[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 168 - Extreme Measures

Freddy sat before Travis with Sophia standing beside him. Freddy had just finished conveying the adjudicator’s words to the man.

For his part, Travis appeared rather unshaken by the news. “I see.”

“You seem to be taking it pretty well,” Freddy said. “I’m not sure you understand—”

“Oh I know,” Travis said with a dark chuckle. “But what am I supposed to do? Cry? Tear my hair out? That won’t save anyone.” He gave out a drawn-out nose sigh. “There is never a good time to panic when you’re the one calling the shots.”

“Do you have any ideas?” Freddy asked.

“We could evacuate the people into the local interspace. Pretty desperate move, but it’s the best choice we have.”

“Do we have other choices?”

“Not good ones.”

“Like what?”

“We could maybe try to establish contact with Yugoslavian border. Either that or delve through the interspace in hopes of finding a passage that leads to another country. But the odds that any country will willingly accept thousands of foreign refugees are low at best. And even if they do accept us, I wouldn’t be even remotely surprised if they decided to enslave us as soon as we made it to the other side. Or worse.

“Yugoslavia is infamous for being stuck in what’s basically a never-ending civil war. The odds are high that most of the refugees would be forcibly conscripted into the service of whoever the local Lord is and then sent to serve as cannon fodder.”

Freddy sighed. “Yeah… But even if we do move everyone to the interspace, that’s a temporary solution at best.”

“I know. But we don’t have any time.”

“What about a wall around Repentawa?” Freddy suggested. “While the monsters will start arriving soon, it will take a long while for anything big to make it this far south. A wall could buy us months to prepare the interspace.”

Travis scoffed. “Odds are, we can’t even finish a crude wall in less than a month. And that is only if the workers are being constantly protected from the incoming horde of monsters.”

“I’ll take the lead on the defense.”

“You might be strong, Freddy, but this won’t be just a matter of straight. Do you think you can fight 24/7 for literal weeks on end?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly. That kind of action—” Travis paused. “Wait, you said yes?” The man scowled. “This isn’t the time for jokes.”

“And I am not joking.”

“Even with your power, I don’t believe that. If you don’t want the reflux essence to kill you before the first day is over, you’ll have to mostly rely on your physical strength to fight. And you probably won’t get any time to sleep.”

Freddy nodded. “I’m still confident that I can do it.”

“Even if you can last through it, can you actually kill the monsters quickly enough to keep up with their influx?”

“Yes.”

Travis paused for another moment, trying to read Freddy’s face. “Seriously?”

Freddy nodded. “I have an ability called Adaptive Water Body. It is a grand concept upgrade. It allows me to adjust to whatever my body is being put through. I’ve long since used it to adjust to almost constantly taking calories into my body and physically exerting myself for long periods. As long as I get enough food pills, I can fight without rest. Granted, the lack of sleep might catch up to me, but that will take weeks.”

“And what if you get hurt?”

Freddy grinned. “You don’t have to worry about that one.”

Travis sighed. “You can’t be everywhere just by yourself. It’ll take a considerable force to cover all sides of the city. While you might be able to last a long while, I’m not sure the same thing will go for everyone.”

“We’ll handle that when we get there,” Freddy said. “I can also call upon the adjudicator for a favour if need be. Well, he might end up helping us fight the monsters off anyway, but I kind of doubt he’ll go out of his way to help.”

“It would be great if he even showed up for just a few hours,” Travis said. A sudden tension enveloped him and he leaned his head forward, grabbing the back of his head as he blew air through his lips. “Why did this have to happen now of all times…?”

“You said it yourself. Dwelling on it won’t help anyone.”

“Right,” the man said as he lifted his head again. “If we actually get a wall going, the word will spread. We’ll get a large influx of refugees from other towns.”

Freddy nodded. “Account for that immediately. Wall off a bigger area and maybe find a way to get temporary camps going on the inside.”

“I’m not sure we can afford to take in a large number of people.”

Freddy hummed. “Yeah. That might be a problem. But there will be a disproportionate number of archhumans among those who come here. That’s more fighters and workers.”

“And a bigger strain on resources.”

“Don’t worry about resources,” Freddy said. “I’ll handle that part.”

“It will take an immense amount of food to keep everyone fed, Freddy.”

“Just trust me. I’ll handle it.”

Travis sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Also, it would be great if you could get that Skull guy to help out. A good number of the Strata healers has fled the city. Anyone who can treat injuries will be in great demand.”

