Chương 45

If I had ever had a hard choice in my life, this was it. This was the most difficult thing I had ever been faced with. Or maybe not. I was not going to let Regulus die. And I didn't decide that because Regulus was more instrumental than me in the plan to bring Alice in front of Bryce. No — I didn't really care about that, if I had to be honest. It was more like I had come to appreciate the lion, and his quirks, and his wife. He had a family. He had people. And I didn't want them to suffer his absence. All right.

Let me go out trying something, then. I twisted with my superior Dexterity, changing position, now crouching on the lion's back. And I saw that the bone arrow was barely five feet from me. I could only hear my breath, though. My heart had slowed. And the only thing that reached my ears in this state of heightened sensitivity, through the Sphere of Intuition, was the sound of air going in and out of my nose.

I inhaled, feeling as if my arms were moving through jello while I tried to raise my glaive to parry the arrow. But I wouldn't make it in time. The arrow was going to catch me around the height of my collarbone, probably making my whole upper body explode, given the power behind it. But then, a milky white barrier suddenly appeared in front of me. It carried the creepy marking of a giant skull, as if it had been 3D printed on it.

But at the same time, it was extremely powerful, and it slowed down the blow enough for me to react. I threw my lance as fast as I could, with all the strength I had in my body — so fast that, while Regulus was running, I caused him to lose his balance and swerve to the side. But as the bolt shattered the shield, I still managed to intercept the deadly arrow meant for me. It exploded, and the aftermath made both me and Regulus shout in pain.

But nonetheless, the lion managed to reach the wall and climb it, and we both rolled onto the battlements, looking at each other wildly as I recalled my lance. It clattered to the ground beside me. Langdon reached us with several healers, and I saw Hailey, with the stinky cloak, give me a thumbs-up as the entire team reached us.

"That was so cool," Lucas said.

"Did you see that, John? Did you see how Hailey saved your ass?" Hailey was looking very proud, despite also looking quite creepy with the giant staff made of the boss's bone splinters and the lich's cloak.

"Hailey," I sputtered.

"Thank you." I felt my heart in my throat at the moment. I was so agitated and flooded with adrenaline, I could barely speak.

"I just helped a little. You struck down another bolt and killed one of their strongest fighters."

"I mean, I have to thank Alice." I turned to the woman wielding the two guns. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! Every other person on the battlements kept sneaking glances at her, and I could see the gratitude, the admiration, the recognition of what she could really do. Oh, I was so glad that she had helped. Maybe in a different setting, with no army of zombies racing for me and Regulus, we could have taken them.

We could have taken down the Dullahan. I was discovering the real power of the Sphere of Intuition, and just how deep my knowledge of spear fighting had gotten with all those levels. But without Alice's help, surrounded by zombies and other fighters, it would have been very, very hard to kill that man.

"All right," I said.

"I need to lay down a second. We'll go as soon as planned, right?" I turned to them. Langdon said, "This is a siege. The open battle was mostly for show. The breach is contained, and we have already rebuilt parts of the wall thanks to the craftsmen. Of course, it is not going to hold. But the barricades we have built, the fall-back points — this is going to turn into a meat grinder. But there's time, John. Rest. The most important thing is for you to overcome the mana poisoning risk." I looked at my wristwatch.

The entire conflict — that entire thing — had barely taken ten minutes, and I still had about a hundred and eight minutes to wait.

"All right." Lucas turned to the wall, and I could see his twitching hands. Everybody here really just wanted to join the fray and help the other fighters, but there were too many zombies, too many enemies. We had stopped Bryce from breaching the wall in multiple points by killing the Corpse Mounds, but now the most difficult part was going to be to keep as many people alive as possible until we managed to take down that woman. The plan was pretty simple.

We would use the pyrotechnic kit, reach her, have Alice throw the glove down in front of her, and then kill her. Alice was confident that, in a short-range battle, she would be able to draw her guns and absolutely tear Bryce apart. It didn't matter how strong Bryce was. It didn't matter that she was an archer. Alice had taken down a supernaturally fast vampire as if it was nothing, and she had been several levels below what she was now.

"How's Zosma doing?" I asked as the zombies reached the breach.

"She has killed more than thirty knights herself," Langdon said.

"That staff she's carrying has pulverized twice as many, after the rest of the fighters down below took down the horses with their long spears. She's scary strong, John."

"She's my wife," Regulus smirked.

"Of course she's strong. Our offspring will be the strongest our race has ever seen." Langdon had a smile on his face when he heard something. He had a relay piece for the speaking stone right in his ear, just like an earbud. Then he turned to me.

"John, Father Okonkwo wants to see you."

"Now?" I said.

"What?"

"You're going to be useless for almost two hours, John. Go. I'll have some men escort you to one of the safe houses."

"All right," I muttered. Father Okonkwo was being shuttled back and forth between safe houses, and there were several decoys in place. Langdon was on a level of paranoid that probably surpassed the Secret Service and the President. And to be honest, I was super glad that he had that kind of mindset, because the way he had arranged more than a hundred people to just shuffle around Father Okonkwo, and other people dressed like him, was mind-blowing.

He said that, with all the potential traitors in our midst, if one guard pulled a knife on the old man, all our efforts would have been for naught. To be honest, I told him that I really doubted that a simple guard was going to be able to kill the man. Father Okonkwo wouldn't be able to join the fight, because he couldn't get out of the Haven without breaking his vow — the same vow that would keep hundreds of millions of humans alive when the second floor happened.

But otherwise, inside the walls, I wasn't sure that I was the one with the most strength and combat proficiency in close combat.