CHAPTER 126: SKINLESS HELL CAVALRY

After Noa was taken away to the Fukushima healer, Arlo ascended the platform. His opponent was Jon.

Jon swiftly summoned his White Dearth Weasel, which stood imposingly on the platform, brandishing its blades.

"White Dearth Weasel! 9.0, Lord tier!" The referee couldn’t even finish as Arlo summoned a Golden Time Sidewinder, a large, golden-scaled snake that slithered around him after emerging from the portal.

Its size wasn’t aggressively large like Percival’s Leviathan, but its golden rhombus scales gleamed softly, a sign that its defence factor wasn’t low in the slightest, just like the Leviathan’s.

It seemed more like an adaptive skill, since sidewinders did not naturally have such tough scales to begin with.

"Golden Time Sidewinder! 10.4, King tier!" the referee announced. His voice made the excited Manhattan students quiet down.

"A King tier? Can Senior Damien fight a King tier?"

They began asking themselves questions. Lucy looked at the terrible expressions on the faces of Rick, Snow, and the others, but Isolde was quite composed.

"Wow! That’s my first time seeing a King tier summon right before my eyes," Isaac said excitedly, while Godfrey could only show his reaction after lowering the water bottle from his mouth.

"It’s obvious Jon will lose. But at least this fight will show the others what the Sidewinder is capable of."

Arlo’s summon was the first to move. Jon already knew the Sidewinder was fast, but the moment it moved, everything changed. It suddenly became a blur, while his weasel slowed almost to a halt.

Time had accelerated for the snake and decelerated for him. The snake didn’t just use time to make itself faster; it also took another cautionary step by slowing down the weasel, which was also a summon with a great speed factor.

Slowing down to a halt also gave the weasel no time to turn into smoke, giving the snake the opportunity to bite into its shoulder in what seemed to be an instant.

Jon reacted quickly as he fused with his weasel and manifested a projection that swung its blades into the snake, but those blades bounced off the scales of the snake, which gleamed at the exact moment the weasel projection struck it.

Jon used that time to burst into smoke, but as he reformed, his mind felt foggy. Since he was fused with his summon, both summoner and summon felt the same effect. Even slashing his blades at the slowly approaching snake, which watched like a dying prey, only produced sparks, leaving the scales in their pristine state.

"The poison my Sidewinder secreted has drained twenty-four hours of your life. It cannot be recovered. I counter your speed and offence. You’ve lost," Arlo said coolly.

A sudden red shade fell on both Arlo and Jon. Arlo was confused for a second before noticing that the same shade was on everyone, and it made him look up.

Right there, about a hundred and fifty feet above this huge arena, with hundreds of students and broadcasting groups, was a massive red mass spiralling with dark clouds at its edges.

"A red gate," Arlo gasped, the three words leaving his mouth as a whisper.

"No... it can’t be." Edwin rose to his feet as screams broke out. Students began to run helter-skelter, their hearts pounding so hard that it felt like they would leave their mouths at any moment.

They had only ever heard of, but never experienced, the destruction of a red gate. What they heard was enough to make some weak-minded ones collapse on the spot.

Evangeline rushed into the headmaster’s office. "Headmaster, there’s a—!" Her voice died in her throat, mimicking the same grim expression the headmaster had as they stared at the gate that slowly turned black.

It had not even been five minutes! Some red gates took twenty minutes, some thirty, some an hour before unleashing the monstrosities within, but this one was fast. The fastest they’d ever seen.

In the next moment, lava poured from the gate, splattering first on the platform and bleachers, which were quickly evacuated as Edwin went ahead to teleport as many students as he could to ease the crowd, while the other teachers led students away.

After the lava stopped, large boulders fell, striking the ground and opening the earth. One flattened the London High coach bus right as the students were about to hop in.

When the boulders stopped dropping, a great amount of dust limited everyone’s vision, but as it cleared, they saw over a thousand creatures, like men on horseback, but these men and their horses were stripped of their skin, exposing red sinewy muscles.

The men also didn’t have legs, as their bodies fused with the horse’s back from the waist down, and they held long fiery spears.

"The Skinless Hell Cavalry. The same ones that appeared in a green gate dungeon thirty years ago, leading to the death of over a hundred guild combatants and thirty Agents. It was only cleared by a team of King/Queen tiers!" Evangeline trembled as these 7.0 mid-level High tiers kept dropping from the gate, rising rapidly into the thousands.

A portal suddenly appeared mid-air, and a huge white dragon emerged, breathing sharp ice shards mixed with white mist. It fell at the same moment the Skinless Hell Cavalry began charging.

The ice shards pierced through dozens of the cavaliers, but it was small damage compared to their numbers. But Nyx appeared, much longer than before.

She launched violent beams, each incinerating nearly a dozen cavaliers and opening huge craters.

Sebastian’s eyes went to Isolde, who sat on her dragon’s back as it circled the sky, launching its attacks alongside the other dragon which dealt even more damage.

It was also able to teleport away from their spear throws.

Others quickly joined in, relying heavily on those with aerial summons because of the pressure of the cavalry.

"We have the best talents in one place. They’re a force even before a red gate dungeon," Sebastian muttered softly.

As Tyla’s Black Widow Spider moved like an assassin and Vin’s Dragon Lion breathed intense flames, up in the sky Ivy rode a black dragon rivaling Grace in size.

While it glided through the air, raining fire from above, Ivy stuck out her tongue at Isolde. "Ice is no match for fire."

Before Isolde could respond, something tore open a huge gash across the black dragon’s neck, revealing itself to be a spinning halberd.

Isolde retrieved Grace and fell downward as another invisible object, rotating at high speed, flew past her. Its target was her hornless white dragon.

Isolde dived down, her hair whipping about as Ivy lost consciousness, while her huge black dragon spiralled downward, wings fluttering like broken sails with blood trailing its tail. But Sebastian’s eyes gleamed, and with a snap of his fingers, the dragon vanished.

Ivy, cold and bleeding from her mouth and nostrils, opened her eyes once more, taking a deep breath.