A Painful Death

Moving through the area for their expedition, the groups of Jake and Kyle had come across other groups that were also fighting beasts.

They weren't the only ones who had an encounter with an enhanced ranked beast. The other group that had encountered the enhanced ranked beast weren't lucky enough to survive with all their members.

Though they had contacted the haven, they hadn't done so in time which resulted in the death of three members of their group.

After some soldiers from the haven had taken care of the enhanced ranked beast, they took the surviving members of the group back to the haven. Due to the group having insufficient members and the trauma of watching their classmates get killed in the blink of an eye, they were unable to continue the expedition.

Eventually, Jake and Kyle's group had met Cat and her group. Cat's group had been killing primary ranked beasts and had at least eight of their beasts essence.

Seeing Cat, Jake was happy that she and the rest of her group didn't have any major wounds.

"Sasha has super speed," Cat said, "so before any of us gets really injured she gets us out of there."

"Yeah." Nikki said. "In a way, she's the reason why we have a lot of beasts essence."

"It's not like we have someone who can heal our wounds like Smith." Ayo said.

Blushing, Smith replied "I don't really do anything. Jake does most of the work."

"I'm sure we all figured that out." Sasha said, with her arms folded across her chest.

"What's that supposed..." Jake was saying before Kevin spoke.

"What the hell is that?" Kevin asked, looking up at the sky and seeing multiple things that looked like tiny rocks that were getting bigger with each passing second.

___

Back at the haven, in a large room with different sizes of monitors everywhere, people were running left and right as if in panic.

A woman could be seen with her hands on a keyboard and her eyes glowing blue. The keyboard appeared to be connected to every system in the room and different people were also typing away on other keyboards.

"Can you do something about it?" a woman with two emblems on her uniform asked.

"I'm trying Colonel, but there appears to be something blocking me out." said the woman with her hands on a keyboard.

"Blocking you out? How?" Colonel Willow asked.

"I don't know. The systems are still active but it's not responding to anything."

"Keep trying Captain Khloe." Colonel Willow said. "You there," she said to a soldier by the door, "alert every soldier in the haven. I'll talk to the brigadier myself."

"Sir, we have an emergency." a soldier said to Captain Hunter.

"What's the problem?" Captain Hunter asked.

"All our systems and communications are down." the soldier replied.

"Down? What..."

Abruptly and unexpectedly, loud bangs and crashes were heard from outside the building and before anyone could look out the window to see what's going on, crashing noises were heard in the building.

Looking at what had just fallen in through the roof of the building, Captain Hunter could see what he knew to be a Wert, get up from the floor and spread its wings.

"I've missed you humans." the Wert said and sniffed the air as if it was savouring a nice scent. Smiling and revealing its set of razor sharp teeth, the four tails of the Werts swayed about and in the blink of an eye, it moved from its position to the end of the room and the head of Captain Hunter fell to the floor.

___

"Those are Werts!" Jake shouted as he saw one of the objects stand and spread its wings. The Wert had a single horn in the centre of its head and two tails which were in a diagonal position at its back.

"Are you sure?" Kyle asked.

"Are you kidding me? Of course I'm sure." Jake replied.

Trying to use their watches to contact the haven, nothing was working. The watches seemed to be off and apparently useless in their current situation.

Standing up from the ground all around, Werts were seen and they were smiling as they sniffed the air once before looking at the humans and flying towards them.

Most of the Werts that had landed on planet Soran had one tail, some had two tails while very few had three tails.

"What do we do?" Ava asked, visibly very scared.

"RUN!!!" Jake shouted, seeing a one-tailed Wert fly towards them. Staying back with Jake was Kyle, Sasha was helping the others get away with her super speed.

[One-tailed Wert encountered]

[System Quest: Kill the one-tailed Wert]

[Reward: +3 Stat points, +1000exp]

"So you're the brave ones." the Wert said as it landed in front of Jake and Kyle.

Not wasting any time, Jake ran to the Wert and used his force field to block the laser which had come out from the head of the Wert before he used his dagger to slash the head of the Wert.

'I knew he wouldn't be tough.' Jake thought. 'He has the same rewards as a medial ranked beast.'

Looking at Kyle, he was fighting another one-tailed Wert. Running over to meet him, Jake grabbed the enlarged fist of the Wert and used the dagger to cut its neck.

"Are you okay?" Jake asked Kyle who had received a punch from the Wert.

Groaning a little bit as he stood straight, Kyle replied "Yeah. Let's go join the others."

"Sorry about this." Lifting Kyle and putting him on his shoulder, Jake ran with full speed. He could see the others fighting two one-tailed werts.

With his speed stat and the little added boost from the daggers, Jake got to them in no time and without thinking, threw Kyle on the ground and tossed one of the werts away from its neck.

Turning to the next wert, Sasha had already killed it with help from Diane. Seeing the wert he tossed away fly back at him, Jake threw a punch at the fist of the wert and the hand of the wert broke from the strength of Jake's punch.

Attacking the wert continuously with the fatal strike of the daggers, Jake decimated the wert and it couldn't even be recognized.

Jake hadn't mimicked the fatal strike magic but had used it directly from the daggers.

"We need to get somewhere safe." Rick said.

"Safe?" Kevin scoffed. "Nowhere is safe. Look around."

The sky that was usually pink was now filled with smoke from a different number of explosions that was going on around them.

Students were trying to fight for their lives while some were too frightened to do anything. They used their magic as best as they could but it wasn't enough and they were getting slaughtered.

