A large splinter was wedged into it, and the door was hanging on its hinges. Sam barged in, spotting a few figures lying on the floor. Dyvan was dead, his head nearly melted off, bone showing in places. One eye gazed off into eternity, with the other merely a puddle of goo. Anna and Malara were huddled together in a corner, the former missing a leg. Sam spotted it a few meters away, with a large piece of bloodied metal lying next to it.
“Sam?” A weak voice came from another room. It was Garnax, but he sounded like he was on his last legs.
Sam glanced at the girls, but they seemed stable for now, with Anna’s bleeding having already stopped. Even as an F Ranker, though, her leg was gone for good.
With a grimace, Sam headed into the kitchen, and saw Garnax crouched over his wife, his body holding up a massive support pillar. His face was strained, and periodic bursts of blood would fall from his mouth as his internal organs failed.
With a snarl, Sam teleported, and grabbed the pillar, lifting it off the man with ease. A surge of purified mana atomized the entire thing, leaving only dust behind.
“Are you alright?” Sam asked, a bit uselessly. He was no healer, and could do nothing for the other man. Suddenly, he felt incredibly, painfully worthless. He could bring devastation to millions of lives, but could not save a single one who needed it.
With a hacking cough, the man rolled away from Gilda, revealing that she was mostly unharmed, but still unconscious. “I can’t feel anything below my waist,” the man whispered. “My regeneration isn’t doing anything.” He turned to Sam, and gave him a wan smile. “Don’t let my children see me like this, please?”
Sam looked away. “About that…”
“No!” Garnax exclaimed. “Are they dead?”
Sam nodded, before elaborating. “Dyvan is. Anna and Malara are still alive.”
“Fuck!” Garnax roared, before collapsing further, unable to even lift himself. “FUCK!”
Unsure of what to say, Sam simply stood there as Garnax grieved. Then the man found some store of inner resolve, and wiped away a tear. “Well, he would want for the rest of us to survive. Can you help me up?”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Sam nodded, and headed over, offering a hand to Garnax. The F Ranker needed little else, despite his paralysis, a single hand enough to prop him up.
A slight groan came from the floor, and Gilda drifted to awareness, clawing at something before her. Her eyes gazed into the distance, and Sam quickly realized the problem. She was blind.
“Where did the light go?” She nearly shouted. “Where are the children?”
“Gilda!” Garnax cried out. “Calm down! We need to get out of this place.”
“My eyes…” the woman muttered. “The last thing I remember is looking at something brighter than the sun… Some unfathomable Dao seared my soul to the bone.”
“That must have been from the battle above,” Sam observed, spotting a hole in the ceiling that let a shaft of sunlight through. “It doesn’t matter right now, though. This entire place is going to collapse soon.”
He strode over to Gilda, and laid a hand on her. It was time for him to attempt group teleportation. While Sam had never achieved such a feat before, he knew that it was possible. Removing the Marns from the building otherwise would be an endeavor fraught with danger, one that could just easily kill them as not.
Sam focused on the skill matrix that he used to teleport, manifesting it into the world before him. A clean rift opened in the air, his Dao slicing through reality to find its kin in the distance. Rather than use his sight, Sam focused on the imprints left in his body-soul matrix by his passage through the world, attempting to teleport blindly for the second time. While not exactly difficult, in his current state, it felt like needles were sinking into every part of his body.
Sam steadied his body, and kept it anchored, attempting to expand the rift into a stable portal, similar to how Granthar had. He hated toi take any inspiration from that man, but in this case, it was necessary. His normal teleportation was nowhere near powerful enough to use for anything other than a solo trip, as it was keyed to his Dao alone. If he brought anything else through, it would collapse.
The rift destabilized, and Sam let out a cry of anger. As he did so, the building around him shifted unsteadily, and he heard a loud crash down the hallway as something collapsed. He was on a deadline here. While he could have atomized the entire structure above him, there were probably other survivors there, trying to get out. In addition, it could pose danger to those he was attempting to save. It was there as a last resort, though. Furthermore, he couldn’t carry the far less durable F Rankers out of the building, as it would pose extreme danger to them with his speed.
With a sigh, Sam picked up Gilda, and strode out into the room where her daughters were waiting. Despite Garnax’s insistence that he didn’t want his children to see him paralyzed, there was no other option here. There wouldn’t be time for Sam to pull off something that he wasn’t confident in twice over.
