Pain shot through my whole body, driving me onto one knee. I had no idea what was happening to me until a notification appeared.
[DRACONIC INTEGRATION INITIATED]
DRACONIC INTEGRATION INITIATED
For several seconds, the all-encompassing pain became stronger. It was all I could think about. It felt like some liquid was being injected into my flesh, and the liquid caused a burning sensation in anything it touched. The only part of my body that seemed to be free from the burning was my left eye, which had already been empowered by [Draconic Integration].
God! Why hadn’t Carlos told me it hurt so much!?
[DRACONIC INTEGRATION COMPLETED]
DRACONIC INTEGRATION COMPLETED
Name: Vinzadir
Class: Eldritch Alchemist
Level: 5
MDC: 13+40/40
Body: 13
Mind: 17
Name Vinzadir Class Eldritch Alchemist Level 5 MDC 13+40/40 Body 13 Mind 17
In an instant, the pain stopped, and my senses returned to me. The pain wasn’t nearly as bad as the sensation of having my eye torn out by Epsilon, but I certainly wouldn’t want to experience it again.
When I looked up, Claire was kneeling next to Simon’s corpse. Tears ran freely down her cheeks, and I wondered what their relationship had been before System Integration. Liz stood next to Claire, trying her best to console the grieving girl.
“You okay, man?” Carlos asked from beside me.
I looked up and saw Carlos standing there awkwardly, unsure of what to do.
“Yeah?” I said, unsure of why he had asked that. “Why?”
“Uh,” Carlos said, scratching the back of his head. “It’s just… you had a pained look on your face.”
Right. Carlos must have thought the pain I expressed as a result of [Draconic Integration] was my reaction to Simon’s death. In that context, it made sense. I figured I might as well use this misunderstanding to my advantage.
“I’m fine,” I said with the inflection of a man who blamed himself for the tragedy unfolding in front of him.
“It’s not your fault,” Carlos said. “We couldn’t know that there would be so many of them here.”
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Ignoring Carlos’s statement, I walked up to Claire and kneeled beside her. Through wracking sobs, Claire said, “Isn’t there anything you can do, Elizabeth?”
“No,” Liz said sadly. “[Heal] doesn’t work once the target has reached zero SDC.”
I looked down at the diagonal cleave that split Simon’s body. His heart and lungs had been cut in half by the Uruk’s attack. No amount of surgical intervention could save someone from such an injury.
As I looked at Simon’s body, I noticed a slight movement in his lips, as if he was trying to say something. I couldn’t be sure if that was the result of his conscious mind trying to communicate, or if it was the result of a few dying brain waves firing at random like a chicken with its head cut off. Either way, he would have no hope of communicating with his hands removed and his lungs bisected.
“His mind hasn’t shut off yet,” I said, accidentally allowing my inner monologue to express itself verbally.
“He’s still alive?” Claire asked through tears.
I wanted to explain that death was a complicated process, that the heart and brain frequently shut off at different times. I knew that the brain could keep running for several minutes after the body was dead. Instead, I decided to keep my answer short.
“No.”
With practiced precision, I drew my gun from its holster and put a bolt of laser fire into Simon’s head. In an instant, Simon’s head was destroyed, and a crater of molten rock was created in the stone floor beneath him. It was far better to die in an instant than to slowly fade into oblivion.
Four shields popped into the visual range of the light spectrum to protect us from the heat generated by my shot.
I knew that I would have to keep the initiative in order to prevent any long conversations from interrupting our walk to the Carolin Union. Claire opened her mouth to say something, but I cut her off.
“He couldn’t be saved. We don’t have time to sit here and talk about our feelings for ten minutes. This place isn’t safe. Another twenty Uruks could pop up at any time, and we probably wouldn’t survive another wave of them. If you want to shout and swear at me, you’ll have plenty of time to do it when we’re safe. We can still be saved, he can’t.”
Punctuating my speech, I reloaded my laser pistol and returned it to its holster. I honestly didn’t like leading in such a way, but Claire needed a shock to the system to keep going. We couldn’t afford to stop and cry every time someone died.
Without allowing anyone time to respond, I turned away from Simon’s body and continued walking toward the Carolina Union. After a few seconds, the others had caught up to me. I heard Liz and Claire conversing at a low volume behind me, but I didn’t try to listen.
“You didn’t have to be a jerk about it,” Carlos whispered to me as we walked.
“It is what it is,” I said with a shrug, echoing a sentiment I had expressed to Carlos and Liz many times before. “If her hatred of me keeps her moving, that’s fine by me.”
Just as we were about to reach the wide open area that contained the Pit, a frantic buzzing filled my skull. There was no pain, so I knew that Epsilon wasn’t trying to dig into my brain again. Epsilon squirmed, as if it was trying to warn me of something.
“Stop,” I told the others, holding my hand up.
“What is it?” Liz asked.
“I don’t-”
A massive boom filled the air, rocking the ground with enough force that I had to widen my stance to stop myself from falling down. Compared to the sound of Hellman’s or Epsilon’s ship crashing, this boom was quite different. It sounded much closer to a massive explosive going off than a projectile crashing into the ground.
Emboldened by the [Draconic Integration], I turned the corner around Hamilton Hall and looked toward the source of the sound.
The Carolina Union had been reduced to rubble alongside half of the Pit and much of Davis Library. The destruction spread out in a wide cone, originating from an area near the Pit. Standing there, at the source of the destruction, was a massive building-sized bull. Some massive cone of destruction must have emanated from between the bull’s horns and destroyed several buildings.
[THRESHOLD GUARDIAN DISCOVERED: BULL OF HEAVEN]
THRESHOLD GUARDIAN DISCOVERED: BULL OF HEAVEN