With a careful aim, the stone arced through the air as it flew towards its target. Truth be told, I was fucking nervous. I was never the best thrower of things even back in the old world. Maybe, at best, I'd hit their armor and that'll be enough. But knowing just how bad I was at this, I could only expect the worst in terms of how things would play out.*ping...*I winced as my projectile made contact with the guard's armor. Based on how faint the impact sounded on top of not even eliciting some sort of reaction, I could only imagine that the damn Decimal didn't even feel the damn thing make an impact on his suit of armor. But then, shouldn't they hear it at least?I kept my eyes peeled as the Decimal visibly looked around the area before their helmeted face slowly locked onto my general direction. Kneeling down and picking up the rock that I just
The road to hell felt exactly the way as I remembered it being despite the location being wholly different. With the heat emanating from the Furnace proper permeating the air, beads of sweat started running down my back the deeper Livia and I went towards our destination. With the torches still unlit, I doubled as our light source as my hand glowed a fiery orange. It was a small price to pay in terms of slowly sapping my stamina, but it was practically a necessity when descending down a flight of stairs as foreboding as this one was. Illuminating our way, I took point as Livia trailed closely behind me, her sword at the ready despite the likelihood of enemies appearing in this place being effectively nil.And that was something that has been bugging me for a while now. With the lack of personnel even at the main compound, I could only assume that there would be nobody even guarding the Furnace at this poi
Was it bad that I was practically used to death? On top of yearning for it on a daily basis back in the old world, my job made it practically a necessity for me to tune out the possibility of death and decay for all of my then-patients. The concept of mortality and morbidity was intricately connected to the concept of death, and being a doctor, telling people how much longer they had left to live was both cathartic and draining for both myself and my patients. I mean, would you feel good if you told someone with leukemia that they had about six months left to live? To tell expectant parents that their premature baby might not even make it till tomorrow? How about the prospective situation wherein an emergency crash case popped up in the emergency room and you had to choose one or the other to live or die? It was decisions like these that made me hate my job. But at the same time, who else was better suited to telling shit like these
It burned.I mean, what else could I possibly say to the intense heat ravaging my body right now? Not that I was literally burning alive, mind you, but it was pretty damn close in the way that marshmallows didn't need to be close to a fire for it to burn. My clothes were pretty much stuck to my skin at this point, and my mouth was absolutely dry despite the amount of water I just ingested over an hour ago. I couldn't really believe it, but my fire resistance was actually helping me survive against the hellfires that this Furnace was throwing at me.Granted, I couldn't exactly speak with the amount of panting I was doing.Sweat poured out from every gland in my skin as each step felt like I was walking in a microwave hallway. My eyesight was blurred to shit while my hands kept the Firebrand pointed in front of me as a way to keep myself from burning
I didn't know how long I was out, but the fact that I had my thinking capabilities back meant that I was conscious again... And that was not a sentence I did not just think to myself. Nope... I swear, I'm fluent in English.."h.y..."Then again, I wasn't really a native speaker, wasn't I... I learned English through copious amounts of reading and consuming foreign media. Constant exposure to the internet was also a massive influence in making me good at the language, I think. Well, I couldn't speak it well enough back then, but being a doctor kind of forced me to get good at speaking English at a much faster pace than I was comfortable with. And that was coupled with the unwanted presentations and research orations that I had to fucking do because I had no choice if I wanted to graduate."Yo. a..ke?"Still, I was kind o
I froze on the spot, my eyes widening as the trio all stared at me expectantly. "You do have a plan to get us out of here, right?" the Decimal asked once again, a hint of doubt now coloring his tone as opposed to earlier. "You wouldn't risk your life like this if you aren't sure that you can get us all out of here alive." I fought the grimace trying to form on my face. Now that I was actually here, I just realized that I really had no fucking clue as to how I'm supposed to get us all out of this mess. Plan... What did I have for a plan to get out of here? "What? Did Lady warrior not have a plan?" the male Den mockingly asked as he crossed his arms in wait. "I could've sworn you were supposed to save us." "Phillipe, stop it," the yellow-haired woman calmly tried to reprimand her companio
A bit of time has passed since the Decimal supposedly left us out to die, and while the two were twiddling their thumbs and watching me do my thing, I was actually trying to do something with the scrap of metal we were left with. I already determined the heap to be enough to make at least one suit of armor if I really stretched it, and if my first iteration of the impromptu heat suit actually worked, then I had to at least start on making the second set of armor for these two to wear. Livia wasn't yelling at us yet, so either he died, or he was still navigating his way out of this mess.Huh... That was actually pretty fucking stupid of me, wasn't it..."How'd you do it?"I raised an eyebrow as Phillipe asked me the burning question. It wasn't even anything special; just a fairly simple copy and paste job that any decent Denominator was capable of d
Efficiency was something I've always preached about even back in the old world. As an avid procrastinator, the little time that I do dedicate to actually working had to be short and sweet; in a way that would enable me to do more procrastinating simply due to how little time was actually needed to effectively do all the work. Take, for example, a time-consuming errand to sort some papers out. A normal nine-to-five worker would probably make it happen in about half of their work shift by half-assing it the whole way through. Meanwhile, I'd probably do it either in the beginning or during the end of my shift just by putting in the effort into it. I mean, why waste effort not doing it properly due to laziness when you could just do it in a whirlwind and waste the rest of your time doing nothing? Wasn't that the express purpose of being the ultimate procrastinator."I thought we're making the armor now?"