I woke up five minutes before the heavy bronze bell rang.
My head was splitting. In my nose still stood the smell of burnt flesh and ozone, and in my mouth settled a persistent taste of rusty iron. But still, I felt myself times better than yesterday.
I sat on the edge of the cot.
The old boards creaked. My gaze fell on the sharp, jagged edge of the iron bed frame.
"One sharp jerk with the throat against this metal. Five seconds of convulsions—and silence."
The thought was tempting. What is the point of fighting, if the world around—is endless suffering?
I closed my eyes. Before my inner gaze immediately popped up Gerald's face. How he went limp in the chains, Valt's action, Richter's behavior, and threats from Kane.
Oh no. I will definitely not give up,—at this moment in my head I was already building a plan how I will torture them.
I forced myself to stand up.
Every strap of armor that I tightened seemed twice as heavy as usual. The metal as if absorbed lead over one night.
[Will to Live] was silent.
"Come on, bastard... work," I hissed through clenched teeth, trying to fasten the left shoulder pad.
Pain pierced the joint so sharply that in my eyes it grew dark for a second.
In the doors clanked a bolt. On the threshold stood Richter accompanied by two guards.
Richter cast a contemptuous glance over me. "Time to exit, Object Alpha. Master Kane is waiting."
"Yes, yes, scum. Of course, I'm going.—how he pisses me off, so much that for a second I forgot about my hellish pain."
"I am ready," I pronounced aloud, looking right into his face.
10 minutes later
The surface met us with a rotten dawn.
In the Dead Quarter the sky always looked the same—dirty-gray. We rode in an open cart (strange that not in a wagon), harnessed by two bony lizards. Their hooves clattered on the cracked slabs of the ancient road, and this sound in the morning silence resembled a funeral march.
With us rode the "elite".
Supreme Mage Kane sat opposite, spreading a yellowed map on his knees. Richter stood nearby, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword, and the whole way did not take his eyes off me, as if waiting for something.
"Listen carefully, object," pronounced Kane, adjusting his glasses. His voice was dry and creaky. "The Shadow anchored itself in the ruins of the old town hall. It distorts the space around itself. We will set up the outer perimeter. Your task—is to enter head-on. Provoke it to release power and absorb the impulse with your skill. When it is exhausted, we will deliver the finishing blow."
I looked at the skeletons of buildings floating by. Empty windows stared at us, like the eye sockets of skulls.
"And what about the people?" I asked. "Refugees live in the basements. I saw the smoke from their fires."
"There are no people in the Dead Quarter. Only garbage. The cleansing protocol does not foresee mercy to side elements. Your task is to neutralize the anomaly. Everything else is a statistical error. Understood?"
"Statistical error..." means yes.
"Understood. Perfectly understood," I answered, squeezing out a semblance of a smile.
Zeno, sitting in the corner of the cart, shuddered barely noticeably.
The cart stopped two blocks from the town hall.
Black slime flowed down the walls of the houses, and sounds died, not having time to form. Ahead, over the ruins, something swayed—a huge, formless mass of darkness. The Shadow.
"Go!" barked Richter, pushing me in the shoulder.
I stepped onto the broken asphalt.
[Will to Live] immediately squealed inside me. Red markers flared up before my eyes—target grids, trajectories, vectors.
I clenched my fists, feeling how mana begins to pulsate in time with my furious heart.
I stepped into the darkness.
The air here resembled cold, viscous resin. The sounds of the city—the clank of the punishers' armor, the dry cough of the lizards—disappeared, replaced by the low, vibrating hum of the Shadow itself.
"Direct magical discharge. Recommended action: absorption through central channels. Probability of target destruction: 98%. Probability of collapse of adjacent structures: 100%. Acceptable," the skill dispassionately delivered the verdict.
"Acceptable?" I spat mentally.
I already prepared to do what was expected of me, when suddenly my attention caught on a movement on the second floor of a half-ruined pharmacy.
A small, grimy face.
A girl, around five years old, pressing a mangy doll to her chest.
"Object, strike! What are you waiting for?!" came Kane's magic-amplified shout from beyond the border of darkness.
Instead of striking into the core of the Shadow and causing a detonation, I dashed to the side, right under the cornice of the pharmacy.
I drove my magical channels into the ground under the foundation of the building.
"Local change of gravitational density!"
Forcibly increase the mass of mana particles at the base of the Shadow, creating a zone of monstrous pressure (an ideal solution).
The Shadow howled—the sound was like the scraping of metal on glass. It tried to break free, lashing me with an appendage similar to a black blade. The blow hit my side, piercing the armor. Hot blood splashed onto the stones, and this smell—salt and iron—finally blew my fuses.
"I... will not let... you... collapse... everything... here!" I wheezed.
I felt my blood vessels bursting under the load. Bloody spots swam before my eyes. [Will to Live] raged, demanding to stop this "irrational" expenditure of energy and simply destroy the sector.
"Shut up!" I ordered the skill. "This is my will, and not yours!"
The Shadow was pinned to the ground by a gravitational anchor. It shrank, pulsating like an animal caught in a trap.
"Kane, you... old bitch!" I spat a clot of blood, looking towards the perimeter. "Strike into the center of the funnel! At a forty-five degree angle! Now, or we will all blow up in the air here!"
I saw how Kane hesitated for a moment. My maneuver did not enter the protocol. But he saw that the anomaly is immobilized and ready for "disposal".
He struck.
A blinding blue beam pierced the thickened darkness.
Flash. Rumble. I was thrown through the air. Brick met bone. Something crunched inside, and then silence came.
When the ringing in my ears died down, I found myself in a pile of broken stone and dust. To breathe was painful—every movement echoed in my ribs with a thousand needles. I turned my head.
The pharmacy stood. Charred, without windows, but standing. The window on the second floor was empty—looks like the girl had time to run deep into the building.
Boot soles crunched on broken glass. Kane and Richter approached me. They looked at me like a rabid animal.
"You... do you even understand what you have done?" Kane's voice trembled with fury. "You violated direct protocol. You jeopardized the success of the operation!"
I raised myself on my elbow, leaning on my healthy arm, and wiped blood from my face.
"The Shadow is destroyed, Master. The mission is accomplished."
"Don't boil over, Kane, or else Lord Valt will be angry. The main thing is the operation is accomplished and it doesn't matter exactly how," Richter said calmly.
"The main thing is the operation, means? And if he messed u..."
"Then Zeno would be dead," Richter cut off.
Zeno approached and silently placed his hand on my shoulder.
"Well played," he pronounced quietly, parallelly healing me.
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