18 Chaos

"What the…"

"ATTENTION! THIS IS NOT A DRILL. DUE TO AN UNEXPECTED EMERGENCY SITUATION, THE TOURNAMENT SHALL BE CUT SHORT. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THERE IS AN EMERGENCY SITUATION, THE TOURNAMENT WILL BE CUT SHORT. ALL STUDENTS ARE TO GATHER IN THE FIELD OUTSIDE, WHERE YOU WILL LEAVE THROUGH THE PORTALS. PLEASE REMAIN CALM, AND DO NOT PANIC.

ATTENTION! THIS I…"

The same message kept ringing out throughout the entire campus.

"Haaaah, things were just starting to get interesting.

...Buuut."

Magnus said as he turned around.

"Looks like things are only getting started."

The energy fluctuations in the room, which he could easily sense even with his mostly blocked circuit, were quite intense, to say the least. The entrance to the room opened, and when he looked outside, he couldn't see anyone in the corridor.

Truth be told, the colosseum was a large structure that surrounded the Gate. There were hundreds of thousands of rooms, each one enchanted to be gigantic in size, and yet, the room Magnus was in, was the room that directly faced the Gate.

Whether that was fate or some divine intervention, was unknown. And in the entire corridor that contained hundreds of rooms, everyone had already left a while ago. After all, not just anyone can easily fight multiple High-Level Monsters like it was nothing.

In fact, Magnus had vastly overestimated the rest of the students. Even the other 5 stars, some of whom were rich and able to afford expensive tools and weapons, were able to just barely make it past the late 20 rounds, after all, none of them gained anything from fighting to the death like this, unlike Magnus, and didn't want to risk their lives and resources, and decided to quit. Not including Magnus, the one who had reached the highest among the stars, was the black-skinned boy, who had managed to defeat one High Levelled Monster, in Wave 31, before deciding to stop.

And as such, Magnus was by far the person who took the longest in the colosseum. Many people had already exited and were at the exit when they had heard the alarm, immediately leaving.

He took a peek out of the window in front of him. There was a gigantic crack in space that was the color of a void and felt like it generated a vacuum. It was sucking all the objects with a low mass close to it.

The entire area in front of him was practically reduced to nothing more than rubble and there were smoke and fire everywhere, and the colosseum he was in was slowly losing its stability as well.

Magnus jumped out of the window, there was easily a couple dozen meters of distance between the ground and him, and yet he landed on the ground without any difficulty. If this was him from just hours ago, he might have strained a muscle or broken his ankles.

"Heh"

He looked forward, observing the large constructions built to keep the 'Gate' stable, breaking into pieces as they were sucked into the Gate.

Magnus could feel a faint gravitational force acting upon him as well, but he was easily able to resist it with his high stats.

The crack in space was hundreds of meters in perimeter and folded and branched out in multiple places. He had obviously realized a while ago that something was wrong with the gate.

He wasn't exactly knowledgable about the Gates in general, but he did know that this was one of the 8 most important gates, called the Pylons. These pylons were the first 8 gates to exist, as well as the only 8 gates that didn't stop the supply of Monsters and Beasts.

Normally, one could clear a gate after killing every single monster inside of it, but the monsters inside the Pylons were said to be infinite.

However, normally, the gate was monitored and there were always Hunters on stand-by to immediately kill them as soon as they appeared.

However, right now, there were no monsters to be seen. Magnus was approximately a kilometer away from the Gate, and yet he could easily see it. The reason for that wasn't Magnus, but rather the Gate.

It was expanding, and with that, it's gravitational force was too. All the surroundings were being sucked inside of the gate that looked like a cracked mirror, except the mirror was the atmosphere.

The gate was already around 5 times its original size and was rapidly increasing. Magnus wasn't sure of what to do, should he just ignore it and go back to safety?

That was the most rational option, however, both his heart and his intuition was telling him not to do so.

He looked at the gate that was already to the point where he could barely see the top, and all he saw when he looked inside was complete darkness.

