24: Chapter 24: Am I A F*cking Dumbass?
24: Chapter 24: Am I A F*cking Dumbass?
As I stared wide-eyed at the spot where the monstrous Urban of the Dark Orange Spine had been standing, I let out a heavy breath.
What…
the hell?
The moment I let out that cough, drawing enough attention to ourselves that the creature had literally bent its head toward us, I had thought we were dead.
So…
Why the f*ck did it ignore us and run away?
Well…
it wasn’t as though I was opposed to it.
But it did spark some curiosity inside me.
I wanted to know why, at the very least.
A low sigh escaped my lips as I focused on breathing normally again.
As I did, I shifted my attention toward Stephanie, who was still cradled tightly in my arms.
But just as I did…
…Huh?
The sensation.
That impossibly strange sensation I’d felt before, when Steph’s body had been in the process of developing her Ability Core…
It was there.
“Big…
brother?” A small voice suddenly snapped me out of my thoughts.
“Steph!” I quickly released my grasp on her face and pulled her into a warm embrace.
Still, I could feel that strange sensation lingering within my bones.
But I didn’t care.
“Are you…
are you alright?” My embrace loosened as I pulled away to look at her face.
She must’ve been utterly traumati- What the…
Steph…
Just a moment ago, she had been quivering in terror, cradled in my arms and too afraid to even breathe.
Tears had been trickling down her face, some of them reaching my hands as I covered her mouth.
But now…
All that remained on her face was an expression of awe.
Then…
Something I would’ve never expected happened.
Steph…
smiled.
Why…
why is she smiling?
What is there to be smiling about?
Don’t tell me…
is she going insane aswell?!
No…
I-it can’t b- “Brother?” “Ah!” I yelped, startled by the sudden movement.
“Steph…” I stared at her for a moment before letting out a quiet sigh.
Then, however…
She looked down at her hands and whispered, “I did it…” Her voice was barely audible.
But the expression on her face said everything.
A smile slowly spread across her lips.
Not the forced smile she used whenever she tried to pretend everything was fine.
Not the brave expression she wore whenever she wanted to reassure me.
No.
This was different.
It was the pure, unrestrained joy of a child who had finally accomplished something she had spent so long chasing.
For some reason…
Seeing that smile left me even more confused.
What exactly had she done?
I wanted to ask.
But first…
We needed to get out of here.
The fact that the Urban had suddenly lost interest in us did not mean it wouldn’t return.
Whatever reason it had for leaving, I had no intention of gambling our lives on it.
I grabbed Steph’s hand.
“Come on.” She looked at me for a moment before nodding.
Then, without wasting another second, we ran.
The two of us disappeared into the endless white haze, moving as quickly as my battered body allowed.
The mist swallowed everything around us, leaving only the sound of our desperate footsteps and heavy breathing behind.
After what felt like several minutes, my body finally reached its limit.
I slowed down.
Then stopped.
Leaning forward, I placed my hands on my knees and desperately tried to catch my breath.
Steph stopped beside me as well, though unlike me, she wasn’t nearly as exhausted.
Of course.
She was a Superhuman now.
I was still just a half-dead Ruined who had somehow survived getting his heart almost pierced.
The difference was a little unfair.
As I was about to complain about my miserable condition, something strange caught my attention.
The ground beneath my feet.
Since we arrived here, everything had been the same.
Rocky.
Uneven.
Cold.
Every step felt like I was walking across a field of broken stone.
But now…
Something soft shifted beneath my bare feet.
I froze.
Slowly, I looked down.
The surface beneath us was no longer rough stone.
It was something much finer.
Something that sank slightly with every movement.
Steph, who had noticed it as well, took a few cautious steps forward.
Her eyes widened slightly.
“…Is it artificial snow?” I looked at her.
“Snow?” She nodded slowly, lifting her foot and letting the strange white substance fall back down.
“It’s so soft…” She sounded almost amazed.
I crouched down and touched the ground myself.
Snow.
Real snow.
Or at least…
Something that looked like it.
I had never seen real snow before.
No one in the Ruins had.
In fact…
No one in the world had either.
The only reason I even knew about it was because of the stories the Elders told us when we were children.
They had shown us old records and history books that described a world where white flakes would fall from the sky every winter, covering entire landscapes in a blanket of ice.
A world before the Great War of Reclamation that split a continent called Antarctica.