There were dead bodies everywhere. Dead bodies of the Werts and mostly bodies of the students were lying across the ground.

"When are we getting help from the haven?" a student asked.

"HELP!" someone cried out.

"What is happening?"

"Where are the soldiers?"

"Are we all going to die?"

"Is this part of the expedition?"

"I want my mom."

Students were dying everywhere and there didn't seem to be any place that was safe.

"The cave." Smith shouted.

"What cave Smith?" Max asked.

"The cave where we killed that enhanced ranked beast." Smith said. "We can try getting there."

"But that's too far away." Kyle said.

"What other choice do we have?" Kevin asked.

"Smith's right." Jake said. "If we can try to get to the cave, we might have some sort of protection."

"We still have the replenishing serum we were given." Ayo said.

"Yeah, should we use it now?" Nikki asked.

"Yes. It's of no use if we're dead." Kyle said.

"Hurry up guys." Jake said as he killed another wert that had swooped down from above.

As they used the replenishing serum, all their wounds got healed and they could feel their mana being restored. They suddenly became energized and were ready to fight at full strength.

"We're done." Cat said. "Won't you take yours Jake?"

"Not yet. Let's go." Jake replied and began running in the direction where the cave was. 'I just levelled up, so using the serum now will be useless.'

[Congratulations, you are now level 9]

[You have been rewarded with +1 to all stats]

[Jake Cayden]

[Level: 9]

[Health:190/190]

[Species:Human*]

[Strength:38]

[Speed: 39 +2]

[Endurance:46]

[Mental Moxie:24]

[Mana:34/34]

[Magic:33]

[Element: None]

[Ability: Magic mimicry]

[Exp: 247/5500]

'But I can use my stat points.' Jake thought.

[Stat points: 22]

[Mimicked magic 1: Force Field Generation]

[Strength of Mimicked magic: 19]

[Mimicked magic 2: Poison Secretion]

[Strength of Mimicked magic: 24]

[Total Magic Strength: 43]

'I didn't know I had this number of stat points. I'm gonna distribute it but I'll focus on strength and speed.'

[Jake Cayden]

[Level: 9]

[Health:230/230]

[Species:Human*]

[Strength:42]

[Speed: 43 +2]

[Endurance:50]

[Mental Moxie:32]

[Mana:36/36]

[Magic:33]

[Element: None]

[Ability: Magic mimicry]

[Exp: 247/5500]

As the group ran, Jake tried his best to kill any wert that attacked them and with Sasha's super speed, she was able to hold off the wert till Jake killed it or until she got help.

"Resbum." a three-tailed wert that was flying called out. Pointing at Jake and the others, he spoke "Those ones are proving hard to be killed. Prove them wrong."

"With pleasure." the two-tailed wert, Resbum replied then flew off towards Jake and his group with three Werts following him from behind.

Sensing the magic of the Werts flying towards them, Rick shouted. "Incoming!"

Turning around, they all saw the Werts land in their middle. Falling to the ground, was Sora who appeared to have been slashed on her face.

With blood dripping from the claws of one two-tailed wert in their middle, they all figured out that it was the wert that killed Sora.

"No matter what, don't die." Jake shouted then ran to the werts with a force field in front of his hand.

A one-tailed wert had jumped towards him and before it could react, Jake had grabbed its head and released acid from his palm which burnt the head of the wert.

Running to the second two-tailed wert, Jake used the dagger to attack the wert but the wert simply stood there, unharmed.

"That is a cute toy." the wert said then grabbed the dagger from Jake's hand and broke it into pieces.

Fighting against Resbum, were Kyle, Smith, Kevin, Diane, Mike, Cat, Ayo, Rick and Louisa, while fighting the remaining one-tailed wert, were Sasha, Nikki, Max and Ava.

Failing to avoid the multiple streams of acid that landed on his back, Resbum could feel a tingling sensation as the acid burned his resilient skin but it didn't burn past the surface.

"That tickles." Resbum said as he turned around and whacked Kyle on his abdomen.

Trying to stop Kyle from bouncing off the ground continuously, Mike created a metal board which he used to break Kyle's fall and put him on the ground safely.

Still using his magic, after dropping Kyle who needed a little time to recover as Smith healed him, Mike threw the metal board at Resbum which hit him on the head and caused a tiny bit of black blood to trickle out.

Smiling manically, Resbum flew towards Mike and used his tails to attack him. Mike was able to create a metal shield and block the attack but after he blocked it, Resbum grabbed his hand and immediately, his body began turning black.

Using his tails to defend himself from the attacks of the others, Resbum didn't let go of Mike until every part of his body had become black.

After Mike's body had become black, Resbum dropped him and as he touched the ground, his body crumbled.

"MIKE!!!" Rick shouted, then in anger, rushed towards Resbum.

With a final punch to the head, Jake killed the two-tailed wert and ran to help the others in fighting against Resbum.

Sasha and the others had killed the one-tailed wert they were fighting and now it was Resbum against all of them.

"You guys should get out of here." Jake said. "I'll take care of him."

"We can't leave you here alone." Cat said.

"I'll be fine. Go." Jake replied.

Just as they were about to leave, more Werts swooped in and before anyone could react, a three-tailed wert swooped in and used its tails, which had long spikes all over it, to hit Cat directly on her head.

"NO!!!" Jake shouted as he jumped to where Cat was falling to the ground. "Smith! Do something!"

Mimicking Smith's healing magic, Jake tried to heal Cat but the wounds caused by the numerous spikes on the tails, were too severe. The spikes had gone right through her head, killing her on the spot.