Chapter 628 (1/2)

The pieces of the broken board fell down, ricocheting off of the buildings below. Those small bits of debris tumbled through the air until a gust of wind caught them and blew them out towards the clouds. Drake did his best not to dwell on the fact that the wind had carried them out past the point where they would have been caught by the nets hanging under the city. The fall would be a long one.

Standing very still, Drake waited for the last of the splinters drifted downwards. A portion of the board had fallen away, but most of it was still intact. The moment stretched as the wind brushed his hair with malicious intentions. Still, nothing happened.

But just as Drake felt a sense of relief, the high winds of this place caused the whole structure to sway. Immediately, a sense of nausea filled Drake.

‘I am going to die here.’ Drake thought very seriously to himself. He considered his life so far and wondered whether he was truly satisfied with what he had done.

Some part of him answered that if he had to ask, the answer was clearly no.

Beautiful golden birds with metallic feathers were crossing the skyline, heading towards the city. They looked like a flowing wave across the sky. There must have been hundreds of the things, and they were a brilliant, shiny thing that Drake could focus on while he let his blood pressure drop back to normal levels.

“Bah, don’t be such a baby. Would the gem of our Zone truly be so fragile?” Kairon scoffed, slapping Drake’s back. As the blow approached, some part of Drake was screaming. Leaning into it, Drake desperately tried to disperse the force without losing his balance.

The hand hit him with a soft pat.

...of course, Kairon was just a trader. His Strength stat was negligible. Drake overbalanced and began to lean out over the edge of the wooden dock. His hands reached for the rope of the balloon’s basket, but in his panic, he couldn’t get his body to work right. Instead, habits he had gained from long hours of training kicked into gear.

His bone gauntlet condensed and stretched outwards, latching onto the basket. The already wounded board gave out, and several of its nearby companions splintered under Drake’s abrupt weight.

Of course, Drake tightened his grip and cut through the rope. The next thing he knew, he was falling, looking up at the sky.

For several seconds, Drake engaged in a vicious battle within himself. One part of him wanted to call in more bones to grab onto something so he wouldn’t fall. There was another part of him that pointed out this was exactly what had gotten him into this problem in the first place. So he was frozen.

‘Goddamnit, why did Sydney send me out here.’ Drake thought gloomily. ‘Doesn’t she know, I…’

Drake crashed into a building and smashed right through it, ceiling and floor. He heard a brief screech, but he was already smashing into the next floor. And then the next floor. And then the following floor.

Only after breaking down seven floors did Drake stop. The ground underneath him was solid but was still swaying slightly in the wind. Above him, a hole sketched up into the wooden hodgepodge, revealing a brilliant blue sky.

“Are you… alright?”

At least it wasn’t the rope, Drake reflected as he sat up. If he was dangling over the Earth by simply a rope… Cutting off that intimidating image, Drake looked around for the owner of a voice. Immediately, he blinked.

The room he had crashed into was of a much higher quality than the places above. Whereas flimsy wood seemed to be the norm here, this wood of this room was dark and solid. It seemed to be some sort of spacious apartment, with wooden floors and simple rugs. What was most striking about the place was there was no barrier between it and the outside world. This apartment was on the edge of the spire, and just… opened up.

The golden birds continued their sinuous path in front of the setting sun, warm red light on brilliant gold feathers. They looked like a weapon that had been dipped in blood.

“...sir…?”