BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM

Logan, Conal, and Orson looked at the six monsters with incredulity and fear. Conal knew them from what his teachers told him at school. They were flesh-eating thaids known as Lomalin, which mainly preyed on lizards and other insects; they had an ant-like mentality and lived inside colonies.

The monsters had a round black head with no discernable eyes and ears, a slitted nose, and a pair of piercing mandibles.

They had no neck, and the head was attached to their sleek, powerful torsos. Their abdomen had countless short legs and four medium-length, thick arms.

They were ugly to look at and resembled thicks with a mottled brown exoskeleton with vivid white dots, while their head was black.

Their family life resembled an ant’s, with a female queen laying eggs and controlling the colony. There was only one type of variant, the workers, the ones the group saw in the flesh.

They had some peculiarities; for example, their hearing was strong enough to hear heartbeats from a distance clearly. They were very fast to adapt to environmental changes, and they could curl themselves up into a defensive ball.

They knew that they were not particularly powerful thaids, but their brain crystal power was problematic since it allowed them to conjure an additional exoskeleton they used for protection.

The good thing was that they were weaker than most other thaids, were less agile, were not very fast, and their only means to defend themselves was to eat the prey and use their brain crystal power to become hard to penetrate. Their survival strategy was to surround the food, bite it to death, and hide behind their shells.

“SHIT!” Logan shouted.

Panic started spreading inside the three men, they had no idea what to do, and their teacher had never taught them to fight thaids. Besides, they spent most of their free time lazying around and beating weaker students, so they didn’t train properly, if anything at all.

But there was no alternative; they had to fight, or the thaids would kill all of them if left alone. It was a race against time before the creatures reached them.

“What do we, Logan?” Orson asked. He was scared beyond measure; he wanted desperately to be home where everything was safe and familiar again.

“I don’t know!” he answered, “We have to get out of here somehow.”

Their inexperience and the time they lost talking gave enough time to the thaids to surround them.

“FUCK!” Conal said with fear evident in his trembling voice.

Then the first of the thaid launched himself against Logan, who instinctively started conjuring mana.

“Use your power!” Logan shouted, Conal and Orson immediately started doing so. Conal shifted his arms into those of a lion while Orson made several spiky bones grow out of his body.

In the meantime, Logan ended up conjuring his poisonous dart and threw it at the attacking Lomalin. The venom immediately started circulating inside its body, and the beast started squirming in pain.

Orson then, as if taken by some sort of frenzy, ran toward another creature; he punched at it while a long, thick, and sharp, hardened bone protruded forward from his arm, piercing the Lomalin’s head and ending its life.

At the same time, Logan started stomping the poisoned Lomalin head hard, but he could do nothing to destroy its hard exoskeleton. The dart was able to penetrate the creature’s defense due to it being made from mana, but he could do nothing with his meager strength.

At the same time, Conal kept two Lomalins at bay by swinging his arms wildly against the creatures that tried to bite him in the shins several times.

The thaids opened and closed their mandibles rhythmically, producing a clanking sound each time. It was as if they were biting the air, already anticipating their earthy meal.

Meanwhile, Orson was fighting another Lomalin; he just stood still, facing the creature and waiting until it got close enough to impale it with his protruding spiky bones.

Logan then produced another dart, this time loaded with enough venom to kill a creature, and launched it to the already agonizing thaid.

Three thaids had been killed, and with that, the boys’ confidence grew stronger. 𝘦𝘯.𝘰𝘳𝘨

“We can do this,” Conal said, but it was at that moment that Erik went out of his hiding place. He observed the short fight against the Lomalins from behind a tree.

Things weren’t going well for him since the creatures were too weak to be a threat to the three students. He started wondering if what the adults said about the creatures was true. They weren’t so strong if even children could fight them.

Erik steeled his resolve because he knew what he had to do; he grabbed a nearby stick from the ground and started channeling mana into it.

Soon a thin coat of mana surrounded the branch, and as soon as Erik willed it, the mana around it thinned further and became sharper.

<Analysis,> Erik thought while looking at Conal. Immediately a screen with the young man’s information appeared in front of his eyes.

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– Name: Conal Price.

– Brain crystal power: Beast partial shapeshifting.

-Physical characteristics: Approximately a meter and seventy centimeters tall. Well built. Approximately seventy-three kilos. He belongs to the human race.

-Personality and traits: He is Logan Reid and Orson Smyth’s friend. He likes to bully people who are weaker than him and follows Logan’s every word. He is more intelligent than his friends but a bit of a coward himself.

-Approximate level: 5

-Approximate Strength: 7

-Approximate Intelligence: 12

-Approximate Dexterity: 6

-Approximate Energy: 25

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…

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<WHAT THE FUCK?> Erik thought as he observed Conal’s approximate stats. He had twenty points in Energy!

<He has twenty-five points, but he is still classified as an E-ranked on the Ferebitz scale?>

There was something else in the stats that Erik noticed. The young man was stronger than the bully in terms of strength and Dexterity, meaning that he could overpower him. He was already aware of this since the fight in the cafeteria, but now he had tangible proof.

<Why didn’t I analyze him at the cafeteria?>

At that moment, another screen appeared in front of the young man.

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<Emergency quest: Revenge.>

-Rewards for completion: Six hundred and forty-three experience points and two hundred DNA points.

-Failure Penalty: Death or prison.

(Kill Logan, Orson and Conal.)

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<Hahahahahaha, even the system wants them dead!>

As Erik thought this, he started running with the sharpened stick in his right hand. Conal, Orson, and Logan were becoming bigger and bigger as he ran until he could see them clearly.

They were still attacked by three Lomalins, but the beasts were losing since they lost their superiority advantage, and Orson proved himself to be more problematic than Erik thought.

Still, Orson wasn’t Erik’s target, but Conal, who was much more intelligent than his friends. Damn, he was much smarter than him! He couldn’t leave him alive, or he would find a way to turn the tables.

When Erik was close enough to the trio, he saw Logan, Conal, and Orson turn their heads toward him. They looked in horror as Erik, behind the mask, ran toward them since they knew he didn’t have good intentions.

Erik ignored Orson, who kept a Lomalin at bay, while Logan charged a dart to kill one of the creatures. It was then that Erik approached Conal; he raised his arm in the sky, and with a swift and heavy motion, he swung his deadly tree branch at the young boy, and a deep gash appeared on his chest.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH” Conal shouted. Logan and Orson could do nothing to save their friend since Erik slashed again and again at him in a matter of seconds.

After all, the tree branch was light, and he was, for this reason, able to swing it several times. Every time he did so, a new wound appeared on Conal’s body until Erik ended him with a slash at his throat.

“CONAL!” Orson shouted. He tried to go help his friend, but as soon as he turned to stop Erik, who was still hiding behind a mask, the Lomalin got closer to him, threatening to bite him on the leg putting him at risk.