There was still no sign of Tokura anywhere near the pit formed amid the Nebula Park’s central big field. Hikaru, Seiren and King had gone off to the Kisdeya River to face the Martians’ Ares Trio. Overall, the strongest members of Earthling Class No. 1 had left the others to deal with the enemies inside and around the pit alone.

And yet Vega Warren could feel things turning in the Earthlings’ favor to such an extent, he could hardly wait to get drunk in celebration of the victory they were about to achieve – an opinion supported by a couple of facts.

Annabel and another girl from Vega’s class had joined forces to take out the Martian creating clones along with his vibration-causing, meteor-making, healer and sensor classmates beyond the pit. Both girls had been incapacitated due to this, but luckily, Keiry D’s sensory ability had led the group under her command to them before Zalan and the Martians using coral-colored crystals and teal energy could finish them off.

As two members of Keiry’s group held off the opposing trio, another member of the same group who could use healing patched up her wounded classmates. And to make things even better, all of them received back-up from the quartet Vale, Earthling Class No. 1’s other sensor, was a part of, after they had defeated two more enemies.

Zalan and co. were done for with the number of Earthlings they were now facing, the only other threat left to deal with being the four villains gathered under Jart’s command who stood in front of Vega. The healer from his group had successfully fixed up Exo’s wounds so he could join the fray again, standing alongside Yonira and the girl of Earthling Class No. 1 capable of reshaping her hair behind the drunkard who led them.

(Vega) ‘Your buddy up there’s not doing too good, Jart. You sure you don’t want to go check on him?’

(Jart) ‘Quit your yapping and come already, you cheap knock-off. Zalan might not have taken out King, but I’m going to dispatch you to make up for that.’

The growing tension between the leaders of the two fives came as no surprise to anyone as it was a consequence of the well-founded enmity between Vega and King and Jart and Zalan, which had been going on for a while now.

Firstly, Jart and Zalan looked like Vega and King with some of the traits of their appearance being reversed between the two. Secondly, one of the duos was the Martians’ surface-to-air tandem (due to using a typhoon and quake deva), the other – the Earthlings’ food-and-drink tandem (due to being a drunk and a glutton), both duets also having the same ranking within their classes’ respective power scales.  

These duos’ members had not had the chance to face the other in proper battle up until this point, but a golden opportunity had now presented itself to settle their dispute. Keiry D was aware of that and had thought of a strategy, relayed to Exo in the form of thoughts by linking her sensor and his metal deva by an underground pipe made by him to then be passed on to Vega and the rest via the same method.

According to that strategy, Jart’s focus on Vega was the key to victory for the five led by the drunkard.

To start the clash, the five’s leader ran forward, channeling his pale green energy through the ground while shouting at Jart.

(Vega) ‘You’re the one who’s gonna be dispatched, typhoon boy! And I’m gonna be drinking in celebration of kicking your ass tonight!!’

The Martian with a darkness deva spread that darkness over Vega’s energy to partially absorb and then cancel it out, at the same time Jart sending a mini-typhoon at his main target.

That attack never reached as a square wall of rocks clustered together made by Yonira blocked it, the leader of the enemy five turning his wrathful gaze to the girl who had got in his way.

(Jart) ‘Stay out of this execution, bitch!!’

The short distraction of Vega’s opponent had given him the opportunity to close the gap between them with a fast teleportation and crush an energy-clad uppercut in Jart’s jaw whil having a wide mocking grin on his face.

(Vega) ‘The execution’s not going well so far, is it?’

As expected, that comeback along with the hit he had taken further enraged the typhoon warrior, now sending many drills of his deva toward Yonira and Vega at the same time with a loud roar.

(Jart) ‘I’LL JUST GET RID OF BOTH OF YOU, THEN!!! AND ANYONE ELSE WHO GETS IN MY WAY!!!!’

From that point onward started a cycle which repeated multiple times and consisted of the following: Jart attacking Vega and Yonira with more and more typhoon drills and the former teleporting around them while the latter blocked them with rock walls. While doing this, the drunkard found an opportune moment to look around to see how the other members of his team were doing.

The healer put her other deva to use by revealing her elongated and strengthened tongue to face an enemy transformed into a big spiny-tailed iguana, her hair-changing classmate absorbing the enemy darkness deviant’s attacks with the huge volume of her hair. Both girls were more than capable of dealing with such opponents, so the only one who had their hands full was Exo.

