Charlotte is the first to reach the monster alongside Edith, but upon seeing it, she just stands there waiting, not seeing how she could be useful against this thing.
The monster in question has a giant serpentine body, but at the head there’s a bulb of flesh with a humanoid body exposed, its hands buried in the flesh and its eyes closed, with an eye on its chest that’s half-open. It’s several dozen meters long, extremely thick and long, with lightning and electricity discharging from its body.
Rouge is the third to arrive, having easily passed Tanya, and instead of waiting she darts past Charlotte’s building and kicks the monster’s head, unleashing a blast of air that shoves the monster backward.
The monster looks at her and fires a lightning bolt. She dodges, launching blades of compressed wind. The monster’s scales hold up well against the attack, only cracking in a few places.
"I think we should get involved! Since neither of us has much attack range, let’s set up traps and have them lure the monster toward us, or something like that. We’ll adjust the plan as we go," Charlotte says to Edith, who nods.
"Makes sense. This monster looks strong and fast, and I don’t think I can do much yet. I forgot to grab a plant and chemical kit. I’ll look for something in one of the apartments."
"I’ll help you." Charlotte tears open a rift in space, stepping through with Edith as both go to prepare their plan.
While Rouge attacks the monster with wind blades and tries to crush it with the atmosphere, Tanya finally arrives and immediately unleashes a massive heat beam. This time, instead of taking the attack like it does with Rouge’s, the monster dodges.
’This isn’t looking too favorable. It’s not very strategic... but it’s fast, and tough... not to mention the scales seem to be regenerating,’ Rouge calculates as she flies around the monster.
The monster keeps dodging and wraps itself around a building, climbing it. It quickly spins its body and strikes Rouge with its tail while firing a lightning bolt at Tanya, who releases a powerful heat wave — but the bolt pierces through it.
"Aahh!" She’s hit and begins to fall, despite having defended herself well. As she falls, she uses small, super-concentrated heat waves in her palms as thrusters to fly. Around her, small spheres begin to form, firing forward into another, smaller sphere.
She then fires an extremely concentrated heat beam at the monster, punching a small hole from one side of its body to the other.
’Yes!! If I sweep the laser upward, I’ll cut it in two!’ She grows confident as she begins to move the continuous laser upward.
"..." The monster turns toward her and charges, catching her off guard with its speed. She’s struck and slammed to the ground, dragged for dozens of meters while Rouge, standing atop a building, starts concentrating the atmosphere into an extremely compressed and pressurized blade of air.
"..." Rouge says nothing, waiting for an opportunity to try to cut off a piece of the monster like a predator, her wolf ears erect and alert to everything.
"Tanya, I’m going in to help. Jump upward," Eirwen arrives, calling out to Tanya. Having learned combat from Zenith, she opts to strike the monster’s head with a punch. This disorients the monster, which stops grinding Tanya into the ground and focuses on Eirwen.
"Huh!?" Not expecting to draw the attack’s focus, she’s hit by the serpent’s tail and slammed into the ground. She still hasn’t released enough cold to generate ice, so she ends up buried in rubble for trying to help Tanya.
"Is that all you’ve got!" Tanya yells at the monster as she generates a massive, flat golden circle, like a giant mirror that reflects an immense heat wave. Multiple buildings and the entire block melt in a circular pattern, carving a giant hole through the structures.
The monster is completely carbonized on the outside, but before she can gloat, it starts regenerating and releases an enormous electrical discharge, a sphere that expands and hits everyone in the area.
This breaks Rouge’s concentration, making her nearly hit Tanya with the air blade and miss the monster completely. Eirwen, being beneath the earth and rubble, takes the least amount of damage. She emerges from under the debris and begins freezing the lower part of the monster, trying to turn it into an ice statue.
Normally, it would work on most monsters, but the electricity coursing through the monster’s insides heats its body in a way that prevents Eirwen from freezing it internally.
"Guys, we need to work as a team!! We’re not going to beat this thing if we just attack without a plan!" Eirwen shouts, unable to hold the monster as it lunges at her with a headbutt, slamming her through multiple buildings.
Tanya fires several small heat shots, one of the few things she knows how to do since she still hasn’t learned to use the many variants of her power properly.
"..." The monster focuses on Tanya, but Rouge strikes it on the head from another side. Before the monster has time to refocus on Rouge, Eirwen fires a large ice crystal at its body.
The three, working as a team, leap between buildings, firing attacks from all sides and not letting the monster focus on anyone — a slightly better display of teamwork compared to the past.
The monster writhes, thrashing against the buildings, confused and disoriented. This is the opportunity Charlotte was waiting for with Edith. Both leap out of a rift in space, with Edith throwing a capsule she created — a potent poison made from kitchen materials.
Charlotte creates a rift, tearing off a piece of the monster, which opens up another opportunity. Rouge concentrates all her power, launching a blade of atmosphere like a saw to cut through the scales. It works, splitting the monster in half.
