As my body fell forward, I was suddenly pulled back by a hand wrapped around my neck in a vice grip. I looked back to see Eternity laying on the wolf's back, her string white hair sprawled over her face, glaring at me with her hand on my neck.
"Eternity-" I started, but she quickly pulled me even closer to her, almost making me slip off the wolf. I managed to stop myself from falling on her injured body with two arms but Eternity barely seemed to notice it.
Her face was twisted in a furious expression, pure rage coursing through her eyes, aimed straight at me. Her grip on my neck somehow became even tighter, making me flinch.
"I don't know what you were trying to do…" Each of her words dripped with barely contained fury, her voice a thin wire ready to snap. I couldn't look away from her piercing silver pupils as she spoke, "...if you try to pull anything like sacrificing yourself, I'll fucking throw both of us off this wolf."
Wait..why would she do that?
"But…"
Her nails dug into the back of my head, making me hiss in pain. "I threw myself into that bastard's sword to save you and now I can barely move, if I find that you die like a bitch after all I did I might as well kill us both here right now."
I opened my mouth to say 'no' but my body froze when my eyes scanned Eternity's face.
She smiled , exposing her teeth stained with blood from her wounds. "...How about I fall off by myself then? Wouldn't that ruin your sacrifice quite nicely--and it would be a great conclusion to my own sacrifice. How does that sound? How about I go let myself eaten by a swarm of monsters, ripped into pieces, just so that I could maybe buy the rest of you ONE FUCKING SECOND."
"How does that sound? Nice, right?" She spat on my face.
I attempted to shake my head.
"What do you mean? I'm useless as shit, I can't help any of you right now especially in the state I am in. I should die, right?" Each of her words were like
"..no." I said in a small voice but Eternity ignored it, pulling me even closer.
"What do you mean no? It's a good idea, it's the same thing you were going to do! Why the hell can't I sacrifice myself?!"
A sob escaped my lips and I realized I was trembling. "Please…no, don't." Tears started to well up in my eyes and my vision grew blurry.
"THEN WHY?" Eternity screamed and I realized she was crying too. Tears were spilling down the sides of her rageful face. "WHY?! YOU DID NOTHING WRONG!"
Somehow there was silence despite the havoc in the world. No, it was just that my mind was shutting off everything else so that I could focus on Eternity's words.
The reason I wanted to die was so that my friends could live. I thought it was the right thing to do--I didn't want to be selfish. Eternity didn't want me to die--she didn't want any of us to die.
What about the other two? Lorelei and Ford, especially, wouldn't like it if I died like how I initially planned.
I thought I was just choosing the option that was selfless. I was trying to make up for my mistakes. However, it was the opposite, I was just running away from my weaknesses.
I threw my head back and laughed, startling the rest of my cohort. Despite the chaos that surrounded us, everything seemed a little lighter now.
I was insecure about my place in the cohort--in the world. I was lagging behind the others while we walked in the Great Plateau. I couldn't as well as the others could, and my aspect was self-destructive and was a larger weakness than my own Flaw.
I kept on overthinking about things and eventually I ignored the fatality of my own Flaw when I fought Itri. When did I overthink so much?
Frenzy, the state of intense focus and efficiency which I prided myself on--I was hindering myself by worrying so much about myself. Why did I depreciate myself so much?
I was the one who brought everyone in the cohort together in the academy. I was the one who fought Itri trying to save the others. I was the one who survived in an ants nest, sitting next to their larva for 3 days, I was the one who killed their queen and moved on to kill 22 more ant soldiers.
How many people in the world had a Supreme-ranked aspect?
I was plenty qualified to be here.
C'mon, Vincent, you idiot! Use those freakishly reckless plans of yours to get us out of here!!!
I stopped laughing and looked at Eternity who was perplexed by my sudden attitude. "Thanks," I said as we both wiped our own tears.
"Yeah, yeah, could we focus on that paralysis demon right behind us now?" Eternity said, her face contorted in irritation but was that a grin I was starting to see?
I spun behind to see that the Moonlight Surge was still biting at our tails like before. Looking up, the tower of clones that it had created was starting to actually resemble a mountain. In a few seconds, it was going to topple over and come crashing down on us. Not only that, there was a second layer of clones that was approaching us from the sides.
The situation was looking hopeless, but my mind had cleared from my self-destructive thoughts, and now it was working at lightning speed. The thunderstorm was practically the perfect mirror to my own mind.
After a moment of thought, I looked behind me to see Lorelei still staring ahead as she controlled the wolf echo. Even though my eyes were on Lorelei, my focus started to shift to her wolf echo's forelegs. They looked strange to say the least. The wolf was moving at a high speed, but there was this weird fold of membrane behind its arm.
Lorelei…what was her true name again?
'Warden of Wyverns.'
…Eh, let's give it a shot.
"Lorelei, can your wolf echo fly?!" I shouted at her. She looked back at me with a complicated expression that I hadn't seen before but she answered, "Yes."
"This thing can fly?!" Ford shouted over the ceaseless screaming of the locusts. "It's not that simple! Dusk-" the name of Lorelei's echo "- needs time to get high into the air with how large he is!" She said, but her attention was focused on our left and right where the Moonlight Surge was getting closer to us.
"Oh, that's plenty simple then." Everyone whipped their heads around to stare at me. I tried to shrug off their intense looks as I talked. "Ford can just blast us in the air, can't he? That'll give Dusk extra time to go high into the air."
"Yeah--" Ford exclaimed but he was quickly cut off by Eternity. "So what?! The moonlight surge can cover more distance vertically than horizontally by piling on top of its clones, and with how close it is, it'd definitely catch us mid-ascension. We'd need to push the clones back at the same time-"
Lighting flashed in the sky along with the lightbulb lighting up in my head. I put my hands on Eternity's shoulders, careful not to squeeze too hard. "You're a GENIUS! I could kiss you right now!"
