vrcanaries Chapter 82 82: I’ve got you
Chapter 82 82: I’ve got you
In one of the rooms on the fourth floor - the same one where Karolina had earlier shoved a desk under the handle and wedged the metal bed frame against the door, just to buy a few extra seconds if anything from the corridor tried to force its way in - four girls were huddled tight in the corner where the walls met at the narrowest angle, offering the illusion of safety. Every one of them knew that if something truly powerful decided to come inside, no furniture in the world would make much difference.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Metal against metal.
Then dull, heavy impacts - like someone was hurling a body into the walls with all their strength.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The sounds carried down the corridor, vibrating through the door, through the floor, through the air itself, until they could feel it in their chests - like their hearts were trying to match the rhythm of that brutal exchange.
Karolina, who by nature tried to cling to whatever scraps of reason she could even when everything was collapsing around her, pressed herself deeper into the corner and flattened her back to the wall, as if the concrete might absorb her.
"It's been minutes…" she whispered so softly her voice felt more like trembling air than words. "And it's still going."
Julia, who had been fighting hunger just as hard as panic for days, bit her lip and shut her eyes, as if she could imagine it all happening somewhere else - anywhere but here, not behind that door.
Marta clenched her hands so hard her knuckles went white.
"If even that person can't do it…" she started, but her voice broke before she could finish.
Over the past few days they'd already seen one man who looked inhumanly strong, like he could carve through an entire floor on his own - and yet even he had been forced to retreat, leaving behind only silence and even more fear.
Alicja, the only one who had caught a glimpse of a human silhouette sprinting into the building minutes earlier, couldn't take her eyes off the door.
He'd been fast. Unnaturally fast.
He'd vanished from her sight before she could properly register his face.
If even someone like that had to fight this long - if even his arrival didn't mean the threat ended immediately - then whatever was out there in the corridor wasn't an ordinary zombie.
Only now did Alicja truly understand: their survival these past few days hadn't been the result of cleverness or courage.
It had been sheer luck.
Or maybe… maybe the monster on this floor simply hadn't been interested in them.
BOOM!
The door suddenly buckled inward as if struck by a battering ram.
The metal frame cracked.
The desk flew sideways.
In the next second the entire door was torn off its hinges and crashed into the room along with something heavy that rolled across the floor, smashed into a chair, and came to a stop a few meters from the bed.
"The door!" Julia cried, recoiling on instinct.
"This is it - this is the end!" Marta blurted before she could bite the words back.
Karolina wrapped an arm around Alicja's shoulder as if physical contact could hold death at bay.
On the floor, a blue-skinned body moved.
The beast rose slowly - shaky, but controlled - and its eyes flared when it stared straight at the four girls pinned to the wall like animals driven into a corner.
Grrr…
The sound it made wasn't mindless wheezing anymore.
It was aware.
Predatory.
The zombie took a step toward them.
In that single instant, all four understood they wouldn't even get a proper scream out - that one clean slice from those blades would be enough to end everything.
And then something flashed between them and the beast.
A hiss.
A shadow cut through the air so fast that for a fraction of a second it looked like a black smear across the wall.
Metal slammed into metal with a deafening crash that rang off the ceiling and made the girls' ears buzz.
The zombie's two blade-arms were stopped cold by a pair of dark daggers, and a man's silhouette planted itself between them and the monster, back to them - as if it were natural, as if that was simply the order of things.
He didn't turn around right away.
He didn't throw out some dramatic line.
He just shoved the beast back several steps and shifted slightly, covering the four girls with his entire body.
Only then did Karolina, Julia, Marta, and Alicja see their potential savior clearly.
The impact rolled through the room hard enough to make the floor tremble, and one of the windowpanes - already weakened by the earlier shocks - shattered into glittering fragments when the evolved zombie's two blades collided with Leon's daggers at an angle that generated a shockwave strong enough to kick up dust and peel a flake of dying paint off the wall.
It wasn't cinematic spectacle.
It was heavy and brutal.
Leon stood half a step in front of the beast, arms locked, the muscles in his forearms sharply outlined beneath his sleeves, the zombie's blades crossed against his weapons so close to his face that he could smell rotting tissue mixed with the metallic tang of blood.
Behind him, Karolina, Julia, Marta, and Alicja watched in disbelief - and in something that was starting to look like cautious hope.
They hadn't expected the person who'd stormed into the building like a shadow to be younger than them, someone who at first glance could've been a student from a neighboring faculty - not someone who tore monsters apart.
The biggest shock wasn't his age.
It was the fact that he hadn't been immediately cut down by that blue-skinned creature.
He was fighting it like an equal.
And judging by the way he kept forcing it back, he seemed to have the advantage.
From their perspective, it was absurd.
