Chapter 161: Suck it up, cityboy

He kept his elbows tight to his ribs. Kept his neck down. Anything dangling was an invitation.

One stray hand brushing his sleeve was enough to spike his pulse.

One accidental bite would be enough to end everything. It didn’t matter that he was “alive.” Infection didn’t negotiate.

He could hear their howls, and could see their location on the map, but he couldn’t physically see how they were sorted or aligned, so he crawled on top of them.

The idea felt insane even as he did it. Crawling over zombies like a pile of sacks, using them as terrain.

But it was the only way through without spending energy punching and shoving them aside. He lowered his weight onto them carefully, distributing pressure so he didn’t stomp down and trigger some reflexive lunge.

The zombies behind the door all stopped moving; they lost the scent of their food, so they had no reason to move forward. But that also meant they had no reason to back away either, so they just stopped, standing still mindlessly.

It created a deadlock. A plug of bodies filling the doorway like cork in a bottle. Kael had to move across them the way you crossed unstable rubble, slow enough not to collapse the pile, fast enough to beat the next petrification cycle.

Kael clawed over bodies, latched on with his metallic gauntlets over corpses. Pushed with one hand and moved with the other.

His gauntlets helped. Metal didn’t flinch from slick skin. The grip was sure, even when the surface beneath him was damp and soft. He hooked a wrist over a shoulder, braced a knee, and pulled himself forward inch by inch. Each motion scraped his jacket. Each motion made the chain between his gauntlets clink faintly against metal, a sound he hated even if the zombies didn’t react.

Until he felt an arm grab his foot.

The touch was wrong. Not accidental. Not a shove. Fingers closed around his ankle like a clamp, and Kael’s whole body stiffened. And if it tightened anymore it would probably bruise.

His boot squeaked against flesh as he tried to pull away without yanking too hard. If he jerked, he might tear his own footing loose and tumble into the pile. For a second, had the worry that whatever grabbed him might just have enough greed to try a bite.

He couldn’t see its face. Couldn’t see its mouth. But he could imagine teeth snapping at leather and finding flesh. He held his breath out of pure instinct, as if silence would keep him safe even from touch.

But it soon let go.

The fingers loosened, confused. Maybe the zombie’s brain tried to follow the scent and found none. Maybe it had only grabbed out of reflex. Either way, the release felt like a gift.

Allowing him to breathe again, “Forty-three…” he kept counting as he pushed himself forward.

He forced air back into his lungs slowly, refusing to gasp. Forty-three meant he was getting close to the next petrification. The number mattered more than fear did. Fear was noise. Counting was control.

Zombie after zombie, until he made it past the door.

He slipped through the last tight cluster and felt the edge of the doorway brush his shoulder. The air changed slightly, less dense, less clogged with bodies, telling him he’d reached the corridor side again.

“Sixty!” he cursed as he felt the sudden petrification hit.

His muscles seized mid-motion. Not fully stone, but heavy as if gravity had tripled for just him. His fingers locked against the wall. His legs stiffened. Even his jaw felt slow to close.

Unable to move, yet thankfully, nothing assaulted him yet.

He froze in place, half leaning, half standing, praying that none of the zombies decided to lunge by accident. Presence was still active, but Presence couldn’t stop bad luck. It only lowered him. It didn’t erase physics.

He looked at the blue bar and realized that he was greatly mistaken about one thing.

He thought that a third of the bar could help him escape. He was wrong.

It was already half of what it was, and Kael didn’t even go beyond the Zombies grouped up at the door.

The realization hit like cold water. The bar had plunged far too fast. Not a gentle decline, an ugly bite out of his reserves. He hadn’t thrown punches. He hadn’t cast fire. He’d only hidden and crawled. And yet his body felt like it had paid for a full sprint.

’Why the fuck did it dip so fast?’ he couldn’t help but whine.

The thought was petulant, but honest. He hated that he had to bargain with a resource he couldn’t properly measure. Mana had headaches. Internal energy had this quiet, traitorous drain that didn’t warn you until it was too late.

After all, [Presence] does hide one from the senses.

But then he realized.

What if it were many senses that were tracking him?

The strain would be far more acute.

And the Rune would consume a larger amount of internal energy.

He realized that fact too late, something he needed to know and understand, a small mistake, a costly one at that, too.

It made ugly sense.

One monster was one mind.

A hundred zombies were a hundred half-functioning senses constantly probing the air. Presence had to work harder to convince all of them that he wasn’t there. Like trying to whisper over a crowd. The more ears, the louder you had to whisper.

This was something that Kael had judged as, foolish.

He couldn’t blame anyone but himself. It wasn’t that he was an idiot, but the fact that he overlooked this possibility was enough for him to blame himself.

He felt the self-anger rising, hot and sharp, but he didn’t let it bloom into panic. Panic would burn energy too. Everything burned energy.

But as the seconds of petrification passed, he came to one realization.

’Complaining can’t solve shit. If I’m in a pinch, I’ll need to get myself out of it.’

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