Chapter 744: Dave

A sky darker than expected for this time of day.

A city with geography twisted and jumbled.

People half-consumed by madness.

In literally the worst scenario.

Someone shouted as they looked at Philip.

“There he is! The Prince! Prince Albert!! The prince who wants to sacrifice us is right there!!!”

In that moment, it felt like the entire city was looking this way, just like before.

The difference was this time it wasn’t a mere illusion, but reality.

“The Prince… ?”

“They said Prince Albert.”

“Is that true?!”

Upon hearing that, the citizens of the Capital surrounding Edith and Philip’s group lit up with a dangerous gleam in their eyes.

It wasn’t a trained siege, just a sloppy one, but no less oppressive for that.

The pressure resembled feral dogs or swarms of ants gathering around a corpse, driven purely by instinct, devoid of reason.

Gulp…

Still, the crowd merely surrounded them and dared not act further.

Philip, like a lion, unleashed an overwhelming aura that none could challenge.

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying. Step aside and let us pass.”

Philip asked the terrified citizens to let them through.

He judged it better to scare them somewhat than resort to violence. His call was largely correct.

The citizens, intimidated by Philip’s appearance, couldn’t act as rashly as they had with the orphans, but still pressed them.

“Wh-Where are you going?!”

“Outside the city. You should consider running instead of this pointless confrontation.”

“Do you not realize the state of the city?!”

“Exactly why I’m trying to get out. So move.”

“What are you carrying in your arms?”

“None of your business.”

Philip’s calm, yet weighty voice caused the previously agitated citizens to nervously step back.

Just when it seemed they could pass quietly, an old man urgently called out.

“It’s you! I was right! You’re Colonel Philip, aren’t you?!”

Though he got the rank wrong, the old man recognized Philip.

“Wait no, now you’re a Major General, right? Either way, it’s you, Philip!”

“Who are you?”

“I used to be a soldier too. Royal Army!! Though I retired a long time ago… Please, help us! I once owed you my life, you may not remember, but now the entire Kingdom needs you! Only you can stop the mess at the Royal Palace!”

The unexpected appearance of a retired soldier, recognizing Philip, begged for his intervention.

Given the chaotic situation, it wasn’t entirely surprising, yet still unsettling.

It was especially problematic now as they were trying to extract Prince Albert.

“Sorry, but that’s not going to happen.”

“Why not?! The Kingdom needs you the most right now! Aren’t you still a soldier?! Have you forgotten your duty?!”

Caught in the contradiction of asking a general to suppress the Royal Army, Philip quietly closed his eyes.

He understood the honor and duty of a soldier, but for the same reason, he had to refuse.

A soldier protects the people, but also fulfills missions. Right now, it was about the latter.

“Sorry. That’s all I can say.”

“How can you say that?! Don’t you dare–”

“Oh, shut up already!”

As the old man tried to argue further, a voice filled with irritation cut through.

It was Edith. Her words were sharp, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Stop rambling and get out of the way, old man.”

Edith stepped forward from behind Philip, demanding the man move.

She bluntly told him to stop wasting time and move aside.

The old man’s face, blackened by smoke, flushed red at the unexpected comment.

“Wh-What did you say?!”

“I said stop wasting time. Fire’s blazing, but instead of helping, here you are pestering orphans. Talking about honor and duty, huh…”

Edith spat out her scorn, laced with venom. Her words were like invisible knives cutting deep.

Philip tried to stop Edith, worrying about the potential consequences of provoking so many people at once.

But Edith irritably shook off Philip’s grip.

“You should stop as well! This isn’t a situation you can talk your way out of! If you’re going to fight, fight properly!”

Philip reacted instinctively, scanning the area rapidly.

The fear that had momentarily abated thanks to Philip’s aura now returned with full force in the citizens’ eyes.

“…Last warning. Step aside.”

Philip, regaining his composure, issued a final warning to the armed citizens. This time it wasn’t a polite request, but a stern command.

Seeing they didn’t comply, he demonstrated his resolve.

BOOOOM—!!!

When the citizens ignored him and even advanced, Philip, without hesitation, tossed a sword shrunken by Minimization Magic into the air. He increased its size and weight, letting it crash down just ahead of the crowd.

The massive metal blade slammed into the ground, causing a deafening noise that shook the earth.

The physical shockwave and the sheer pressure broke the citizens’ frenzy, forcing them into uneasy calm.

“Ugh…!”

“He-He really intends to kill us!”

“He’s definitely got the Prince with him!”

“Move aside!!”

The citizens screamed in panic, but Philip’s roar drowned them out.

By now, he held a massive saber in one hand, cutting an imposing figure that made the crowd part like the sea for Moses.

It seemed they could now safely escape.

“Not so fast!”

A strange voice echoed from the scared crowd. In the next moment, a figure dashed forward with a sudden kick.

Slash!

Philip didn’t miss and swung his saber, cutting through the attacker’s leg in one clean move.

Yet, his face darkened at the sight.

He soon realized why.

Clank… whirr…

The leg that Philip had cut came apart, and the enemy’s arm stretched out, grabbing hold of Philip’s shoulder.

