felt his mind drifting to other territories; his head was buried in her neck. Her mind-boggling scent was turning him into a complete idiot again. But with a strong will of effort, he separated from her, erasing the unnecessary thoughts. This wasn’t the time for that.
As the cocoon of darkness dissolved away with Sophia’s command, they both got up and stared at the sheer devastation in disbelief. Even though Axel knew it, understanding it in theory was one thing, and experiencing it in reality was another.
The entire building area above their heads was blown away, and the whole night sky became visible. The large emergency runes engraved all over the walls shimmered violently, struggling to fulfill their purpose. It was only because of those runes’ effects that all students were moderately safe and did not get hurt.
Everyone else also got up slowly, panic and dread filled their entire body. Sophia asked Axel in a demanding tone,
"Axel, what is going on? What do you know?"
Her gaze was sharp and her tone serious, with no room for objections. With noticeable hesitation, he answered, "The principal had warned me that something would happen during this time."
Sophia furrowed her eyebrows. She knew him well enough to understand that it wasn’t the complete truth, but Axel’s following words gave her no choice but to put that matter to rest, at least for now.
"Sophia, this is not the time for that. We need to evacuate the building and get everyone out. Please take command of everyone."
She nodded and decided to trust him, seeing his grim expression. All hesitation from her vanished in an instant; her aura changed, exerting a sharp and commanding presence. She used her hidden charm attribute in a commanding authority as her voice boomed in everyone’s ears equally,
"All students, stand and help the others near you. Immediately drink healing potions or pills. We need to move out of here right now and go outside to assess the situation and fight if necessary."
"Do not panic or cause any disturbance. Because if you do, I will kill you myself before anything else."
Her words were absolute, and no one dared to defy them. Following those instructions, all the students had no choice but to swallow the potions calmly and stabilize their conditions as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, Jaden Redmar, Enrick Samartan, Thorian Blackvale, and Heinz Gil all came to stand beside Axel.
Heinz questioned in worry, "Vyra and Lumina are both outside."
But Axel reassured his friend calmly, "Don’t worry, they will be fine."
Heinz felt a sense of unease at Axel’s confident tone, as if he knew somehow that they were indeed safe. But choose not to question it for the moment. Axel’s focus shifted to the two princes of the other two great kingdoms as he requested,
"Enrick and Thorian, please help with keeping the students organized and ready for battle."
The two princes nodded with a grim expression on their faces. Then Axel turned towards Jaden, and the genius strategist was already waiting for him. Jaden’s expression was much calmer and controlled than the others, similar to Axel himself.
As if he had expected from the get-go that an attack was about to happen. The very fact that the principal had put all the students in a single room, , when many had been disappearing just a week before, seemed like an open invitation to whoever the perpetrators were behind the incidents.
Axel asked Jaden as the last one, "Jaden, once we are outside, we will have an understanding of what is going on. I will need you to come up with something then, depending on what we have to face. But I suppose, you should expect the worst."
Jaden nodded with no visible change of expression, already trying to think of all the possibilities and strategies he could implement depending on the situation. But Axel knew the brutal reality of their situation was something that no one could imagine, even in their wildest dreams.
Then, another sound of an explosion followed, as all the students looked upwards into the sky. Since the top part of the whole building had been blown off, they could all see the clear night sky. The purple eclipse was happening. Far high in the sky, there were five pairs of lights. Five different battles were ongoing.
As all the students, one after another, used their mage branch aspects to cast magic to temporarily enhance their visions, trying to understand what or who was fighting in the sky, they were faced with another brutal setback: all the prominent professors were fighting against the clones of the principal, and only Forger Gareth seemed to be helping the principal’s clones, holding off professor Fenris.
Everyone fell into panic mode again, but the bloodlust of the valkyrie pressed upon them like a colossal warhammer, making their knees buckle; her dreadful bloodlust forced everyone to remain calm and follow orders obediently.
Because there were two kinds of fear working on the minds of the students at the moment, one was that they might die at the hands of whatever was attacking the academy soon enough.
Another was that they might die right then and there at the hands of the valkyrie, because Sophia’s bloodlust conveyed her genuine desire to kill anyone who caused trouble, and she was dead serious about it. With that done, everyone started to walk out of the building, as fast as they could, while remaining organized and under the strict command of Sophia, behaving like obedient little dogs.