He was simultaneously protecting the healer from the wide lava stream sent to her by one of the Martians with a counter stream of liquid metal and pouring that same metal over the scaly tentacles of another opponent coming from the side. With the techno-genius’s style being focused solely on defense, he wouldn’t last much longer like that, so one could only hope Keiry D’s plan would work sooner.

That plan finally came into effect when Jart got so mad at Vega and Yonira for dodging and blocking his attacks while making fun of him that he sent mini-typhoons in all directions, not discriminating between his friends and foes in terms of who was targeted.

Both the scaly-tentacle-making and the lava-controlling Martians were cut and blasted away by two of those typhoons, Exo only being grazed on the side of the waist by another, which still made him panic.

The healer with a whip-like tongue had taken the battle with her opponent beyond the reach of Jart’s rampage, so she was safe, but the same could not be said about the hair-changing Earthling. She had taken a heavy hit from one of the typhoons, her enemy being missed by it, but still not being able to finish her off due to having used up too much of his darkness.

Jart himself had got a bit tired, but had not noticed that yet under the effects of his ongoing fit of rage, Yonira and Vega using the opportunity this provided to channel a combination of their devas through the ground under his feet and unleashing their attack when he was the most distracted.

Many giant rock spikes enveloped in pale green energy came out in X-formations all around him, the enemy five’s leader quickly changing the direction of his typhoons to destroy that attack. He successfully got rid of the energy around the spikes, but not the spikes themselves, being cut and stabbed in a few places across the limbs and the torso.

(Yonira) ‘And that’s how dumb bastards like you get taken out, Jart! You really should look out more for …’

Vega turned to Yonira to look at her while she made her victorious speech in face of Jart’s demise only to see a wave of lava was now nearing both of them.

His earth-crafting classmate also noticed the wave, taking action to block it before Vega could. She had started propping up a number of rock walls with the same design as the last one when scaly tentacles came at her and the drunkard from the side, wrapping tight around both of them.

(Vega) ‘I guess Jart’s rampage won’t be able to buy us more time!

Don’t worry, though, Yoni! I got this!!’

Having the tentacles wrapped around him was actually ideal for Vega, because running his deva through different things was his speciality.

He could also send his deva over a long distance with great speed when channeled through something, thus delivering a present to the deviant the tentacles were coming out of within a second. That present took the form of a pale green energy pulse that was released inside her body.

With the tentacles’ grip loosening, Yonira could turn her attention to finishing up the walls meant to stop the coming wave of burning hot lava just in time. That wave crumbled under the weight of a crushing mass of dense crimson energy just before reaching its targets, though, leaving both of those targets surprised.

There wasn’t a single member of Vega’s class who could use energy of that type. So either one of the Earthlings had suddenly discovered a new ability or the enemy had intervened to save them.

The mystery was revealed very soon when something was thrown down the pit, inside which Vega and co. were. Something big.

The energy-using drunkard stepped closer as it crashed nearby, stopping only a few steps away from the object. It was revealed as the severely beat-up and unconscious King who turned from a giant back to his normal form moments after he had been sent to his classmates.

Vega had never seen his friend in such a state. Many parts of his body were covered in blood, that blood coming out of holes and cuts left on his skin, some of which quite deep, multiple bruises being added on top of all his other injuries. While still breathing, the muscle-bound glutton sounded as if he could draw his last breath at any second.

A new mass of crimson energy was smashed in the pit while the drunkard was trying to make sense of King’s condition, Yonira forming a smaller pit within the bigger one where all three of them could drop to evade the energy’s crushing force.

Vega himself couldn’t pay much attention to this attack or the fact that he had been saved from it as all he could see was his friend’s body and all he could hear – his faint breaths. Due to that, Yonira shouting at him sounded muffled for a few moments before he could turn his attention to something else beside King.

(Yonira) ‘I can’t get us out of this pit with my deva, Vega! Teleport us away from here so we can regroup with the others and get one of the girls to heal King!! Now!!!’

The rock-crafting beauty addressing the ex-giant’s condition helped Vega to fully come to his senses, sending all three of them back to the surface with a blast of his pale green energy where they found the rest of their classmates were waiting.

Only two members of the group that had faced Zalan’s trio were still unscathed, Keiry D being the one with the lightest wounds, but having still sustained damage, while Annabel was already back on her feet and was patching up the ones in a more serious state.

She was aided in that by the class’s other two healers, one of which was the whip-tongued Earthling, her return to her comrades meaning she had probably dealt with her iguana-like opponent from earlier.

Exo, who was also among those with lesser wounds, caught a glimpse of King, joining the two unscathed girls from the surface group as they stood by Vega’s side and looked at their broken classmate.

