Void Reaper: The Essence Apocalypse

Chapter 76 76: Let’s do it

"If it really is a creature of the Highest Order, fighting in the dorm's cramped corridors could mean casualties," Leon said. "And I'm not making mistakes because of emotions."

After that, Natalia stared at him for a long moment, like she was checking whether he actually meant what he'd just said.

"There could still be dozens of students in that dorm," she said at last, her voice lifting. "Hundreds, even. They're not 'abstract people.' They're students. Just like us."

Her tone wasn't cold anymore. It was tight.

"If we know they're there… it's our responsibility to save them."

Leon's brow furrowed slightly.

"Our?" he echoed, calm.

He looked at her without provocation, but without giving ground either.

"And what about me?" he asked.

He still didn't raise his voice.

"Honestly, my number one goal in this world is survival. Walking straight into a lion's mouth just because 'it's the right thing to do' doesn't strike me as a reasonable plan."

The air between them thickened.

Roland stepped in before the tension could turn into open conflict. The old man looked at Natalia with something that resembled sadness, not criticism.

"I agree with Leon," Roland said quietly. "It's too dangerous."

He folded his hands over the head of his cane.

"If we lose even one Evolver at this stage, it'll be an enormous blow to our shelter. And back there, in the gym…" he hesitated slightly, "…there are over a hundred people we're already responsible for."

Natalia looked at him like she couldn't believe it.

"You too?" she asked, almost a whisper.

Roland gave her a tired, gentle smile.

"There aren't good choices here," he said softly. "Only the one that gives our people the better chance of surviving."

It wasn't indifference.

It was calculation.

Natalia stayed silent for several seconds.

There was a fight in her eyes.

She wasn't naive. She understood numbers. She understood risk. She understood responsibility.

But the thought of hundreds of people trapped above - hungry, terrified, abandoned…

She couldn't accept it.

Finally, her gaze returned to Leon.

And something in it changed.

The blue of her eyes sharpened. She narrowed them slightly.

"Didn't you say earlier," she asked more evenly now, but with unmistakable emphasis, "that you owed me a favor? That you'd do everything you could to pay me back?"

Leon didn't answer right away.

"Then here's your chance," she continued. "Come with me. Help me save those people in the dorm."

She took a step closer.

"Unless your words are worth nothing. Unless you just threw them into the wind."

The room went so quiet you could hear someone's quickened breathing by the wall.

Roland's eyebrows rose slightly.

That wasn't a blow to logic.

It was a strike at honor.

Leon stared at her without blinking.

This was no longer a discussion about risk.

It was a challenge.

After her words, silence settled - not theatrical, just heavy and ordinary, the kind that happens when people know a decision is about to be made.

Roland looked at Leon without saying anything this time. No pressure, no interruption - just that quiet, experienced gaze, like he wanted to see whether the young man would choose out of emotion, out of stubbornness, or out of something deeper.

Natalia stood across from him and met his eyes without looking away for even a second, curious what he'd say - though deep down she was almost sure she'd hear a refusal. After watching his indifference and cold calculations, she'd prepared herself for a clean, logical "no," delivered without hesitation.

Because in this world, words weighed even less than they used to.

Promises were often just tools.

And she knew that too. People used to make declarations lightly - loyalty, help, support - then back out at the first real difficulty. Now that the world had cracked apart, words were worth even less, because everyone thought of themselves first.

So she was ready for refusal.

Ready for the cold "no" and the neat explanation.

But to her surprise, Leon nodded.

Slowly. Unhurried. As if he weighed the decision inside himself for one last fraction of a second.

Then he said, low and steady:

"Fine. If that's how you're putting it, I'll help you save them… at least, I promise I'll do everything I can."

There was no grand speech.

No heroic proclamation.

Just a commitment.

And behind it was something that ran deeper than the moment.

Leon's parents weren't the affectionate type. They weren't the kind to praise him at every chance or clap him on the back. They didn't meddle in his education or his choices much either - because they believed a person had to learn to bear the consequences of their own decisions.

They were strict. Distant. Focused on work and survival in a world that hadn't been kind to them even before the apocalypse.

And yet, from his earliest years, they'd repeated one thing like a mantra: words were more valuable than gold. Gold could be stolen, lost, spent. But a broken promise left a mark on a person that never truly faded.

If you can't keep a promise you made yourself, don't call yourself a man, his father had told him once, when Leon had tried to back out of something he'd decided was too hard.

Leon knew he had plenty of flaws. He could be ruthless. He could be indifferent. He often calculated instead of reacting with his heart.

But when it came to keeping his word, he always tried to rise to it - because he knew how much his parents had sacrificed, even in a hard life, to raise someone who could stand straight in difficult moments, even when nobody was there to applaud.

