The Abyss Gate was positioned at the corner of the wide road far up ahead, and the digital interfaces of the vehicle already began to glitch on and off.
"We'll circle it and find a safe area to camp," Abraham informed the two brothers.
As the APC drove past the Rank-1 Gate slowly, Roy observed it carefully.
It was like a tear in the fabric of reality, its corners bearing no proper or defined edge—a real spatial distortion.
White particles hovered across its surface, and red lightning sparked across. The surface of the gate flowed inward into itself constantly, giving the gate a pulsating and eerily alive presence.
In the backdrop was an abandoned district, with dilapidated skyscrapers, broken windows and doors of old shops and apartment buildings, countless deserted vehicles, and an overgrowth of grass, vines, and moss almost everywhere the eyes could see.
Roy gazed at the abyss gate in complete awe. Seeing one up close was a vastly different experience from behind a screen.
"Should be a day-old gate," Donny voiced and turned to Abraham, "…right?"
Abraham nodded.
"It'll break by sunset."
Donny added worriedly, "And unless the abyssals that will pour out reach the curbing threshold, executioners won't be dispatched."
The D-Class Executioner wore a thoughtful expression before glancing at Roy and saying, "This is just what we need."
"We?" Roy raised a brow.
Screee!
A loud screech resounded in the nearby area.
Abraham immediately stopped the vehicle, and the group looked outside.
A winged creature, closely resembling a bat and pterodactyl, stood atop a high building far ahead, staring them down with a fierce gaze.
Roy's eyes were wide with a silent fear, but he found strength in the fact that he was in the company of a D-Class Executioner.
Abraham smiled slightly and explained, "That's a Spearhead Wyvern, a Strange Abyssal. It's warning us not to enter its territory…"
"Then are we going back?" Roy asked, and Donny too waited for the answer.
"Going back?" Abraham scoffed and raised the flap below his chin to cover the lower half of his face. "What did I tell you about fear?"
Roy and Donny gulped audibly.
"Take up your knife, Roy. And Donald, stay in the vehicle for now," Abraham said and jumped down from the APC.
Roy followed suit too and voiced, frightened, "W-Wait, I'm not wearing any armour, and I don't even know how to use this thing. Shouldn't I at least prepare a bit more?"
"Shut up and stay behind me."
Abraham took a step forward and stretched his right hand, calling out, "Array."
Immediately, a floating rack of various weapons appeared beside him, on his right. There was a pistol, a rifle, a sniper, a chainsaw sword, a jagged spear, a bow, and a scythe.
Roy, standing on the left, looked at it in awe. Just how many killing instruments did this man always keep around for heaven's sake?
'…No, not for heaven's sake, for the abyss' sake,' he thought, timidly holding onto the Netherstone dagger.
The D-Class Executioner remained facing the Spearhead Wyvern far ahead and grabbed the jagged obsidian spear from the rack.
"I won't kill it. You will, as planned. These things don't stay down for long, so you have to do it, do it quickly. Lobotomise it," he said to Roy.
Roy gulped. 'L-Lobotomise it? I'm only sixteen!'
"Screee!" The Spearhead Wyvern screamed and flapped its wings, pushing itself off the building and coming down towards them like a jet fighter.
"There may be more than one, so be prepared," Abraham said in a more agile tone and ran forward.
And boy, was he quick!
And just then, three more Spearhead Wyverns appeared and leapt off the building, all screeching in a wicked cacophony.
Roy was already far behind when Abraham jumped on a car and then leapt into the air.
'What is he doing?!' Roy wondered, his eyes focused on both the executioner and the strange abyssals. The increased numbers made him freeze in place and look back at the APC, the thought of fleeing welling up in his heart.
He couldn't see Donny from outside the vehicle, but he was sure the lad was looking right back at him.
Roy looked at the surrounding area briefly, hoping to spot another abyssal to justify running back to the APC, but there was none; or rather, they were all carefully hidden away.