His condition was without a doubt the worst out of all the members of Earthling Class No. 1, so King was carried straight to the healing trio to take care of him. The drunkard who had helped get him to the medics didn’t say a word upon leaving him, Annabel and the others also not being able to muster a response when they saw the muscle-bound glutton’s state.

Having barely ensured the survival of the other member of the food-and-drink duo, Vega turned to look at the enemy forces with one main goal – to find who among them was responsible for the beating King had taken.

The Martians had a giant in their ranks as well now. Even bigger than King, red-skinned and monstrous-looking. Vega guessed some kind of monstermorph deva had led to the emergence of this beast. And since the creature was a new player on this field and everyone knew what Hock and Gorudora’s abilities were, the logical conclusion was the enemy giant was Nepalo.

Taking a look at how Martian Class No. 3 was doing, Zalan’s trio had all been taken out, left next to the beaten meteor-making, vibration-causing, cloning deviant and the healer and sensor of their group. The tentacle-creating villainess Vega had hit with a pulse of his deva had been knocked out, the spiny-tailed iguana villain also being crushed.

Although wounded, Jart was driven mad by anger enough to still be willing to fight, his darkness-using classmate being tired, but still determined, meanwhile the member of the typhoon warrior’s five with a lava deva being in the best condition out of all of them.

This meant the current count was four battle-able combatants for the enemy and five for Vega’s forces with quite a few that could provide additional support. There was still a chance to win, but that all depended on how strong Nepalo actually was.

However strong and driven, though, beating up King that bad just to make a display of his power was completely unnecessary. And called for revenge.

Revenge the de-facto leader of the Earthlings at the moment was going to exact at all costs.

Simply delaying Nepalo until Tokura reached the big central field as per Hikaru’s plan from earlier was no longer what Vega had in mind. For him, the bastard needed to suffer the same amount of pain as the one he had brought upon the ex-giant.

(Vega) ‘Exo, you better put on your game face, cuz I’m gonna need you for this one.’

(Exo) ‘Don’t worry. I may be a coward, but seeing how powerful he is, I’m not about to let him hurt our class.’

(Vega) ‘Good. Then first up, I want you to seal him in a prison with Yoni’s help after I shake him. When you’re done with that, we’ll go on the offensive.’ – upon finishing that sentence, he moved his gaze from the techno-genius to the class’s chief medic – ‘Bel, get the rest of the crew up and running as fast as possible, will you?’

Annabel smiled before answering, which initially confused Vega.

(Annabel) ‘You sure you’re not drunk, Vega? I’ve never seen you take the lead like this.’

The drunkard returned the smile to hide how hungry for revenge he was from Annabel and the rest before focusing on his enemy.

(Vega) ‘The other sober bastards are all away, aren’t they? So it’s up to me to take charge whether I like it or not!!’

As it turned out, Nepalo had been giving instructions to his classmates as well during the Earthlings’ strategy discussion, Vega hearing the last of those instructions.

(Nepalo) ‘Jart, you and the others stay back. Don’t interfere.’ – he leaned forward in a sort of running stance that made his muscles stand out even more, blowing out some brownish smoke of his mouth, amid which his eyes flashed in bright yellow – ‘I’ll crush all of them by myself. Breaking King wasn’t nearly fun enough, so I will need a lot more to feel good.’

(Jart) ‘Got it. What do we do with the ones who are no longer able to fight among them?’

(Nepalo) ‘Just secure a perimeter around this field to make sure they don’t escape.’ – Jart stepped back after being given that order, giving a sign to those among his classmates who could move to do the same – ‘I’m waiting for Ulura to give me the green light on killing them.’ – Nepalo now lunged at the Earthlings with an explosion of crimson energy that blasted tens of trees away and an even more destructive grin that was the incarnation of a mad lust for violence and blood – ‘But until she does that, I’ll put whatever remains of their miserable lives to some use!!!’

He didn’t move too fast for Vega’s eyes to follow. That was actually a relief, because if he had some kind of ability to increase his speed or decrease that of his opponents, the bunch of Earthlings left, who were all rather slow, wouldn’t stand a chance. Without having to worry about the speed factor, all they needed to do was match his power.

Pale green energy was spread across the ground ahead, bursting under Nepalo’s feet just before he reached his prey, Exo pouring liquid metal over the red giant that quickly covered his skin and hardened, Yonira reinforcing the prison made by her classmate with a layer of giant cubic rocks just as tight-fitting.