Freddy paused. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Well then,” Travis said as he got off the chair. “I’ll have to go get started on alerting the higher-ups.” He pinched the bridge of his neck. “Jesus. This headache is going to kill me.”

“Feel free to die after this crisis is over. Until then, I’m gonna need you to help out.” Freddy said as he also got up. “I’ll get a few things settled in these last few days of peace. Come on, Sophia. We have work to do.”

As they walked out of the office, Sophia walked in step. “The food will be a real problem, Freddy.”

“I’ll have to talk to the adjudicator. Hopefully he can get me in contact with someone who can deliver a ton of cheap food pills.”

She winced at that. “That will be—”

“Unbelievably expensive, I know.” He sighed. “Although even the cheap ones are costly, they have a long shelf life and they’re compact. They’ll keep the people alive.”

“Will anyone even deliver them?”

He glanced at her as she said something incredibly stupid. “Sophia, we are talking about the American Empire here. No matter how stupid or dangerous it is, as long as there is money to be made, someone is going to do it.”

“Right,” she said, snorting and shaking her head. “And what are we going to do for the next week?”

“Are you now wiling to try making some undead?” he asked.

She groaned. “I knew you were going to ask me that. Do I even have a real choice at this point?”

“Of course you do.”

“Yeah, but if I choose not to do it, I’ll be holding back on something that could potentially have a serious impact on whether we survive this damn invasion or not!”

“To be fair, we don’t know whether they’ll actually even be that good. You haven’t even taken the shard yet. You can’t even be called a beginner necromancer. Even with your talent, making effective undead won’t be easy.”

They turned the corner and opened a door. There, they spotted a number of people walking through the rustic hallway. He glanced at her. “We’ll continue this talk later. For now, we have something else to do.”

She raised an eyebrow at him but remained quiet and followed as he led the way.

On their way, they stumbled upon Lucas and Janice. Lucas gave Freddy a hostile look and then suddenly turned, opening the door of a seemingly random hallway and walking through it. Janice, meanwhile, gave Freddy an apologetic and somewhat sad look. Then, she followed.

Sophia sighed. “That kid really hates you, huh?”

“That’s his problem, not mine. I can’t be on good terms with everyone.”

He ended up taking her down to the secret training area, and then all the way to the back, where the hidden entrance to the underground cave was located.

“Whoa!” she said. “I didn’t know Valhalla had a sex dungeon!”

He snorted half-heartedly at the joke.

They continued walking, and before long, they made it to the underground passage.

“Oh…” she said as he slowed down and swallowed heavily. “I didn’t know Valhalla had a passage in the basement…”

“It’s a pretty well-kept secret,” Freddy said. “You’re one of three people who know about this place currently.”

“Woo-hoo… Glad to be a part of the club.” She eyed him. “So what exactly are we doing here?”

“Just follow me,” he said as he stepped through.

He navigated through a few of the first steps. Sophia commented on the near-total destruction of the realms Freddy had cleared out, but he didn’t reply.

Before long, they made it to one of the wild realms he noted down but didn’t explore.

It was a depressing place, with murky, gray skies, sagging ashen trees with dead leaves, and a number of patches of oily, black marsh. Creatures slithered in the patches of march, occasionally poking their heads out.

“Come on,” he said. “We have a lot of things to kill before we get started.”

“And what are we getting started on exactly?”

“I’ll tell you when it’s ready.”

“Fine. Sheesh. Would it kill you to just communicate a bit?”

He grinned at the. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“Okay now you’re scaring me.”

Freddy ignored her as he approached one of the marshy ponds. A snake-like monster immediately poked a head out. He conjured Sanguine Avenger, and with a quick swing, cleaved its head in two, right down the middle. “Be careful of the ponds,” he said.

The two of them slowly got to killing the vast number of monsters hiding the marsh.

For her part, Sophia acted as bait, getting close enough to a pond to provoke the monsters out of hiding, then running over to Freddy, who was effortlessly chopping them up. After about an hour, they were done with the job. He nodded. “Okay. Now follow me,” he said as he started running. Before long, they made it to another passage, another one he’d discovered and noted without touching it.

In this one, the danger was a lot more obvious.

Giant, extremely fat lizard-like monsters were interspersed throughout a massive meadow with sky-high trees. Surrounding them were their offspring, which were significanly more mobile and slightly resembled plucked chickens.

The giants reached their spindly necks into the sky to grasp fruit from the numerous trees.

“This is a great one,” Freddy said.

“Great one for what?”

