BSI Chapter 131: SPACESHIP
Chapter 131: SPACESHIP
Like a tide, the soldiers of the Anti-Empire Alliance began to flood the ship.
The student candidates stood without fear, facing the tide with gazes that felt almost too cold for people their age.
Their weapons were held firmly in their grips.
At the forefront was Sylvester, dressed in white armor.
Silver boots and a golden helmet.
His left hand held a golden shield, his right a white sword.
At that moment, he looked like the incarnation of a war god.
Raising his white sword, Sylvester roared.
The candidates behind him roared in response, raising their own weapons.
It was a trigger.
The students surged forward.
Clang.
Sparks flew through the air as weapons clashed.
The sounds that filled that space were the thud of bodies dropping, the chime of metal kissing metal, and the rhythmic thumping of boots against the floor.
Blood sprayed into the air, creating a thick fog of crimson.
Billie held her dagger in a reverse grip.
Her eyes carried a fierce glint as she looked at the enemies approaching.
"Okay, let’s see what this dagger can do."
The words had barely landed when she shot forward.
The enemies blinked in shock as Billie vanished from their sight.
Short precise lines formed along all of their frames in that instant.
Before they could speak again, blood burst through the cuts across their bodies.
Billie did not look back at them.
She did not need to.
Their bodies slid apart slowly.
In another section of what had become a battlefield, Sylvester pushed forward like a bulwark.
His white armor remained as spotless as when he first appeared.
Not even the blood spraying around him touched it.
He swung his sword in a vertical arc, cutting through one enemy’s neck.
He raised his shield, deflecting a sword strike with ease.
Before the attacker could pull back, Sylvester drove his leg into his stomach.
The attacker’s body folded inward, his hands clutching his abdomen in pain.
Sylvester did not waste time. His sword descended, hacking through the exposed neck without resistance.
Before the body could fall, he planted his foot on the back and used it as a platform to launch himself upward.
Like a meteor, he landed on one knee, sending a tremor spreading outward from the point of impact.
Everyone caught within its radius staggered, their footing destabilized.
Sylvester rose from the floor, his sword finding every remaining enemy’s neck in turn.
As the last one fell, his gaze shifted to the left.
Amelia wore her cape, her body shifting to the side on pure instinct.
No. Not instinct.
The cape pulled her aside.
A sword whistled past the spot she had occupied just moments ago, carving a thin line of silver through the air.
Amelia’s sword sliced upward, splitting the attacker cleanly from the groin upward.
Her body twisted simultaneously.
An arrow buried itself into the floor where she had stood a breath ago.
Her fingers closed around it before she yanked it free.
She came face to face with the person who had fired it.
That was the last thing they saw.
Amelia hurled the arrow forward.
The tip pierced through the attacker’s head and pushed out the other side.
Amelia rolled clear, then drove her katana into another attacker’s chest.
"Why are there so many of them?" She wondered.
Her eyes remained calm despite the question.
"I wonder if Silas is alright," she muttered.
Asher remained as composed as ever outside Silas’s door.
He did not bat an eye at the chaos around him.
One of the Alliance soldiers lunged toward the door, weapon raised high as he closed in on Asher.
Asher did not raise a finger. His eyes did not twitch.
A blade shot from behind him, ripping through the air until it sliced through the attacker’s neck.
Blood was about to spill, but it froze mid air.
Then it began to flow in a controlled stream.
The blood within the attacker was drawn out as well.
Everything condensed into hundreds of blood needles hovering above the spot where the previous attacker had fallen.
A needle streaked through the air, tearing through the next soldier nearing the room.
"How long will this take?" Asher wondered, his gaze resting briefly on Silas’s door.
Inside the room there was only emptiness.
Except for the mess of blood and organs scattered from the explosion of Silas’s body.
And the drifting mass of aether that pervaded the space.
The air itself smelled of burnt flesh and hair.
The lights above flickered constantly.
And in the middle of it all was a white wisp that remained perfectly still.
It was not aether.
This was Silas’s soul, still in its infant stage.
Silas looked at the aether drifting farther and farther away from him.
His mind was already in overload, pushing itself to its extreme as he willed the aether back toward his soul.
The aether answered his call, surging toward him like ants to sugar.
He began with the head.
The aether answered his will.
A head began to form. From the jaw upward, it reached the mouth, then the nose, then the ears, then the eyes, then the hair.
Everything was shaped to be as perfect as possible.
Silas removed every flaw that had existed on his face before the breakthrough.
He moved on to the neck.
Boom.
A tremor swept through the ship.
The ship tumbled, somersaulting through the emptiness of space before coming to a stop.
The people inside were not spared.
Everyone rolled, bodies colliding with the ship’s walls with heavy thuds before coming to a stop.
Silas’s soul shook, the force from the sudden movement sending him bouncing across the room.
His already formed head scattered back into aether as he lost concentration.
Scanning the room, Silas’s fear spiked.
The aether he had forced out during the explosion of his body had thinned considerably.
"Rion, what are the chances of failing at this stage?"
"Chances of failure are up to eighty percent given how much the aether has reduced."
Silas sighed.
"There is still a chance."
He reached for the remaining aether in the air and began again, starting over with the head.