Getting into the bridge. It was a mess. A branch had pierced through the main glass viewport, people were scattered about. Several were clearly dead by how twisted and smashed up their bodies were. I quickly got inside the bridge and checked Captain Francis who was slumped over the command console. I checked his pulse and breathing. He was alive. I quickly moved him onto the top deck.

Another soldier was still alive. The others were clearly dead. I kept searching for Doctor Katz, but the kitchen area had a large portion of its floor missing, and the bottom rear half of the airship, where most of the passengers had been during our cruise.

No one wanted to be stuck in the cabins on the main deck, while crusing, since it would be too hard to get down below. That meant the vast majority of people were dead. Fiyaz was still alive and one more soldier.

That brought the total of count of survivors to seven, myself, Michelle, Captain Francis, Fiyaz, and 3 soldiers. Doctor Katz appeared to have fallen out of the airship. The entire search had only taken a minute thankfully, since the airship was so small.

The flying monsters were already coming down. I leapt off of the airship. Air Burst. I began aerial combat, not holding back on my skills in order to kill the monsters as quickly as possible. I couldn’t risk the survivors and let the monsters get close.

The fight took five minutes or so. It was that long since there were so many flying monsters I had to deal with. Setting back down on the airship, I then killed off the approaching Poison Gas monsters that were approaching up from the ground.

At least the monster in the zone wasn’t faster. That would have been much worse, and put me in a much harder spot. Checking on the survivors I noted that Captain Francis, Michelle, and one of the soldiers were moving slightly.

“Wha-!” Captain Francis tried to sit up in a panic, but I was quickly in front of him.

“Don’t move around. The airship is on a tilt. I don’t want to have to catch you if you fall off,” I said. I had placed the survivors between the deck and the energy storage cabin. It made a nice ‘V’ shape. I pulled a life flask off his belt and handed it to him. His hands shakily took it. I was glad it was a standard piece of kit for my people.

I then did the same thing as Michelle and the soldier came to. Then the rest of the began to wake up. I had to leave the airship once to kill the Poison Gas monsters, and then quickly returned. The survivors were sitting some and coming to. I noted the Infinite Block floating back over. That was good, Michelle still had that monster.

“Book Of Curses?” I asked her and she shook her head. I let out a sigh at that.

“Is there anyone else?” Fiyaz asked. Everyone looked at me. It was a dumb one question, but one that needed to be answered.

“No. Everyone else was lost overboard and fell, or is dead inside,” I replied. There was a long moment of silence at this.

“What hit us?” Michelle asked.

“A golden energy beam. Based on the color and the intensity of the energy, possibly a unique skill. With its distance, I would also say another unique upgrade for targeting. It didn’t hit just but the shockwave blew the engines. You were pushing them?” I asked Captain Francis who nodded slowly before speaking.

“Yes. With our elevation and the unknown source of the threat, I ascended and increased our acceleration to the max.”

“That is fine. There is no one to blame for what happened, except for the person or thing that attacked us,” I said. Something like this, I was ultimately responsible. It was my expedition and these people were ultimately my responsibility. I let out a heavy sigh.

There had been an additional twelve people. There was Doctor Katz, four of Fiyaz’s spy team, and another seven soldiers that had been lost when we had been hit. I counted three dead inside the airship. That meant the remaining nine had been sucked out, including Doctor Katz. Searching for their bodies would be impossible in the jungle.

If this had been the darklands, then I might have considered trying to find them. And even if they were alive, the monsters would have already killed them. While they were Missing In Action, or MIA, I considered them dead.

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“Supplies?” Captain Francis asked.

“All lost. Cannons don’t work either. We can either turn back, which means going through a level 5 zone, or we can pushforward, and find another way back,” I replied.

“Communications?” Captain Francis asked.

“Also lost,” I replied. All that stuff had been stored in the kitchen area, or the personal rooms. All of it had been sucked out when we had been hit.

Leaping off the side of the airship. I scanned the area again and saw no approaching monsters. I returned to my spot with the survivors. “Still clear. I handled the Poison Gas monsters nearby and the flying monsters, but we have two choices now.”

“You are still thinking about pressing on?” Michelle asked in surprise, and I nodded.

“Yes. That attack occurred past the obfuscation effect. That means long range targeting. Airships are out. That means we have to keep going on foot and find out who or what did this and take them out. There is zero chance for peace now. This is war,” I replied. There were no objections to this.