Meanwhile, Tanya fires multiple concentrated beams, having seen that they can pierce the monster. The monster’s body receives several holes in the chest area instantly as the flesh emits a sizzling sound.
"Get back!!" Eirwen shouts as she tries once again to freeze the monster completely. Since the cold has intensified greatly in the area, she manages to cover the monster’s body entirely, cooling its flesh on the outside, unsure if it worked.
"..." Everyone looks at the ice statue, confident in what they’ve learned — until a dark bluish glow appears. Blue lightning with black edges bursts from the ice, which cracks as something crawls out from the fissure.
"What is that?" Charlotte asks Edith beside her as a "person" emerges from the ice — a girl covered in scales with a single horn on her forehead. Her face has no features, only a single giant eye covering almost her entire face, while lightning circles around her.
"That’s—" The monster lunges at Eirwen, who barely manages to raise her hands in front of her face and uses what Zenith taught her to reduce the damage. She takes a punch that sends her flying. Her flesh crackles as she gasps, seeing the burns on her arms.
"Haaa... haaa..." She groans in pain as lightning begins to fire at everyone, who barely have time to react. The bolts are now far more aggressive, stronger, and more numerous.
...
...
...
"Astrid, Astrid, Astrid — are you serious?" The hooded girl asks Astrid, who’s clutching her stomach with a severe puncture wound. If she removes her hand, her organs will spill out.
"Did you think it would be easy to kill me just because I ran from Zenith? That offends me, you know... although it’s almost pathetic that you practically got eviscerated when I only used a kitchen knife. Seems your level has really dropped, former top 1." The hooded girl looks out the window, watching blue lightning with black edges falling from the sky.
"Looks like her second phase has started..." She opens the window, giving Astrid room to see. The smell of blood from the many dead Kairas drifts in through the window as Astrid’s hair stands on end from the electrical current reaching this location.
"W-What did you do..." Astrid questions, dragging herself against the wall, trying to stop the bleeding.
"Stalling, huh? Pretty clever. I want you to know I’m not one to brag about my plans, but I’m feeling generous today. That thing out there is a Kaira, a pretty weak one. She had the power to control small electrical discharges. Normally, she’d use batteries to try to amplify it."
"I just gave her a little help. She got pretty strong, didn’t she? Meet the world’s newest monster, born from the fear of storms, lightning, and thunder."
"...!!?" Astrid, understanding the implications of what that means, looks out the window in fear.
"Y-You created a monster from scratch!!!"
"More or less. It wasn’t a hundred percent from scratch — it still depends on having a Kaira. Can’t do it with humans without powers. But other than that, yes, I created a monster almost from scratch."
"She’s beautiful, don’t you think? I needed to distract you top-ranking Kairas so her metamorphosis could complete. The bulb on her head was where she was changing phases. A shame Zenith’s students didn’t notice that weakness. They could’ve won if they’d aimed at the right spot."
"What do you want?" Astrid questions, trying to explode the hooded girl’s body and growing frustrated when she fails, even as she tries to figure out what she’s made of.
’Is she even human?’ Astrid wonders, struggling to keep some of her wounded comrades alive. They were deceived by a false alert of a very high level, which is why no one was sent to where a giant monster was destroying the city — leaving Zenith’s students as the only ones there.
"Just testing my thesis. And it was, let’s say... a success, albeit a bit unstable. She’s dumber than I expected, getting confused by multiple attacks. It seems rationality wasn’t preserved at any level. A shame."
"Y-You sick..."
"Sick... what a strange insult. Is there something deeply wrong with trying to create a monster? Hahaha, it’s just one of humanity’s fears. That thing firing lightning out there is the fault of people’s fear. If no one feared it, that thing wouldn’t exist."
"If you’re afraid of lightning, why is that my fault? Blame yourselves. I just gave it a little push."
"...Whoops." The hooded girl leaps to the windowsill, barely dodging an attack — a fissure in the components of logic that would’ve split her in two.
"You’re terrifying, as expected of the former top 1. Calculating so many complex vectors while wounded like this... truly a genius... It’s a shame I don’t have anything left to inject into you. I’d love to see what kind of monster you’d become. But I think my time’s up. I wonder if you’ll manage to deal with this little inconvenience... the top 1 is off the island, isn’t she?" She speaks mockingly, jumping down as Astrid grabs her communicator.
"We failed to capture the threat... I need immediate reinforcements... and activate the evacuation system for the northern zone... district... districts 60 through 90, I’m not sure exactly which... and... we have a traitor among us... a traitor who’s far too high in the hierarchy..." She speaks while tearing her clothes to help cover the wound.
’I hope someone gets here fast... I can’t believe I was tricked like this... I should’ve been suspicious of an alert without official contact from a superior via Nexus...’ She stares out the window at the countless lightning bolts falling from the sky, imagining how costly it’ll be to deal with all the deaths, destruction, and bureaucracy from this.
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