Solo Cultivating in Superhero Academy
Chapter 71: Escaped creature

Chapter 71: Escaped creature

The eerie stillness made it worse.

"Sand?" Elius would think of Jiro. His first recruit.

Clint, Balkan, and Monkaar stood a distance away, their faces pale, frozen, watching it with unreadable expressions.

"W-What happened?" Elius asked sharply, striding toward them. "Where’s Jiro?"

None of them answered immediately. Clint, the bullet, merely stared at the sand wall, his jaw clenched.

"Where’s. Jiro?" Elius repeated, slower now, his voice tight.

Balkan pointed weakly at the coffin-shaped structure. "We d-don’t know, but... b-but... by the l-look of it... he c-could be—inside?"

Elius frowned. "Inside? How? What—?"

His instincts flared with danger.

Without hesitation, he leapt forward, pulling back his right arm and delivering a thunderous punch toward the sand wall.

BAM!

His fist impacted solid stone-like sand.

A blast of spiritual force erupted outward, scattering moss and dust—but the wall didn’t so much as budge.

Instead, a strange echo resonated from it, like a deep vibrational hum that sent shockwaves up his arm.

His bones tingled.

"Damn it!" Elius gritted his teeth and raised his hand.

With a flick of his fingers, three of his golden swords flew into the air, their auras pulsing with pressure.

They whistled through the air and slammed into the wall’s surface in rapid succession.

CLANG!

SHRRRRRRK!

BAAAAAM!

Each strike sent splinters of sand flying—but again, the wall regenerated.

The indent in the center—the coffin—remained untouched. Not even a crack.

"This is not natural sand," Elius muttered. "It’s constructed. Controlled."

He stared at the sealed structure, his mind racing. "What... is this?"

He turned to the three. "Tell me everything. From the start."

Clint took a breath, rubbing the back of his neck. "It was right after your clone disappeared..."

Cough...

"We were messing around," Clint began. "Trying to see if we could really push our new powers. I... I went first."

He held out his hands.

They weren’t normal.

Each of his fingers now ended in a small cylindrical joint—and when he flexed his knuckles, click, click, click—six sleek, obsidian-colored barrels extended. Small-caliber revolver muzzles attached directly to his fingers.

"I used to only be able to fire a single weak skin-piercing shot, remember? They stung at best." Clint looked up. "But now, I can control six full-sized finger-guns. When I fire, they spin."

He held out his right hand and BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM—six high-velocity shots cracked through the air, hammering a tree in the distance.

The bark exploded, sending yellow-green leaves raining down.

"They don’t just sting anymore," Clint added. "They can break rocks."

Elius nodded, eyes turning to Balkan.

The insect tamer looked grim. "My bugs... all died."

Elius frowned.

"But that’s not a weakness," Balkan continued, raising a hand. The soil trembled.

RRRRRMMM!

Suddenly, the earth behind him cracked open, and four colossal worm-like beasts rose from the ground, their armored scales glistening, their mouths yawning open with rows of rotating stone teeth.

"They came from the ground," Balkan said. "Naturally formed, like Earth’s own predators. And somehow... they listened to me. I don’t use swarms anymore—I use titans."

Each worm curled in anticipation behind him, like coiled artillery.

Elius looked impressed, but he turned toward Monkaar, the floating boy.

"And you?"

Monkaar looked nervous, hovering a few feet above the ground.

"I can... fly. Higher than before. Faster." He slowly floated upward, then shot up like a beam of light. "And—"

He dropped to the ground, landing with a faint puff of sand. He crouched, touched the floor.

RUMMMMMBLE...

A circular patch of earth, about five meters wide, suddenly rose straight up, taking trees and grass with it.

The ground didn’t bend or break—it floated like it was defying gravity.

"I can lift land," Monkaar whispered. "Anything I touch—can fly."

"But only up or down," Clint added. "He can’t shift it sideways yet."

Elius nodded slowly, absorbing the weight of what he just heard. Their powers had drastically evolved in such a short time. The energy of this dimensional rift wasn’t just abundant—it was amplifying them.

And yet...

He looked back at the sand coffin.

"...Then what happened?"

The three looked at each other uneasily.

Clint spoke again, his voice low. "We were still experimenting. Then we noticed Jiro wasn’t responding."

"We thought he was nearby," Monkaar added. "Then we turned around and saw this—" he pointed at the wall, "—already here."

"No sound, no warning," Balkan muttered. "It just... was. And Jiro’s inside."

Elius’s expression darkened. He stared at the coffin again, brows furrowed.

