Chương 37

I slowly, very slowly came to my senses with a splitting headache starting from just above my nose. It was the worst headache I had ever felt in my entire life. But the first thing I thought of — even before asking myself where I was, since I was looking at a starry sky above — was, Holy shit, that worked. I'm still alive. But then I felt a warm cushion on my back, and I turned.

"Sir John, I see you're awake." I pushed myself forward and turned.

"King Pussycat?"

"That's not his name," came a severe woman's voice.

"Darling, please, I need this," King Pussycat replied.

"Regulus. Husband, I do not want to hear such a ridiculous name for a valiant warrior like you."

"It is not a ridiculous name. It is the apt name for someone who failed at his duty. It was not me who liberated my subjects. And despite the System putting Sir John through so much, he managed to save the love of my life as well. The person most important to me. I thought I would never see you again, Zosma. And it was John, however, who brought you back." I cleared my throat, feeling a lot of stuck mucus in there.

Then the first thing that hit me wasn't the fact that we had reached the outside, nor the fact that Queen Zosma was there, or King Pussycat, or the three hundred cat women and men walking around. It was that I was still covered in fucking rotten flesh.

"Holy shit," I muttered before retching. By now, I had puked my entire stomach several times over, so nothing came up. But King Pussycat smiled at his master acting like that.

"Sir John," King Pussycat smiled.

"I am glad you're alive and well." I turned to look at King Pussycat, and my eyes went wide. Oh, shit. I turned to see that my teammates were just a dozen feet over, discussing something.

"Guys," I called, and they approached me. I looked at my wristwatch. It was 4 a. m. Holy shit.

"Did we find the antidote? Where is it? Did you already take it?" I asked King Pussycat. At that moment, King Pussycat smiled.

"Sir John, I must admit something." I was already using the Sphere of Intuition once again, and I could see, at the same moment, a grim expression on Lucas's and Marcus's faces, and tears — dried or fresh — in everybody's eyes. Then, through the Sphere of Intuition, I saw that King Pussycat was still affected by the poison. Even Queen Zosma closed her eyes and put her head against her husband's side.

"The poison has no known cure. I lied to you, Sir John. I selfishly wanted to let you—" King Pussycat stopped midway through his speech to give a few coughs and paw away some tears running down his giant lion face.

"I have rarely seen, if ever, such a display of heroism, of friendship, Sir John. But I am not sure I will be able to hold my end of the blood pact. You…" But that's when King Pussycat had to stop, because I had gotten to my feet — wobbly, but with firm eyes. I looked for my spear, which had been put at my feet, and bent to grab it.

"King Pussycat," I said, "show me your belly."

"What do you think you're doing?" Queen Zosma suddenly stiffened, and claws appeared in the place of her fingers, less imposing than before, but still deadly.

"King Pussycat," I said curtly, "your belly."

"All is well, darling," King Pussycat said to Queen Zosma.

"It is Sir John's right to take the life of a liar. The fact that I lied for my subjects does not make this any better. I still deserve a punishment for such foolishness." Then King Pussycat rolled over, and everybody erupted. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"John, what the hell are you doing?" Marcus asked.

"Have you lost your mind?"

"John, he is— he is gonna die soon," Tina said in a low voice. Hailey just cried. But Lucas — Lucas stayed silent, looking intently at me, and then giving me a small nod. I raised an eyebrow at the archer, and then nodded back.

"My husband will not—" King Pussycat pushed his wife back and said, "Please, Zosma, do not interfere. My shame is already too large. Please let me go on my own terms, not on the undead's terms."

"Regulus," Zosma said, with her composure breaking.

"Regulus, I cannot lose you."

"Fear not. I will reach the stars and forever accompany you in your journey through life, my love. I will watch over you. And now, farewell and goodbye." I went up to King Pussycat's belly and closed my eyes. Everybody was raising their voices and shouting. Marcus was about to step forward, and Queen Zosma could barely look. But then I pierced right above King Pussycat's belly, and something happened. There was a faint light coming from it, and then darkness came out.

