"What? Naruto, you're not joking, are you? You're saying an unprecedented Beast Tide is approaching Free City? You're not joking, right?" Vilis exclaimed in shock.
Compared with Vilis's outburst, the Dean remained remarkably calm. He merely asked, "When are those magical beasts expected to reach Free City?"
"Tomorrow morning, probably," Naruto said calmly. "If we don't stop them."
The Dean raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Boy, tell me what you have planned. If you only wanted to warn us, I doubt someone as lazy as you would exhaust himself just to arrive more than ten hours early."
Indeed, to reach Free City as quickly as possible, Naruto had rested only briefly in the canyon along the way. He had not stopped again after that. By the time he reached Free City, his chakra was exhausted. Without the Nine-Tails' chakra sustaining him, he would probably have collapsed long before.
Naruto looked at the Dean and smiled. "Nothing gets past you, you old geezer. That's right. My companions and I have come up with a workable plan to resolve this crisis."
The Dean smiled smugly. "Heh, I've lived far longer than you, after all. If I couldn't see through something this simple, wouldn't all my years as Dean have been wasted? Go on, what's the plan?"
Naruto wasted no time. After explaining Shikamaru's strategy, he said, "I've already set up Space Points at each location, so we can teleport there whenever we need to. As long as we prepare in advance, Shikamaru says that even if we can't completely stop the Beast Tide, only the Ninth-Rank and Tenth-Rank beasts will make it to Free City. Then we just need to send out our strongest fighters to break up their formation, and their frenzy will dissipate. Once they regain their senses, they naturally