Until. The Gate pulsed. A wave of energy passed through everything, with the center of it being the Gate itself.

Magnus just watched, he was far enough for it to not affect him. The Gate stopped growing after pulsing. But… something else was happening. It was moving?

No… The Gate wasn't moving, it was the inside of it that was. What was infinite void a second ago, was now showing… motion? Finally, something came out of it.

No. Not just something. It was gigantic. It was easily around 50 meters, and looked like a… troll? Magnus checked its status, and yet, all that appeared was:

{???}

Race: Jötunn

That was it. There was no name, no skills or traits, nothing. While Magnus was fighting wave by wave in the tournament, his spirit stat had reached the point that the status now also displayed the race.

And that was the only thing that was displayed here. He wasn't sure what to do. That was when… the Gate shook again. There were more. So. Many. More.

'What th-'

There were hundreds coming out of the Gate. Hundreds of those… Jotunns. Magnus gasped and stepped back.

Every second, more and more of them came out. Magnus's eyes widened. He was surprised enough after seeing one of them, not to mention… their number was already in the thousands.

Most of these Jotunns were around 50 meters tall, but there were quite a few that were taller and bigger. Magnus was in awe, many of the 'giants' in front of him were unable to even be appraised.

Magnus then looked over to the side. He noticed someone approaching from the side. They were humans, and it was a large group of them, judging by some of whom he had recognized, these were probably rankers.

One of them was a neatly kept man dressed in a suit who stood in front. They hadn't noticed Magnus as he was pretty much hidden in the kilometers of debris, and wasn't moving.

Besides, it helped that during the tournament, at one point, he seemed to have gained the trait: [Camouflage], which had been assimilated by his [Aether Physique], with his Growth Function.

Magnus stared at the people behind the man in the suit, he was unable to appraise any of them and decided to stay put for now.

One of the people who stood next to the man was familiar to Magnus. It was the Headmaster. Obviously, though, the person he could see was a clone of his, the one in charge of Magnus' branch of the Academy.

His name was Tristan Ashray. Magnus debated whether it would be a good idea for him to reveal himself before the group in front of him since they seemed to be composed of important people, especially if the headmaster was among them.

In the end, he decided against it, he was curious to see what they would do against this unexpected entrance of these giants that were called 'Jotunns'. Besides, he had completely concealed any trace of him and was now hiding under some debris, just in case.

He then took a look at the rest of the people, he noticed that many of them were instructors and professors of the Academy, they were the ones that had escorted all the students into the Pylon Site.

He had found Instructors Erik, Zach, and Lilith amongst them. He wondered if they would fight the giant monsters in front of him.

However, he saw the man in the suit say something to the Headmaster.

The headmaster walked forward and used his mana to fly. That's right, he flew and stayed in the air. Magnus observed the way he was doing it, with complete interest. However, after he carefully looked at the flow of mana around the Headmaster, he was disappointed when he realized that the Headmaster was circulating the mana around his body, transforming it into the air element, to reduce the weight of his body, and then kept his body up.

He memorized the pattern and method of which the Headmaster flew across the air, and decided to practice it once his Stream unblocking process was finally completed. What Magnus didn't realize, however, was what he just did was considered impossible. After all, there would be no point in scrolls and spells if people could just 'observe the flow of mana' around someone to understand how they performed the spell.

Seeing the Headmaster approaching, the largest of the giants, who was the last one to leave, also stepped forward. He was so gigantic, that just by standing, he was taller than the headmaster, who was flying. His body released an Aura that was similar to the one exhibited by the Headmaster, except he didn't seem like he was trying to hide it whatsoever.

Once the Headmaster got close to the giant, he started to speak, except, the language he spoke… It wasn't English. Ever since the Incursion, even though many countries had their own various languages, those languages were mostly going out of use. The alliance had decided for the most popular and common one, English, to be used by all countries and people, regardless of who they were. English was to be learned by all people, it was pretty much the national language of Earth.

