Page 1065

“Papa?” was all Emiliana had to say, and the ice dematerialized. The bodies of Zeff’s victims were still not visible, Marcos noticed, but there was so much blood that it dripped from the ceiling and splashed against a dozen red puddles on the floor.

With her arm around one of Zeff’s, Emiliana led everyone out of the room, and together, the Elroys left blood-soaked footprints as they made their way down the hall.

-+-+-+-+-

Dunehall was finally in sight again. The constant assault from every direction made it feel like he was running underwater. He’d tried launching himself on platforms, only to be knocked off course and forced back to the ground. He couldn’t remotely make out what was hitting him. In the low light, it was just an indistinguishable flurry of shit, but he had little doubt that it had all been materialized.

The shield did its job, though, and he pushed onward, recreating his full plate armor each time it was destroyed. On that front, he was also seeing progress. At first, the armor had only lasted a few seconds before being melted away or exploded apart, leaving his shield-strengthened flesh to weather the brunt of the force; but now, the armor was lasting longer, and while Hector had a vague idea why that was, he didn’t have time to stop and question right now. He only knew that he wanted his armor to be stronger and that his soul power was making it happen.

‘Garovel,’ Hector thought in the middle of a fully armored sprint, ‘can you sense Asad yet?’

He waited, but there was no answer.

‘Garovel!’

A pair of deep piping noises demanded his attention, and Hector rolled through a picket fence to his right, out of the way of two destructive paths that dug up the sidewalk and sent chunks of dirt and concrete and splintered wood flying past him.