The beast that had stopped another powerful man and forced him to retreat was now being driven deeper into the room by someone who didn't look like a legendary hero - just someone who, a week ago, might have been standing in line for coffee at the campus café.
Leon, fully absorbed in the fight, didn't even glance their way.
Not because he didn't care whether they lived.
But because one look to the side could cost him his life.
"Isn't this a little too easy…" he muttered under his breath, meeting another block against the beast's blades.
The zombie answered with a low rumble and a sudden burst to the side, trying to exploit its advantage in Agility - but Leon had already read the move and cut the distance, driving it closer to the window.
In his head, Valeria's voice spoke up - lazy, but clear, as if she were perched on the windowsill watching the whole scene with interest.
"Not because it's weak," she said calmly. "That creature is strong for its level. The problem is you stopped being 'for your level' the moment you absorbed the essence of a Highest-Order monster."
Leon didn't respond - because at that exact moment he pivoted and kicked the zombie in the torso, catching it perfectly before its barrier could activate, sending the beast flying sideways with a crash into the wall beside the window, deepening the crack in the masonry.
"There are differences among the evolved too," Valeria continued in that same, irritatingly clinical tone. "Type. Fighting style. Compatibility. You drew someone fast, but not necessarily better balanced."
Leon gave the slightest nod as if filing the information away, then pressed forward again, denying the beast the space it needed to fully leverage its speed.
It still wasn't simple.
The zombie never stopped moving - its body vanishing from his field of view for a fraction of a second only to reappear at a sharp angle, each slash capable of ending everything with one mistake.
Leon could feel it: this wasn't an enemy you could underestimate just because it was temporarily being pushed into defense.
He had to hold on a little longer.
A few more exchanges.
One more perfectly timed moment.
Because he'd finally driven it exactly where he wanted it.
***
Meanwhile, in a building several dozen meters away from the women's dormitory - on the top floor of the old administrative department, its windows shattered on the first day of the apocalypse - Adam and Natalia took their positions at a wide, ruined opening where they could easily observe the dorm's fourth floor.
Wind poured inside carrying the smell of dust, old concrete, and distant blood. Shards of glass crunched beneath their boots - no one had time to clean anything in a world where the priority wasn't aesthetics but surviving until tomorrow.
Adam held his bow in his left hand. On his right he wore a thick rubber glove Marek had dug out of some technical storage room the moment Natalia said the plan involved using an ice stake as a projectile. Even though Natalia controlled the temperature of her construct, the cold was so concentrated that he could feel it through the glove - a piercing chill that made his fingers tremble.
Not from nerves.
From a physical reaction.
A fibrous rope - thick and reinforced - was attached to the end of the ice stake. It ran out through the window and dropped down to the ground, where Marek stood by the wall of the building holding the other end in both hands, ready to yank it taut at the right moment to block a dodge or force the target's trajectory to stabilize.
All three of them stared at the women's dorm's fourth floor.
The plan was only simple in theory.
Leon was supposed to drive the beast back toward one of the windows, giving them a clean line of fire - but in practice there was no way to predict which of several shattered windows the exchange would end at.
"There," Natalia said suddenly, narrowing her eyes and lifting a hand to point at a window on the right side.
Adam followed her gesture instantly and caught a flash of metal and a fragment of blue-skinned body flickering in view.
"I see it," he answered shortly, his voice calm - trained by years of shooting, when the only things that mattered were distance, wind, and the moment you released the string.
He set the ice stake on the bow, taking the stance he'd polished for years before the end of the world, back when archery had been a sport and a hobby - not a tool for fighting higher-order monsters.
Natalia glanced at him for a split second as if she wanted to say something, but instead she stepped forward and, without hesitation, jumped out of the window.
Her silhouette hung in the air for a heartbeat as ice formed beneath her feet into a thin platform that slowed her descent and let her land a few meters lower on a protruding section of the façade.
She could attack from a distance, yes - but the farther the target, the higher the mana cost to maintain control over ice constructs, and without telekinesis every extra meter meant an exponential increase in energy expenditure.
So she had to get closer.
For a brief moment Adam watched her descending figure, her hair whipped by the wind, a subtle icy aura circling her - then forced himself back into full concentration.
This wasn't the moment for admiration.
In the frame of one of the dorm's windows he saw the blue-skinned zombie's back and Leon's flickering silhouette, still trading blows with it inside the cramped room.
Metal crashed into metal.
Sparks scattered.
"Don't move…" Adam muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
The distance was significant.
The wind unstable.
The target moving.
But he had the advantage of height and a clean line of fire - at least for a fraction of a second while the beast had its back turned.
"I've got you," he whispered, and a cold, focused glint appeared in his eyes.
He released the string.
The ice stake shot forward with tremendous force, turning into a lightning-fast projectile that, in one - maybe two seconds - cut through the space between the buildings and screamed toward the target, leaving a thin trail of frost in the air.