And yet, the language that the headmaster spoke, it wasn't English, in fact, it didn't even sound remotely Earth-like, the sounds coming out of his mouth didn't seem similar to the movements he was making with his mouth. It was weird.

"Gsffujoht, qfpqmf pg uif mboe pg hjbout. Wibu nbz vt pg uif njehbse ep gps zpv po uijt ebz?"

That's when,

[Translation Function Activating]

What the Headmaster said was immediately displayed as text,

[Gsffujoht, qfpqmf pg uif mboe pg hjbout. Wibu nbz vt pg uif njehbse ep gps zpv po uijt ebz?]

But that didn't help Magnus understand it in the slightest. But then, in the next couple of seconds,

[Greetings, people of the Land of Giants. What may us, the people of the Midgard do for you on this day?]

There was a perfect English translation. 'Man, that's sick. I wonder how it does this stuff.'

It seemed like most of the other strong people standing there also understood this language, as they were standing there, trying to guess the intentions of the Giants in front of them. It was hard to believe that it wasn't hostile, besides, they were also worried about the Gates, had these 'Jotunns' been the ones to control the gates to them?

Upon hearing the Headmaster's words, the tallest of the giants, that seemed to be the leader, at least of the ones present here, made a scoffing noise.

"Ik toodt r'xo vai virv 'rtokkt aeuo aevaeuo ag klo raersiaeso ag klo Jakirr. Hav 'rkouotk'rs. Ik 't gau raeislk, lavoqou. Faar'tl 'rtokkt, tiuuorbou 'ddob'aekorv, aerb vai v'rr rak laeqo ka irbousa kaeraed'kv. Ta uot'tk 't ka uot'tk Jakirlo'd."

The translation was then displayed to Magnus, around a second later,

[It seems like you puny insects have somehow learned the language of the Jotunn. How interesting. It is for naught, foolish insects, surrender immediately, and you will not have to undergo calamity. To resist is to resist Jotunheim.]

'Oh? They… want to take over Earth? Wait, these people have never entered through the gates before, so that means they have never met, so how come they can speak the same language?'

Magnus stared at the people standing there, and then at the giants. It then clicked to him. The towers. It was said that the floors of all the 10 towers were connected, once one climbed the first 10 floors, they all connected from the 11th floor onwards. And since all of the people here were at least Ascenders, if not Rankers, that meant that they had probably encountered these types of monsters. And considering that they even knew their language, that meant these 'Jotunns' were actually quite prominent, within the towers.

Since Magnus had gotten a lot stronger, he wasn't very affected by any of the Auras, although he still had no chance against any of the people here. He kept watching but was ready to back away if a fight broke out.

Confirming that the intentions of the Jotunn weren't friendly, the expression on the Headmaster's face immediately stopped being gentle, and he let out a fierce expression as he said,

[It seems to be that you are misunderstanding. Heed my words, people of the land of the Giants. We may be tiny in size, but humans are not to be underestimated. Wage war now, and you shall regret it for eternity.]

The giant leader seemed to not appreciate those words very much, and a large frown appeared on his already scary face.

It seemed like any chance of peace was gone now, as the leader of the giant army seemed enraged.

'I should probably get back, this isn't a place for me.' Thought Magnus, but the second he thought that, another thought appeared on the back of his mind.

'Wait a second, this is a battlefield, and in a battlefield, anything can happen, with hundreds of thousands of people firing spells and abilities at the same time. So… no one should notice if I use a little Aether to hopefully kill a giant or two… right? After all, every single person in front of me is much, much stronger than me, and killing even one should boost my strength by a large amount.

Magnus weighed the pros and cons of this idea in his mind before he finally came to a conclusion.

'I'll stick around for a bit, if there is an area for me to sneakily intervene after a while, when these Giants are weak, then I'll do so, otherwise, I'll just leave, it's not wise to put my life at risk for this, however, some things can only be done by taking risks.'

"Haaaah. I'll do it." He decided.

To be continued

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