That duo’s creation was destroyed mere seconds after being completed, the Crimson God of War disintegrating all of Vega’s pale green energy coming from the earth then with an energy shroud of his own. Exo and Yonira wasted no time in light of that, using what was left of the drunkard’s energy to clad their newly constructed blades of hard metal and rock coming out of the ruined terrain.

Right then, Vega combined a barrage of projectiles from his deva with attacks of the same type launched by those among his classmates who also wielded active elemental-type devas to rain down on Nepalo from the sky. In the young drunkard’s mind stopping this and Exo and Yonira’s attack at the same time was impossible.

The strongest Martian managed to do it anyway, however, by unleashing a pulse of his energy that covered a wide area, aiming to not just neutralize the aerial and ground assault aimed at him, but to wound his opponents with the pulse.

Yonira and Exo covered themselves in armor made of their respective elements to defend against the counterattack, the rest simply doing their best to dodge it. Nepalo’s pulse was so powerful, however, that neither dodging, nor armor could save those targeted from being hurt by it.

The armored duo had managed to keep the personal damage to a minimum, Vega also having got off easy, but the two Earthlings who had aided him in the elemental barrage had had their stomachs cut by the pulse and had then been crushed hard in mini-craters on the ground.

Having left the healers and their patients defenseless in the wake of everyone’s shock from his attack, Nepalo went after the easier targets first.

That advance was thankfully stopped by the series of rock-metal walls formed by Yonira and Exo, who also sent a rockslide with big metal spikes coming out of each rock at the Martian King from the side.

He directed his palms in opposite directions as a response, shooting beams of crimson energy that became wider the further they reached, destroying both the two-element walls and the rockslide with metal spikes. The red-skinned monster’s manic laughter after doing this was short-lived, however, because more attacks came at him from different directions amid the smoke risen from his own two-way attack.

From one side of the smoke came the tongue of one of Earthling Class No. 1’s three healers and from the other – a whip of pale green energy with small spikes coming out of it and an end resembling a devil’s tail. Both wrapped around Nepalo’s neck, Vega and his classmate tightening their grip as much as possible to strangle their foe to the point where they gritted their teeth from the effort.

(Vega) ‘Choking Devil’s Whip!!!’

(The Whip-Tongued Earthling) ‘Hangman’s Tongue Noose!!!’

The Crimson God of War grabbed the tongue and the whip with a smirk, pulling them toward himself and with that – getting Vega and the whip-tongued healer within the range of his technique.

(Nepalo) ‘Head-on attacks like that could never work on me!!’

Vega’s answer to this statement was a wide grin as he teleported one of his classmates who excelled at close combat right behind Nepalo, the girl placing both her palms on the lower back of the enemy.

(Vega) ‘Not even as a diversion?’

Purple energy with black streaks started flowing out of that girl’s palms, Nepalo twisting his head to look at her with eyes widened in mindless outrage.

(Nepalo) ‘Trying to suck out my life force? MINE?!?!!’

He swung to hit the adversary who was draining his power, Vega teleporting her aside before the red-skinned monster could succeed. That, however, led to Nepalo redirecting his attention to Vega and his whip-tongued classmate again, grabbing each one by the throat, lifting them off the ground and finally channeling crimson energy through the bodies of both.

While being subjected to unfathomable pain the moment the energy came in contact with him, the grin would still not leave Vega’s face, the same being valid for the girl along with whom he was being tortured.

(The Whip-tongued Earthling) ‘We’re not done, Nepalo!’

What she meant by that was the multielemental tide Annabel, Yonira, Exo and the rest of the class who had been partially patched-up were preparing, finally sending its earth-shattering might at the Crimson God of War.

(Annabel) ‘This is our class’s true power!!!’

(Annabel, Yonira, Exo, Keiry D, Vale and the rest of the Earthlings) ‘EARTH’S MULTIELEMENTAL FLOOD OF FURY!!!!!’

(Vega) ‘HAAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!! HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT, YOU BIG RED PRICK?!?!!’

Vega created many more energy whips to wrap around Nepalo so he couldn’t move or teleport away and held a tight grip over him along with his classmate as the tide reachem them, now looking like the night sky full of stars, planets, moons and the like, but lit up mostly in a bright yellow color.

The heroic drunkard kept smiling even then, because in his mind, this had been quite a good fight.

All he needed to do now to ensure his class’s victory over Sunbird’s strongest student was to sacrifice himself along with one of the healers – a small price to pay for avenging King and earning a place among the legends from their school’s history.