"Evreux!" someone yelled. "Evreux, you motherfucking bastard! Don't you even dare to die on me!"
There it is again - that familiar voice.
A voice he believed he would never hear again and never wished to hear again. He was displeased and annoyed, thinking that that scumbag would still bother him even before his death.
At least let him die in peace, okay?
As much as it was his fault for picking such a terrible target to kill, he still had the right to die peacefully.
Evreux realized it wasn't an imagination when the voice got louder and closer. In fact, it seemed to come from the person in question. It sounds strange, almost as if it was right next to him.
He opened his eyes wide and looked up, only to discover a person possessing a pair of enchanting emerald green eyes hovering a few feet above him. His heart stopped for a moment as he was too stunned to speak.
He couldn't understand what was going on. This had to be some kind of hallucination.
Is this guy for real? Or am I finally dead?
Fuck, how many surprises can this eccentric prince bring him?
It's normal for the assassin to react in this way. First of all, the distance from the border and to the snail king wasn't close, and by crossing it, one should consider all the obstacles, including the dead vines, exploding bugs, and the annoying tentacles. Evreux would find it difficult to traverse even if he fueled himself with courage, even as an assassin.
The point is that this eccentric prince seems to be flying!
It's just impossible!
Evreux had given up. He thought he was doomed to die when the beast pulled him up. It never occurred in his mind that Chase, this unlucky prince, would return and save him!
Who in the right mind would waste such a good chance to escape?
Though his thoughts didn't last long. As if time returned to its pace, Evreux could feel the gravity pulling him down with the air whistling heavily in his ears.
The mouth of the snail king was wide open, which was remarkably resembling a flower with overstretched petals riddled with sharp silver teeth. The snail king wailed loudly, spewing out noxious gases and fluids that were putrid and disgusting.
His figure dropped without blockage as if the snail king was spreading its arms to welcome him. Yet, before he could enter the deep dark hole in the midst of the enormous mouth, a force grabbed his body abruptly, tugging his guts in pain that his insides were almost rearranged.
Chase gathered him around his shoulders haphazardly, tossing him like a sack of potato, then propelled himself from the scene immediately, just in time for the reinforcement tentacles to miss him.
The momentum from falling disrupted a portion of his energy, making his flight lower than before, and with the baggage on his shoulders, it only made flying impossible to achieve.
But Chase is not without a plan.
The tentacles were not smart enough to perform complicated actions and simply swarmed the areas Chase had passed through. These large, wiggling appendages created a path that allowed Chase to jump from one place to another.
It was such a heart-stopping scene. Evreux could clearly see how close they were to being caught between Chase's jumps. He could feel Chase's muscles straining and the sharp jolts of pain whenever he bumped into the young man's sharp shoulders.
But he endured. Even though it was painful enough to make him pass out, Evreux persisted as he gritted his teeth and moved as little as possible to not become a burden. He knows they are currently in a very vital step!
The tentacles surrounded the snail king as if to create a nest, gradually entrapping the two small figures inside a closed stage. The lack of ground to step on made it difficult for Chase to generate a drive to push them up from the surge.
He was multitasking; his eyes were looking around for ground to anchor while his hand did not cease from throwing all the bugs he could pick at the pursuing tentacles. That's when the movement of the enormous gaping mouth slowly closing caught his attention.
A ridiculous idea flashed through his mind. Evreux noticed that Chase stopped moving around and stayed in one tentacle. Of course, the tentacle lashed around to throw them off, but Chase was very good at balancing.
The only thing he had to do was walk around in hurried steps to gain a footing. This skill made Evreux look at Chase in awe. There is no time to reiterate the plan, so Chase simply chooses the idea he thought of.
That's why, when Chase suddenly started jumping around again but obviously going down close to the mouth, Evreux began to be anxious. He had seen death many times today, and he'd rather see that than the close-up of the hideous flesh of the snail king.
The surrounding is already dim and would have been darker if not for the exploding bugs emitting scant lights. The bugs were everywhere, buzzing agitatedly, but their numbers had obviously lessened because of the tentacles disturbing their camp.
It did not help that Chase was also catching these bugs, ripping their paper-thin wings, generating a louder hissing that made the ear bleed. Evreux just watched the young man collect the bugs as if picking petals!
But there is no time to complain. The tentacles had already created a dome of protection that encased the entire body of the snail king. Complete darkness covered every nook and cranny, but with the help of the bugs in Chase's hand, they could still somehow see the way.
And it is because of its prominent feature that allowed the assassin to see Chase throwing the bundle of the dangerously close-to-exploding bug into the tiny opening of the closed mouth.
