Scarlet

I hurriedly turn my head to look at the bunker, just to find that the red light from the camera above it is off, leaving only the faint blue light from the shield itself, along with the red light from the blood moon outside.

Well, could this possibly-

“Stop, don’t ask that question,” Tar suddenly says while appearing in front of me in a panic.

I blink in surprise at that, but before I can retort, I make the terrible mistake of trying to move closer to the bunker, which sends a wave of pain throughout my body that has me instantly losing the strength I had left.

Why is my luck so bad? First I get caught in a Class II Fracture. But no, that would’ve been fine since I would’ve been able to hide in a bunker like the civilians here.

Then the emergency power shuts off, making it impossible for people inside of the bunkers to look outside of it. Meaning I have no way to signal them that I need in. And even if I did have a way, it wouldn’t matter because the emergency power is what powers the doors. Not the shield’s power generators.

All they would be doing is turning off the shield and leaving the door shut if they did that. And while I would be able to tear my way through the door, that would kind of defeat the purpose entirely since the shields are anchored to the doors and won’t activate without them being closed.

Damnit, why the fuck couldn’t those politicians make a decision faster on this! They’ve been debating for months over fixing this exact issue in case this exact predicament came up, but noooo, they had to continue postponing the issue instead. All because they don’t want to spend the massive fortune it would cost to change the design of every bunker in the city.

“Scarlet,” Tar says, sounding slightly wary, snapping me out of my inner rant.

What?

“Sorry, you just seemed to be…” he doesn’t finish, but I understand what he is trying to say.

No, it’s my fault. I… kind of almost lost my temper there. And this pain isn’t helping, even if it is getting better.

On that note, I use blood sacrifice just a little bit. Enough to gain the strength to drag myself over to the window before lifting my shirt a little and lying on my back with the wound facing the window.

Then I wait.

And wait.

And after five whole minutes of waiting, the wound manages to heal enough that I can start moving again. So I raise my arm and open my terminal to find quite the number of messages there. The first of which being from Michael.

[Where are you? We’re meeting in front of the advanced class students dorms.]

Then another one from Michael a couple minutes later.

[Scarlet?]

Followed by a flood of several panicked messages from Belle, and a few worried ones from Denise and Emily.

But the last message is what catches my eye the most and turns my mood even worse. Because it’s a mass emergency message sent out by Sage.

[This is an alert sent out to all Guardians who missed my call. Two Class IV Fractures have opened up at once and all Class IV Guardians in the city are being sent to the first one while White deals with the second. During this time, all other Guardians will be expected to hold out until the Class IV Fractures are dealt with as there will be no reinforcements until then. Good luck, and stay alive.]

I stare at the message for several seconds, hoping against hope that I just misread it or something. But no matter how long I stare at the thing, it doesn’t change. Nor does my current circumstances.

Neither Tar nor I say anything for nearly half an entire minute, just letting the blood moon’s light heal my wound in conjunction with my own blood regeneration skill.

Eventually, the tanuki finally says, “I told you not to ask that question…”

This time I don’t even argue.

I just continue lying in place, focusing very hard on the sounds of fomorians wandering through the floor, one of them starting to slowly make its way over here.

As long as they’re just fomorians, and it’s only one on one, then I can take the things. Especially with the help of the flash feature on my terminal, which is designed specifically with the fomorians’ weakness to bright lights in mind. Something built into normal phones as well, along with some other default features meant to stall certain demons long enough for regular civilians to get away and make it to a bunker. Things that take advantage of the demons’ weaknesses.

Also why they actually have demonology classes throughout high school and junior high in the first place.

But if it’s not just fomorians, or not one on one…

I shake my head at the thought.

It looks like the core spawned on a floor very far away from me, judging by the fomorian’s level being only level 102. Which means I have a chance of surviving outside of bunkers.

On that note, now that the pain from my wound isn’t so severe as to hurt my thought process, I let the System messages go through from my having killed the fomorian before.

{Level 102 Demon Fomorian defeated. A vast EXP bonus is awarded for killing a creature above your level.}

{Congrats, you have leveled up to level 61. Two Free Points have been awarded to you and your stats have been updated.}

…

{Congrats, you have leveled up to level 63. Two Free Points have been awarded to you and your stats have been updated.}

{Thirty Skill Points are awarded for killing a being at a higher class than yourself without any assistance.}

{Five Skill Points are awarded for killing a Demon Fomorian for the first time.}

{One Skill Point is awarded for killing a demon.}

Three levels from a single demon? I understand that it was forty-two levels above me, but really? It was taking me hundreds of demon kills to get that same amount of levels when I was working with the others… and even still dozens when I was going solo against demons at my own level.

“The System rewards risk,” Tar says, repeating that same phrase again.

I sigh.

Yeah, that it does.