Apocalypse: Regression

"Quick! We must heal the injured!" Nick called out, dismissing the EXP notifications that flashed in front of him, his eyes scanning the battlefield for the injured and dying. Adele was already at work, her hands aglow with energy that washed over their frozen allies. Reggie was beside her, fire in his hands as he tried to melt the ice covering the knights and Christina.

A knight wrapped bandages around the leg of a fallen comrade, whose greave had been fighter torn off and leg shredded by wolf teeth.

"Everyone, take a breath. Then we push forward," Nick continued, slipping his communication device from his belt. Fingers numb from the cold, which he felt more acutely since he switched crowns, he keyed in a message. "Walters, this is Nick. The wolves are down. We're en route to your position. Hold on!"

He slipped the device back into place and nodded to his assembled team. There was no time for respite—not when one of their own was out there, facing down the enemy.

“Adele, Reggie. You two stay here and defrost Christina,” Nick said as he turned to the knight commander. “I’m sure you and your men are tired, but we have our friend out there. Let's move out!”

The group moved forward, following the clear trail of blood droplets the monsters had left in the snow and marching as fast as they could while still watching their surroundings for traps or hidden vulpes. Nick scanned the snow drifts for Mr. Walters and the monsters he’d led east, but the wind and snow was quickly covering up the trail, fresh white being slowly blown over the top of the crimson drops of blood and filling in the large tracks, but Nick’s group was quick enough.

This is Mr. Walters we’re talking about, Nick assured himself as he followed the trail, a little worried as he saw some of the red grow brighter and deeper, a creature bleeding out. There’s no way Mr. Walters can’t handle this.

Even with that reassuring thought repeating in his head, reminding himself that Mr. Walters was one of the greatest adventurers in his city, even in the past timeline, Nick still felt his anxiety build with every passing moment until he finally caught the sounds of fighting on the wind: shouts, snarls, and the thunderous crack of heavy blows. He scanned the sky and pointed out the flying figures of the harpies in the distance. Nick’s company redoubled their speed, and as they crested a hill, Nick found the fight between his friend and the small army of monsters. Mr. Walters was surrounded by the smaller monsters while the hulking bear picked himself up off the ground a few dozen feet away and shook his head after what must have been a tremendous blow.

The veteran warrior's arms moved so fast Nick could barely make out the man’s strikes, but with each lightning-fast movement the nearest dire wolf or harpy erupted in a bloody mess of pulverized flesh and bone.

At one point, a harpy dived down at the old man’s face. With barely a glance upwards, Mr. Walter stepped to the right and snap-kicked through the neck of a wolf while he used his right hand to snatch the diving harpy from the air by its head, which he crushed easily with the same hand. Mr. Walters then whipped around in a spinning kick, tossing the nearly headless harpy into an approaching wolf even as the rest of the monsters retreated from the wide arc of his deadly foot.

"Keep pace!" Nick shouted over the howling winds, urging his team forward. Their boots crunched through the snow. "Form up! We hit them hard and fast!"

As they neared the fray, Mr. Walters' loud baritone roar cut through the tumult. "I'll leave these pups to you kids!" The towering figure turned on his heel and charged headfirst into the behemoth before them.

"Seo-ah, Allen, clear the skies," Nick ordered, “the rest of you, finish these wolves and don’t let them distract Mr. Walters.”

Arnold and his siblings laid into the wolves with their obsidian-black hammer, fiery purple sword, and glowing fist. At the same time, the circling snow harpies fell from the sky, shot through by Allen’s bullets or torn apart by semi-translucent aura spears launched by Seo-ah’s Hwatu Spear Burst. A dire wolf tried to hamstring Seo-ah, but Nick punched a hole in its neck with his spear as his team and the knights decimated the monsters, the creatures failing to defend against the surprise onslaught.

As Nick killed another dire wolf, the enraged roars of the bear caught his attention, but even in its furious state, it was struggling to land a blow on Mr. Walters as the old man managed to dodge most of the attacks, his shield absorbing every blow he didn’t evade.

As much as Nick wanted to watch the fight, finding it amazing how quickly the old man had adjusted to the bear’s rapid rhythm of strikes, he had to focus on what was in front of him. The remaining dire wolves were doing their best to reorganize and encircle Nick and his friends, but by the time the monsters had managed to adjust to the new enemies, their ranks had already dwindled, and they were the ones that were outnumbered.

