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C177 - Darkness

More tall figures appeared around Khan as the monsters continued to charge forward. The dark gas had made them unable to notice the death of their companion, but they wouldn't have cared anyway. They had precise but simple orders, and they didn't dare to ignore them.

Khan shot after the nearest monster. His sprint made him reach his opponent in no time, and his left arm stretched before the creature could notice him. However, the knife didn't manage to pierce the beast's skull when it stabbed its head.

The monster noticed Khan at that point. It roared angrily as it turned toward while interrupting its charge. Three of its legs slid on the ground and created long holes as it tried to stop and swing its paw toward its opponent.

Khan only needed to run around the creature to dodge the incoming attack. He stabbed his opponent's head again when he reached its side, but he ended up failing to execute the technique correctly again.

The monster was livid. It tried to put strength in its rear legs and jump at Khan, but a kick slammed its head on the ground. The knife tried to pierce its skull again, but its bones managed to stop the weapon.

'Dammit!' Khan cursed in his mind while interrupting the monster's attempt to stand up with another kick.

The creature growled to no end, but Khan's kicks always managed to bring its head back to the ground. Swinging its paws didn't help either because Khan could jump on the other side of its body before resuming his offensive. The monster felt powerless in front of the flawless execution of the Lightning-demon style.

A cracking noise eventually followed the thudding sounds generated by Khan's relentless offensive. The monster died, but he only felt pissed at his incompetence.

The other monsters had long since run past Khan while he was busy dealing with his opponent, but the darkness of the cloud didn't allow him to find them. He could only sprint toward the students in the hope of finding something among that annoying gas.

Khan had to reach the end of the cloud to find the other monsters. They were about to leave the gas and approach the students who had just stopped to call their Aduns, but he ran among them while throwing kicks left and right to attract their attention.

The six monsters crashed on the ground, rolled on themselves, or ended clashing with each other. Khan had only needed a few kicks to interrupt their charge, but he found six pairs of fierce eyes pointing at him afterward. His only consolation was that he had finally left that annoying cloud.

The three Niqols hesitated when they fixed their gaze on Khan's back. He appeared incredibly small with those huge figures surrounding him. The monsters stood up as angry growls came out of their mouths. They had completely forgotten about their targets after receiving those kicks. They only wanted to pounce at the human now.

Khan tightened the grip on the knife. He felt no fear in front of those threatening monsters. His figure radiated pure confidence.

The monsters seemed able to sense Khan's power. They were angry and even rather stupid, but their instincts told them that their opponent was strong. Their sensitivity to mana was working now that they had left the cloud, and they couldn't help but hesitate in front of that clear confidence.

The Aduns screeched when they landed on the ground and let the Niqols climb on their backs, but the monsters didn't react to that event. They remained still and left their eyes on Khan. They feared what would happen if they dared to lose their concentration.

One of the monsters began to bend forward, and that slight movement marked the beginning of the battle. Khan shot ahead and thrust his knife forward once the skull-like mask filled his view. His weapon pierced those bones and dug the flesh behind them before creating a hole in the creature's head.

A faint satisfaction spread inside Khan when he saw life abandoning the monster's eyes, but pain took its place as an unstoppable force landed on his side. He lost his grip on the knife as he flew above the monster to his right and blood accumulated in his mouth.

The monster stood on two feet and swung its paw toward Khan. He couldn't dodge the incoming sharp claws while airborne, so he moved the [Blood Shield] on his right forearm while crossing his arms in front of his chest.

The paw hit the forearm and flung Khan further away. He slammed on the ground and rolled on himself as the massive force generated by that simple attack vanished. Still, he soon managed to plant his feet on the terrain and stop himself.

His right sleeve was in pieces, and part of it hung on his hand. Khan tore it apart as he unsheathed the null-grade knife and threw it in his left palm. The gesture revealed how four bloody cuts had appeared on his right forearm, but they seemed pretty superficial.

The monsters had charged ahead as soon as Khan had slammed on the ground, and one of them was even about to fall on him after he drew the knife, but the creature ended up hitting nothing. Khan sprinted among his opponents and reached the other side of the group before jumping toward one of the enemies.

Khan performed an airborne spin before slamming his heel on the monster's mask. Cracks opened on those bones as the creature's head crashed on the ground and dug a deep hole.

The sudden stop made the monster's back rise, but it was too heavy to perform a complete flip. Khan could stab his knife downward, and the azure glow covering its surface stopped shining on the dark fur when it dug the creature's nape.

Khan immediately jumped backward while taking out the knife from the deadly wound. A monster immediately fell on his previous position and turned the corpse's head into a gory pulp of fur and blood. Nothing would have been able to save Khan if that attack had hit him, but he had learnt from his previous mistake.

