Dawn of the 13th Era

A Tier 3 (3)

"We're late, aren't we? My apologies, we got caught up a bit."

The Captain and the special force recruits looked back at the entrance to see Aeric and the other two walking over while Aeric had a smile on his face.

Seeing the smile on Aeric's face made the already irritated Captain even angrier, and he shouted, "Who are you, and why are you here? The university area is sealed off right now. All civilians are advised to leave till the military are done here."

"Oh no, we are not civilians," Aeric said with a smile while stretching out a hand.

"Then what are y'all, reinforcements?"

"You could call it that. We were passing by and decided to help," he replied while showing the captain his badge.

The captain couldn't recognize the squad number sign, but he knew only members of the special force could use the squad.

'I'll just let them tag along. As long as they don't get in our way, it should be fine,' he thought while ordering the rest to move back into the campus premises.

Aeric and the other two initially followed the soldiers into the campus, but after a while, without meeting anyone apart from the dead bodies of animals and students, Aeric looked up in the direction of the zoo.

'The animals were rampaging at first. Now they're gathered in a single spot.'

"It knows we're coming," Aeric said.

Damion raised an eyebrow and said, "It knows??"

"All the animals are gathered together. It's raising its guard towards us, obviously. I don't think there's anyone else here who can make it this cautious, and it's not moving out," Aeric replied with a worried look on his face.

"If what you said is right, then does it mean...."

"Yes, we're about to deal with a tier 3, and there are other tier 2s there also. The problem is, how are there so many mutant animals here when even the animals in the forests can't produce this many mutants?" Aeric replied.

"Should we tell them or not? I don't think telling them would help much though," Damion asked.

"Don't bother about them," Aeric replied, then turned in the direction of the zoo without anyone noticing or even looking at him. Damion and Vincent also followed behind him, but no one seemed to notice—even the soldiers beside them didn't notice anything wrong.

"Let's deal with this as soon as possible, then leave," Aeric said while looking at the zoo.

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Meanwhile, after Orion killed the mutant tigers, he didn't have any more worries and just killed as many of the animals as he could find. After a while, he could barely find the rampaging animals.

"Are they all dead?" he said while panting, then glanced over the campus while walking around looking for survivors. Looking at the corpses spread around—both animals and students—his eyes became moist.

"They only came to study. Who started this? What started it?" he thought while covering his face with his hands.

"Jerry, I'm sorry," he thought, then looked towards the direction of the zoo.

'They all broke out from the zoo. Before leaving, I want to know what exactly caused the breakout from the zoo,' Orion thought, then switched to Dave's form and started running towards the zoo with large strides.

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The soldiers searched around the campus for the rampaging animals, but all they found were dead corpses and hiding students.

"Where are the animals? I can't see any alive," one of the reinforcements asked.

"I think someone beat us to it. It must be the special force," another one of them said while inspecting the body of a dead gorilla.

"Special Force?"

"The corpses were either charred, or they have a huge dent caused by a fist print. I don't think there's any normal human capable of doing that, right?" he asked while looking up with a smile.

"Either way, I don't care if the special force sent others apart from you guys, but it made our job easier. You all should search the halls and offices for survivors," the captain said, then ordered the soldiers and special force members to spread out and find the survivors.

"Each of you split into teams of two, a special force member and a soldier each. The three extra members... Wait, where are they?" he asked the soldier he ordered to watch over them while searching around for any signs of danger.

"I...."

"Can't you talk??" the captain asked in rage.

The special force members were highly valued, and if four of them died here under his watch, it would be a huge hit to him.

"I don't know when or how they suddenly vanished. They were with us till a few minutes ago. I could swear I still saw them here just now!" the soldier said while looking around frantically.

"Forget it for now. Just look for the survivors. The three of you come with me, let's go find them," he said while pointing at three soldiers, including the one he instructed to watch over them.

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Orion, after getting to the zoo, found it empty without any sign of life. The only things there were corpses of the guards and workers of the zoo.

'It looks like it's the same here also,' he thought while stepping into the zoo carefully and walking towards where the animals were kept when he saw a lion with broken chains all over its body lying on the ground in front of the cells.

Looking at the lion, his eyes suddenly widened. 'It has two colors?' he thought, when the lion suddenly stood up while staring at him and let out a low roar.

“ROOOAAARRR!!---"

The next moment, the zoo burst into pure chaos as animals like hyenas, tigers, lions, cheetahs, gorillas, crocodiles, snakes, pigeons, and even an elephant suddenly rushed out from the zoo building, all of them staring straight at Orion.