It was only a matter of time before majority of the team – those with the tattoos, as well as Taehyun and Yeonjun – prepared to set out for the battle. Keeping Taehyun’s plan and his trust strongly in their minds, they rushed out of the lobby with their bags and torches, determination surfacing along with utter fear. 

After all, they were heading for a battle that would either keep them alive or throw them into the hands of death.

Meanwhile, Hoseok raced down the flights of stairs leading into the lobby of the dormitory building. He kept one arm pressed against the door, keeping it open, all the while pointing a torch towards the steps of the staircase. Hanging over his other arm was an untidy heap of what seemed like white bedsheets.

One after another, a group of men and women walked down with lifeless bodies in their arms, tattered uniforms and gruesome flesh clear within the dim light.

“Oh my God!” Yeji immediately covered with her hands, her legs losing control as the awful stench diffused across the air. She quickly rushed towards the entrance and kicked the door open, keeping her foot against the edge to prevent it from closing. She watched quietly as the dead bodies were being carried out.

“Where are the others?” Hoseok let go of the door by the stairs, adjusting the pile of sheets he gathered within his arms, ready to exit with the group that just left with the bodies.

The others filled him in on the whereabouts of the ones that were risking their lives to protect the people trapped within the indestructible barrier. In the meantime, corpses were being collected from the dormitory buildings and the block of houses on the other side of the road; white sheets covered the stained and disfigured bodies, before they were all kept under the roof of a gym on campus.

While the people were slightly relieved to not see any familiar face among the corpses, – no recognisable student or family member, but they knew they were the staff – they were unsure of how to feel, knowing that these bodies were probably being desperately searched for from outside the barrier. Much to their misfortune, a few bodies were far too mutilated and disintegrated to be carried along for proper burials.

Back at the lobby, the rest of the team was sitting on the tiled floor with their faces buried in their hands. The only sounds reaching their ears were their muffled breaths and their whimpering sobs and cries, apart from the distant whirring and rattling of the machine outside.

“Whoa, the barrier…” Changbin was the first to speak, crawling towards the window and staring through the glass, squinting his eyes to focus on the surface of the barrier. He let out a gasp as he saw the barrier gradually mutate its opaque coating to noticeable translucence.

As if the barrier pitied them, thin beams of light peeked through the pores of the now translucent surface, filling up the area with a warm glow they dearly missed. They would’ve never found daylight so beautiful if it weren’t for its absence.

But if there was a group of people that truly needed the morning light to guide them on their journey, it was the team that headed straight towards the vicious monsters.

“Oh my God, the sunlight is on my face! I’m gonna become an early bird from now on, I don’t care what my roommates say!”, Beomgyu screamed at the top of his lungs with a wide grin on his face.

He quickened up his pace, jogging back and forth, left and right, linking his hands with whoever stood next to him. He put his arms above his head, dropping to his knees. With a heavy gasp, he bent over with his head touching the rough ground, his hands clasped together. “Thank you!”

While Beomgyu rejoiced under the sunlight, the others kept away their torches and they seemed to have understood how the sudden change both benefited and harmed them; they realised that the light would save the torches for later, but they also realised that they were now more vulnerably visible to the monsters.

The squad was now just a few hundred metres away from the slimes that continued to glide across the land, and just a few metres away from the machine that moved along the intersection of roads, all the way from the left to the right, spraying the dangerous liquid all over the stationary vehicles and non-functioning streetlights.

Jungeun put up a wooden wall right in front of the slimes, making the team’s movement much easier than expected. However, she knew it was only temporary.

Kai halted in his tracks before the others did, a shaky breath leaving his lips. He couldn’t stop his hands from trembling with fear, nor could he muster up the courage to stand still, feeling his toes tingle in his shoes.

“Beomgyu-hyung, get up. It’s time to actually defeat these ugly slimes. Let’s pretend we’re superheroes, alright?”

The others responded to his words by immediately getting into formation just before the monsters, knowing that taking a curve to assemble on the sides would be risky. They simply stuck to the plan they discussed along the way.

Kai stood at the front, his arms already reaching out in a stance he felt confident in, while Jungeun stood just beside him, her hands ready to bring down the wooden wall she created. Just behind, on either side of the aforementioned duo, Beomgyu and Yuqi were in a crouching position, which enabled them to work together more efficiently.

They were the four essential elements, the strongest in the team.

Right at the centre of the formation was Jisu, her hands ready to use her icy powers. Behind her, positioned on both the left and right side, though a little far from her, stood Yeonjun and Yeosang; their hands were firm around the guns they held, ready to fire away upon Taehyun’s command, who stood behind the armed duo.

On the other hand, Soobin stood in an area that once held up the clinic. He hid behind a wooden wall that Jungeun had created for him. With one arm, he made quick gestures to transport some broken remains surrounding the machine at a distance, just moments away from being dissolved by the viscous liquid.

In about a minute or so, he had a pile of sharp blocks of cement and concrete, tiles of marble and ceramic, as well as large shards of glass, all ready to be thrown when needed. He only waited for Taehyun’s order.

“Jungeun-noona, whenever you’re ready!” Taehyun quickly wandered his eyes over the team, making sure they were in the correct positions, and suddenly, there was a bubble of confidence floating up to his throat.

He then looked back at the wooden wall that was now wonderfully visible under the sunlight striking through the barrier; the wood was fractured with the claws thrashing against it. He only hoped for this to work.

“Okay, I’m pulling it down!” Jungeun’s declaration was followed by a swift gesture of her nimble fingers, which instantly brought down the wooden wall, the barricade dissolving away with the ground.

There was not a second’s break; as soon as the wall crumbled down, the limbs and claws soared forward, sharp and strong.

But Taehyun’s plan was foolproof, and the team’s training was all worth it.

Just before one of the claws could grab one of the members of the team, Yuqi kicked out a leg and leaned forward, pushing her right hand outward, forming a small whirlwind that sped across the ground, gradually growing into a massive hurricane; the strong gust of wind struck against the gooey bodies of the slimes, pushing them back and distorting the stability of the dangling claws.

Jungeun took that as her chance to create thick vines that wrapped around the exterior of two of the slimes, before another rapid wave of her hand led to a cluster of prickly thorns to penetrate through the bulk of the monsters. “Kai, now!”

Upon that short instruction, Kai dragged a foot behind, leaning back with hands curving towards each other, his fingertips slightly touching. He then hunched over, hurling a blazing ball of fire towards the stunned creatures. He held back a shout of victory as he saw the flames burn away the vines, before the thorns were caught on fire too – the fire was spreading.

Two slimes were already on the verge of death.

In the meantime, Jisu had prepared a mass of cold icicles that floated just above the hand she put out in front of her. She waited for a nod from Taehyun, and just as she received that signal, she closed her fingers into a fist, breathing out in relief at the sight of the icy structures soaring across the air and piercing right into the body of the third slime.

She was capable of handling that slime all alone, her core being the strongest out of them all even though she wasn’t one of the four common elements. Manipulating her power easily, she relaxed her fingers and let her palm face the sky, and as she raised her hand, a pillar raised up just in front of the creature; the pillar curved into an arc, pushing down on the slime until it was compressed into a mushy puddle. Feeling the iciness in her heart calm down, she screamed: “Alright! Take that!”

There were three slimes left unharmed, towering over and casting massive shadows over the team, their claws finally breaking through the strong hurrica