234 The Almighty School (8)

"She called me a beautiful and generous older sister with a wide heart, how could I go against that?" she laughed.

I shrugged when everybody stared at my thick face. How could anyone hate hearing compliments about themselves? We needed as many recruits as possible and it worked.

"Stay backstage Rika, and we'll take care of this," Lucius commanded before he turned to Claire and Yulian.

"Then can I go back to the middle school section now? I need to check how bad the barrier has gotten," I didn't want to do nothing when we were literally a few steps away from our deaths.

"Go," he allowed me to leave.

He didn't show any worry for his younger brother and focused on the task in front of him. The mini army of students who volunteered to help us out waited for them to start. I sprinted towards Luke and Alex, wondering how bad the situation had gotten. It would take a while to organize the help that was going to come towards our way.

On my way there, I bumped into Charles as I didn't watch what was in front of me. Maybe it was a good chance to recruit him into helping us as well. I turned back to face him, "I don't have enough time to explain but you should follow me."

I grabbed his hand and ran towards the barrier as Charles was too stunned to react. By the time I met Luke, Charles watched the barrier slowly being chipped away from the s-class monsters. Since it was his second time being in this situation, he didn't appear too surprised.

Half of the layers in the barrier were now gone during the hour I went to gather recruits. Not only there were the humanoids and their pet, but a whole swarm of monsters acting like their army behind them. I wondered if the high schoolers were enough to combat this storm together.

"The swarm of monsters is increasing from the summons of the humanoids," Alex turned to Charles who was the newest at this.

"But reinforcements are coming from high school students who volunteered to help," I updated them on the news.

"This is an entire organized army of monsters," Charles turned to my direction to partly blame me.

"And you think I don't know that?" I shouted back with annoyance.

"At least you got time to relax while we just recently arrived at school with monsters suddenly at the barrier," I started to get mad.

"Rika," Luke warned me to calm down.

"But do you think we can defeat a swarm of monsters with the s-class generals without losing our lives?" Charles spat out the reality of our situation.

"This is worse than I thought it'd be," Claire suddenly appeared from behind.

"Is the conference finished?" I looked for the volunteers.

"They're on their way here," Claire studied the barrier.

"No way," a student mumbled her thoughts that was in everyone's minds of those who volunteered.

The crowd stared at the monsters outside the barrier like they were dumbfounded. It was much worse than what they had imagined. None of them ever went to missions as dangerous as the scene in front of them. The instructions they were given was too vague for them to understand the true situation in front of them.

"Oh, you're here," the humanoid noticed my presence.

"I was wondering when you'd come," she studied the mini army behind the barrier.

"You could always leave, and we would all be happy. I know you hate me as much as I hate you," I shouted.

"I'll stay," she narrowed her eyes.

"Don't you see my beautiful collection of pets behind me?" She gestured.

"You don't always have to follow your leader you know," I tried to continue distracting her.

Lucius, Claire and Ben worked together as some of the high school students sneaked out of the barrier to defeat some of the monsters. Both of the humanoids were focused on me to the extent they weren't watching how their pets were doing. We needed to separate the s-class monsters from their army.

"I have never seen Ailes this adamant before," the other humanoid agreed.

"Is it really worth it for her mana?" she huffed from looking at my face.

"Should we make a deal?" I offered them.

"If you really want me for my mana, you can wait to target me when I grow to have more mana unlike now. That way, we won't have to live with each other. Or you can just tell Ailes that you accidentally killed me as I would rather die than to join you guys," I suggested.

"That isn't a bad plan," she wavered.

"I don't want to live with you if I can and Tilly doesn't care since he likes peace," she started to contemplate.

"Just leave your army here to do your job," I continued.

"I was against Ailes from the start anyways. I did keep on telling him we should only save people who want to be saved," the other humanoid showed his disagreement with his leader.

"There's no way I'll survive with an army of your precious pets anyways," I pointed out.

"What could mere students do?" I showed her our weak army that was starting to lose against one of her giant pets.

Unfortunately, the group of students retreated back into the barrier once they expelled most of their mana. Maybe the monster pitied them, but they didn't attack back yet. Their skin was as tough as the hardest shields that could not be penetrated, leaving them unscratched. One move was all it took to slam them onto the ground before they scrambled to run for their lives.

"How about this?" she brightly smiled from her newfound plan.