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Chapter 31: Down in the Warzone - Part 1

The Girl in Black strolled toward him. The echo from her heeled boots was the only discernible sound in the area, as the roar of the two-headed dragon and the noise of the people fighting it seemed distant and mundane.

"What\'s so funny, sweetheart?" The girl tilted her head, showing genuine curiosity. Without saying a word, she ordered the black bindings around Oscar\'s wrists to hold him aloft, so she could watch his face. "Has losing that easily gotten in your head? Did I hurt your precious pride so much that the only thing left for you is to laugh?"

"No. It\'s not about me. You mentioned something about your colleague, fighting The Golden Comet as we speak."

"Yes. What about it?"

"I presume that this colleague of yours is also exempt from the Safe Zone\'s debuffs like you, am I correct?" Oscar waited for her response, but the girl opted for silence. "I\'ll take it as a yes, then. He-he. I\'d like to give you a warning. You\'re really underestimating her."

The girl remained quiet until something resembling a small black dog approached her feet, wagging its tail.

"Look who came back!" she said lovingly. "Who\'s a good girl, hmm? Did you find him, Bubsy?"

As the girl crouched to hold the pet\'s feet, Oscar stared at it. The creature looked back, showing that most of its head consisted of one large eye.

Wait, what did she say? \'Find him\'? Find who? Is Astrid not their primary target? Don\'t tell me that her colleague\'s job is just to distract her?! I have to tell Tamara about this...

"Tell me, sweetie. What would be the most painful way to die for you right now?"

Don\'t get distracted. Just deliver the message...

Seeing that his defeated enemy had fallen into silence, she shrugged. "Oh, well. I\'ll choose for you then."

The shadow under her feet enlarged, getting below Oscar\'s body. He knew what was going to happen.

"Wait! There\'s something else I need to ask you!"

"And I don\'t need to comply!" the girl said, grinning and gesturing goodbye.

The shadow below Oscar bubbled as if it had turned into a pitch-black swamp, and a second later, dozens of spikes impaled his entire body.

"Okay, Bubsy, let\'s go," the girl said while the little critter disappeared inside her shadow. "We\'re in the middle of a date, aren\'t we?"

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A girl with dirty blond hair slowly opened her eyes and immediately felt her body numb. With squinting eyes, she barely recognized the streets she traversed every day to go to work, as the sidewalks and buildings looked in complete ruin.

She was moving but could not feel her legs working. It wasn\'t until she clenched her hands against someone else\'s clothes that she realized she was being piggybacked.

"W-What... happened?"

"Oh, great! You regained consciousness. How do you feel?"

"As if a dragon had stormed my house..."

The young man carrying her chuckled. "Well, technically, that\'s what really happened."

"W-What? Are you serious? H-How did a dragon—?" The girl stopped mid-sentence as if a sudden pain had shut her up.

The young man halted after hearing her wail and gently put her down. "Try not to move, okay? You got wounded when the building... um..." He pursed his lips and avoided her gaze as if he had been the cause of her misfortune.

"What?" The girl frowned while examining the boy\'s face. There were dark marks under his eyes, giving him a restless appearance, but it did not make sense. No one in The Novus kept physical imperfections voluntarily unless they were some kind of attention seeker. "Whatever. Shit happens. Do you have a red potion?"

The guy with red chestnut hair shook his head. "No. Sorry. This is the best I could do." His gaze pointed at the bandages covering her abdomen.

"So what now?" she asked, raising her voice. She only got a puzzled expression as an answer. "You were carrying me somewhere. What was your plan?"

"Oh, sorry. I\'ve been trying to get some help for a while now, but..."

"Nothing?" She sneered. "Is the situation so dire that you haven\'t stumbled across someone since you found me?" She looked around, maintaining an expression of disbelief. "I recognize this place; we\'re five blocks away from my apartment."

He pursed his lips, unable to answer until a light projected his shadow over her. "LOOK OUT!"

A nightmarish, deafening sound terrorized them for five excruciating seconds. Her heart skipped a beat as she tightly embraced the young man shielding her. When she dared to peek over his shoulder, she could see a massive wall of light disintegrating the convenience store she had used as a point of reference.