It seemed the nearby gate made them disperse from the area. This was so because a gate break would mean new monsters in the playing field, meaning new adversaries for the current landowners of the playing field.
Only the aerial Spearhead Wyverns remained to protect their territory because they were well aware of the air advantage they possessed, along with them all being 'Strange'—the threat level equivalent to E-Class.
After Abraham leapt off the car, a set of two-dimensional circles appeared mid-air in an ascending, zig-zag manner. Right when he landed on the first circle, there was a flash, and he was already springing off the last circle, shocking even the abyss creature with how fast his movement was.
The leader of the Spearhead Wyvern had their eyes fixated on Abraham, coming down in a charge with its six-foot-long, spearlike mouth, aiming for his torso.
However, his fierce charge and the spear in his hand made it swerve away, deciding to let its minions attack him first. Unfortunately for the creature, Abraham was already aware of this idea of theirs.
Without a second thought, just half a second since he leapt off that last two-dimensional circle, he twisted his body and threw the spear with defining aim.
Pierce!
"Sqaaaaaah!!!" The flying monster screamed in agony as the spear impaled its right wing, and its companions charged harder with a scream and aggrieved eyes.
Roy watched all these things happen in less than two minutes.
"G-Goddamit," he voiced under his breath and continued running forward.
Abraham, however, never remained static. After he threw that spear, he twisted his body forward and landed on another plane circle that was tilted to face downward.
In a squatting position, he pushed himself off the circle and shot towards the agonised Spearhead Wyvern.
He grabbed onto it and slashed its left wing with a short dagger, causing it to tumble down while attempting to wrestle Abraham off.
"Roy!" he called and let go of the strange abyssal, landing on a black plane circle.
With a heavy thud, the creature landed on the concrete road, immobilised.
"I'm ready!" Roy voiced, running towards the fallen avian monster.
The other Spearhead Wyverns had charged past with their mandibles, but Abraham seemed like a thousand steps ahead. They weren't even close to landing a near-miss attack on him.
He didn't harm any of them and landed safely back on the car he had leapt off from, while the wounded Spearhead Wyvern was just a metre away, trying to use its mouth to remove the jagged spear lodged in its right wing.
And just then, Roy arrived there too.
"Screee!!!"
The Spearhead Wyverns were charging down fiercely at them, in hopes of saving their leader, but Abraham took a deep breath and leapt off again.
Roy oscillated gazes between the fallen Spearhead, Abraham, and the surroundings, extremely lost on what to focus on. But in just the sixty seconds he remained dazed, the other Spearheads fell dead one by one.
"What are you waiting for?!" Abraham shouted at Roy, snapping him out of his reverie.
"I'm coming!" The kid screamed and ran down, holding the dagger.
The wounded abyssal wyvern gave up on removing the spear and began to retreat, already sensing what was soon to befall it.
Roy saw it, the fear and anger evident in its yellow and black reptilian eyes.
Abraham finally landed after massacring the other Wyverns, but did so on the head of their wounded leader, pinning it to the ground forcefully.
"Screeeaa—"
Thud!
Abraham stomped his foot on its head, forcing it to shut up.
Roy was now only a few centimetres away and observed the creature closely.
The body of the Strange Monster, Spearhead Wyvern, was the length of a fully grown alligator, which was about twenty feet. Its head and mandible added an extra seven feet to the length of its body, also bearing a wingspan of at least ten metres.
Roy looked up at Abraham, and the executioner waited patiently for him to finish the deed with the bloodied chainsword whirring in his hand.
'This is crazy,' Roy thought, his attention drawn to the dark-red blood pouring out from the wounds of the abyss creature.
Despite it being just a class below Abraham, he was still able to bring it and its companions to their knees in mere minutes. This power discrepancy only served to increase in higher classes.
Before it could make another wailing sound, Roy rushed forward and confidently stabbed the creature's left eye, and then twisted the dagger.
Right then, the monotone voice of his system resounded in his heart.
[You have slain the strange monster, Spearhead Wyvern.]
[+400 EXP.]