There was a thick wire connecting the detached arm to the enemy, and it moved like a snake, trying to bind Philip.

“A Zombie Puppet?!”

Seeing this, Philip shouted, slicing the wire with a swift swing of his saber.

As the wire was severed, the Zombie Puppet staggered backward, but it was smiling.

Beep-beep!

At that moment, the arm attached to Philip’s shoulder emitted a strange noise.

Realizing something was wrong, Philip quickly hurled Prince Albert to Jane.

BOOM━!!

Just as the prince left his hands, the arm exploded, engulfing Philip’s upper body in soot and smoke.

The force was powerful enough to send an ordinary person flying.

“Cheap tricks…!”

Philip, strengthening his body with magic, endured the blast and shook off the soot.

However, as though his enemies anticipated this response, a large man charged at Philip from the side.

Grabbing Philip’s waist, the man dragged him a good distance away.

As a result, only Jane, Edith, and Prince Albert, wrapped in a cloak, remained.

The surrounding citizens sharpened their gazes like wolves spotting prey.

Bang! Bang! Bang!!!

As the citizens attempted to rush in, another massive sword fell from the sky.

It had been thrown by Philip, despite being wrestled by the large man.

Several blades slammed into the ground around Jane and Edith, forming a makeshift barrier of steel.

“Wait for me!”

Philip shouted as he pierced the giant man with his sword.

Though the man resisted, he bled out and collapsed. But before Philip could return, dozens of others emerged from the crowd, intent on stopping him.

They included everything from Zombie Puppets with blades sprouting from ribs and machine guns from faces to Pinkmen wearing magical gear.

Despite using every sword and weapon at his disposal to destroy and kill them, Philip found himself stuck in place.

“Now’s the time! We must seize the Prince!! Let’s bring justice!, everyone!!”

Seeing that Philip was held back, one of the citizens cried out. The people who had momentarily hesitated now rushed in again like a swarm of ants.

However, they couldn’t move the steel barrier, and they ended up yelling at Jane.

“Hey, you there, woman! Hand it over! That’s the Prince, right?! Give him to us!!”

“That’s not the Prince, you idiots!”

Of course, instead of complying, Jane responded with a string of curses.

“Miss Jane?”

Prince Albert, half-surrounded by the burnt tent, weakly called out.

“Let me go.”

“Why?”

“You’ll get caught up in this too. It might be better if only I go. For Philip and Terence, it’s one thing, but there’s no need for you.”

He wasn’t wrong. Philip and Terence were soldiers, and Edith had her own reasons. But Jane wasn’t bound by such obligations.

“No way. I’m here by my own choice.”

Jane, backing off from the citizens clawing at the steel barrier, answered.

“Why… why?”

Albert seemed to ask, unable to understand.

Jane chuckled softly.

“Don’t make that face. My reasons are personal. I just don’t want to embarrass myself for anyone.”

“Who…?”

Without thinking, Albert repeated her question.

As if to answer, Jane was about to say who, when something seized her ankle.

It was a man who had crawled through the gaps in the steel barrier. Despite being bloodied from scraping against the blades, his eyes were filled with malice.

“Damn…! Hand over that brat! Can’t you see how many lives depend on it?! Can’t you see the city’s tragedy–”

Crack!

Before the man could finish, a massive foot crushed his face without hesitation.

Under its weight, the man’s face was smashed.

“No, I can’t see it…”

Edith, her voice filled with contempt, answered softly before spitting on the unconscious man’s head.

“Disgusting… ptui!”

Though surrounded by an angered crowd, Edith didn’t care one bit.

She was, after all, Edith.

Wielding a club in one hand, she proceeded to beat down anyone who dared crawl through the gaps in the barrier.

“If you’ve got complaints, you should have whined from the start! Why the hell are you bitching around now, you worthless vermin!!”

Her movements were shockingly swift for someone of her build.

Every time Edith swung her club, someone’s head cracked or their jaw shattered.

Her sheer power and intimidating presence left the crowd trembling.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“Can’t you see? I’m cracking the heads of these worthless bugs! Been doing this forever!!”

“You fool! Don’t you realize there’ll be hell to pay if we don’t catch the Prince?! Do you think only you will get away unscathed?!!”

“Who’re you calling a fool? The only fools here are you lot! Trusting some radio broadcast to tear the place apart. Shut your traps, idiots!!”

“…!!”

The crowd was left speechless.

Edith had hit them right where it hurt.

Sure, the strange phenomena of the darkening sky and twisted geography had occurred, but the stampede was driven primarily by panic and the words they had heard through the radio.

And beyond that, there was little more than fire and chaos to fuel the madness.

Terrified, they had turned on the weak simply because they could.

“But it’s true that Prince Albert is the key to all this! Otherwise, why would you be running away?!”

Someone finally broke the silence, but Edith sneered.

“What a smart dumbass we have here. If only you’d used that brain sooner, none of this would’ve happened!”

“Please, just give us the Prince! Once we have him, all of this craziness will stop!”

A woman clutching an injured child cried out. The child in her arms seemed to be her son, likely a victim of the chaotic outbreak in the city.

