Monster (3)

Luke swiftly grabbed my hips with Shelly's help that kept me inside the car and tugged me into the middle of the car as Alex shot a laser beam to the creature's arm dragging me outside. Shelly's eyes welled up with tears in relief as I collapsed onto plushy seats with the creature's hand attached to my hand from its long nails.

With no mercy, Luke immediately pulled out the nails as I shrieked from the pain. My blood covered the floors, which was probably going to leave a stain. Only Alex continued to fight off the monsters as Luke and Shelly were focused on performing first aid on my injuries. But as the hover car rose higher and higher into the sky, there were less monsters able to reach us.

After Luke pulled out all the nails, my mind felt feverish as my vision made everything double into twos and threes. Colours began blurring in and out and shapes were increasingly more defined as everything was turning into circles and rectangles. My hearing dulled as I heard the sounds of Luke and Shelly closing the windows while Alex turned on the ventilation.

"The smell of blood will attract more monsters," Alex heaved out the words.

"And the school is too far while my mansion is the closest," Luke decided on our next destination.

Luke emptied his bottles of medicine like they were cheap, disposable potions from his marble. My head started to become clearer as my body became completely drenched. I was never more thankful that Luke was prepared for almost everything. My vision stopped blurring in and out as I was finally able to sit up.

This must not be the usual medicine since I couldn't feel any pain. There had to be a numbing effect mixed inside. My ears perked up as I heard sounds of wings flapping like there was a whole colony of birds chasing after us.

"But were there always birds this high up in the air?" I whispered when I noticed grotesque birds resembling the same skin tone as the monsters we fought before.

"No way," Shelly looked out the window.

Alex appeared like he was about to faint after freezing for several of minutes. I have never seen Alex this stiff even when I was paired with him with failing grades. It wasn't like I couldn't understand. We were all currently exhausted with almost no reserves of mana left while two heavily injured people were also boarded.

I didn't want to imagine how we would fight against this group of monsters. But I knew it would be much worse than the ones that were good at jumping. When Alex returned to his senses, he immediately turned on the accelerator as it zoomed towards Luke's mansion. He looked like he was praying we would get there in time before we got attacked.

Luke's mansions were protected by extremely high-level barriers that got fortified even more after I met his parents. Initially I thought that the barriers were to prevent human intruders from entering his place, but I knew now it was to protect the house from the monsters. I pretended to not notice the existence of barriers everywhere in the first district from residential areas to the school.

But everyone knew except for me about the constant danger the citizens of the first district were protecting themselves from. No wonder all the mana training classes were mostly on the attack side rather than the defensive. A lot of things was starting to make more sense from the reason why possessing a lot of mana was important in the first district.

"How far away are we from Luke's mansion?" I asked.

"Thirty miles," Shelly pointed out the map on the GPS system.

Normally it would take ten minutes to get there, but with the accelerator burning through the fuel, it was risky to determine what would happen. It was either the car breaking down before we got there or if safely arriving before it happened. And even with the accelerator, the displays told me it would still take at least five minutes to get there.

"We're jumping down onto the residential area," Luke pointed out on the map where a weaker barrier was placed.

"Is the barrier strong enough?" I wondered.

"Enough to fend against the mutated birds," Alex muttered as he studied the map.

Mutated birds? Did this mean that these creatures weren't originally monsters? Luke shook me to pay attention to the outline of his plan as he showed me the map when I was about to immerse myself into my thoughts. The residential area was closer since it was eleven miles away, meaning we would get there under two minutes.

We prepared to jump as Shelly opened the door. Alex held the boy on his back as Luke hugged my waist to jump with me since I was still injured. Before the bird closest to us swung to attack us with its beak, we jumped down with no seconds to spare.

I closed my eyes as I hoped we would land inside the barrier since we jumped a bit too early. The difference between a few seconds was all it took to determine if we were their next meal where another wild forest surrounded the residential area. When I opened my eyes, I almost fainted from the scene in front of me.

This couldn't be possible.