Chương 21

I sighed.

"Yeah. I guess. But we have no choice. We'll prepare as best we can, and we'll do anything to save Father Okonkwo and the rest of humanity. Any other advice? Oh — by the way. The base thing. We can select this haven as our base?"

"Oh, I already did." We all turned toward Hailey.

"What?"

"Yeah. I got a prompt when they were explaining it to me, asking if I wanted to join. I just did. It felt like the most natural thing."

"The girl did the most obvious thing," Bluemont said.

"You're not going to find anything better for now, and you have a triple-S ranker in the city. His blessings are not something to underestimate."

"All right. So that's settled," I said. We briefly talked about the upcoming day, and ate something. I walked back to my house. In the small stock pen beside it, King Pussycat was talking to some little children.

"…And that is the most honorable thing to do when someone pulls your hair." A little girl who had been crying nodded, and petted the gigantic lion. I didn't want to know what advice had been given. As I approached, King Pussycat told the children to go home. They obeyed, clearly smitten with the giant cat.

"Sir John."

"King Pussycat." I greeted my pet. I still had to talk to him before going to sleep. The ex-boss had said he had something to tell me.

"You said you wanted to talk, right? Is it important? I kind of have to sleep. Maybe it can wait?"

"I fear not, Sir John." King Pussycat looked down, then stood. Suddenly his head was higher than mine, and I had to look up.

"I have not told you something, because I wanted to enjoy the little time we had together. It was nice being among children. Being around warriors, after a great fight against the filth." I really didn't like the lion's tone.

"Why do you sound like you're saying goodbye?" I said, fearing what might come next.

"Because, Sir John—" The lion sat down, then rolled onto one side. I suddenly saw something that had completely escaped me. After the fight, I had kept the Sphere pointed outward — at the dark, at the road, at anything that might come at us. Never at him. Now I saw a spiderweb of black, rotting flesh across his chest.

"The poison they used to tame me still flows in my veins. I have barely one day left before my body fails me completely, and I pass away." When I heard that the lion would die, I felt many contrasting emotions. First came the simple realization that without him, we would lose. Then he interrupted my own selfish thoughts.

"I do not want to die, Sir John. I have not yet atoned for my sins. My arrogance brought the demise of my people at the hands of the filth. And so I must correct my old ways. But this poison is consuming me, and my death is soon to be upon us." The giant lion rolled back up and stood. He looked sad. Remorseful. I sighed.

"Listen. I have to admit something, since you just confessed something very personal. You are the strongest creature I have seen in this tutorial. Much stronger than any human I know. And when you told me you were going to die, the first thing that came to my mind was that you're the only way I'm going to save hundreds of millions of people. That was the first thing. It is very selfish of me."

"Selfish?" the lion interjected.

"Sir John, please do not let me hear such foolishness from you. How can it be selfish for you to think about saving others? Our bond is deep, across souls — but new. Unripe. It is too green for you to put my life before that of your kind. So do not be ashamed of that. Or I shall be ashamed that you are my master." If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. The lion's words hit me hard. In that moment, I realized just how much I was learning as a human being.

About — I don't know. Maybe honor. Maybe dignity. I looked at the lion, and I felt a deep admiration for him, despite the ridiculous name.

"I want to save you, King Pussycat. And if I do — despite knowing how much you care about it — when we get out of the first floor, we're changing your name."

"Sir John, my name—""Listen," I said.

"We will save your life. We will atone for your damn sins. And once that is done, you shall have a proper name. Not this ridiculous mockery of you." The lion went silent for a moment.

"Very well. I do have an idea of what could be done. But then I must confess, selfishly, that this is not just to save me. It is also to save my kind, Sir John."

"Well — tit for tat." I smiled.

"The Latins, Sir John, would say do ut des. But let this not be a symbol of exchange, or transaction. Let this be the blood pact upon which we shall forge our friendship." It was honestly pretty upsetting — and at the same time very fitting — that this lion was more eloquent than me. I nodded at him.

"There is no time for sleep, then. I will go wake the others. What shall we do? Tell me."

"There is a stronghold of the filth," King Pussycat said.

"They subjugated my kingdom. In that stronghold, I know there must be a tonic to cure me. So we must raid them, liberate my subjects, and save them from the filth. Once we do, I shall drink the tonic, and we will be able to go on across the dungeon, Sir John. With whatever name you shall choose for me." Quest Received: The Poisoned Blood of Kings.

"How bad is it?" I asked.

"The stronghold." King Pussycat did not answer right away, which was answer enough.

"The filth in that place is not the filth you have killed," he finally said.

"And I am chained to your measure now, Sir John. What you are, I am. As we stand tonight, neither of us walks back out."

"So we need to be stronger. By tonight."

"Yes." There was only one thing I could think of that would make a substantial difference beside a laser-shooting-lion. I opened my status. Item — Lance of the Hero Strength: 40/40 ✓ Spear Mastery: 12/15 ✗ A Hero's Heart: ✗ I still needed three levels on the Spear Mastery even if I somehow figured out the Hero's Heart requirement. Three levels in a night. But then, there was still the question of how I'd get 'A Hero's Heart.' Where the hell am I supposed to get that?

The answer to that question was the hinge on which humankind's salvation might be resting. A Few Hours Prior Alice saw the tide of undead collapse. She had been hiding in a trench, hidden away from all the zombies. All at once the zombies shrieked toward the sky. Some mysterious light left their corpses, and what stayed behind was only rot. They fell on top of each other.

A few were still crawling as they went down, still reaching up, as if looking at something above them — and they piled higher than anything the defenders had managed to build. Alice bent over her knees. The little food she had eaten in the last twenty-four hours came up and she puked. The adrenaline was draining out of her now, and leaving nothing behind it. She looked at her gun, with all her Mana magazines still filled from the efforts of the caster at the Haven. She realized she had still too many. Fuck.

She unholstered the guns and put the nozzles against the grounds, emptying one mag after the other. When she was done, she took the nearest corpse she could find and broke it apart, smearing herself in blood and gore from head to toe. She tussled her hair, scratched her own face, and used a knife to partially tear her armor. Then, she turned to the sky. She looked at the screen with hate. John O'Donnell was flat on his back on the floor of the boss room, and his friends were laughing. Why did he take so long?

She had watched the montage. More than an hour of him sitting on top of that sarcophagus, while the wall came apart forty feet from where she stood. Then something small and bright fell out of the air beneath the screen and landed at her feet. She crouched. She brought her hands close to it, hesitantly. It was a stone in the shape of a heart. Item: A Hero's Heart Description: Awarded for acts of extraordinary heroism. Granted only to the purest of hearts among Divers.

Owner: John O'Donnell Alice looked at the stone.

"Is this a joke?" she muttered. She looked around. Nobody had noticed. She looked back up at the screen. He was still on the floor. Someone was still laughing. She pocketed the stone, got up, and walked back toward the haven.

"Alice!" Francis, one of the better warriors at the Haven, shouted.

"You were so deep into the fight that we lost sight of you! Oh my God! Look at you! You must have killed hundreds of those bastards!"

"Yeah," Alice said in a raspy voice, burned by the acidic vomit residues.

"It was really hard."

"And that son of a bitch," Francis said, looking up.

"I want him fucking dead! Fuck him!"

"I agree," Alice said, looking up at the screen and tapping the heart-shaped rock in her pocket.

"Fuck him."