And it came out part in wisps of smoke and part in long ribbons of cloth inscribed with runes. King Pussycat seized up, and his eyes momentarily glazed over. But the wound on his belly started draining of its evil essence, and the dark rot slowly receded as the ribbons emptied out from the wound. Everybody looked. And then Lucas said, "Look at his level." They watched intently as King Pussycat's level went down.

[Pussycat, the Noble King of the Jungle - Level 18 (Boss)] [Pussycat, the Noble King of the Jungle - Level 16 (Boss)] [Pussycat, the Noble King of the Jungle - Level 12 (Alpha)] And it went down to Level 1, just like it had for Queen Zosma. And Lucas was the only one who had known why Queen Zosma's level had fallen so much. He had not actually told everybody else, waiting for me to explain. So everybody was stunned, but they immediately put two and two together. Suddenly, that spectacle was done.

And King Pussycat was passed out at level one — but he was alive, and there was no more poison riddling his body.

"You." Queen Zosma couldn't believe her eyes.

"You… What did you do? You did this to me as well. I thought it was malicious rotten magic and that you somehow had a skill to stop it and…" Queen Zosma was rambling now, seeing her husband saved. I took the spear back, deactivated the Sphere of Intuition, and lay on the grass, looking again at the starry sky.

"You know," I said, ignoring the woman for a second, "I didn't know the stars were so clear here. Just noticed it." Everybody looked at each other.

"Are you having a stroke?" Tina suddenly asked.

"What did— what did you just do?" I looked at Tina.

"I don't know. I just doomed humanity, I guess," I replied in a low voice.

"The System sort of gave me hints about how to deal with Queen Zosma's possession, and that brought her to level one. I thought that doing the same thing for King Pussycat would drain the poison, and it worked. But now we don't really have anything we can do against the army that's coming later tonight." I sighed and rubbed my face as I sat back up. All this work and…

"You are such a fool," Queen Zosma said, holding her husband's mane in her hand tightly, almost as if afraid that he would disappear at any moment. I turned to her and asked, "Why? I can't do anything. I don't know how."

"John," Queen Zosma called me by my name.

"Sir John," she corrected herself.

"You saved me and my husband and our people. You have an army now." My eyebrows raised as I looked at the many cat men and women looking at me curiously. Still half naked.

"I…" I muttered.

"I'm not sure an army will be enough. And I don't want to put all your people at risk. There is some kind of monster apparently coming our way — a triple-S ranker, Father Okonkwo said — and I don't know how we will deal with him, and…" Lucas suddenly stepped up.

"Well, we," Lucas said, "we won't deal with him. Because a hero will." I scoffed.

"Lucas, what are you talking about?" My voice died in my throat as Lucas took out a stone in the form of a heart and placed it in my hands.

"A hero's heart." Item - Hero's Heart (Rank - A) - Level 25 I looked up, and Lucas smiled.

"It dropped after you fainted, and, you know, I picked it up. So you owe me, dude. Big time." I looked back at the heart. I couldn't believe it.

"So, uh, we won't have a huge overpowered cat fighting for us and shooting lasers," Lucas said, "but we have a hero on our side. So, what do you think? Do you wanna use that and show us the Lance of the Hero, finally?"

"Yeah," I muttered, "but first, we forgot to do something." I took out the detonator from my inventory.

"Are we far enough, and have we got everything we needed?" Lucas nodded, and then I pushed the trigger button. We all turned in the direction of the undead fortress, and for a second, nothing happened.

"Holy— is this broken?" I muttered.

"Did we just waste—" But once again, I was cut off. And then, even from this far, everything blew up. It was a series of chained detonations, and then a large one, and a mushroom cloud appeared right above it. The entire team was slack-jawed, and all the cat men and women covered their ears, hissing in pain from the loud shockwave that came up to them.

"Good stuff." Lucas coughed, shaken from the aftermath.

"You couldn't really wait a moment and just be a hero, right? You went straight for the bombing." I looked at the trigger in my hand, which was slowly turning to dust, and smiled at my friend.

"Bad habits die hard."