Transcendent Gene-Chapter 306: Return [2]

Gio took off running the instant he was on the academy island, but he knew how much time he had. His goal wasn’t to reach the school buildings yet.

’The academy’s foundation was first destroyed with bombs so it could be disconnected from Celestelle. When that foundation was broken, the island itself was forced to fall apart.’

The island was once created by first making three huge molded pieces of land before conjoining them with architecture and technology.

Those three pieces would come apart in–

’–6 seconds. I need to be in the middle.’

Most of the teachers were on the left side of the building, as they had been attending a staff meeting moments prior to the attack. They’d be stuck there defending themselves, but they’d also be able to roughly protect the students around them for some time.

The right wing...

’They’re sacrifices.’

Gio stopped wasting time justifying his decisions.

’The most important targets to save are in this middle section. The church gathered the most talented students of all years using their people on the inside and kept them there.’

He had to save those talents so they could help him save everyone else.

’The first target is there.’

His eyes locked in on a specific part of the school’s main building as he ran when he suddenly lost his grip on the ground and rolled forward.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

RUMBLE!

OOOOOOOOOOOOH!

The world shook with such intensity that it made those standing on the surface lose their balance.

Immense metal beams within the foundation of the floating island bent apart, creating a low cry that made the air buzz.

Gio’s eyes narrowed as he returned to his feet. His eyes turned pitch-black as the world followed their lead and showed him nothing but change.

He saw the fault lines around him. He also saw all of the chaos taking place below the ground.

The metal beams would snap soon. The force of their destruction would send a wave of malfunctions and explosions through the island’s systems and eradicate everything keeping it afloat.

Within a split second, Gio traced the fault lines and fully placed himself within the center chunk of the island.

That was the most he could do before thunder filled the world.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

It sounded like a massive compounded burst of thunder sent down by the gods of lightning themselves, but it was instead something much worse.

The metal beams in the island snapped one by one. The force of their destruction spread into a tsunami of chaos.

The entirety of the First Institute swayed from side to side at a rate that seemed impossible for such a massive chunk of land. The sheer level of vibration coming from the ground itself made it impossible to stand straight.

CRACK!

Gio barely managed to grab onto the ground before two fissures opened in the earth to his sides. The depth in the sound was enough to tell how devastating they were.

’Huu...’

Silence flowed into Gio’s mind as he entered battle mode.

In the next instant, everything came apart.

RUMBLE!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The island cracked into three parts. Two of them careened to the sides and fell to the ground, while the middle island fell straight from where it flew.

Screams filled the air. Wind roared in the ears of any and everyone on the island.

When Gio got his eyes open and adapted to the torrent, the first thing he saw was bodies flying into the sky.

Debris followed them with no sympathy for their circumstances.

Bang!

It was a distant sound, but Gio felt like he heard it. He personally witnessed as a student was crushed in the sky by a chunk of the school.

’Tch!’

He had to focus.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

The fall was the last straw. Other than the ground around the buildings, which had been heavily fortified and enhanced, everything fell apart.

Puffs of dirt were taken by jets of air all around Gio until the very chunk of ground he held onto was thrown into the sky.

WHOOOOOOSH!

The wind roared in his ears, but he only gritted his teeth.

"Dammit!"

[Surge]

He pushed his foot against the dirt and forced himself forward. A barrier of energy fought against the wind’s force and stabilized him in the air.

He immediately dropped down and started following the falling island through the sky. His eyes were on the ground below, but his senses were spread in every direction.

Voom!

Virtual energy was birthed from his fingertips and sent flying into the world, creating arcs in the sky as it solidified into several cloud-like objects that caught nearby students out of the sky.

Leaving the energy behind to slowly descend to the ground, Gio accelerated towards the academy.

For those who survived, this was said to be one of the most traumatic moments.

A full thirty seconds of freefall where panic made it impossible to act.

Bodies flying into the sky attached to the mortified faces of people they knew and loved. The next time they saw those faces, they’d be mangled pieces and chunks on the ground.

Perhaps it was worse for the people who didn’t get sucked into the sky. There were some others who were slammed into the academy’s ceiling or decorations. They were impaled on lights and bludgeoned against marble.

The number of students unharmed by the catastrophe was zero.

’And there’s no way for me to change that even now.’

Gio maintained his energy to save anyone he could find in the sky, but there wasn’t a single thing he could do about a structure as massive as the island or its buildings.

In thirty seconds, he chased the academy and reached his target location. He saved many students temporarily, but the ground wasn’t any safer than the air.

Regardless of how minimal his impact was, he did as much as he could.

And then the island hit the ground.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

It was so loud that it could be heard from nearby cities. It was so destructive that the dust cloud was visible even from the center of Celestelle.

Gio descended into the rubble before it even had a chance to settle and lowered the saved students to the ground.

Some of them saw him and followed him. Others saw them and followed them. The crowd would be useful once Gio noticed them, but they weren’t on his mind yet.

He charged in between pieces of rubble and into the destroyed halls of the building.

BOOM!

He waved his arm, using massive waves of virtual energy to lift chunks of debris away and throw them away.

He heard cries and wails from every direction. There were corpses under his feet before he knew it.

Almost every chunk of debris or massive pillar he picked up saved another group of students with broken, flattened, or severed limbs.

They looked at him like he was their savior, but he did not save them. He pushed forward, continuing the same routine of clearing debris away from crowded areas and bringing more students out.

When he reached the end of the first hallway, he turned back and noticed a scene he wasn’t expecting.

Students with seemingly no injuries or almost no injuries were rushing around and helping the ones he’d just freed.

’Where’d they come from...?’

He wanted to question their existence, but he didn’t have time.

’The array will activate at any moment.’

Without thinking further, he opened his Storage Hole and retrieved an entire shelf of healing serum and left it at the door as he left.

He searched through the destroyed face of the academy. Some of its halls were intact, while others were completely in ruin.

The ruins of the island had become something like a miniature mountain range below Celestelle that Gio had to treat like such.

He looked like he was simply rescuing people without purpose, but that wasn’t the case.

He was saving them and leaving them potions and serums so they could become a fighting force against the beasts. A lot of them were third and fourth years.

’What I need right now is people to go against the array with me.’

He was the majority of the army, but there was one reinforcement he absolutely needed.

Bang!

He threw aside a collapsed wall and revealed another classroom filled with dead bodies. His eyes scanned it intensely, discovering two beating hearts.

’White and purple hair.’

They were the ones he was looking for.

VOOOOOOOM!

A great wave of aura spread above their heads.

Gio looked up, spreading his senses and vaguely catching the words being spoken outside.

They were being transmitted through enough speakers to be heard across Celestelle and even within the rubble.

’The words of lunatics mean nothing to me.’

But Gio didn’t care about whatever spiel the Apocalypse Church had prepared for their day of reckoning.

He lifted the two men up and put them against a wall, feeding them enough serums to visibly see their bodies healing.

"Nngh..."

Consciousness started returning to their bodies almost immediately.

As long as they were conscious, they could be convinced.

"Hey," Gio said, snapping his fingers in front of their faces and gathering their confused gazes in a single place.

He grinned, not giving them a second to feel flustered.

"Have you ever wanted to be heroes?"

It was a question filled with hope and innocent ambition, but it was said in a tone that didn’t feel that way at all.

Rather, coming from Gio’s mouth, the term hero sounded like something grimmer than grim.

However, if he ever used it, he was bestowing upon its listeners a fate they could not avoid.

Whether they wanted to or not, they were going to help him save the world.

They could decide if they wanted to be heroes or not after the fact.