Chapter 223: Escape [I]

The world stopped moving.

Or maybe it just

felt

that way... now that a walking volcano had finally stopped trying to kill us.

I caught myself on a jagged ridge along the cyclops’ back — breathing hard, ribs tight, and heart still hammering like we were mid-battle.

There was far too much adrenaline in my veins.

That tends to happen when you go toe-to-toe with a colossal giant made of fire and fury.

I took a long breath to calm myself and glanced around, trying to take in my surroundings.

Charred, stone-like flesh crackled beneath me. Smoke and steam hissed in the air. The cyclops lay lifeless — like a shattered mountain, half-buried in its own crater, its mouth frozen in a final, wordless gasp.

Then, I felt something else.

Something besides relief and exhaustion.

I felt Essence.

A lot of it.

Flooding the atmosphere around me.

’Right. Of course,’

I thought. The cyclops was dead — and all its Essence was now leaving its body.

I didn’t waste a second. I started absorbing it.

But sadly, I didn’t have much time. The battle might’ve been over — but the massacre wasn’t.

There were other giant monsters still present in the plaza.

Greater

Spirit Beasts, just like the cyclops. And they’d soon begin converging toward the now unguarded eastern exit.

We had to evacuate before that happened.

So, not even a third of my core was refilled when I stopped and snapped my head up, scanning the battlefield from my vantage point.

The swarm of

Lesser

Solbraiths wasn’t thinning.

If anything, it looked worse. There were more monsters on the field now than before.

Because more humans had fallen. More had turned. More had joined their undead ranks.

The battlefield still burned in scattered patches, and the vanguard was on its last leg. At this rate, they wouldn’t last five more minutes.

And once the frontlines fell, everyone else would be slaughtered as well.

Luckily, we had a way out now.

"Fuuu..." I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding, turned... and then I saw her.

Alexia.

I almost forgot about her.

Crumbled near the edge of the crater she’d created in the cyclops’ skull — by hammering my sword in like a nail — she lay sprawled, hair scorched at the tips, combat uniform torn halfway, ash clinging to her like warpaint.

I was on my feet before I realized I’d moved.

With a sharp tug, I yanked Aurieth free from the cyclops’ back. Its flesh, now brittle and cold like burned charcoal, offered no resistance.

The sword slid loose easily, leaving a trail of cooling magma in its wake.

I held it in my non-dominant hand and ran.

"Alexia!" I dropped beside her, gently grabbing her shoulders. "Hey! Are you okay?"

She looked up and smiled dazedly through gritted teeth. "Oh, just peachy."

My stomach turned.

She was anything but.

Her entire right side was a wreck — skin blistered, raw, and scorched. I figured it was an injury she sustained earlier — when I blasted her with that pillar of light during the test.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

She’d clearly taken more hits since then — probably while tearing through the undead horde of Solbraiths.

But her worst injury was her most recent one — her right arm.

Bone jutted out through torn muscle. Flesh mangled. Blood streamed down in thick rivulets. Her arm wasn’t just hurt. It was

shattered

. The whole limb hung limp by her side.

I was pretty sure she couldn’t even feel it, let alone move it.

And still... she smiled.

In pain, yes. But smiling all the same.

"I said I’m okay," she repeated, just as I opened my mouth again.

I stared at her.

Then pointed down.

"

That

," I said slowly, "doesn’t look okay."

She blinked. "...You do remember I’m blind, right? I don’t know what

’that’

is."

I groaned. "Your arm, Alexia."

She tilted her head. "What about it?"

"It’s broken," I said flatly.

She reached across with her left hand, touched it — once, gently... then a bit more urgently.

She flinched.

"...Oh," she murmured. "I can’t feel it. How bad does it look? Also, why the hell is it broken?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it again.

I briefly considered explaining to her the laws of momentum and why punching a Divine Sword into an ancient molten monster was not recommended medical behavior.

But I just sighed.

"You know what? It’s fine," I muttered, brushing ash from her shoulder. "It’s probably for the best that you can’t see it."

She scowled. "Great. That’s

always

reassuring."

I gave her a tired smile. "Come on. Let’s get you to Michael. He’ll fix it."

She nodded. I slipped an arm around her waist and helped her up, careful not to jostle her ruined arm.

Her legs trembled beneath her — but she didn’t complain.

Together, we began making our way down the side of the cyclops’ massive, still-smoking corpse. Its cracked, blackened hide hissed faintly beneath our feet like a dying furnace.

•••

After a few long minutes of hiking down the slope of the giant’s skull, we finally hit solid ground — landing with a rough drop onto the uneven, scorched flagstones.

I steadied Alexia before her knees gave out completely.

All around us, the plaza was still drowning in chaos.

Fires blazed in the distance. Screams echoed between collapsing columns and crumbling obelisks.

Spirit Beasts howled in the smoke as Cadets scrambled to regroup.

But above all that noise, one thing stood out — the eastern exit behind us was wide open now.

Our escape path was no longer guarded by a one-eyed volcanic behemoth trying to squash us into human pancakes.

With one arm around the petite girl beside me, I started walking toward the front of the fallen giant’s head — where I’d last seen Michael.

"Hey, Lord Samael," Alexia hummed weakly.

"Yeah?" I asked, not slowing my pace. She had already lost too much blood. We had to hurry.

"If I die," she said with a shaky breath, "bury me in the shade of a cherry blossom tree. And do not — I repeat,

do not

! — let my family take my body. I will not spend a moment with those motherfuckers even in death!"

Wow. And here I thought blood loss would make her quieter.

I rolled my eyes. "Don’t be dramatic."

"Says the guy with the most annoyingly dramatic personality," she shot back, grinning faintly.

I gasped.

But before I could defend my entirely reasonable and well-balanced personality, I spotted Michael’s figure a few meters ahead.

He stood near a group of Cadets — most likely the Brawlers who helped collapse the cyclops’ second leg — sheathing his blade with no urgency now that the immediate threat was gone.

As we approached, his eyes swept over us... then narrowed at the sight of Alexia.

"Oh no," he said flatly. "What did she do this time?"

"She fell from the sky," I replied. "And punched my

precious

sword into the cyclops’ skull like a goddamn nail."

Michael blinked. Then gaped. "Wait! That was her?! I saw someone falling and wondered who might be that stupid?!"

Now it was Alexia’s turn to gasp — though with her current condition, it came out more like a wounded sigh.

She gave him a strained smile and said, "Hey, Mikey? Be a dear and fix my arm... so I can punch you."

I, for once, was impressed that she was still threatening violence while half-dead.

Michael, on the other hand, just chuckled and stepped forward while reaching for her arm.

He then placed a hand over it, looked into the distance, copied a random Healer’s ability, and started mending her wounds.