Chương 108: Drowning In Misery

'June! Wake up!' June opened his eyes and felt the sting of dirt and dust flow into his eyes. He floated limply in the bloody still water, finding it funny how the dust and dirt getting into his eyes was his first thought, probably because his leg was nearly separated from the kneecap, or his body was bruised and scraped all over, maybe even because he was moments away from drowning if not for his imaginary friend freezing his diaphragm.

He looked around, and his expression soured; he would have gasped if not for the fact that his breathing was frozen. The tons of stone and wood that pinned him underneath during his fall had crashed through the floor and into an underground dormitory. Clothing and curios alike floated up near the doorway. It seems that tenants of this shared room woke up abruptly, crowded the doorway as the room filled up, and drowned together in a clump.

The door itself was torn inward, which meant either that someone, in a panicked state, had opened it and let the water gush in or that the torrent cascading down the catacomb had blown it open. June would have inhaled deeply to calm himself, but there were several obvious reasons why he couldn't, so instead he bore with the fear, discomfort, and urge to give in to the peaceful waters.

He looked down and observed his leg coldly; it was thoroughly stuck, tons of stone had it pinned to the ground, shattered, and almost cut fully through except for one painful strand of flesh connected to his leg. June had no time to steel himself, so he swiftly turned a revenant into a sickle, jammed the blade into the floor next to it, and suppressed the squeamish worming in his stomach as he, with a single motion, dragged the blade through the connected strand, freeing himself.

'Looks like a meatball?' His disconnected thoughts somehow amazed him and annoyed him; the cut wasn't clean, and the wound was mostly caused by a jagged piece of stone that extended past the ceiling and most likely to the surface he would have attempted to lift in any other case, but due to water and his precarious positioning of floating while being pinned, it made it hard to muster proper strength.

June reached his hand to the bleeding stump and infused streaming gold into his hand before crushing flesh together and keeping it in place with Will; flesh-shaping may be an all-cure, but sometimes an even brasher method would work as well. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. He swam away and looked longingly at the rock, contemplating recovering his leg, but decided not to. He continued to the corridor and looked down both sides.

It was already claustrophobic to be in the caves, but now they were dark, drowned, and, not to mention, murky. He looked at the path heading down, then to the path heading up, and after a short moment of hesitation, he went for the path up.

'Most people further down would have been crushed or drowned already…'

"I… know…. There's still a chance.' June ceased his swimming and looked back down the dark tunnel. He wasn't as afraid; he had night vision to see through the dark and didn't need to breathe, but others didn't know that mechanic within the games. He clenched his teeth and kept swimming up. Even if the dwellers below survived, they would just as likely die above if he didn't sort the surface out. So he continued swimming, and to his fortune, he found another breach in the ceiling closer than the entrance.

He swam up to the top, popped his head up above the water, and unfroze his diaphragm. June took in a deep breath, swallowing rain and floodwater that rushed in equally, and coughed. He treaded water and looked around desperately for signs of life, but to no avail. Up, down, left, and right, everywhere he looked was obscured by a veil of falling water and backlit by a theatrical illumination of lightning. His mind raced with dozens of plans of action, but in the end, he just swam forward.

Every plan needed a foundation of plausibility; without knowing a general likelihood of a plan, it might as well be considered gambling at that point. So, lost in a storm of thought, June simply swam forward, hoping to bump into something or someone. And shortly, he reached a wall.

An hour had passed since June climbed up one of New Brighthaven's remaining walls. A small group of people huddled together behind him as he leaned dangerously over the standing battlements. Ann, Eren, River, Silvester, and several other familiar faces were unaccounted for. He clenched a fist around a corner of the blocky battlements, and in turn, it slowly crumbled to dust.

The water that flooded into the castle was now somewhat still, meaning the underground areas where people lived were fully flooded, and the flooded castle was now sitting in still water. The rain fell in battering carpets; each thunderclap made the world, castle, and his entire body vibrate, and the lightning itself was devastatingly powerful.

Doomsday was a horrible event, even worse than the current drowning of the world, but the difference between then and now was that Brighthaven was mobile then, and now that they were hunkered down, they had nowhere to run to. The caravan buses themselves were scrapped for parts while their furniture was reused to furnish dormitories, and the Form of Burden had been left to rot over the past weeks; unless it was continuously used, it was an inevitable outcome.

So, in the end, the thing that might wipe out Brighthaven wouldn't be the Royal Faction, Doomsday Week, the Wendigo, or even the Demon-Class, but a singular hurricane.