Chapter 471
Chapter 471
A full minute had passed. Everyone around the cavern had stopped whatever they had been doing and were now just watching Jake and the Commander, who stood at the center of the area.
With each passing second, the Commander grew more nervous. He’d just tried contacting Silvia again, but there was still no reply from her. The situation was definitely far from normal, and he could no longer conceal it. Though he tried to appear calm, his anxiety was obvious.
The Commander was already preparing for the worst, taking small steps back from Jake and casting furtive glances at his people. While Jake noticed it, he gave no indication. He didn’t really care. He was simply waiting for any of his winged creatures to locate Catalina. However, a full minute had passed since he’d issued the order for his wyrmcallers to start looking for her, but none had reported back yet.
His wyrmcallers were surprisingly fast and could cover vast distances in short amounts of time. Their sight was exceptional, allowing them to notice small details even when flying far above them at great speed. Still, Dead City was enormous, and he had only ten wyrmcallers at his disposal. Despite their exceptional speed and sight, it might still take them a few minutes to locate Catalina.
And if she were in danger, those few minutes might already be too much. To help her in time, if she needed it, he first had to know exactly where she was. So he turned his attention to the Commander, who had already managed to put several steps between them.
“Where exactly did you send them?” he asked.
The Commander flinched slightly, as though Jake’s voice had yanked him out of his thoughts. “Well, it’s hard to explain…”
“Then show me on the map,” Jake said.
The Commander hesitated. He was accustomed to giving orders, not following them.
“Do it. Now,” Jake said, his voice rising. “There’s no time to waste!”
The Commander must have remembered Jake’s recent threat, because he complied without any objections, quickly striding across the cavern. He reached the makeshift briefing area and stopped before the map.
Jake didn’t move from his spot, as he could see the map from his current position just fine. The Commander, however, looked puzzled, wondering why Jake hadn’t moved.
Instead of pinpointing the possible location of Silvia’s group on the map, he stared back at him until Jake snapped, a note of irritation in his mechanical voice as it carried across the distance, “Don’t just stand there like an idiot! Show me!”
Clearly unaccustomed to being spoken to that way, the Commander clenched his teeth but held his tongue. He jabbed a finger at a point in the northwestern part of the city and said, “They exited the subway through this entrance.” Then he dragged his finger diagonally toward the upper-right section of the map and stopped at another point. “Their objective was to reach this location and assess the situation. After that, they could return to the base, and they would likely use the same entrance they had used to come out, since it was the closest one.” He traced an oval around the subway entrance and the target location. “Obviously, I don’t know exactly where they are right now, but they should be somewhere within this area. I’d guess they’re about halfway to their objective, considering they only left a short while ago.”
Jake barely listened to the Commander’s words, though. The moment he saw him point out the area where Silvia’s group was supposed to be, he contacted his wyrmcallers and ordered all but one of them to sweep the location for the humans.
While they carried out his orders, he spun toward the nearest exit from the cavern and dashed toward it. A moment later, he was navigating through the maze of natural underground tunnels. It didn’t take him long to reach a subway tunnel.
From there, he made his way toward the nearest subway entrance. He’d known beforehand exactly where he was going to emerge, so he’d sent the single wyrmcaller he hadn’t dispatched to search for the human group to that exact subway entrance.
By the time he emerged from the subway, the wyrmcaller was already there, standing near the entrance and patiently awaiting further commands. He rushed toward the beast, circled it, and vaulted onto its back. He immediately merged with the huge creature and a second later, became one with it, observing the world through its eyes.
Spreading his huge wings, he launched into the air, gaining more than a dozen feet in a single leap. He beat his wings with great vigor, climbing higher and higher.
At one point, a nest sprouted a long, whip-like tentacle and lashed at him with a whoosh of displaced air, but he veered aside and easily avoided the strike. Once he was above the rooftops and beyond the reach of the nests’ tentacles, he turned toward Silvia’s possible location and sped through the air.
Then one of his wyrmcallers suddenly reported back, informing him that it had found Catalina. Still flying in the same direction, he established a visual link with the creature that had just contacted him. His point of view shifted once again.
Now seeing through the eyes of a different wyrmcaller, he took in a new scene. The creature was perched on the edge of a ten-story building, looking down at the street far below. A group of humans was sprinting down the road, pursued by a pack of ravagespawn. Among them, Jake immediately spotted two familiar figures: Catalina and Silvia. The two of them were in the lead.
The group of humans ran as fast as they could, moving not toward their objective’s location but rather toward the subway station they must have emerged from a few minutes earlier. Those at the back of the group occasionally thrust their weapons backward and fired bursts of energy fire at the swarm of monsters chasing them.
Due to their lack of aim and chaotic movement, most of their shots went wide. As for those that found their mark, they didn’t deal nearly enough damage to stop the mass of monsters from pursuing the humans. Jake thought they shouldn’t have bothered firing at all, since doing so only slowed them down.
He also couldn’t help but wonder what had caused the group to retreat in such a hasty manner. After all, those were seasoned survivors, and a pack of ravagespawn shouldn’t have been enough to send them into a panic and drive them into a desperate sprint for the safety of the subway.
A moment later, he got his answer. Some distance behind the swarm of ravagespawn, Jake spotted D. That was almost certainly why the human group was panicking.
His counterpart was chasing the ravagespawn, but Jake doubted the monsters were his real target. He was most likely after the humans.
Apparently, Silvia’s group had encountered D at some point, and he’d immediately started pursuing them, prompting them to break into a run. Or maybe he hadn’t immediately begun chasing them, so they had decided to return to the base as soon as possible, but D had noticed them and given chase.
Either way, the details hardly mattered. If D caught up to the humans, they would all be done for, that was for sure.
Now that Jake had spotted D, he realized why most of the shots the survivors fired missed the ravagespawn altogether. The reason was that those shots weren’t even aimed at them. Instead, the humans were trying to hit D, who was behind the monsters.
The nest beneath the wyrmcaller spawned several monsters, and the winged creature took to the air before they could close in on it. But the wyrmcaller continued to circle the area, looking down at what was taking place in the street far below.
D finally reached the swarm of ravagespawn, but he didn’t even slow down. As he charged through them, he either shoved them out of the way or slashed at them with his incredibly long, powerful claws. By now, it was painfully obvious that his goal was indeed the humans.
At some point, he sprouted two scythe-blades from his shoulders, and they carved through the monsters as easily as a hot knife through butter, slicing the unfortunate creatures apart.
D’s movement speed was undoubtedly incredible. And he clearly wasn’t interested in the ravagespawn one bit, dealing only with those that were directly in his path or tried to slow him down. His sole focus was on the group of humans that was desperately trying to get away from him.
Jake flew toward the street where the chase was taking place as fast as he could, but it was painfully obvious he wouldn’t be able to come to the humans’ aid before D reached them.