Chapter 404: A Larger Issue

Simyon couldn't keep his eyes off the dead body on the ground as he analyzed the wound. He turned his head, thinking about looking at the others, that was until Dame called out to him.

"Simyon, I thought you were in a rush to help the others, can you stop standing around?" Dame asked.

Unable to look away and concerned about the others, he had decided to follow, but not without deep concerns on his mind.

'Come to think about it, we never did find out who really killed those students. One thing was for sure, it wasn't Raze. I thought it might have just been one of the other main disciples, but the more that I think about it now, there was no reason for them to.

'At least, their later actions didn't make it seem like it was them. Could it really be, were those killings all Dame?' Simyon started to think.

The more Simyon thought about it, the more his mind was starting to spiral.

'I actually don't know much about Dame in the first place. Sure, he's helped us a lot, especially when it comes to training. But what do we know about him?'

'We know he belongs to the Demonic Faction, but why is he even helping Raze in the first place? Does the reason even make sense? The two of them might be close as well, but is that closeness linked to us?'

'It's quite possible Dame, who has more of an instinct of a traditional Pagna warrior, would get rid of us in a heartbeat if he were to cause trouble towards his goal. And all of this. It felt like it was more Dame pushing Raze into going against the academy in the first place.'

'It's almost like he has a secret agenda of sorts, a reason to take down the Dark Faction.'

Whatever the reason was, Simyon had decided that it was best to keep an eye on him and not be so trusting of him after all. Because he doubted that this was something that Raze knew either.

While Dame was on their side, he was a good ally to have, but if he went to the other side, then he would be a formidable enemy to face that knew everything about them.

The entire group had entered through the portal with Dame being the last person. When stepping into the new dimension, they found themselves on a hard stone-paved ground.

It wasn't just any ground as the pathway was only a certain level of thickness and had walls on the sides; on top of that, there were large smoky clouds in the area.

"This is one of the strangest dimensions I've been in," Joe commented.

"I would have to say the same, this one is certainly unique," Dame commented. "Anyway, we should search the areas close to here. If one of us were attacked like the rest of you, I guess they would end up staying close to the portal entrance."

In his mind, Simyon was hoping they would run into Safa, rather than Mada, Ricktor, Liam, or Raze. He couldn't help but stop worrying about her.

'I promised that I would protect Raze, and I'm thinking about his sister,' Simyon thought, bashing the top of his head.

"Hey, hitting yourself that weak isn't going to help your body get stronger; if you want to train while moving, I can hit you along the way," Dame smiled.

Before Simyon would have thought of it as a mere joke, but after suspecting him of the worst, he was imagining being hit on his head and a large dent appearing.

While the group was searching and looking through the area, Tinson couldn't help but ask a question that was playing on his mind as well.

"How long do you think we have?" Tinson asked. "Until the academy finds out about the missing staff members."

"I would suspect that they would assume most of the students would spend a day analyzing the beasts in the dimension before coming out again. So we should have at least till tomorrow.

"If no students return to the academy, with their fellow teachers, in a couple of days, I'm sure they'll know something is up, and I don't think we can bluff it this time."

Searching the area, after a while, they had eventually come across a tower. This tower was different compared to the last couple they had walked past because at the base, they could see that there were some fallen beasts.

From the look of things, they had dropped down from above, hitting part of the roof sliding down before crashing onto the floor.

"It looks like these beasts, they fell from above, so they were killed in the air. It means someone is up there," Dame said, as he shot off, and started to jump on one roof tile after the other going up the floor with ease.

"I think we're going to take the stairs," Tinson commented.

"Don't worry, I'm with you guys," Simyon replied.

After taking the stairs above, Simyon was the first to walk out on the balcony, and immediately his eyes were laid on a certain black-haired beauty. With the clouds behind, he couldn't help but mutter the words.

"An angel... maybe," Simyon mumbled.

Shaking his head, he soon rushed over.

"Safa, you're here, you look... you look really good, I mean like you look really really good, you're completely fine."

What Simyon also noticed were there were some dead beasts on the balcony as well. Counting those he had seen below, he could only guess.

"Did you defeat all of these?" Simyon asked.

"I did," Safa replied. "I did get hurt a few times, but with what I can do, you know I'm back to a hundred percent." She smiled. "Dame was just telling me about what happened."

"Right, we were all attacked by the Lethal Bite Clan, it's thankful that they didn't seem to come after you as well," Simyon commented.

"They did come after me," Safa replied.

"They did!" Simyon was a bit stunned, and soon embarrassed.

With how many beasts she had defeated, as well as how good she looked, he thought she had to have had a stroke of good luck and not run into one of their members.

"She managed to defeat the person all by herself; she is a lot stronger than you think," Dame commented. "The rest of you should learn from her, since I had to save you all. Regardless, she's not the one that we're looking for."

"Right," Safa replied. "The person you mentioned, they didn't match their description, and I don't think I would have been able to defeat a middle-staged warrior."

"Yeah, the vice clan head is a man called Royo," Tinson answered. "He looks like your typical middle-aged man but always wears a pointed straw hat."

"Then we need to get out of here quickly; it's good that another one of us is Safa," Dame commented.

The group agreed, and they were quick to leave the place. After leaving the dimension, they were on the search for one of the next locations. Here they needed to perform their act again, getting rid of those on the outside.

As they did the same act, Simyon made note of the victims again. He wanted to ask Safa if he was just going crazy or not, but he knew that it wasn't the right time, not now, while Dame could hear.

When they finally entered the next dimension, the group found themselves on a field, a field filled with grass and large trees in the distance, but at the tip of each blade of grass, there was a strange fluff ball.

It was the same as the giant trees that had round-shaped balls instead of leaves at the end of them.

"We need to hurry; I'm not too worried about Raze and the others, but if Liam ran into the vice clan head, it's quite worrying we haven't found him yet," Dame stated.

In this dimension, they would soon learn, though, that they would have more questions than answers appear for them.