"I will castrate you if you do." I ignored Eternity's extreme, yet reasonable, threat. Instead I looked back at Ford, "Switch place with me, you beanpole!"
"Huh-What?! Wait--" However I pulled on his shoulder and he reluctantly switched places with me. After tying myself with Dusk's fur like Ford did, I looked up at the locust-rabbits amalgamations.
I almost fainted just by locking eyes with one of the clones, not to mention the weight of the eyes of the entire horde now pointed at me. I shook uncontrollably as if I was in the middle of a frigid blizzard that was slowly killing the more I was in its presence.
I'd faced death multiple times before. The armored worm that swallowed, the nest of ants that tried to rip me apart, and Itri who was trying to poison and then kill me with his sword. However dark those situations were, I saw a small glimmer of hope of killing them and I had the ability to do it.
Yet the monstrosity in front of me was unlike them. Facing this was like standing in the path of a destructive tornado, it was simply death incarnate. I saw no chance at killing this thing…but I definitely could run away from it.
"Ford-!" I mentioned this before, but Ford was the golden child of our highschool's sports teams. Whatever sport it was, he was the undeniable champion across all school districts that were present in NCSQ. While most chalked it up to his almost awakened-level physical abilities, the real secret was his ability to gauge distance. Combine that with his long limbs, strength, and speed--and it made sense why he was the undisputed king.
It's been a while since Ford played a sport after joining the Academy, but let's see if he still has that spatial awareness--well, he better have it or else we'll all die.
"200 meters from where Dusk is, get ready to blast your strongest geyser!" 200 meters was a completely random distance I thought off which I thought was reasonable enough, but Ford could probably work around it to find a better spot.
"Ford, switch with Eternity!" Ford's eyes went wide with my second order, but he complied seeing that my plan was likely our only way to get out of this situation. Ford picked up Eternity and put her behind me. Eternity didn't seem pleased to be close to me again. With her broken arm preventing her from tying herself to dusk, she had to hug me with her good arm to avoid falling off. "First, you fall on top of me, then you declare you will kiss me, now you're making me hug you? What sort of twisted desires do you keep in mind?!" Despite her harsh words, she seemed to enjoy the thrill of being closer to the Moonlight Surge.
Was this like an amusement park ride to her? She was crazy herself.
"I need you to heal my arms in a few seconds." I said to the outskirts girl while she hugged me. I tried to face again, forcing myself to not look away from the damned creatures in front of me.
"Why? What the hell are gonna happen to your arms? We literally just talked about this---" Eternity and I shrieked as Dusk suddenly burst into higher gear, the ground beneath us exploding from the sheer force of the giant wolf's hindlegs.
Ford stared ahead without blinking, ignoring the passing wind irritating his eyes. He raised his arms slowly while clenching the muscles in his hands, he didn't breathe, instead his eyes were set on a spot which were getting closer to. The spot he wa sloking at slowly started to bubble and break as streams of water leaked from underneath the bed of grass.
Seeing his determination, I locked eyes again with the Moonlight Surge. Their features were so easy to make out now. The bulging green eyes, the sagy rabbit skin with white fur that shined in the rain, the smell of scorched flesh as the speed its insect limbs moved at literally was bruning it from the inside out, the swelling balls under its skin which popped and turned into another clone, the process repeating endlessly.
"Gods, you're disgusting." I muttered. At the exact moment, the ground underneath exploded and a powerful geyser propelled us several meters into the sky with meteor falling-speed. My body almost fell flat against Dusk's hide from the force of our ascension, but I somehow stayed up straight.
The overwhelming speed at which I left the ground created a massive distance the size of canyon between us and the Moonlight Surge. I could hear a wet sound behind me as Dusk likely stretched out his wings and flew higher into the sky. I almost thought that I wouldn't have to enact the second part of my plan.
Almost…I heard an unholy screech from the thunderclouds above and looking up, I saw a stark-white figure whizz past me and down into the ground. I was baffled for a moment if I didn't see another white figure fall from the thunder clouds again and plummet to the ground some distance away. Then another and another.
It was raining Moonlight Surge clones.
But how? How had the Moonlight Surge fallen from the sky, but then I remembered the tower the clones were making no more than a minute ago. "Hah…" I sighed, realizing that they went up so high that they were trying to skybomb us.
This thing was so damn persistent.
Another ear-piercing shriek, except this time it was closer. I looked up to see that one of the clones was right above us. It wouldn't miss us like the other clones.
Seconds passed by slower than a turtle, as the outstretched head of the clone reached for me, its mandiles open to bite my head off.
I pulled one clenched fist behind me. The arm of my clenched fist started to bulge and blood started to come out from scarlet skin bubbles.
One moment, and the clone's head was right in front of my face, the next second, my fist was near its chest…
Blood, flesh, and bone splattered everywhere at machspeed turning the entire air around me red for a moment. My right arm was gone now and a red mist covered my vision. For a moment I thought the clone was gone when a locust head popped out from the crimson mist-closer than before.
It really was persistent, "but I expected it, you devil."
My left arm was already winded up, aimed for the thing's face.
The lighting stopped for a moment as if holding its breath, the dark thunder clouds parted and golden rays of the morning sun dyed the world in a honey colored tone. The scattered raindrops reflected the sunlight, giving the impression of raining liquid gold.
Underneath the space where the flashing thundercloud split, a red mist made from blood floated in the sky.
The next moment the red mist burst, and a humongous wolf that seemed to be made of darkness used its black feather wings to depart from a red cloud.
The land was filled with devils screaming in rage.
The sky echoed with the howl of a winged-wolf made from shadows.
The faint laughter could be heard from the wolf's back as well.