Speed Is King

“You guys did well.” Elliot said softly to his beasts.

Dawn of the third day of the apocalypse was breaking, and the sun rose upon a bloodied land littered with dead beasts and human beings.

“Thank you, Master.” Frosty replied for the rest of the gang.

Elliot nodded and looked away from them.

He was feeling rather conflicted inside.

On one hand, he was rather aghast that his beasts had taken it upon themselves to massacre every single living being within the Battle Royale area – including thousands of human beings.

However, on the other hand, he was glad that he didn’t have to give the order. Even though he knew that the only way the event would end was for all the other human beings apart from the ten survivors to die, he was avoiding having to think about it. To have such a painful decision taken away from him was a blessing indeed.

His beasts were extremely sensitive creatures, and they instinctively knew what Elliot was feeling. Many chose to remain silent.

A few who cared deeply for Elliot, however, tried their best to cheer him up.

“Little Master, your two future ma- ah your helpers here are extremely ferocious!” Brock cried out loudly. “We actually found them holed up in an obscure house facing a little square with a HUGE pile of dead beasts in that square! I think they sniped at least one hundred beasts to their deaths!”

“One hundred? Try TWO hundred?” Red snorted. “I had to work REALLY hard cutting through all that flesh and beast armor to get to their beast cores. You’re officially a universe level wealthy young master, pip. You can actually sell all these beast cores for a pretty hefty sum of money out there.”

“It’s a shame that the girls didn’t have systems though. They would have leveled up to at least the Lord level if they did.” Wu Kong remarked.

“Indeed. They were extremely efficient with their attacks. I dare say that they would still be able to survive for another day or two even if we didn’t come.” Winter chipped in.

“Maybe not two days. They were already having trouble killing the remaining five Lord Level beasts when we arrived. And that was even with all five fighting each other. They would have to hide all traces of themselves or escape to a different location as soon as that fight was over. The surviving Lord level beast would definitely not let them off.” Wu Kong analyzed in their public mindspace.

“True. A day then. Still very impressive.” Winter agreed.

Elliot smiled at his beasts’ attempts to create a casual atmosphere and turned to look at the nine surviving human beings.

The beasts had come to an agreement to kill all the weak ones and allow only the nine strongest human beings to survive. All nine were the ones actively defending themselves against the beasts, and had at least one successful kill.

None were as spectacular as Camelia and Kara, of course, not even close.

After the beasts had finished their gruesome work, they had herded the surviving human beings back to Elliot.

Camelia and Kara had immediately approached Elliot and hugged him tightly, glad that he was able to kill all the beasts and end the event.

However, the remaining seven men were extremely nervous.

They had no idea if Elliot was a native human being with the power to transform into beasts, or an alien with the power to transform into a human being.

“Relax guys. My name is Elliot, and I am a native Californian. I am one of you.” Elliot gave them an awkward friendly smile.

“Yeah? How are you able to turn into a dragon then? And why do all these beasts obey you?” A large and powerful looking black man with a full automatic assault rifle challenged him.

Somewhere behind Elliot, Rex growled lightly. She didn’t like the tone the man was using to talk to her master.

“I have a powerful boon from the aliens. If you’re lucky, you’ll come across one like mine in the resource boxes they drop all over the country.” Elliot gave him a lazy explanation.

“You mean the aliens would drop all these boxes everywhere, and some of the boxes would contain power up items that could make beasts obey us?” A tall and broad shouldered caucasian spoke up. He was holding two sawed off shotguns, one on each hand, and had a bag which Elliot assumed was full of shotgun bullets.

He looked extremely solid and dependable. But judging from his words, a little bit slow on the uptake.

The aliens had made it more than sufficiently clear that their only hope of survival was to get to these resource boxes and win monthly races.

“Yes.” Elliot replied patiently. He didn’t recognize any of the seven people, so that meant that none of them had managed to survive to the late game in the previous iteration. But that didn’t necessarily mean that they were weak or useless.

They could simply be plain unlucky.

Now that they were handed to him almost on a platter, he would try his best to make good use of them and to lead them to the end of the game.

Of course they all chose to join. Sticking with a powerful person with the ability to easily kill giant beasts was like a Godsent opportunity for them.

“Good. However, I have to warn you. This is not a democracy. I am the leader, and these two women are my deputies. You can either cheerfully obey us, or you can go and try your luck alone outside. Am I clear?” Elliot stared them down.

“Of course. We’ll do whatever is required of us to remain with you. Don’t worry.” A bespectacled young man immediately replied.

“Excellent. Now that we’re clear, we need to-“

At that moment, the sky above them seemed to crack into pieces.

CRACK!

[The Battle Royale Event is over! Congratulations on being the final ten! Please standby.]

[Rewards are en-route to you!]

VROOOO!!! VROOOOOO!!!

Loud sounds of large objects hurtling down towards them sounded.

As one, all ten survivors looked up.

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