A monster approached Khan from behind, but it didn't escape his senses. Khan turned before sprinting to the creature's side and stabbing his glowing knife on the spot right next to its mask, but only the tip pierced the tough skin.

The creature's head performed a sharp movement as it turned toward Khan, and the knife ended up snapping in half when the mask hit its side. A swinging paw followed that gesture, but it found no one once the monster completed the attack.

Khan cursed in his mind while running toward the corpse with the first-grade knife stabbed in its mask. He threw away his broken weapon once reaching his destination, but a pale-red glow spread in the area when he crouched.

A dense sphere of mana suddenly entered the range on Khan's senses. He didn't need to raise his head to understand what was about to arrive, so he quickly pulled out the knife from the mask and ran away. The sound of an explosion reached his ears while he ran away, and a heatwave eventually engulfed him.

Khan felt hot, but the heatwave didn't hurt him. He continued to sprint for a few seconds before stopping and turning to gain a clear idea of his situation.

The four normal monsters had stopped attacking now that their leaders had stepped into the battlefield. A trail of dark smoke came out of Khan's previous position. The monster's corpse wasn't burning, but its charred skin continued to release an ominous gas that tried to hide the two huge figures that had come out from the cloud.

The two leaders had run through the cloud to hide their arrival, but Khan had been fast enough to dodge their attack. The two monsters had their hungry eyes on him now, and their underlings imitated them as growls resounded from behind their masks.

Khan replied with his cold gaze. The battle had changed completely after the arrival of the two leaders, and he didn't know how smart it was to be part of it. He had managed to kill four monsters, but the previous exchanges had highlighted how unreliable his prowess was.

The first-grade knife returned inside the sheath as Khan began to run away. Angry roars followed that gesture, and the same pale-red light from before shone around him, but he didn't care. The battle was over for him.

Khan ran on the plain until Snow had enough room to pick him up without entering the range of the fiery specimen. It didn't take long before he was high in the sky, far away from the monsters.

The three Niqols soon reached him, and the group remained above the monsters to keep track of their movements. They had to stay there until a stronger soldier showed up and cleared the area before resuming their task there.

The monsters didn't do much after losing their targets. They advanced for a while, but more creatures eventually came out of the mountain chain and started fighting them for control of the plain.

A messy battle unfolded, and its size increased as its noises attracted more packs living in the mountain chain. The group could confirm the existence of almost fifty monsters, and many of them turned out to be different abilities.

Khan and the others never had a chance to defend the area, but that was fine. The Niqols had actually expected something like that to happen once the sunlight started to shine on the surface. The students' role was to delay those creatures once stronger assets arrived to clear the area.

Of course, the situation wasn't so desperate elsewhere. The mountain chain was one of the crowded areas on Nitis, so the Niqols already expected Khan and the others to be unable to defend it. They had actually predicted that they would lose control of most of the planet in the initial days of the crisis.

Edil updated the Niqols in charge of handling the various stronger assets on the changes that the plain experienced. He kept count of the number of monsters and described their abilities accurately so that the experts nearby could decide if their powers were up to the task.

Kakhir had to separate from the rest of the group to follow a few monsters that decided to run away from the bloody battle unfolding on the plain. The specimens with abilities were trying to enlarge their packs by subduing their opponents, but it took almost an hour before a clear hierarchy formed.

The monsters had to wait and recover at that point. They ate their dead companions and slept. Khan and the others could start to relax and focus on something else, and he even decided to meditate during those hours.

His body had been able to endure a direct hit from a monster, but his insides felt off. A vast bruise had even appeared on his side due to that attack, but he couldn't deny his slight satisfaction.

Khan had struggled against a single monster on his first hunt on Nitis, but he had just killed four of them in little more than a few exchanges. He had grown incredibly strong in mere months, and he had yet to perfect his abilities too. It felt unreal how much had changed.

The screech of an Aduns awakened Khan from his meditation. An eagle with peculiar dark-red feathers flew in the area while carrying a middle-aged woman who wore a serious expression.

Khan didn't know that Niqols, but she didn't waste time announcing herself. She appeared in a hurry while she descended toward the resting pack and pointing at the various monsters.

A dark sphere came out of her fingers and expanded as it descended toward the pack. Some monsters noticed the event and alerted everyone with their roars, but the attack moved too quickly. It only took a few seconds to transform into a black halo that enveloped all the specimens.

Cries of pain resounded, but Khan couldn't study what was happening since the halo hindered his vision. The technique remained active until everything went silent and made the woman decide to disperse her darkness.

The scene that the dispersion of the technique revealed left Khan speechless. The pack had disappeared. Patches of blood stained the ground, but he couldn't see anything else there. The darkness had also devoured the short grass in that area.

To be continued