Chapter 112: A Successful Escape, But at What Cost?
“We’re finally leaving,” Lyra murmured, staring blankly into the distance.
Amelia remained silent beside her, also gazing at nothing in particular.
Noticing this, Mikael understood that the girls had received the same notifications as him. The last remnants of his anxiety faded away. He hadn’t been too worried before, but the earlier scare had left him a little paranoid.
The minutes ticked down until less than a full minute remained before their departure.
During this time, Mikael had been scanning their surroundings, and he couldn’t help but think, ‘Honestly, these last hours have been… smooth? Yeah, that’s the right word. Considering everything that happened in the past 24 hours, I didn’t expect the end to be this “easy.”’
‘Of course, it wasn’t truly easy, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly difficult either. It was about the same level as before. If I were some kind of main character, things wouldn’t have gone this smoothly. No, the last few hours would’ve been filled with relentless battles. And the end? The beast attacks—or maybe even Nexorian entities—would’ve intensified at the worst possible moment, turning everything into pure hell.’
‘Finding five uninterrupted minutes to extract from this world would have been nearly impossible. The only way out would’ve been through the automatic extraction, forcing me to leave the girls behind in a tearful goodbye or something equally dramatic. And then, I’d escape, vowing to destroy Nexoria or some cliché like that…’
A shiver ran down his spine. ‘Yeah, thank god I’m not a main character. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life. It wouldn’t even make sense. If I survived for 23 hours, why would the last hour suddenly become exponentially harder for no logical reason? If the difficulty had spiked like that, I’d have already been dead long before this point.’
‘And even if the worst-case scenario did happen—if I were incredibly unlucky and something attacked me at the last second—it would have to be strong enough to overpower me, but not instantly kill me? That would be… ridiculously convenient in the worst way possible. Sure, it’s possible, but the odds of that happening are way too low to worry about.’
As Mikael lost himself in thought, time continued to slip away.
Before he even realized it, the countdown reached zero.
A brilliant flash of light engulfed the three of them, and in the next instant, they vanished—leaving behind a doomed world.