Chapter 573: Things Fall Apart
I took being bowled over by an explosion with good grace. It all seemed to happen so slowly. I tucked and rolled, turning the harsh push into a somersault, and bounded back to my feet right as everything was disintegrating around me, turning into a hundred thousand splinters that were about to go through the command staff and all the [Scribes].
They’d be fine. Liberal amounts of mental trauma, but none of us were getting out of here without needing significant sessions with the [Mind Healers]. I had to protect what was actuallyimportant.
I threw up dozens of [Event Horizons] between the former walls and the stacks upon stacks of delicate paperwork. I put my hand on top of a nearby set of papers, rapidly storing them in my [Library].
[*ding!* [Event Horizon] leveled up! 842 -> 843]
There was a reason I was working on paper instead of people for a brief moment. I vaguely needed the explosion to settle before I took wing, otherwise I’d leave, everyone here would get shredded, and I’d be in exactly the same position of needing to heal everyone, without the reassurance that a lot of people were currently close to me.
If nothing else, keeping Katerina alive would make the further organization and cleanup efforts that much more efficient, net saving more lives. It still sucked deciding who lived and who I was alright with dying, but I was the [Arbiter], and the math was clear.
Katerina’s life and presence would save dozens to thousands more lives in the coming hours, as there was structure and order. Someone people could easily look up to, who could give orders and they’d be obeyed.
Iona and Fenrir being in my healing radius didn’t hurt things either. From what little I’d seen so far, they should be fine, but for all I knew this was the side-effect of a greater attack. They should still be inside my radius, and the moment this settled down a hair I’d be off like a shot, rapidly circling the city again and again. My mind filtered through dozens of injuries and problems before I settled on the worst ‘recurring’ injury that I couldn’t quite heal through.
Rather, I could, but it wouldn’t help.