When that massive laser beam dissipated, silence reigned over that lonesome street again.

"N-No way..." she muttered. "What was that?"

"That\'s the dragon\'s deathly breath. That\'s why I\'m trying to get you out of this zone as quickly as I can."

"You\'re kidding me," she whispered, as her lower lip trembled. "Is something that powerful roaming the city right now? What are the guilders that swore to protect this city do--?!" Her shouting was interrupted by the piercing pain from her wound.

"H-Hang in there just for a little while, okay? I promise we\'ll find you a healer." He then turned around, ready to carry her again. "Come on, let\'s keep going."

She observed his back for a moment before sighing. "What\'s your name?"

"Alan Warden. Yours?"

"Nikki. Thanks for helping me, Alan, but it may take us a while until we find a healer since they may be busy dealing with the monster."

"We\'ll find someone who can give us a red potion then. Come on, we have to get out of here!"

"I have a better idea," she began whispering as she leaned forward to touch his cheeks.

"Nikki? What are you...?"

She exhaled before casting: "Active Skill, Lifesteal."

Overwhelming dizziness paralyzed Alan as if all the blood inside his body was being taken away. Seconds later, he lost control of his body, and half of his face hit the ground.

As he did his best to remain conscious, a pair of shoes got inside his blurry line of vision.

"What kind of joke is this?" the girl cried, annoyed. "Are you really level 5? You barely had the necessary HP to help me close this damn wound! Whatever. Thank god there are still stupid white-knight assholes like you in this shitty VR. Nice meeting you, Alan. You should be grateful that I stopped the Skill before killing you."

With that said, the young woman strode from there, but her rushed footsteps were shut by someone giggling in his ear. "What a shitty person that was... Are you okay with this outcome, Alan?"

Squinting, he turned his gaze toward Nikki running down the street, but saw a shadowy figure instead, getting cut in half like a piece of paper.

What the...?

He gathered his strength to stand up, ignoring a system warning telling him that his HP was at 5%, for something had appeared in front of him that demanded his full attention.

"Alan Warden..."

A disembodied voice echoed inside his head.

"Do you really want to know what happened?"

The street in ruins had been swapped for a white hallway. The floor reflected him, and the pristine walls begged not to be touched by his dirty palms.

Is this... The Santa María?

"...The truth may be ugly, you know,"

"I know..." he replied, as the immaculate walls now presented burn marks, and the floor changed to red.

"It\'s a good thing that The Novus does not leave corpses behind. It\'s better this way, right, Alan?"

He almost tripped after stumbling upon something. Was it a person lying down over a pool of his own blood? He could not tell and he refused to inspect it. But when he looked at the path in front of him, dozens of other human-looking figures awaited.

The corridor spread forward like an endless tunnel, and with it, hundreds of unidentifiable sacks of meat.

"Just imagine how messy the streets of Londorus would look right now if The Novus did not get rid of the bodies. It\'d be quite a sight to behold... Don\'t you think? So answer me this, Alan. Have you seen a bunch of bodies lying around lately? Like candy scattered across the ground after breaking a pi?ata, hu-hu."

"I..."

He noticed a light at the end of the tunnel. A blinding light that tried to scare him away and threatened to go out forever, leaving him in perpetual darkness. But he needed to advance forward whatever the costs. Even though the goal may hurt him and break his soul into a thousand pieces. He owed it to the people that worked before him and to those that made this journey possible.

At least that\'s what I believe, he said to himself as he forced himself to go forward.

"Stop. I wouldn\'t go in that direction if I was you..."

"Shut up. Don\'t try to stop me."

"Seriously... It\'ll kill you."

"J-JUST SHUT UP! I know I\'m hopeless, okay?! I just need to—"

"What a nuisance. I can\'t have you getting killed just yet, you know? You still have a lot to an—"

An explosion shut the woman\'s voice and brought Alan back to reality.

He looked up in the direction the voice was coming from and witnessed the black-clothed girl escaping from an entire building floor engulfed in flames. He then realized that the light coming from the illusionary tunnel was the dragon\'s breath, coming at him from a distance.

Oh, for the love of—I\'m so toasted!