“If we have to walk it is about 100 miles, or 160 kilometers back to New Dhaka. Well with the road network, we can hit a road in about 60 miles,” Captain Francis said.

“That means pushing through unknown level 5 monsters, and then the level 4 monsters of the Burning Man, Living Shadow, and Blink Assassin. Flying on the Infinite Block, we can bypass the Burning Man and the mushrooms, but the Living Shadow can reach us along with the Blink Assassin,” Michelle said.

“We are near the edge of the level 4 zone right?” Captain Francis asked me.

“Yes. The edge isn’t that far. Only a couple miles in that direction,” I replied and pointed to where I had seen the level 3 zones in the distance.

“Or we go that way,” Captain Francis said. There was silence at that. At least no one suggested a vote. This wasn’t a democracy. I had the ultimate decision.

“Michelle, you capable of continuing?” I asked the most important person after myself.

“Yes,” she said with a bit of hesitation. I gave her a look and she stared back at me. “I…that was something I never expected.”

“Me either. But there is no use crying right now. We don’t have long until it gets dark.” I let out a sigh. “We keep going forward unless anyone else has any serious objections?” I asked. No one spoke up. I considered bringing up the issue of taking the enchanted armor of the dead soldiers, but that was a bit much.

Might be useful as trade goods, but I was hesitant to go that far. It would damage morale, which was already very low. The loss of Doctor Katz, hit hard. I liked the man tremendously. Even though we disagreed on a lot of things, he was a voice of sanity in this mad world and had been around for a long time.

I trusted him with my life. I could only say that about a handful of people, and he was the only person who I could say that with absolute confidence that the trust was based on the fact he was a good person, a good doctor.

He had started helping people the moment he arrived during one of the Ritualist’s attacks all those years ago. A man of principled character, who wasn’t afraid to speak up. Out of everyone in the Systemic Lands, he was one of the few people with a positive number of lives to his name. He had saved far more than any deaths that could be attributed to him.

If there was a karma score, his was one of the few positive ones I knew of. Losing Doctor Katz was a huge blow in my mind. The soldiers and spies with us could be replaced in time. They were unique people, with hopes, dreams, and feelings, but they didn’t matter that much. I should have looked for him as well, but I only had a few seconds to act and once I found Michelle, I went for her. I didn’t encounter any other person while falling.

If he had been in his cabin, he might have even been killed by the explosion that wrecked the rear, bottom, portion of the airship. There wasn’t anything I had found, even blood stains, but all of it would have fallen out of the airship or been vaporized in the explosion. The crash had only things worse.

“We need to get moving. Michelle, can you make a platform?” I asked her and she nodded.

“We could try and recover supplies,” Fiyaz suggested but Captain Francis shook his head.

“In a jungle, impossible. It is either stuck in the trees like us or hidden in the undergrowth. We would waste too much time before it all disappeared anyway,” he replied. I nodded at this. It was a decent suggestion, but impractical in this terrain.

The Infinite Block expanded onto a platform, which everyone got on. “Up, to the top of the trees,” I told Michelle.

“We would be at an angle for that earlier attack,” she replied.

“If that happens, we jump. But trying to navigate through all that?” I waved my hand at the canopy and Michelle nodded.

“Very well,” she replied and we began to ascend. Thankfully there was still a hole from where the airship had crashed through. My fight with the flying monsters had made it bigger, so we were able to escape vertically from the jungle canopy.

Once that was done, we took off to the Northwest. It was slow traveling, but at least Poison Gas monsters weren’t fast enough to get up here and bother us. My mind drift back to Doctor Katz. He had been with me for so long. I hadn’t felt this hurt since Naran died.

I rubbed my eyes, and kept watch behind and below the platform, staring out at the swirls of energy and the leafy green canopy. I knew it was possible for people to die, but it had just been so sudden and unexpected. A super beam out of nowhere. I clenched my hands into fists. Whoever had carried out that attack was going to die, horribly.

If I could capture them, they would be getting made into furniture. Or getting the Avatar treatment, being turned into a human nugget, and forced to suffer through paperwork. I would let them keep one hand and one eye, to fill out useless forms, over and over. While it wouldn’t bring Doctor Katz back, it would make me feel a lot better.