Luxor Academy: Flames of Chaos

Chapter 9 - Escaping the City

The final chapter that takes place in the Dead City! This one is a bit longer and the chapters are hopefully not going to maintain these lengths in the furture.

It was a spectacular thing, joining the monster hunting students in the rush against the aberrations. It took less than a minute, with swords slashing, guns blazing, magic exploding.

Kagami's scythe whipped back and forth cutting down aberrations left and right, Caesar left a trailing of dust in his wake, sudden patches of missing aberrations appeared with the fault from Aiko, the air became chilly with Skyler's cryokinesis, arrows speared into countless monsters, and the combined darkness from Roy and Crow were able to stifle the gait of the monsters.

As for Blaise, he contributed as much as he could, running into the fray and doing his best to abandon his cowardice. He knew the best thing he could do is add to the onslaught and that he'd likely not be hurt.

And before he knew it, Blaise wasn't facing a horde of monsters, rather the streets ran sticky with their blood. It was a bit repulsive. He leaned over, his sword dirty, gasping for air.

"You okay, Blaise?" Kazuki asked from behind him, flexing his bow arm.

"I'm fine, thanks," Blaise heaved in a deep breath and stood up, and wiped his sword on his thoroughly dirty pant leg, putting it back into its scabbard.

All the students were standing around, afraid to move, shocked by the situation, and were evidently awaiting instruction from Hundun, who was pacing back and forth, staring at his moving feet and mindful not to trip on the dead monsters. Finally, Hundun stopped his pacing and commanded, "Gather around, everyone."

"Listen up," Hundun said once everyone had huddled around him, "Time in this dimension doesn't align back to the time in Luxor Academy."

"That means," Hundun looked around at each of the students, making eye contact, "Night will be here soon. During the night, the monsters are not at all easy as the day variants."

Hundun paused to let the idea soak in. For Blaise, it was horrible that the monsters were only going to get harder to combat since it had been a struggle to even fight the evil apes. What could the night monsters have in stock for them? It was a very grave situation they were in.

"We have three hours," Hundun continued, maintaining the same level of eye contact, "I'm going to split everyone into three groups. Kazuki, you lead one, you'll be responsible for collecting resources. Naomi, you'll the group to try to find the most suitable shelter. Tsuji, you'll lead another resource collection. Now, everyone, off to work, go join your friends."

It didn't take any convincing for a group to gather around Kazuki. Perhaps it was the advantage of being extroverted. It would always be a mystery to Blaise how he was able to talk so easily. Blaise, Kagami, Aiko, Crow, Skyler, Caesar, and Roy all crowded into one group with Kazuki and in a daze still wondering what was happening, they headed out.

"Well, ladies, gentlemen," Caesar tried at light conversation with Kagami, Aiko, and Crow as they walked grimly, "How did your group fare?"

"My tonfa broke," Crow replied, looking the slightest pissed off.

"My book got injured," Aiko added, looking the slightest pissed off.

"It went fine," Kagami concluded, looking the slightest pissed off, the reason of which was not clear to Blaise.

"Okay..." Caesar dragged off the word awkwardly, sounding accustomed to social interaction but rusty. There was obviously something in his life that made him like that, Blaise could attest to the rusty social interaction. But what?