Up close, the arena was much bigger than he'd initially thought. The strange perspective of the portal world with its burning sky and wall of dark fog had thrown him off, leading him to underestimate its size. His guess had been wide as a stadium, and tall to match. Standing only two 'blocks' away from it, he could see it probably loomed higher than two stadiums. Maybe three. And it was wide enough that he could only barely see the curvature of the complex from this angle.

It was round like the Roman colosseum, though not perfectly so, with its jagged edges and uneven tiers jutting out. In a way, it looked kind of like a giant had snapped an overhanging rock off a mountain and plonked it down here in the portal world, before going to work on it with divine tools to turn it into a functional building. John couldn't help but be impressed with it.

The school corridors sprawled out around it for what had to be miles. Dozens of them fed directly into the arena, and Mana Sense told him there were hundreds of monsters filing along below him, making their way to their classrooms. Resisting the temptation to lay into those monsters, he focused on the information his Mana Sense was feeding to him. With every heartbeat, he got a clearer idea of how the monsters were moving through the massive building ahead of him, and he was close enough now that his range encompassed the entire structure. In a matter of seconds, he had a mental 3-D map of the paths the monsters were moving through, and, most importantly, where they were coming from.

"Found you," he growled.

+1000 Aura

Somewhere behind him, a voice boomed in reply: "THAT'S MY LINE, YOU FILTHY MONGREL! FACE MY WRATH!"

John had neither time for nor interest in bantering with the headmaster any longer. He'd already spent way too long in this portal world before factoring in how long he'd been unconscious. Feeling the monster draw closer in his Mana Sense, he activated Teleportation, and took in the snapshot of his surroundings in the blink of an eye.

Cave-like passageways wound through the arena. They were chaotic, haphazardly placed, like someone had tossed a bundle of string on the floor and taken it as inspiration for how they were going to design the interior of their ridiculous building. Winding up and down and left to right, twining around each other, coming to dead ends, all without any apparent rhyme or reason. Most of them were packed with monsters, too.

Making a snap decision, John transported himself to the one that appeared to be the most out of the way, seeking to make sure the headmaster had to take the longest route possible to get to him, so he'd have time to wait out the cooldown for his next teleport in peace.

The world shifted, and he found himself plunged into total darkness. Of course, he thought. It's a cave.

Luckily, the faint glow of Aurora Blade combined with Mana Sense and his faint memory of the snapshot Teleportation had provided to give him a decent understanding of his location.

Monsters surrounded him. Giant insects of every variety; centipedes, spiders, fleas, grasshoppers, woodlice, gnats, ants, and others he couldn't immediately identify in the dim glow of his blade. None of them were bound by classroom rules, and he couldn't hide himself with Shadow Stream, because he didn't want the headmaster to just retreat back to the spawn chamber and await him there.

Thus, John had a merry old time slaughtering the ugly shits. It was actually kind of nice to face monsters that fought back after the brain-melting grind he'd subjected himself to over the last couple of hours. He found himself smiling as he cut off a mantis' head, imagining it was the crazy bastard that had been giving him so much trouble. One day, he told himself, he'd defeat reds as easy as this. That day couldn't come soon enough.

Despite the fact he was killing multiple monsters every second, though, the numbers thronging the corridors never thinned, all of them rushing right towards him. By the time Teleportation completed its cooldown, he was sure he'd killed at least a hundred, but the circumstances weren't conducive to keeping count. Sensing a particular signature drawing closer, he swiftly ported himself away to another out of the way cave just under 100 metres away and repeated the process.

Another routine settled in, though it was at least nowhere near as monotonous as the classrooms had been. Teleporting from cave to cave as soon as the Spell was ready, slaughtering monsters during every wait, with one nervous half of his attention watching the headmaster's signature rush through the caves at alarming speed, always moving inexorably towards him, like the maze meant nothing.

How does it always know? He found himself wondering at one point, a little wide-eyed when he realised the headmaster was only a few turns away from reaching him. Does it have its own Mana Sense?

There was always variety in the monsters, differences in every encounter. At some points, he found himself among a swarm of ants. At others, centipedes carpeted the walls. Most of the time, there was a solid mixture of giant bugs, though, and they rushed him with reckless abandon, and their sheer numbers actually made him break a sweat, despite their individual weakness. Quantity over quality.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Unfortunately, the swarm of enemies made it nigh impossible for him to farm Aura with any particularly flashy moves, though he did get a couple of quips in here and there when the chance arose:

"Did anyone call an exterminator?"

"Bugs are meant to be squashed."

"Know your place: under my boot."

