Chapter 51: Decision To Leave
"Something’s going on outside?!" one of the students cried out, their voice trembling as they watched Merek burst into the living room, trailed by the other fighters.
"We’re leaving!" Merek snapped without pausing, striding toward the exit.
But the door didn’t budge, not because it was locked, but because a frantic crowd had gathered on the other side.
Students from the third house, now under siege, and others from the first, overwhelmed by fear, had barricaded the entrance. They slammed against the door, pounded the windows, yelling and pleading to be let in. Some had even begun climbing in through the side windows, desperate to escape the unknown horror outside.
Merek’s jaw clenched. "Get out of the way!" he shouted, yanking his pistol from its holster and pointing it at the window frame, not to shoot but to warn. "Move!"
Panic and terror had driven these people mad. In their desperation to survive, they were trapping the very fighters meant to protect them.
Yuki’s eyes glowed as she surged forward. The floorboards groaned under her acceleration, and she slammed her armored shoulder into the door. It burst open with a violent crack, hurling several students backward onto the ground with startled cries.
Without missing a beat, Merek emerged into the open, flanked by Tevin, Fred, and Nero. Merek’s crossbow hung across his back as he raised a hand, his mind picturing a colossal invisible fist sweeping across the street.
A dozen of the massive mosquitoes diving toward them were swatted mid-air by an unseen force, their bodies smashing into the asphalt with sickening cracks. Blood splattered across the pavement like paint flung from a bucket.
"Go!" Merek barked.
Nero hurled fireball after fireball into the night sky, the explosions briefly illuminating the chaos as mosquitoes erupted in flames. Tevin moved like a juggernaut, his spear impaling anything that flitted too close. Beside him, Fred roared, swinging his bat like a sledgehammer, turning mosquitoes into pulp.