The students were finding out the hard way the ways of the hunter. The majority had died in the first few minutes of the event as they fell prey to a horde of magical beasts, void creatures or even whooshed away by cosmic mana waves.
What was worse were the overconfident ones who didn't even look before they walked. Most of such students walked into veiled spaces without even realizing it. And as silly as it sounded, it was quite a common occurrence.
Some students were also fortunate to run into their colleagues with whom they teamed up to face the dangers on the planet. They were those who also preferred to move alone, but they were in the minority.
One of such people was Julia Knight. After dealing with her first challenge, she journeyed from the cold mountains fighting and collecting resources as she moved.
And though she came across others, her interest was only in finding Alex or Ross but she had no such luck as currently she was in a new terrain, traversing through the tall and magnificent trees in search of her beloved.
But like all things on the Terravon planet, danger lurked in all corners.
...….
Julia came to an abrupt halt when her eyes caught something a few meters from where she stood. With narrowed eyes, she looked again to make sure that what she saw was actually the case.
About 20 meters to her 10 o'clock, she noticed a subtle distortion in space. It was well hidden and if one didn't pay close attention, they might have missed it.
'A veiled space?'
Throughout her journey on the planet, she was fortunate enough to not have run into any veiled spaces or a cosmic mana wave. She was one of the lucky ones.
Now it seemed her luck had run out and all of it, it seemed.
Julia had no intention of getting close to that area and although she felt no void aura coming from the veiled space, she knew it was due to her distance away from there.
One more thing about the veiled spaces was that they mostly served as the resting place of void creatures and resources swallowed by cosmic mana waves.
The few testimonies of those who survived longer before dying, what they describe the space as was a culmination of darkness, filled to the brim with energy. However, if one had the ability to see the entire spectrum, then it was an entirely different experience.
Inside the veiled space, when one saw it through the lenses of the entire spectrum, it was a place of wonder. It was reminiscent of a space with a swirling mass of condensed energy in a multitude of mesmerizing colours; a sight to behold.
Yet extremely deadly to end up in. And in all those instances, there was one factor anyone, irrespective of the abilities of their eyes, could see the outside world as clearly as day. Be it in the vast expanse of space or in the bounds of a planet, you could see outside the veil.
Knowing all this, Julia backed away slowly, trying to make herself as unnoticeable as possible. And while it worked till she turned around to dash away, multiple growls and screeches sounded from her back.
'Fuck…'
She didn't need to look to know that void creatures within the veil had come out to play. Julia wasted no time and stormed away.
The void creatures were not about to let their prey escape, and the moment she dashed away, all seven of them chased after her, moving faster than she did.
Some prepared their breath attacks and fired it in her direction in no time.
"Shit!"
When Julia heard the sound of something or something burning through the air, she turned around briefly and saw the charged attacks coming for her at insane speeds.
She counted three with a glance and each had a different property. One looked like a greenish fog, the second was fiery red and the last was a greyish-white colour.
'Poison, fire and metal!'
The attacks will be on her ins seconds and if she didn't come up with a solution, the damage she would receive would cripple her and if she didn't die from those attacks, the sharp claws and fangs of the void creatures would finish it.
The three attacks were already behind her as Julia took a dive and spun around. With her back to the ground and her eyes locked onto the attacks that were just a breath away, she raised her sword for defence and then channelled her mana through her body, condensing a solid suit of ice around herself.
*BOOOOOOOM!*
"Ah!"
The attacks hit with deadly precision as she was sent flying and her uncontrollable body with an added mass due to the ice armour with several cracks exposing the armour underneath crashed into multiple trees in a straight line.
Wherever her body passed, the trees exploded from the impact of her momentum, creating a long trench that extended hundreds of meters.
The spot the attack hit was charred beyond recognition with sizzling of the edges resulting from the poisonous blast alone with its fumes. The metallic element? It formed spiked lances embedded in the crater, each spike at least 2 meters long.
The attack was devastating, powerful enough to take out any Class F hunter who took it head-on. Yet, it wasn't over. The void creatures did not rest after the attack, moving towards the site Julia impacted. As long as the prey breathed, they wouldn't rest.
Julia groaned in pain as she struggled to crawl out of the crater. Every movement sent blinding pains through her body. Her left leg hurt the most as that leg had a large wound where a spiked lance pierced. Just a bit more and her bone would have been shattered.
"Mmgh… That can't be good."
Blood freely flowed from her head down her chin and multiple places on her armor had varying degrees of cracks with blood stains everywhere. She was heavily injured and she knew it.
'Alex, where are you?'
She didn't want to die before seeing Alex once more. There was no way she was going to allow herself to die in this dump!
With a fierce light of determination in her eyes, she pushed through the pain, got up and walked over to her sword, reaching it in a moment.
Then the growls and screeches of the void creatures came again, promptly her to look over in that direction.
"Fuck, not again."
The void creatures were upon here once more. If running away would make blasting her easy, then the only remaining choice was to stand and fight.
If only she could receive help from someone in the area. But no one was insane enough to walk right into the danger zone without a guarantee of survival.
'With my injuries, it will be a miracle to defeat all of them. And that's if I can one short kill them!'
Julia took a deep breath, momentarily closing her eyes to feel the mana circulate through her pathways before directing it towards her sword. She tuned out everything and just focused on gathering her energies.
Her sword hummed slightly as the mana flowed through it, giving off waves of cold energy. Then…
*BAM!*
The ground beneath her feet shattered with the force of her intense movement. In a split second, she arrived before the first void creature in her path.
"Ha!"
Her sword moved swiftly as it targeted the void creature's upper body plunging deep into it before Julia released a violent blast of mana into it.
*BOOM!*
She managed to kill the creature, but the amount of mana utilized in that kill was more than half her reserves.
'Two more at most! At least I ca—'
Yet, she was fighting just one void creature and while she was aware of that, the creatures were faster than she was.
Moments after blowing the first void creature to bits, the others did not freeze in shock but turned to her with their ferocious claws.
Seeing the approaching claws incoming from both sides, she used the momentum of her lunge to turn to face the sharp claws, managing to bring the sword before her and at the same time exposing her back to the other.
She could only block one and take the other. There were no other alternatives.
*CLANG!*
*BOOM!*
"Argh!"
The force from the claws she blocked pushed her right into the second one, the almost equal but opposite forces wreaking havoc in her body.
Her spine and bones shattered on the second impact and was instantly blacked out.
She was done.
Seven void creatures were more than she could handle alone.