“Another idiot… You should protect your kid yourself, why ask for help? Pathetic and shameless! Why don’t you just die?!”

“What?!”

A man shouted in response, but Edith remained unflinching.

“I said just die, damn it! The radio warned you days ago and you ignored it. Now you’re all following the crowd! Oh, no wonder they want to sacrifice you all! You’re gutless, spineless worms!!”

Every word dripping with venom, Edith’s taunts struck deep. Some of the citizens snapped and tried to move forward, ready to risk being slashed by the massive blade.

Bang!

Just then, Edith drew a gun hidden beneath her hulking frame and fired a shot into the air.

The gunshot made the crowd freeze once more.

Then she turned her gaze in one direction.

At the end of her gaze, Terence was sprinting toward them, leaping across people’s heads and shoulders.

He had finally recovered from the explosion that had taken him out earlier.

Edith’s taunts and provocations had all been to buy time.

Clank.

In that moment, as Terence rushed forward, someone silently slipped into the steel barrier from behind.

Their movements were fluid and ominous.

Edith raised her club in one hand and aimed her gun with the other, but before she could pull the trigger, the man’s arm transformed into a whip-like steel appendage, lashing her aside.

Thud.

Edith’s massive body was violently thrown against the steel barrier.

The one who had entered was another Zombie Puppet. And after confirming Edith had been dealt with, he reached out towards Prince Albert.

Jane instinctively moved to shield the prince with her body, but the Zombie Puppet raised its tentacle-like arm to swat her away.

Bang!!!

A gunshot resounded, causing the Zombie Puppet’s head to snap to one side, leaving cracks across its face.

The one who had fired was Edith, still struggling to breathe after being struck down.

“Heh… hiding behind corpses… who’s the coward here…?”

Her sneer seemed to infuriate the Zombie Puppet, who sharpened its tentacle arm and drove it straight into Edith’s abdomen.

Squelch…

The sickening sound of flesh being torn echoed as Edith’s shirt turned crimson with blood.

The tentacle had pierced through her and even struck one of the civilians behind her, who collapsed in shock. The onlookers backed away in terror.

“Ughhhhh…”

“Who’s the coward now?”

The Zombie Puppet taunted Edith.

Despite sweating profusely, Edith grinned.

“Not… coward. You’re an idiot.”

At that moment, an iron fist imbued with magic crashed down on the Zombie Puppet’s head, crushing its body from top to bottom.

The Zombie Puppet exploded into pieces, scattering mechanical parts across the area.

However, the tentacle piercing through Edith remained.

“Edith!”

Terence, seeking to help, called out to her, but Edith groaned.

“Too… late…”

Jane, with Prince Albert in tow, hurried over, staring at Edith with a stunned expression as she passed the prince to Terence.

“Edith…”

Jane’s voice was faint, as if dazed by disbelief.

It was one of the moments she had dreamed of, but it didn’t feel real.

It felt like a dream.

“…We need to go.”

Gritting his teeth, Terence grabbed Jane’s wrist.

“We must leave here now.”

He was right. They had to leave.

But Jane couldn’t move.

She didn’t understand why Edith had stirred things up by firing the gun.

She could’ve pretended to be dead or done nothing at all.

Edith, seeing Jane’s confused face, took in shallow breaths and motioned her closer.

Jane moved in close, as instructed, only for Edith to grab her hair.

“Ack…!”

Jane groaned in pain as her hair was yanked, but Edith only tightened her grip.

“What’s with that face? Feeling moved? Think I sacrificed myself for you…?! Should I remind you of what I did for your mother?!”

Staring directly into Jane’s eyes, Edith growled.

“I crushed your mother with money, stomped her into the ground, and dumped her! And I ditched you too! That pathetic name of yours is because of that. Jane, the most common orphan name.”

“…Ah—”

“—Don’t call me father! I tossed you aside! And you’re no different! You approached me because of my money, didn’t you?! Isn’t that right?!”

Edith’s face, pale from blood loss, turned momentarily scarlet like a flickering candle. From the pain, his eyes seemed to glisten slightly.

“That’s what we are. We use and abandon each other! So don’t you dare ruin that neat little relationship by pretending I died for you…!!”

New Zombie Puppets began to climb through the gaps in the steel barrier, and Terence urged Jane to hurry. But Jane remained still. Edith, mustering her last strength, spoke one final time.

“You got my inheritance, didn’t you? So stop with the stupid performance and get the hell out of here!”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“…”

The voice that echoed at that moment sounded as out of place as a drop of water falling into oil.

The disturbed atmosphere shifted at the sound of the voice, and everyone paused.

The only things that moved were their eyes.

They all looked toward the source of the voice,

and there, as though he had been standing there all along, was a man holding a quarterstaff.

“Sounds a lot like what you said to Miss Jane after finishing your mission as her bodyguard, when we met in Sapphire.”

The sudden appearance of Oliver left Edith, who was on the brink of death, Jane, who was filled with tears, Terence, Prince Albert, and even the Zombie Puppets all staring at him with wide eyes.

Noticing the attention, Oliver waved his hand and greeted them.

“Hello.”