“A Blood Sacrifice.”

Behind them, the numerous corpses they’d left suddenly spazmed as they were drained of the last of their blood. It rapidly flowed through the air as it gathered above Freddy, where it suddenly morphed into mist and took the form of a shawled Bloodshed.

Sophia pointed at it. “That thing looks very different from what I remember.”

Bloodshed glanced at her. “Pleasure to see you again, too, Sophia.”

Sophia visibly recoiled. “No offense to you, Bloodshed, but you give me the heebie-jeebies.”

“As long as I give the… ‘heebie-jeebies’ to my master’s enemies, I see no problem with that.”

“Right,” Sophia said as she turned to face Freddy. “And you summoned it because…?”

“To get a lot of lifesteal going,” he said as he turned and walked back into the last realm. There, he sat on the ground and took a deep breath. “I once got myself a tempering technique by the name of Hundred Wet Hells. And then, partly out of ambition and partly because I’m a reckless moron, I upgraded it into Hundred Thousand Wet Hells. And from what I estimate, it will kill me in about point-one seconds from the moment I activate it.”

“Oh. So that’s why we’re here.”

Freddy smiled. “I’m going to need you to use your talent on me. Many times in quick succession.”

“Not to scare you or anything… but I don’t think my reaction time is quite that fast.”

“You’re an archhuman. You should be able to react that fast.”

“Yeah, but, you know.” She chuckled nervously. “This is a bit stressful.”

“If I activate my time-altering spirit ability, I can use the pentalty part to my advantage here. You will have point-two seconds to react, instead. Oh, and also, the healing Bloodshed earns me will come to me twice as fast. Yes, I know, I’m a genius.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ll still be soup before I can heal you.”

“Bloodshed’s damage and the healing from my talent will delay my death further.”

“Still…”

“Come on, that’s plenty of time.”

“Not the problem.”

“You’re nervous that you’ll mess it up?” he asked.

“Obviously. If I fail, you’re going to die. Are you sure you need to get started on this before the third star?” she asked.

He released a long sigh. “If it were just a bunch of monsters coming, my current toughness would be more than enough. But I’m afraid things never go so smoothly for me.”

“Right. That Nahar guy. You think he’ll come?”

Freddy shrugged. “Maybe he, maybe some sort of horrible monster that shouldn’t have been disturbed, maybe a dormat eidolon… You never know.”

After a drawn-out groan, she sat on the ground before him. “Okay, okay, let’s just get it over with then.”

“You sure you won’t let me die? I might be a little crazy, but your lack of confidence doesn’t exactly inspire me to go through with this.”

“Oh, shut it. I have like what, point-three seconds?”

“Maybe a bit more. Maybe a bit less.”

“Should be enough. Just uh… when do I heal?”

“As soon as my body starts obliterating itself. By the way, your fingers might get blown off. Just so you know.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Leave it up to Freddy to make a tempering technique that can kill a bystander.”

“Okay,” Freddy said, “enough chatting. You’re going to spend all five sparks on me. Use them as quickly as possible. As soon as you’re out, I’m going to stop using the tempering technique. I’m going to encase myself into blood metal to ensure that my limbs don’t fly off somewhere. Stay focused.” Then, he proceeded to do exactly as he said.

Sophia gulped.

Freddy left a hole on the top of his head. She put her fingers against his hair. It was important to keep his brain intact. Everything else was secondary.

Breathing heavily, Sophia focused on the hole. Her heart was beating out of her chest.

Inside the metal, Freddy gave the mental command to Bloodshed. Then, he muttered, “Twisted Pendulum.”

His sense of time sped up. He could feel the impact of gravity on his body enhance drastically. The healing coming from Bloodshed poured in twice as quickly as usual, filling him with ecstasy unlike anything he’d experienced with his talent in a long, long time.

As soon as the healing arrived, he activated Hundred Thousand Wet Hells.

Instanly, he lost all feeling in his body. In that brief moment, he felt like nothing but a soul floating in darkness, with the vague sensation of his talent generously pouring healing into him. Then, the sudden wave of Sophia’s healing arrived, briefly putting him back into one piece before he rapidly dissolved into a soup again. Then the healing hit the second time.

Then the third time. Fourth. Fifth.

He cancelled the ability.

For a long moment, the darkness remained. He feared he’d truly overdone it this time, but as the healing kept pouring in, he slowly regained his senses.

His nerves were reconstructed, but something was wrong.

Uh oh.

From what he could tell… his whole body was the same consistency as jello.