I stared at the white substance beneath my fingers.
So this was what it looked like.
A small part of me wondered what it would’ve been like to live in that kind of world.
A world where people looked forward to snow instead of fearing what came after the Rifts.
But that wasn’t snow.
Not really.
The world had appearently changed too much for something like that to happen naturally anymore.
The artificial weather systems humanity created were the closest thing left.
The V.E.I.L.
network, the countless satellites surrounding the planet, and the combination of advanced technology with Ability-based systems had allowed humanity to recreate things it had lost long ago.
Rain.
Temperature control.
Even seasons in some places.
Humanity had reached a point where it could imitate nature itself.
But this…
This wasn’t artificial snow.
I narrowed my eyes.
The texture was wrong.
The feeling was wrong.
And the more I looked at it, the more uneasy I became.
Slowly, I lifted some of the white powder into my palm.
Then…
I coughed.
My expression hardened.
This wasn’t snow.
It was ash.
Pure white ash.
I frowned.
Ash.
That was…
considerably less pleasant than snow.
“Stop.
Don’t breathe any of it in.” She immediately looked at me.
“What?” “Just cover your mouth.” I pulled the collar of my ragged onyx cloakover my nose and mouth before motioning for her to do the same.
I had no idea what kind of ash this was, and considering where we were, I wasn’t exactly willing to discover its effects firsthand.
Once we were both covered up, I grabbed her hand again and started walking.
In whatever direction.
Because, at this point, calling it a direction was being generous.
We wandered through the endless field of white, surrounded by nothing but mist and ash.
Every now and then, my feet brushed against something beneath the powder, usually a rock or some other piece of debris, but there was nothing that could tell me where we were actually going.
Then…
Something finally appeared through the haze.
I stopped.
A tree.
Or…
What remained of one.
A colossal, withered trunk stood in the middle of the ash-covered landscape, its blackened bark twisted into grotesque shapes while its dead branches stretched toward the invisible sky like skeletal fingers.
Beneath it was a small opening dug into the earth, barely large enough for the two of us to crawl through.
I stared at it.
A tree.
Again.
My expression slowly soured.
You’ve got to be kidding me…
of all places in this godforsaken world…
why…
why does it have to be inside another bloody damned tree?
No…
I’m not going in there.
Absolutely not.
I’d already been trapped inside one once.
That was enough tree-related suffering for an entire lifetime.
Unfortunately, when I looked at Stephanie, she was already staring at the small cave beneath the trunk.
Then she looked at me.
Then back at the cave.
I sighed.
Of course.
It was probably the only shelter we’d found since arriving here.
“Fine…” I reluctantly approached the opening.
“If I get stuck inside another tree, I’m blaming you.” Steph tilted her head.
“What did I do?” “Nothing, just…
forget I said anything.” I crawled inside.
Because apparently, survival sometimes required accepting the possibility of being eaten by a tree.
The passage opened into a small hollow beneath the roots.
It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was better than standing exposed in the ash field.
The mist had even managed to seep inside, filling the little space with a pale haze that made everything beyond arm’s reach difficult to distinguish.
My vision was practically useless.
The walls were rough and uneven beneath my fingers, with jagged stones protruding from the earth.
Some sections were strangely damp as well, cold moisture clinging to the rock.
Gross…
I eventually sat down against the wall, stretching my legs out in front of me.
For a while, we both remained silent.
The silence wasn’t exactly peaceful.
It was the kind of silence where you could hear your own breathing and suddenly become very aware that you were sitting inside an unfamiliar cave inside a classified Death Zone, surrounded by an ash-filled mist and potentially sharing the area with something that could tear both of you apart.
So…
Naturally, I decided to ask the most important question.
“Steph.” “Hm?” “You said you did it earlier.” She turned toward me.
“Oh…
I did!” She exclaimed as her face lit up with a joyous expression.
Meanwhile, mine remained confused.
Steph tilted her head slightly, staring at me with a raised eyebrow, then sighed and spoke, “I used my Ability.” I blinked.
“…Your Ability?” She nodded enthusiastically.
“I finally figured out how to use it.” I stared at her.
She stared back.
For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.
Then my expression slowly went blank.
I looked away.
All this time, I had rambled about Stephanie being a Superhuman…
an Ability User.
And yet, I had somehow completely failed to acknowledge what made Ability Users Ability Users in the first place…
Am I a f*cking dumbass?