God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.

{Congratulations to the host... Your understanding of the elements and mana has increased. Your skill, {Golden Armor Transformation}, has been upgraded to the internal active skill, {Golden Halo}.

{Golden Halo}: Create concentrated rings of light that dampen incoming physical attacks by 30%, and magic attacks by 10% per halo. A maximum of 5 halos can be created at once, and with each additional halo, the amount of protection decreases by 60%. Halo effects can stack.

Cost: 100MP per halo.

Cooldown: 5 seconds per halo.

'Another skill...' It came as a surprise to Cain, but he suspected as much. With how high his magic stat was, and the situation they were under, it was not too unbelievable that he formed a new skill.

"Haha! I knew we'd survive for sure!" Steve lied through his teeth with a shit-eating grin.

"Liar!" Manny called his lies out instantly.

"Says the guy who wanted to share grace. Not a single ounce of grit in these sack of bones, I tell ya." Vincent said with a snort.

Cain deactivated the skill as soon as he noticed things were back to normal. Once he did, he was able to witness the destruction that was wrought upon their surroundings by the explosion.

The explosion from the missile had destroyed almost everything in their surroundings. The buildings a few meters away from them had been turned into ruins, and a good portion of the forest before they were destroyed, burnt to a crisp.

Flames were still crackling everywhere, but since ground zero was coincidentally where Cain and the rest were, the damage to the surroundings wasn't as bad as it could be.

"This is fucking..." Vincent swore in a loud voice.

"The entire place is destroyed?" Susan said in disbelief, almost not believing what was before her very eyes...

The air was completely saturated with the smell of burning wood. They could hear the shrill cries of various mutant creatures that were burning to their death within the forest, or simply running away, creating a cacophony of disaster carried by the night breeze...

Although the school buildings had almost been destroyed, there were still a few structures that bore some semblance of structure.

"But who the hell would do something like this?!" David asked with scrunched-up brows. He wasn't just worried, he was also very angry.

"If I had to take a guess, it would be either the government or the military," Cain said resolutely. Numerous thoughts ran through his mind all at once, but he chose to bottle them up.

Manny asked curiously, "What's the difference?"

"Well, there are numerous differences, but to sum it up, the military is a government-controlled organization that has access to things the government wants control of, but can't easily get their hands on.

On the other hand, since the military doesn't have anything better to do due to the era of 'peace' we are in, they chose to 'legally' go against the government. That's essentially all there is to it." Susan answered his question in a single breath.

"How do you know that?" This time, it was Cain's turn to look at her in surprise.

Susan's cheeks blushed from embarrassment, "Let's just say some questions can't be easily answered." She said awkwardly.

"Oh... I understand." Cain understood that some things were better kept as secrets. Besides, he wasn't all that curious.

Seeing that Cain wasn't interested in knowing, Susan was a bit disappointed but didn't let it show on her face.

"Why do you think that, Cain?" David turned to Cain.

"I don't have all the pieces figured out yet. I might be wrong, and it might be a foreign government trying to take advantage of our situation."

"I don't think this is the time to be worried about all that." Hunter suddenly said out of the blue.

"What do you mean?" David asked him.

It was then, Cain heard it...

He could hear the faint sound...

If one didn't pay close attention, it could be mistaken as mere background noise or the rumbling of thunder in the distance.

"Trouble just doesn't seem to end today. This is the kind of life I love." Manny said with a chuckle.

"What are you on-" Before anything else could be said, those with lower perception stats finally got it.

"It's coming from everywhere!"

"Just when I thought this day couldn't get any worse..."

"Can we share grace now?"

The explosions that had occurred had probably frightened the monsters in the forest, causing them to rampage, and go on a stampede.

The artificial forest was really large and had been created to bring a more comely and down-to-earth environment to the campus. Because it was so large, it was only natural that it would have a lot of wild animals living within it.

It was where students, staff, and even visitors could stroll through without having to worry about much because the wild animals there were tame most of the time.

Attacks on humans rarely happened, and if they did, they were few far few between, with most cases involving only slight injuries.

But now was an entirely new story...

God ash mutated the genes of the animals, causing them to change completely from what they were to the abnormal beast they had become with frightening levels of intelligence. They had become stronger, faster, smarter, as well as aggressive and bloodthirsty.

All their natural traits were multiplied by many times.

The God ash had a similar effect on humans, just more refined. It also didn't make them lose their minds. The speed of their development was slower than the mutant creatures because they had to rely primarily on the things they kill to become stronger.

Whereas, the beasts could create mana cores and simply just absorb mana from the atmosphere to become stronger. They could also do what the humans did as well. They fought amongst each other to increase their power, which only served to make their aggressive nature worse.

"There is no escaping here. Our only option is to fight." Cain said resolutely.

'Even I'm not sure I can fight against so many alone.'

"Fight? There's no way we can fight against so many of them. There's a whole mob approaching!" Steve said in amazement.

"Yeah...Last time I checked, there could be hundreds of thousands of animals in this place. If all of them came at us like this, we are all going to die. No way out of it..."

"So all of that was for nothing? We just survived a god-damned missile for God's sake!"

"But we can't escape. Listen closely... We are surrounded. They are coming from everywhere."

The forest formed a huge circle around their department, or what is left of it. When the missiles fell, most of them fell at the borders of the forest, causing most of the mutant animals to run deeper into the forest.

There were only two missiles that fell deeper into the forest, and that was the one that nearly killed Cain and the others, and another that fell not too far away from them.

"We have to do something, or we'll just be sitting ducks."

They were all silent for a while before Manny spoke up, breaking the dreary atmosphere.

"I say we fight!" Manny said. He never re-sheathed his blades. Not even once...

"You are a crazy battle maniac... Of course, you'll think we should fight. I suggest we think of a better solution. Maybe we can try to break away from the probable encirclement." Dan said, his hand on his chin as he pondered deeply about their situation.

"If you want to run, go ahead. We have been given powers that were the things of myths and fairytales just a few days ago, and you want them to waste away. Pussy!" Manny spat back.

"There's no need for name calling..." David tried to calm the situation down, but Manny was having none of it,

"If you want to, run. But I will fight. I wasn't able to help earlier, but this is my specialty. If you want to run, feel free to do so.

Those who have confidence in their strength, they'll stay and fight. Besides, even if you do want to run, where will you run to, huh?!"

There was silence for a while before Cain spoke up...

"Haha... There is no need to think too deeply about this situation. I'll fight as well." Cain drew his blade for the umpteenth time that morning.

'This day has been so eventful...'

Cain could feel that his life was becoming more and more exciting as the days went by.

He had gone from being a regular antisocial high school student with a bit of knowledge of martial arts to fight with his life on the edge every day.

'Things couldn't get any better.' Cain fought hard to suppress the grin dragging at the corners of his lips but failed miserably.

"Seems like I've been moving with a bunch of psychopathic masochists who just love to dance with the devil... I'm in!" Steve said excitedly.

Although they had said they were against standing their ground, no one had attempted to go anywhere. Their weapons were still drawn, and if anything, they all looked eager to draw blood.

"No other choice I guess... I'll fight as well," Vincent said with a grin.

Cain turned to Hunter a devilishly handsome grin on his face illuminated by the faint light radiating from the still-burning embers of scorched earth contorting his features and causing him to appear sinister in the dim lighting.

"What say you?"