559 Chapter 559: Another Time Skip (2/2)
I stared at him blankly, and he gestured out of the window.
”We are out in the wild plains! There's a possibility that we will be attacked at any time by wild monsters! At times like this, we need every mage aboard this train on high alert!”
…huh?
Well, he had a point. Occasionally the trains would be forced to move through large swathes of wilderness between cities. And the wilderness was often filled with monsters. Not that any of them could catch up with a high-speed maglev train that was moving at almost supersonic speeds. And even if they could, the train was heavily armored and had a barrier around it. So the monsters would find it difficult for their attacks to penetrate the barrier or armor.
Not only that, there would be a contigent of Federation soldiers aboard the train, as well as their heavenly lightning cannon or whatever.
Seeing my skeptical expression, the elderly man scoffed.
”I know you think the defenses are adequate, but this time they won't be enough! The moment you stepped onto this train, you have raised a flag!”
”Flag? What flag?” I gaped at him.
”What will happen?” I asked, still dazed and confused.
”Have you not read any of the web novels?!” the professor roared. ”Main character on a train that is traveling through a vast expanse of wilderness known for monsters! Of course we are going to be attacked! It's a huge flag! There will be an Emergence event, a monster horde will show up, and you will be needed to help the soldiers defend the non-mage passengers on this train!”
So I was basically turning from Bu Fan to Li Yao now. What the fuck? We only had a single millennium of magic, not forty millenniums of cultivation!
”Sir, I think you should calm down…”
The words were barely out of my mouth when there was a thunderous crack. All the passengers froze and slowly turned their heads to stare out of the windows.
The roiling clouds above were rumbling, lightning flashing and crackling around its gray edges. The fabric of space-time tore open, as if some massive monster from another dimension had driven its claws into a point and began ripping the space apart. I caught a glimpse of a hellish dimension from further beyond, a dark and gloomy world illuminated by molten lava and ghostly flames.
Then a horde of Ghost Jellyfishes swarmed out and toward the train. Each of them wasn't that big, their long, dangling tentacles reaching down to a height of a human. Their bulbous heads glowed an eerie white, giving the impression that they were ghosts…phantoms that were drifting high up in the heavens. If I wasn't mistaken, their tentacles contained stings filled with neurotoxins that not only caused hallucinations but also could kill a human by shutting down their nervous systems.
”You've got to be kidding me…”
So we were now ripping off Forty Millenniums of Cultivation? Seriously? Well, even if that was the case, we didn't have to worry about the first wave because the Ghost Jellyfishes were mere fodder. It would be the Human Face Mosquitoes we would have to worry about.
”See?!” the professor was jabbing his finger in the direction of the Ghost Jellyfishes. ”What did I tell you?”
And what exactly did he want me to do? Nuke them? With the train moving at such incredible speeds, I couldn't summon any of my bigger Constellation spirits because of the hundred meter rule.
The railgun at the back of the train lifted and fired, and in a single blast all of the Ghost Jellyfishes vanished.
”…”
Everyone stared at the professor, who looked sheepish. But he pointed at the rift in time-space again.
”It's not over yet!” he blabbered. ”More are coming! The Human Face Mosquitoes are next!”
He was not wrong. After the annihilation of the Ghost Jellyfishes, a swarm of Human Face Mosquitoes billowed out of the rift and buzzed angrily toward us. There were millions of them, and when they were clustered together, they resembled a gigantic human face. The danger of the Human Face Mosquitoes was their sheer numbers. By swarming over a victim, they could suck his blood dry in the matter of seconds.
The railgun fired again, and the entire swarm of Human Face Mosquitoes exploded. Fire spells streaked from the military compartment and incinerated the poor swarm. I watched in awe as living flame danced from one mosquito to another, igniting an inferno. The entire horde combusted, and within ten minutes, all of the Human Face Mosquitoes were incinerated.
And the rift caused by the Emergence event was slowly closing, with no more monsters exiting the rupture in the space-time fabric.
”…”
”Can I go back to sleep now?” I asked the astonished professor. Without waiting for him to reply, I shut my eyes and dozed off once again.