"Strike now!" Nick shouted, plunging his spear into the flank of a dire wolf, the creature releasing a pained yowl as it collapsed into the snow. The knights and adventurers tore into the dire wolves and harpies with fresh vigor, but then a flash in the corner of Nick’s eye turned his attention to Mr. Walters again.

The old man’s arms glowed with power, a glowing golden dragon of aura forming around his right arm and fist. He shouted, “Raging Dragon Fist!” and his arm shot forward with the momentum of a comet, tearing through the air and colliding with the core of the enormous bear. The impact echoed like thunder, and for a moment, time seemed to stand still.

A gaping hole appeared in the ursine's torso, the edges of the wound singed by the sheer intensity of the strike. The creature's roar turned to a gurgle as it staggered and then dropped like a felled tree, shaking the ground as it landed.

You have gained 15,812 EXP.

You have leveled up! You have 5 unassigned stat points!

Congratulations! Omni-Trainer's Insight III has evolved Omni-Trainer's Insight IV.

Nick felt the flow of energy that came with any level up and saw similar expressions on several of his teammates’ faces. Between this and the last fight with the monsters guarding the human captives, he suspected that most of his team had gained at least a level. He checked his own status, distributed his free stat points to charisma, and saw he was level 28 and half way to level 29.

Even Mr. Walters seemed to have gained a level as he roared and shouted, “All will worship at the altar of steel!” while flexing his biceps. He took a stumbling step towards Nick, and it was only then that Nick saw that not all of the blood splattered across the man was the monster’s. Mr. Walters had fought a small army alone, and he had not come out unscathed. A myriad slashes, bites, and claw marks marred his muscular arms, and there were even three thin lines that crossed his forehead where a harpy had scored a lucky strike.

“Are you okay?!” Nick began to rummage through his pack as he looked at the injured man, trying to find the special potion the commander had given him earlier. “Do you need—”

“Don’t concern yourself with it, son. Part of any good workout is knowing how to handle post care,” Mr. Walters interrupted him, waving off Nick’s good intentions. The injured juggernaut took a seat on the snow, surrounded by the bodies of dire wolves, snow harpies, and the giant ursine. He closed his eyes, and a green glow enveloped him.

“Yeah, you don’t have to worry about dad. He’s survived tougher fights than this. How do you think his healing skill got to such a high level in the first place?” Arnold said, looking rather proud of his old man as he pulled out a red potion himself and drank it.

Nick nodded, sure that they were right. But he couldn’t let himself feel relieved yet.

“The others! The people that were enslaved!” he blurted out the moment the thought came to his mind.

The battle hadn’t even been over for more than a few minutes, but once more everyone was rushing into action as Adele, Topaz, and even Mr. Walters, who looked like wasn’t in any condition to run, his wounds barely closed, raced back to the injured. Reggie was pulling what looked like some leftover armor out of his inventory, and Christina was producing a backpack with camping supplies in it. The whole crew sprung into action to take care of the surviving captives, but with over a hundred of them, most in incredibly bad condition, it was hard.

“We should clean this up and move out. Our Lady will need us back at the wall to reinforce the siege now that the enemy supply chain has been destroyed,” the knight commander said, his face unflinching. The man sounded incredibly callous to Nick.

“I understand your concern,” Nick told the commander, “but rather than moving out, we need to ensure the safety of these people first.”

“I and my knights do not even number twelve, and there are over a hundred and fifty of them,” the commander objected, blinking in surprise. “We don’t speak their language, we don’t have supplies, and the march is long and arduous. Even if we did our best to save them, they would still die. We could at most save ten or fifteen while the rest perished in the tundra.”

Nick felt his stomach churn a little at the concept. Abandoning these people just because it’s difficult? Nick couldn’t stop his belly from twisting and his mind from reeling at the very thought. Nick took a deep breath, trying to keep his composure so he didn’t break their faith in him. He still needed their help no matter how much their words had sickened him. “I think you’re mistaken. We have plenty of food here,” he said, pointing to the beasts around them. “The monsters brought us flesh for food, fur for clothes, and bones to make the armor and snow shoes they’ll need. That single bear is enough meat for the entire group of survivors.”

“You would waste that precious flesh on others when our own people’s bellies could be empty,” the knight commander replied, eyes wide in shock.

