Chapter 139: Ch137. Home, sweet home (2) - Alone
The streets were on fire.
Not in the literal sense, though plenty of wreckage still smoldered and cracked under the weight of destruction. It was chaos, blaring and immediate, and Miles was running through it like a hunted animal, his lungs screaming, his mind barely keeping pace with his body.
The moment the [Bounty Notification] had gone out, the battlefield turned on its axis.
Miles had escaped the hilltop in a storm of blades and spells, dodging lightning strikes that lit the sky purple and bolts of ice that shredded the rusted bones of half-collapsed buildings. Monsters pursued. The players followed. Some with bloodlust, others just out of obligation or greed. It did not matter.
They all wanted the reward.
And so, Miles ran.
Through ruined overpasses with broken signs still pointing toward districts that seemed to no longer exist, over cracked sidewalks with grass growing through them, past shattered windows reflecting him like a ghost darting through a dying city.
A fireball exploded just behind him, sending him sprawling onto the road. He rolled, surprised to not feel any pain, and forced himself back up with a grunt. His scythe was still in his hand, flickering slightly as if responding to his distress.
The city was a skeleton of what it used to be, but something tugged at him.
It was familiar, even though it did not carry the life Miles felt before he left.
Miles blinked through the stinging sweat and grime on his face, peering at the worn-out shopfronts, the shell of a bus stop, the mural on a half-demolished wall. His feet slowed.