He couldn't help thinking they seemed to rush at him even faster and more recklessly after those little insults. The idea that they'd take offence kind of offended him—what the fuck did these murderous pieces of shit think they had any right to get indignant about—and he found himself responding to their increased aggression with greater brutality of his own. He painted the walls of the caves with bug blood. Only caution prevented him from risking a few Ultimate Shots; he didn't want a cave-in while Teleportation was still on cooldown.

In the end, thirteen teleports in total brought him to the spawn chamber at the core of the arena. Not every teleport had been the full 100 metres, of course, but the distance he'd had to cover still illustrated the enormity of the monstrous building. It was obviously bigger on the inside, for one thing. Though it had appeared huge from outside, it hadn't been anywhere near large enough to require over a dozen teleports to reach the centre.

He couldn't even imagine how much it would have sucked to actually fight through the caves in full—it surely would have been impossible if the headmaster was fully aggro-ed. The legit way to do it, in his estimation, was to actually clear out enough class blocks to make it through to the arena, then battle through the caves the hard way. Even against 'mere' blue-souled monsters, it sounded exhausting.

But here he was. The cavernous room he found himself in wasn't anywhere near as vast as the final chamber of the bus depot had been, but that wasn't saying much. It was still easily big enough to fit a few football pitches inside, and tall as a ten-story building. What he could see of the walls and floor were smooth like polished obsidian, and cave entrances lined the walls at uneven intervals, hundreds of them.

The biggest difference between this place and the bus depot was the presence of monsters. By the time they'd reached the bus depot, they'd been cleared out in preparation for the final boss battle. Here, he'd teleported straight in, presumably bypassing the portal world's routines.

Thousands of eyes turned to stare at him. Not a single bug moved. They were all grouped up according to their species, ants, spiders, cockroaches, centipedes, etc. Awkwardness hung in the air. John was oddly reminded of those nightmare scenarios that sometimes invaded his mind about finding himself naked in front of a large crowd. Except in this horrific scene, no one was laughing at him. Somehow, it felt worse.

And hanging in the centre of it all was a great blue orb drinking up a pale white stream of fairy lights. This time, he had cause to believe each one of those lights was a soul, and the sphere was using their power to create monsters. Its hourglass iris slowly turned to him. The air stilled. Its incredulous judgement fell upon him with the weight of a mountain.

Luckily, John had an easy way out of this uncomfortable situation. Cringing a little for some reason and trying not to show it, he lifted his arm and fired an Ultimate Shot at the great blue eye. The coruscating projectile roared across the distance in the blink of an eye trailed by a dozen different magical effects, faster than any blue-souled monster could hope to do anything about it. Only one monster in this place could have intervened, and Mana Sense told him it was only just turning the corner of a cave that would lead it straight to the spawn chamber.

The eye barely had time to tremble in place, as if it was trying to pull itself away at the last moment, before the Spell struck. It popped like an oversized balloon, and the stream of souls it had been devouring diverted itself to him. The number implanted in his consciousness soared upwards once more, climbing past 23,000.

A hazy shockwave ripped out across the room upon the eye's demise, sending all the bugs sprawling to the ground. None of them got up.

+10000 Aura

John frowned. Only that much? I guess it makes sense, since this portal world only has the one eye, and it's just a blue at that. Still.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"

John's frown deepened as he spun on his heel and slipped into a combat-ready stance, preparing himself. There was something different about the headmaster's voice, now, and he only understood the source of that feeling when he faced the approaching monster head on.

It was charging through a cave, running on the roof to avoid the monsters thronging the ground. Hellfire flared to fill the entirety of its bulbous eyes, and they blazed, so bright the monster was surrounded by a furious red nimbus. Its mandibles were constantly twitching, gnashing, snarling, and he realised as it next spoke that it was using its actual voice, rather than whatever sound projection ability had carried its threats and taunts before.

"YOU IMPUDENT WORM! THIS WILL NOT BE FORGIVEN! YOUR CRIMES WILL EARN YOU A THOUSAND MILLENNIUMS OF AGONY AND TORMENT!"

"I've already won, you dick," John snapped, glancing around. The bus depot portal world had started to fade almost immediately after destroying the eyes, but things were acting slower here. He could see visible strain in the fabric of reality, like the world itself was shivering, but at the same time there was a strange thickness building in the air. A weight. He squinted back at the headmaster. Its red aura flared, its eyes brightening. In response, the world stabilised.

"NO ONE ESCAPES PUNISHMENT! NO ONE!"

Ah, he thought. You're keeping this place together somehow, aren't you, you colossal dick?

He had to admit a part of him had been hoping the headmaster would concede defeat and let him go, like the crab monster had. That did not appear to be the case, here. Of course not. That would've been too easy.

"Fine then," John said, rolling his shoulders as he stepped forward. "Bring it on."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.