For several seconds, Natalia just looked at him, visibly shocked, like she wasn't sure she'd heard him right. Something appeared in her eyes that hadn't been there before - not triumph, not satisfaction.

A brief hesitation.

Because she hadn't expected the man who'd just been talking about calculation and survival to agree to step into something that might turn into a fight against a monster far stronger than Ragnar.

She didn't know what to say, so she stayed silent.

Roland let out a quiet sigh, watching them both like he was looking at two young people who had just chosen the straight road into trouble.

"I've got a feeling this will be nothing but problems," he muttered under his breath - not in protest, more like weary acceptance.

Natalia inhaled, like she wanted to move immediately.

"Then…"

She didn't finish.

Roland lifted his cane slightly and flicked it through the air in a motion that wasn't aggressive at all, yet still cut her off.

"Then," he repeated calmly, "first we move these people back to our gym. We stabilize the situation. We meet with Adam and the others. And only then do we plan how we're going to try to save the students in the dorm."

Natalia frowned.

"But we don't have time," she said more sharply. "If they've been without food for days, every hour - "

"Every hour doesn't matter if we all die on the way," Roland cut in again, still without raising his voice.

A small, pulsing vein appeared on Natalia's forehead.

Roland didn't react to it at all.

"Listen," he continued, practical as ever. "We don't know exactly how many people are in this building. We don't know how many are injured, how many can't walk. We don't know if there are still Ragnar loyalists who'll do something stupid in panic. We don't know if we'll run into a larger horde on the way out."

He looked her directly in the eyes.

"And you want to head straight for a dorm where a Highest Order entity might be waiting, without support, without preparation, without full information."

Natalia clenched her jaw, but didn't answer.

"If you die," Roland added more gently, "you won't save anyone. And if Leon dies…" He let the words hang for a beat. "…the consequences for our entire shelter will be far more serious than what happens to those people in the dorm."

It was brutal.

But logical.

Natalia looked away for a moment, drew a breath, and after a few seconds let out a heavy sigh.

"Fine," she said at last. "We'll move them to the gym first."

Then she lifted her eyes back to Roland.

"But we leave today."

It wasn't a question.

Roland closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, as if running through hours, distance, exhaustion.

"Today," he echoed quietly. "All right. If everything goes smoothly."

He looked at Leon.

"Then there's no time to waste. We start moving people."

Leon nodded.

"Let's do it."

There was no point dragging the conversation out.

The decision was made.

While Natalia began giving the first concrete orders for splitting the group and Roland calmly organized the exit sequence, Leon stepped half a pace aside, watching them from the edge.

There were no emotions about the "favor" in his head anymore.

Only analysis.

Natalia - strong ranged offense, high area control, but enormous mana consumption in prolonged fights, and clear limitations in tight spaces where allies could end up in her line of fire.

Roland - extreme speed, precision, no visible active skills, making him hard to read even for allies, but potentially perfect for eliminating a high-mobility target.

Himself - shadow control, fast executions, high effectiveness in one-on-one combat, but still no full picture of his limits against an opponent specialized in agility.

And there was still Adam and Marek, who could also be useful against an entity like that.

If the monster in the dorm really was an equivalent to the boar - but built for speed - then a frontal entry would be a mistake.

***

In the women's dorm a few buildings away, life looked nothing like the former rector's office where strategy had just been debated. Here there was no room for long conversations or calculations - only quiet waiting and the attempt to survive one more hour without drawing attention.

On the fourth floor, in one of the rooms, the door had been barricaded with everything four girls could force into place: a toppled wardrobe, two desks shoved sideways, a metal chair jammed under the handle, even suitcases and plastic storage bins that normally held clothes and textbooks now serving as a desperate barrier.

It wasn't a fortress.

Just a frantic attempt to gain a few extra seconds if something started pushing from the other side.

The room was stifling, the air stale. The curtains were drawn tight so no light - or shadow - could betray the presence of living people inside. The four girls sat pressed together on a single bed, even though there were two in the room. Instinct kept them close, as if body heat could become a thin substitute for safety.

Their faces were pale, eyes sunken, skin dry from lack of sleep and food. Their hands trembled even when they tried to clasp them on their knees.

Silence filled the room so thick it almost hurt. There were no conversations, no whispered plans for the future, not even quiet crying - because over the past days they'd learned one thing perfectly.

Zombies responded to sound.

They didn't need movies or novels to understand it. All it took was hearing the scrape in the hallway when someone knocked over a chair.

So they stayed silent.

If they needed to communicate, they did it with gestures, a tilt of the head, a look.

Their water had run out yesterday. The last dry biscuits had been divided two days ago, each of them eating the smallest pieces possible, like that could trick a stomach that had been twisting in cramps for hours.

But every one of them knew the truth.

They couldn't sit here forever.