Chapter 163: Monster Portals

Rift?! The same kind of rift I sealed back in the Phantasmal Reality?!

"Maple! Let's go!"

"I was just waiting for you to say that!" Maple nodded and pulled her set of knives out of nowhere.

Since the explosion is just near, we sprinted towards the location while readying ourselves on what is going on. We arrived at a plaza that never existed in the real Akihabara since this place is full of buildings on that spot so that place must be an exclusive park only seen here in the Akihabara Other World. In the middle of the plaza is the rift that the man earlier said.

"Monster Portal! What is that doing here?!" Maple was surprised when she saw the rift.

"Monster Portal?"

"You have encountered the G.A.T.E.S, right? Then the monster portal acts similarly except that you cannot enter it as the former does. Instead, the inhabitants inside will emerge and go on a rampage to the other side where the portal appeared. Unlike the G.A.T.E.S, the Monster Portals can be closed once the monsters that emerge all get killed. Also, it only appears whenever the balance of mana in the surroundings suddenly spikes up which will cause an imbalance that will allow the monsters to rip open a portal, giving them access to our world."

"So, everything got messed up due to the imbalance of the mana in the surroundings? Then how can we return its balance?"

"As I said earlier, we can only close the portal once the monsters emerging on it are all killed. There is no other way for us to force close it."

Looks like there is no easy way. I wanted to preserve my energy instead of going to pointless battles but there is no way I can skip this one out. If killing the monsters is the only way, then so be it.

"Let's end this quickly so that we can go straight to the investigation right away."

There are already a lot of people killed by the monsters in surprise. Male, female, adult, or young, none are spared. The monsters that appeared on the portal are humanoid flesh that has no definitive feature except the white circle on its forehead area and a small hole placed on its mouth. Other than that, it looked like a lump of mashed meat piled together and shaped like a humanoid which looks disgusting enough.

Surprisingly, they might look like wobbly creatures but they possess a strong physique that they can easily rip out a human body to shreds as it did to some victims that we failed to save.

"I'll handle the left, Kazuma, you handle the right side!" Maple suggested before running to where she assigned herself.

"No problem with me."

The gore on the streets seems like it came from a horror movie where a monster wreaks havoc on unsuspecting people. Getting close to one, I can smell the strong smell of blood and the vomit-inducing air coming from their body. As one spotted me, it hurled itself to me like a lump of meatball rolling from the plate.

"Get away from me!"

BANG!

Punching them on their body then overloading them with mana caused the fat body of my target explodes. I didn't have time to enjoy the explosion as I quickly moved to the next target and kill it. They move slowly when nothing is around them but their reflexes to move when there is a target is insane as they can quickly move from where they stand to a few meters ahead as long as a target appears on their field of view or field of their senses as I don't think that white circle on their forehead is an eye.

Despite the massacre they did in just a short time, they are weak enough to be easily killed. Just annoying to deal with especially their insane speed to attack a human. I sighed in relief after killing the last monster on my side. Looking into Maple's side, she also finished her side and cleanly cut everything to pieces.

Looking at the monster's corpses, and surveying the place for any enemies, I noticed the portal started to shrink until it disappeared without a trace.

"Alright, we have closed the portal," I said and wipe off the sweat on my forehead.

"Good job on your part. Anyway, I was wondering why I don't see the mercenary magicians around? They should be here prioritizing the closure of the portals," Maple said.

Just like what Maple said, the mercenaries that were supposed to be present here in the Other Realm of Akihabara did not even help to close the portal. But then, there was someone who suddenly started speaking raising our defenses.

"Don't attack. We are the mercenaries in this area. Sorry, we came in late!" one man who is wearing a hoodie jacket said. Behind him are two females wearing casual clothes usually seen on girls who are going outside to visit some places. They don't look like they are mercenaries to me at all.

"Mercenaries? You came in late. We already finished off all monsters here and closed the portal. There is no need for you lot to stand in here. If you want to clean up the mess here, then we will gladly hand the job over to all of you."

The three were surprised when they heard that the portal is closed. They looked around for a while to confirm if we are lying or not.

"It looks like they are telling the truth. The mana residue in this place is quite high and the surroundings are full of corpses and demon carcasses. They might not look like strong people but they are telling the truth," the girl with glasses said as she assesses us.

"Just the two of them?! The monsters we killed on the other portals are hard to defeat and they defeated them easily?" the guy in the hoodie said.

"Sota, you underestimate others, aren't you? From what I can see, these guys REALLY have the abilities. I can tell from their mana storages that they are not just your average magicians, especially the guy over there," the girl that looked like a fashionista pointed at me.

"So there are multiple gates that have appeared here? No wonder the mercenaries that we expected to appear did not appear here, turns out they are busy with other portals," I mumbled.

"Since you guys are here, we will not be staying here since we still have something to do. Farewell," Maple said and beckons me to follow suit.

The three mercenaries or so they call themselves did not stop us and just stare at us moving away from the scene as we are still trying to find where the hell is the building that has the mercenaries are. We didn't bother to ask those three as they seemed to be warier on us so it is more unlikely they will cooperate with us.

...

As the two odd magicians left, the three looked at the surroundings and the male named Sota scratched his head in confusion.

"These monster carcasses are a mess! How the heck did those two wrecks the enemies easily?"

Shizuka, the girl with the glasses crouch down to one of the flesh scattered on the street and inspected it, though she didn't touch it, she levitated it using magic before she inspected the whole thing.

"Based on this flesh of meat, the monster that got killed is the Moving Mounds. With the droplets of blood scattered all around, I assume that the way it was killed is by an explosion, however, there are no signs of flesh burned so this monster must have been killed via brute force or magic that can cause this kind of damage to a degree. There are no signs of magic damage dealt from the flesh but there is overwhelming mana residue on their flesh attached."

"Moving Mounds are pretty resistant to Physical Attacks. So if there is no magic involved, but there is mana residue, isn't this blowing up enemies by overloading them with mana?" the fashionista looking lady, Reiko said.

"It is possible. But isn't overloading mana only possible if the magician has a boundless amount of mana to expend? From the looks of the number of corpses, there are so many of those monsters killed. The other group of monsters on this side did not get killed by explosion but they are diced to pieces in cubes," Sota said as he examined the area where Maple fought.

Hearing what Sota said, Shizuka went to Sota's location and looked at the cubes of flesh from the Moving Mounds. It was cleanly cut that not a single shred of flesh that is out of place stands out."

"This... it's possible if they used some sort of blade that can easily cut things to pieces. If I may guess, the girl earlier is the one who did this stuff. Cutting up the monsters to pieces might be her work due to the sword bag she was carrying earlier," Shizuka said.

"Then, are you saying the one who exploded all the monsters using mana overload is that guy?!"