"Mm," Grey hummed out a sigh, looking at the corpses, and then back at Amunet and the others. "You guys are a bit..."
Grey’s words stopped when his gaze landed on Mauve. She was still standing in the same spot, her body shivering from head to toe.
He could tell she was taking deep breaths, doing her best to regain her composure, but the harder she pulled on those reins, the more it felt like they wrestled against her.
Mauve must have faced death before. Hell, Grey had killed her several times before, though he had no intentions of telling her that. However, that was about as close as she had come to death. She had experienced a moment just now where she was certain it would come, and yet it hadn’t.
That was very different from the way Grey had killed her before. It was done and over in an instant back then.
’Well... this is a bit of a problem.’
Grey had seen that look before on guys entering the MMA cage for the first time. It was one thing in a training room or a sparring session. But there was something about that scent of sweat in the air and the dried blood on the ground that felt completely different.
Mauve had obviously faced blood before, but she had always felt in control of the situation, or had picked her challenges very carefully.
This time, Grey just ripped them up from the beginner village then trekked them over to an expert’s farming ground before leaving them to their own devices.
Grey sighed, scratching the back of his head. He realized he had been a bit of an asshole.
He didn’t really care about how Amunet felt about it, but he had already reconciled with Brad and Mauve. If he was going to drag them along, then he couldn’t just leave them up shit’s creek.
Grey sighed again. "My bad."
He walked over to Brad and helped him up.
"I’m fine." Brad said, patting himself down. "Don’t worry about me."
"I’m not worried about you. I’m more worried about you eating me for protein."
Brad chuckled, and then looked over at Mauve with a bit of worry. "Mauve? Are you alright?"
BOOM.
The forest floor suddenly shook. The earth collapsed into an enormous sinkhole that landed exactly where the ruin had just been moments ago. Even Grey almost lost his footing, though that was half because Brad suddenly reached out to grab his shoulder and nearly toppled them both over.
"Uh... run." Grey suddenly said.
He summoned the bike, tossing Brad onto the back of it. He revved the engine, sweeping by and picking Mauve up quickly.
Amunet was still struggling to get up from the bush when Grey tilted the front wheels up. The wheel hit a fallen tree, using it like a ramp and shooting up into the air.
For a moment, Amunet was truly speechless. Was Grey going to just leave her to die like this?
Grey pulled out a rope from his inventory. It snapped down like a lasso, grabbing onto one of her ankles and yanking her up.
Amunet shrieked. "GREY I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!"
"Watch your mouth young lady. What would your mother think?"
"SHE’D THINK THE WORST MISTAKE I EVER MADE WAS MEETING YOU?"
"Really? You sure she wouldn’t think I’m handsome?"
"WHAT THE FUCK IS THE CORRELATION?!"
"Ah, so you really do think I’m handsome."
"FUCK YOU!"
Amunet screamed out her pain, the wounds in her body growing more aggravated with every bump. Luckily for her, Grey wasn’t actually so cruel. She hit one tree, mostly by accident—that was his story and he was sticking to it—then he yanked her up, snatching her waist out of the air and hauling her over his shoulder.
He pulled on the rope and pinned it under a thigh, quickly grabbing at the handlebars before he lost any more control of the bike.
With another rev, they shot off, outpacing the crumbling earth and not a moment too soon. Grey caught through his Resonant Sense just how close they were to crumbling. His back wheel just barely escaped that fate.
Then they moved forward so fast they went from barely outpacing the crumbling earth to shoot well past it.
They moved so fast that it wasn’t more than a few seconds before Grey realized he had probably gone in the wrong direction. The worst direction possible, actually.
That was because up ahead, a city appeared in view. It was probably twice as large as the city of Zone 234.
The problem wasn’t the city, of course. He knew that there probably had to be one close by. It was one of the cities in the maps he had downloaded, after all.
The real problem was that there was an army of Holy Knights coming out, and when they noticed the growing sinkhole in front of them, they immediately did an about-face and rushed back into the gate.
When Grey looked behind him, the sinkhole had grown too large for him to outrun to the side, and yet in front of him was a city wall that spanned even wider than it.
If he tried to go around the city, the sinkhole would catch up to him first and he had no idea what was down there, and he didn’t have the slightest interest in finding out just yet, not when his stamina was running on fumes and he had three injured people depending on him.
But if he went ahead, he didn’t know how kindly they would react to the aura of the Dark Kin that was radiating from the bike right now.
’You’ve got to be shitting me. Just my luck.’
There was only really one way out of this.
Grey revved the bike again and it hit a new gear before it roared forward.
They were going to have to enter the city.
He didn’t know what had caused the sinkhole, but he had a feeling that it was his fault and he didn’t want to find out in these circumstances.