"Take off your stockings. Now."
Seven minutes had passed since Magnus killed the orderly. Ti was tight, but he kept a calm face - couldn’t let Joshua see any sign of urgency.
The girls acted fast. No one dared to resist. Magnus pressed down hard on Jenkins’ neck with one hand, eyes locked on the girls. "One by one, cover his face with them."
Layer by layer, the stockings wrapped tighter. Jenkins struggled, mouth clamped shut by Magnus’ hand, trying to breathe through his nose. But with three layers over his face, each breath got harder.
tal Crystals were tough as hell - no blade or bullet could touch them. But they couldn’t help with suffocation. Magnus knew this. He peeled back the cloth from Jenkins’ mouth just enough.
"I want the Crystals and the three girls. Give that, and you live."
Saying that in front of the girls was no accident - he needed their help next. If they made it back to the Ice Regint, they might still have use.
Jenkins gasped for air, fury in his eyes. "Bastard! Kill if you have the guts! You’ll get nothing from , you piece of - Xavier! Help!!"
No use. Still talking big.
Magnus didn’t waste another word. Stockings back on. Hand over his mouth. Barely two minutes later, Jenkins started thrashing, head nodding like mad, desperate.
Magnus lifted the cloth again.
"I’ll talk! Crystals - under the bed, under the damn bed!"
It was an old, box-style bed. Magnus slamd Jenkins down and tossed a flashlight to one of the girls. "Find it. Open it up."
The beam lit the inside. Dozens of Crystals. All types. Sorted. Enough to overload a packhorse.
Whether Jenkins had told him about all of them or not didn’t matter anymore. He was done. Magnus muffled his mouth one last ti and finished it.
Then turned sharply to the girls. "Move fast. Each of you check one room. Look for more Crystals. Go!"
Magnus swept through the stockpile fast, feeding each piece into the storage space in his palm. Every single one, he had to whisper "In." Over a thousand tis. No mistake.
One girl rushed back. "There’s more - next room, sa place, under the bed!"
Eighteen minutes since the first kill. From the hallway, heavy boots were thudding - soldiers coming.
Magnus flung the door open, dragged the corpses inside. Too late now to cover the damn blood trail. Should’ve done this earlier - cursed himself under his breath.
The girls, half-dressed, confused, scared stiff.
He hauled them into the living room. "Scream. Now. Loud. Just scream! Don’t stop no matter what you hear outside. Got it?"
The three girls nodded frantically, then started screaming loud enough to shake the floors. Outside, dozens of soldiers followed the blood trail and stord up the stairs. By the ti they reached the sixth floor and stood outside the commander’s door, they could all hear the won’s cries from inside.
David Smith hesitated, then banged on the door, shouting, "Commander Joshua! Are you in there? Open up! It’s David!"
Thanks to his second Awakening, Magnus could now store three Crystals into his spatial space every second. Five minutes had gone by, but half of the Crystals were still hidden under the bed in the other room.
Gunfire crackled outside the door - a sure sign the lock was blasted apart. Magnus bolted into the living room, flicked off the safety on his assault rifle, and yanked the door open. He emptied a whole magazine without pause, spraying the hallway in blind fire. When the clip clicked empty, he snatched up a fallen rifle and kept shooting.
In no ti, over thirty soldiers hit the floor. But more footsteps rushed upward from below. Without skipping a beat, Magnus stepped into the stairwell and bellowed downstairs, "David! Get outta here! Soone upstairs is about to chuck a grenade and blow the whole floor!"
Then he dragged the girls back into the room with the Crystals, slamd the door shut, and kept collecting the glowing stones at full speed.
Five minutes... four... three... two... The Crystals under the bed were running low. Only seventy or so left. Magnus figured it would only take him another minute to wrap up - when suddenly, flas licked at the door. Soone was torching it with a flathrower.
"Shit!"
Still absorbing Crystals, Magnus yanked a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and barked back at the girls, "Get behind !"
Three Crystals left.
In his last life, Crystals were scarce as gold within the Ice Regint. This ti around, Magnus wasn’t wasting a single one. He’d already claid over two thousand, and now he wasn’t about to let three asly Water Crystals slip away.
He hurled the grenade into the living room. As the ten-second tir ticked down, he scooped up the last three Crystals in one smooth motion. Then, with an arm linked around each girl, he clamped the third between them, spun around, and ramd his back into the wooden panels covering the window.
Crash!
The boarded-up window shattered. Magnus, clinging tightly to all three girls, plunged straight down from the sixth floor. With a thunderous slam, they landed flat on a car, setting off its alarm in a screaming wail.
Then, a split-second later - BOOM! - an explosion tore through the building’s sixth-floor window. Chunks of concrete blasted outward, raining down like a landslide. Magnus didn’t have ti to think. He rolled over the girls, shielding them with his own body as slabs of cent clattered down hard on his back.
Even with Magnus taking the hit, the fall had battered the girls sothing fierce. Blood trickled from the corners of their mouths. Worse yet, they were outside now - and naked. Overhead, massive mosquitoes buzzed down from Coldre Town’s smoky sky. Around them, the ground teed with crawling spiders and centipedes.
It was a damn ss.
Magnus gritted his teeth, cradled the three girls tight, and shot forward like a blur, leaping over the compound’s outer wall. He bolted along the road, scanning for threats. He didn’t dare use a Fire Crystal to strike back - not with sharp shooters likely lurking, just waiting to take him out. Still, the girls in his arms looked like damn pincushions, each one riddled with mosquito stingers, and even wrapped in a centipede.
With a low, furious growl, Magnus picked up his pace, darting across the street. He ducked into another compound, headed for the garage where he knew Emma and Abigail were hiding. He pounded on the steel door with all his might.
But just then, the heavy grind of engines echoed behind him. Two infantry fighting vehicles rumbled into the compound right on his heels...
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