The last amount of light vanished. The assassin who depended on his hearing made him aware that Chase had landed on something soft and slightly undulating ground. There is a hint of blobbing sounds and gurgling, as if a balloon was fused with much water and air it inflated and created strange noises.
It had become prominent when the ground they were stepping on glowed. It's only this time that the assassin understood what Chase had done.
The snail king had been releasing foul-smelling goo since earlier. It wasn't something special, but Chase is familiar with that smell. It has been proven that the dead tentacles were the snail's progeny, thus its body must contain at least more than fifty percent of the snail's original genes.
It also means that the exploding bugs evolved into something like a bomb because they are fed with the snail's carcasses full of this gross fluid.
And by that, Chase concluded this snail is a whole tub of natural gasoline. Though natural gases shouldn't smell, their foul smell could be associated with the snail's living environment and peculiar diet.
Who cares about the technicalities anyways?
As long as Chase recognized its properties, he was ninety-nine percent sure that he could find a way to utilize it. He just used the evolved bugs as a trigger to create a colossal bomb.
The snail king is made up of sturdy flesh, and it is possible that the bugs Chase tossed inside won't deal it much damage, but it is enough to create an opportunity.
The closed mouth to which Chase landed started to grow and inflate whilst the exploding bugs produced the light inside the cavity. Evreux could fully see the muscle holding on under Chase's feet to look more bloated and transparent, the intricate capillaries visible, as if the explosion would tear the appendages apart.
It's building up.
"Hold unto me tight," Chase made the assassin change position, so he was on his back in piggy-ride. Evreux followed and indeed clung to the prince tightly.
He could fully feel the strange power accumulating underneath him in this position. A strong gale of wind circled underneath their feet, as if a tornado was accumulating. It wasn't large, however, concentrated on that certain part that will surely hurl them up in the full blast.
And at that moment, at the point where things had reached the summit, a flash of light so bright it blinded both of them burst out intensely.
Chase activated his skill immediately and used the momentum brought by the explosion to catapult them up to the sky. The tentacles that created the dome collapsed as predicted since its main body had lost control momentarily because of the internal explosion. Chase excitedly reached out to the heavens, and even without wings, flew up as if the limit had been surpassed.
They're free.
They could feel the sudden surge of freedom brought by reckless bravery and courage. Evreux opened his eyes wide, watching the surroundings filled with flashing lights.
It is supposed to be dangerous, heck, he could even feel the scorching heat coming from the explosion they barely escaped. Yet, it felt so fucking enthralling he never felt so alive more than at this moment.
Maybe, this time, they could really escape here alive.
The feeling of reckless freedom wasn't limited to the assassin. Chase, who had the power in full operation, could be considered to have been tripped as if he was on drugs. The ability to fly is not something humans possessed naturally, but it was a skill Julian Moore was born with.
No, rather, an obsession he could never let go of.
His previous world was just an ordinary world until the apocalypse arrived. And at that time, when everyone was dying, and corpses were found more often than food, people with special abilities emerged.
And the reason why Julian Moore managed to survive the first wave of the apocalypse is the ability to command the wind. It allowed him to escape.
It also allowed him to run faster than anyone else.
He is also running now, but the difference is that he is also saving people. He is ecstatic. And that mindset allowed him to utilize his abilities better, his control is much more adept than before.
Chase commanded the wind supporting them to send them to the border. Many tentacles block his way, but he is only using them as a foothold to continue forward.
Nobody would be able to stop a person who is determined to live despite the desperation.
The snail king whined ferociously. It did not expect that these two puny humans would be able to wound it, and not just any part, but on its mouth. The concentration of its saliva is actively flammable, and simply throwing a spark is enough to break it thoroughly. The pores carrying the minuscule drops of natural gasoline churned in pain as it was slowly getting burned by its own composition.
It will die in no time.
Chase miscalculated. He only thought that the snail king was only producing natural gasoline as saliva, never expecting that the entire snail was loaded with the chemical like how humans were made of blood and water. It made the snail king thrash around wildly, destroying anything in its wake, just to remove the fire surging internally.
But it's not working. Fire is such a dangerous thing. It consumes whatever it could touch. And the snail, being a natural fuel, will have no chance to put it off.
That's why, when Chase landed at the border in between the wasteland and the poisonous swamp, he was immediately pushed off by a surge of a hot wave, causing the two unprepared people to roll off from the border wall.
Fortunately, the wall on the poisonous swamp side wasn't straight and was inclined slightly, only making them roll down like dumplings. Clouds of dust and dirt clouded on the passing, with grunts of pain and curses, before they stopped on the ground with a plop. No, it's not ground. They were directly thrown into the poisonous marsh.