“There is no waste if it saves a life,” Nick chided him angrily, his calm and collected mask shattering under the frustration he was beginning to feel at being told to abandon human life. “Whoever saves a single life, saves an entire world. They have the same right to live that we do, and I’m going to make sure they get it.”

“Are you not the Lady’s avatar? Shouldn’t we be prioritizing our own people first?”

“I am not,” Nick said, causing the knights to all take a step back as they heard his declaration.

It was then that the knight commander, scratching at the back of his head as he seemed to struggle with what to do, finally came to a decision. “Fine. If you’re not her avatar,then you’re on your own. I’ll treat your aid in these battles as penance for pretending to be her spirit. However, we have a mission to fulfill, and we’re going to do just that,” the commander said as he drew with his blade on the ground. “This is where we are,” he said, creating a map for Nick to follow clear as day in the ground. “This is where we will go. When you are finished trying to save these foreigners, you can meet us here. We still need to stop the siege and save the city.”

“I’ll do what I can, as soon as I can, but I’m not going to leave them behind,” Nick told the commander, gritting his teeth a little as he thought about how much faster everything would go if he had those eleven extra hands to work with him.

“What’s going on?” Seo-ah, who couldn’t understand the Proto-Germanic conversation, asked as she came up to Nick.

“The commander was just telling us that he has to return to the battlefront and that he looks forward to us joining him after we save these people here,” Nick answered, watching as the freed captives—outside of those being healed by Adele, Mr. Walters, or Topaz—seemed reluctant to even accept the smallest gesture from the group. Reggie was trying to get some of them to wear the armor and clothes he’d already made, hoping it’d cut the cold, but they were just staring at it like they’d never even worn a cloak, much less a chest piece or pants.

Instead, despite the fact they looked like they might die at any moment from the cold, they were just huddling together the best they could, staring at the attempts at kindness that Reggie and the others were making the way a starving alley cat might look at food set on the ground in front of it.

This is not good, Nick thought, looking in the direction of where the knight commander and his troops had gone. As frustrated as he was with the commander not wanting to help these people, these “foreigners” as he deemed them, Nick still understood the gravity of the man’s situation. The more time passed, and the harder it clearly was to deal with the people he was rescuing, the more frustration he felt himself. He wanted to be a part of that siege, but he needed to somehow get this group of people he’d never seen or met before to fall in line and ‘be rescued.’

Why are you taking your time? Just force them to do what you need. It’s for their own good, the Black Witch suggested in his head, but this time, he ignored it. There was no forcing someone to do something just because he thought it would be best for them. That was a line he didn’t want to cross.

Instead, he reached through the comms channel to see where the other teams were at. “Kaylee, can you see our location on the map? How long until we get reinforcements?”

“Five minutes, give or take,” Kaylee notified him.

“Five minutes until they leave, or five minutes until they get here?” Nick asked for clarification.

“Until they leave the base to reach you,” Kaylee told him.

“Pause their departure for a moment then. Load them up with clothes and food supplies, and make sure they bring people skilled in rescue and relief missions. We have around a hundred and fifty people out here dying of cold, starvation, thirst, and needing medical attention, and I don’t have the necessary skills for treating and handling them,” Nick told her. “Do you have anyone who does?”

“Uhhh . . .” Kaylee seemed like she was drawing a blank. A moment later, she suggested, “Malcolm might know someone? I think? Let me see what I can do. You said about a hundred and fifty? We’ll shoot for two hundred units worth of supplies and try to get things ready for them, but boss . . . the sporadic waves of random monsters aren’t letting up back here at the base. The Crimson Crusaders and your two hired merc groups are doing their best, but we could also use upgrades to the base’s defense system.”

You can go back to your base and reinforce them with your hard-earned essences, but if the citadel falls . . . your base is next, the voice whispered in his mind. Do you think you can defend them then? Forget a hundred and fifty. How many do you think would die at that point?

“Right . . .” Nick paused, looking in the direction the knights had headed. “Can you hold them off for now?”

“You’re asking a lot of us,” Kaylee replied, seeming a little sour at the prospect, “but we can try?”

“Then I’m sending one person your way, and we’ll meet you soon,” Nick told her, looking over toward his group as he ended communications with Kaylee. “Alright, we’re going to need ropes, chains . . . and who do you think has the best ice control?”