That was when—

CRRSHHHHHKKKKKKK!

The sound came from behind the wall.

Everyone froze.

CRSSHHH—SCRRRT!

The sand to the side of the coffin bulged, and a strange figure emerged.

It was small—no larger than a child—its body made entirely of granulated sand compressed into smooth form.

Its limbs were sharp and jointless, like carved blades. Its face had no eyes, just a mouth, and it let out a quiet, gurgling chhhhhhrrrrrkk.

Then—

SHOOM!

It blurred.

A streak of golden sand and static lightning.

Before any of them could even react, the creature shot forward, blitzing past the group like a cannonball.

The gust it left behind knocked Clint back, threw Monkaar midair, and nearly cracked Balkan’s concentration.

Elius’s sword snapped to attention, but he was too late.

The creature vanished into the dense woods.

It didn’t attack.

It just... fled.

But something about its speed, its energy—it felt exactly like Jiro.

Elius’s eyes widened.

"...No," he whispered.

His gaze turned back to the coffin.

Then to the path the creature took.

Then to his team.

"The fuck?"

Clint’s face was pale, almost ghostly, his six gun-fingers trembling ever so slightly as he stared at the path the sand-creature had taken.

Monkaar floated just inches above the ground, too shocked to maintain proper altitude.

Balkan’s hands twitched near his belt, where he usually kept his insect seed pods, even though his worms now answered directly to his spiritual will.

"That... that thing..." Clint muttered, voice hoarse and dry. "That wasn’t—no, it couldn’t be—was it Jiro?"

Monkaar turned to Elius, eyes wide. "Captain... please tell me that wasn’t Jiro. That’s not Jiro, right?"

Balkan didn’t speak, but his mouth opened slightly, as if asking the same question without voice.

Elius felt the pressure mounting behind their stares, and for a moment, even he wasn’t sure what to say.

The scene replayed in his mind—the way the creature darted past them, the trail of sparkling sand, the subtle hum that followed in its wake.

It was like the start of a horror movie scene... yeah, like that alien movie that he could still remember.

He swallowed thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He didn’t want to say it. He hated what his senses told him. But he couldn’t lie to his team.

"I don’t know what that was," he finally said, slowly. "But..."

His eyes narrowed, and he touched his chest, focusing his spiritual perception like a lens.

The trace of energy, faint but undeniable, shimmered through the air. It lingered in the space where the creature had passed. "I felt... a spiritual signature," Elius said. "It was Jiro’s. But it was also... mutated."

The wind seemed to stop.

Clint staggered back, nearly tripping. "No. No. No, that’s not—Jiro wouldn’t—he wouldn’t turn into that! He was human! He was one of us!"

Monkaar floated down and grabbed Elius’s sleeve. "What does that mean?! That he’s been turned into a monster? Is he dead? Is he still alive in there? What do we do?!"

"Captain!" Balkan shouted, his voice cracked and frantic. "We’re trapped! That sand wall—it’s like a goddamn tombstone! That coffin? It’s a warning sign, man! What if that thing was made to feed on us? What if that’s why it sealed us in? What if—"

"Shut up!" Elius barked.

His voice cut through the panic like a sword through fog.

All three froze, their words caught in their throats.

Elius stared at the jungle where the creature disappeared. His expression was grim, but his gaze was focused, sharp.

"That thing—" he said slowly, deliberately "—ran."

Clint blinked. "What?"

"If it was strong... if it had really turned into something deadly, it wouldn’t have fled like that. It had the element of surprise. It could have ambushed us. Killed us when we weren’t looking. But it didn’t. It ran."

Elius looked at each of them, gaze fierce.

"That means it’s afraid of us. Or it’s still weak. Maybe it doesn’t even know what it is yet. That thing might’ve just been born."

Balkan gritted his teeth. "But what if it grows?"

Elius nodded. "Exactly. We kill it before it grows."

He raised his hand. Five of his floating swords shimmered into the air behind him, forming a crescent halo of steel and energy.

Each blade hissed with contained Qi, their runes glowing in rhythm with his heartbeat.

"We go together," Elius said. "Because if we don’t, it’ll pick us off one by one. It could be watching. Waiting. But if we stick together and crush it now—"

He let the rest hang in the air.

Clint inhaled sharply, still trembling. Then he nodded.

"You’re right."

Monkaar bit his lip and floated up again. "Let’s do it. We’re not dying here."

Balkan clenched his fist, summoning two of his massive worms from beneath the ground with a RUMBLE. "Yeah. We end this now."

Elius nodded once. "Then let’s move."