God of Souls: Attaining the Strongest System in an Apocalyptic World
Chapter 42: Beast Run

Chapter 42: Beast Run

In total, there were only about eight bodies, which meant the other students had fled into the forest in an attempt to escape whatever beast had attacked.

But there wasn’t any sign of Alistair or her body, all Leonard found was blood that had a scent of her aura.

Could it be the beast had singly consumed her because she was the strongest target he had encountered or something else? Who knew.

The important thing was that the students were alive and in the forest somewhere.

They checked further the camp, and Leonard realized something. The sack of gems that allowed them to return back to the academy had most of its gems missing.

Some of the gems were in students’ tents, while others could not be found. Giving this much thought, it was sure they had run off while taking their gems in hand, which would have permitted some of the students to escape from the planet. This was fine by Leonard.

Leonard turned to the student who was holding the sack in his hand with a face filled with worry and pain; he wanted to go back to the academy but not just yet.

"Several students are still out there as you can see, and we both have to take responsibility, I will leave you in charge of taking care of the camp while I’m gone, in case any student comes back, you will hand them a gem to go back—"

"No! Please, sir, I can’t do this, just let me go back home... To the academy!" The student began to shake in his stand unable to hold back the fear he felt just by standing amid the bodies and stench of blood and smoke.

"Please... What if the beast comes back here and finds me?"

"Man up kid, this is not the time to be scared, if you don’t stay here, the gems might get smashed up by a beast, you are a grade three don’t tell me all that power you have is to bully weaker humans," hearing Leonard’s last words which dropped like a threat the student’s composure seemed to shift a little bit.

"I thought as much, stay in the camp and do your best to fight off the beast, while I search for other students and if you see a beast too powerful just break a gem and return at least then I would know you did your best," Leonard grabbed about five gems from the sack and fitted it into his small cross bag. "And one more thing, if I return back and see you unscathed to the extent you haven’t yet lost another arm or an eye, then I will be the one to end your existence."

With this statement, the student felt more petrified than he originally was. This was not an empty threat, and from how strong the academy gauged Leonard, he was sure to come back, and if he ran, he would die more horribly than he would have with a beast.

"I’ll be heading out..." Leonard tightened his grasp around the hilt of his sword as his mind crossed Alistair being dead, ’ When I get my hands on whatever did this, I swear I will make it pay in a very painful way.’

Meanwhile;

The group of four students sprinted through the forest with their weapons drawn, for those that used soul weapons and those that used long-ranged ability attacks simply had their abilities ready to blast anything that came their way.

Since they had been chased out of camp, they had encountered a few basic beasts and managed to slay every one of them as a group, which gave them the advantage of numbers. Though they were on the run this didn’t stop them from extracting the soul cores off the beasts.

Kory Guts was one of the members of this team alongside others she had no idea they were. So far, each of their abilities has implemented one another.

But there was just a single problem that got all of them in the group worried. They had all grabbed their gems before leaving camp when the Humanoid beast attacked, all but a single boy in the group who forgot he was in the tent he set up.

If only he had gotten his own they could have all left the forest. Now they stood the chance of being followed by a humanoid beast or something even less but still deadly to them. It was all a risk they couldn’t afford to take.

So they decided to keep on wandering further into the forest until some time had passed and it was daybreak to retrace their steps back to camp. They had noticed a pattern in the beasts as more showed up in the night than day.

"Common Kory, what do you see up ahead? My legs hurt as fuck," one of the boys spoke, taking off his night goggle glasses, tired of the all-green sight it gave.

Kory did not seem to be wearing her own as he possessed an ability that allowed her not to see but to sense her surroundings well enough in the darkness.

"If we take a break here, we’ll be attacked by basic grade soul beast, so I suggest we keep on moving," Kory spoke back to the boy.

Rayton, who was another boy using a soul weapon too was already slowing down in pace. He was the only one in the team who did not possess a gem in hand and knew he stood the chance of being left behind if things were to go sideways.

His friends, who were the other two running beside Kory, wouldn’t hesitate to give their lives for theirs, and Kory would not even consider sacrificing her survival for a simple stranger. He was cooked.

"Pat, do you sense anything," Jessy, who was the boy who engaged Kory in a conversation earlier,r, directed to the other boy.

The boy with short orange hair nodded softly having his mind and attention on something else.

Pat was an earth user and their navigator from hidden enemies. Thanks to him, they were able to prepare and predict ambushes before they even came, thanks to his ability to sense vibrations through them.

"Something is coming fast!" He yelled out in urgency but it was too little too late for measures to be taken. Like a blur, a large beast tore through the trees and sprang out to the group.

Their reaction to this was too, and the beast lashed out at Rayton, who was the closest towards it; he screamed as the attack reached him and...

The arm of the beast met with the sharp end of Kory’s sword and sparked off from her force. She had been the only one with the reaction speed to have been able to stop the attack, and luckily, she did on time.

Rayton, in fear of how his life flashed before his eyes, fell to his bottom and grasped his throat. ’I almost died.’

While he did this Kory tightened the grip around her sword and made a stance to implement more of speed over strength. ’If only I had taken a spear before leaving camp, I wouldn’t be this tensed.

Staring at the beast, it resembled a Scorpion, larger than it obviously and having a dark armour-like body and three heads.

As she faced this beast, her body shook with some sort of reverence to the aura emitted by the beast, and she instantly pulled out her glasses from her pockets. Putting them on, she stared at the beast and was instantly surprised by what she saw.

{Dark Scorpion beast}

{Intermediate Soul Beast}

The glasses allowed them to gauge the straightness of the beast, and this was an intermediate one, which meant their chances of survival were dropped to a minimum.

’Damn, this was what we were avoiding this whole time, a powerful beast,’ she took off her glasses and placed it back into her pocket, watching the beast as it also did the same, gauging its enemy.

It slow her down and dropped them to the ground. "Rayton, pick them up and run with them; they will only be a burden this way."

Rayton immediately did as she commanded, taking the bag and other things and then going a few feet back.

Now Kory could fully focus on the beast and...

"I was wondering when she would make a mistake, and we would attack and steal her gem; luckily, she sold herself with her own hands!" Pat laughed, then shattered his gem, disappearing just as Rayton did.

Now it remained Jessy who looked at Kory with some kind of pity before breaking his own gem and disappearing.

’Fuck! Those bastards?!" Kory turned back to the scorpion soul beast, and her legs tightened, and her gear started to ooze out of her being, which gave the beast the impression her first block had been a mere trick.

She was about to go up against an intermediate beast and knew the results would be anything but good.