Chapter 183: Zach’s Estate
Chapter 183: Zach's Estate
It didn’t matter how much he tried to hold back the fear. It didn’t matter that he was in no greater peril now than he’d been in only a short while ago. It didn’t even matter that death was death and all death was equal. No, none of these things mattered. Because to Zach, the how of it all was still very much relevant. For this reason, he could fight against a gigantic, T9 superboss without so much as flinching, and yet in this situation, he remained totally and completely unable to control his quivering; this, as his current duration of Unleashed Phase ticked down to 0:20.
“Jimmy,” Zach said, his voice unsteady. “Am I about to die?”
“Nah, man, no way.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Tena smiled at him. “I trust Jimmy too.” She and Jimmy then exchanged glances, and there was an awful lot of complexity in the way that they looked at each other. Tena looked like a young woman trying her best to be patient, and Jimmy gazed at her like a guy who knew he’d screwed up but wanted to do better. Neither of them seemed to pay Zach much mind despite the possible end of his life fast approaching.
At the moment, Jimmy stood just a few feet away from Zach. Over the past few minutes, he’d gathered several purple healing stones from various adventurers, which he’d then handed off to Donovan, who was now closest to Zach. Both seemed relaxed and calm: the opposite of the way he himself felt. Right now, his mind was flashing back to Archian Prime: to the pain and terror that came with a death by exertion debt.
“Please don’t do this to me,” he’d begged Queen Vayra as the seconds had ticked away. “I don’t want to die!”
This time around, there’d be no impulse to beg, because nobody here actually wanted him dead. Rather, if today ended with Zach drawing his final breath, it would be solely due to a miscalculation on the part of Jimmy. And to make it all worse, Zach still had no idea what Jimmy even planned to do. From the look of things, it appeared like he was just going to rely on purple healing stones, which was not going to be enough.
“So like, if you really do have some great idea, why do you keep refusing to tell me what it is, Jimmy?” Zach asked him.
Jimmy chuckled. “It’s because then you’ll start overthinking everything and convincing yourself it won’t work even though it definitely will.” He pointed his thumb at himself. “But I’m a master at cheesing shit, so I know this is gonna work.”