Koro looked like he wanted to go get Baolao and Caexiu back, but before he could even move, Al sensed that the house's structural integrity was about to reach a tipping point, so he grabbed the back of Koro's shirt and flung him out of the house. He then grabbed Yuly's hand and followed Misty to get out too.

Outside, he saw the street he'd treaded oh so many times these past two months covered in burning debris and even bodies. Most of the houses hadn't been hit as hard as Al's, but not a single Ona was intact either. Most had collapsed sections or wings, and almost every single house was covered in black flames, causing countless smoke columns to rise to the sky.

The ash in the air made it hard to breathe, and Al really regretted not having an air mage with him. From what he'd seen, the whole city was most likely surrounded by swarms of beasts, and without a wall to stop them they'd reach the streets of the outer city in a matter of minutes.

'They probably didn't want to leave any witnesses, so they left no escape routes. What's the motive of whoever did this?'

As Al mulled over what to do, he reached there was only a single feasible answer. "Let's go, we're heading west! The only part of the city that can't be invaded from the outside by land beasts is the zone that's up against the river. We'll just have to gamble on that and escape through there!"

They started running at a supernatural speed, and Yuly soon had to go on top of Misty due to exhaustion. Koro could keep up decently well though, and for Al this was like walking. He took down three black flame birds that were circling the sky above them, and they gave the experience of a Rank 3, getting Al near the next level.

Fortunately they seemed to be easily killed and not too fast, and they weren't shooting their feathers at the city anymore. 'Did they run out of ammo?' Al stared at their bodies as they fell to the ground.

'These are evolved red birds...damn. A bunch of weak Rank 3s managed to destroy all we built these past few months...fuck. Come on Al, you gotta concentrate. You can cry over this later.'

They ran through the smouldering city and soon reached the river. As Al had feared though, it was packed with giant, 3-meter-long fishes plated in glistening black metal.

'My throwing spines ain't getting through that. I could probably cross the river with [Impulse] if I used up all my mana, but...I wouldn't be able to carry them with me. Come on Al, think...'

Then he say a stone bridge, about 100 meters downstream. Some people were trying to cross, but the few black beasts that had reached this side of the city killed them or threw them to the river, where they would become easy prey for the metal fishes.

There was no other way though, so Al led his group to the bridge. There were several black Rank 3s they recognised like Tusk Tanks, Spinegolins and Hareth Collapsers, along black, 5 meter-long snakes that Al had never seen before. He shouted to his group.

"Push forward! We can't defeat all of them, so evade their attacks. The pigs' charges should be easy to avoid, and the rabbits are harmless on stone bricks, but be careful with the giant flying spines! Also, avoid those weird snakes, they can't be good news. Quickly!"

They all thickly reacted to Al's orders, like a well-trained military squadron. Yuly held tightly to Misty's back as the cat gracefully jumped on a pig's back. Koro pushes straight through the monsters like a bulldozer, and Al also advanced forward.

Something felt wrong though, it was almost too easy. There wasn't a clear path to go through, but they crossed the bridge, using monsters as stepping stones, and didn't receive a single attack. As he thought harder about this, Al's head started hurting, and finally something seemed to click.

When he opened his eyes again he was in the middle of the bridge, surrounded by monsters and with an unconcious Koro next to him. A Tusk Tank came barrelling towards them, and Al narrowly evaded with Koro in tow. He scanned his surroundings with unbelievable speed, and found the five snakes that he'd seen before collapsed on the ground at the end of the bridge, bleeding from their eyes and mouth.

Misty was standing on the other side of the river with Yuly on her back, seemingly having crossed safely, and she quickly asked Al with telepathy [What's wrong!? The two of you suddenly collapsed on the bridge. Did the snakes use mind magic to knock you out!?]

Al shouted "I think it was an illusion! Fuck!" He said as he dodged a giant black spine aimed directly at his chest, then dodged a second one moments later.

"We need to get out of this bridge! Wake the fuck up, Koro! He strongly stepped on the big guy's chest, but he didn't wake up. "Damn! Just how low is your fucking Will stat!?"

Then, he saw the two Tusk Tanks charging at Al and Koro at the same time. He could no doubt jump over the,, but that would basically guarantee Koro's death. He could do it, but 'That would be a lame sss move, wouldn't it?'

With that flimsy excuse, he gathered all his straight then picked Koro up by the leg, and started spinning him around. He was as heavy as a rock, but Al managed to quickly increase the speed Koro was turning at. As the boars were about to turn the two into shish kebab, Al threw Koro towards where Misty was, then jumped into the freezing cold water of the deep, 100 meter-wide river.

He heard a splash as he collided with the water, then two bigger ones as the Tusk Tanks fell too. He could barely see anything, even with his enhanced vision, and the cold chilled him to the bone. He could still hear just fine though, and he felt several faint sloshing sounds coming towards him. 'Fuck, the fishes are onto me. I might not be able to get to the other shore.'

Al desperately fought the river current and reached the surface, but when he tried to jump up into the air using [Impulse], a sharp pain exploded in his other leg. It crushed his leg and was about to tear it straight off, but Al conjured a quick [Palm of the Storm], barely hanging onto his consciousness thanks to his Will, and electrocuted the bastard to death. He was quickly sinking back into the water, and came to the bitter realisation that he would be unable to reach the shore, that was just 50 meters away. Before his head sank down, he shouted towards the night "Look for me downstream!"

Then he curled up into a ball, and discharged lightning bolts all around him. 'I don't think fresh water's a good electricity conductor but... these guys are covered in metal. Fuck, my leg. It hurts so fucking bad.'

The experience surge confirmed that he'd ended around three fishes with that discharge that took 10% of his mana, and his level had risen to 18. Al didn't rejoice though, and instead put the point into Toughness, making it higher than his Strength and almost as high as his Dexterity.

This was both to cope better with the cold and the pain in his leg and to not get electrocuted by his own electric mana, since his resistance to electricity wasn't perfect, especially when he surrounded himself in it.

Al felt a weird warmth in his leg, and it reminded him of Yuly's mana. He didn't know if she was capable of healing from that far away, especially when the current was dragging him at such a high speed, but he felt like the bone in his leg had been mostly restored. 'Wow, she really is something else.'

Al could try to swim to the shore, but just seconds after his first discharge, he was already surrounded once again by the fishes. There were dozens of them, and all he could do was to keep spending small amounts of mana every second to electrify the water around him and keep them at bay.

Al had felt the power of their bites firsthand, and it could definitely crush Al, no matter how high his Toughness was. It was their only attack other than their razor-sharp fins, but it was a fearsome one. Al looked around and saw them eating the body of one of the Tusk Tanks, barely leaving anything left after a few minutes.

The fishes had done quick work of the tough muscles and hard bones, their steel-like teeth shredding their meal effortlessly. Al could keep them a couple of meters away from him with his magic, but he would only be able to keep it up for a bit over an hour.

The water temperature must have been of about 5°C, because even with his Toughness, Al was shivering heavily after 20 minutes. Any normal human would have long since died of hypothermia, and somehow Al's mind wandered to that famous story of the prisoners who escaped Alcatraz.

'Their bodies were never found, but there's no way they survived crossing that freezing water. Fuck, I guess the investigators didn't experience hypothermia first-hand'

Al's mind had become sluggish, and he was desperately clawing at straws, trying to keep thinking things so that he wouldn't lose consciousness and stop channeling his mana, since it would spell death for him.

After 40 minutes, Al couldn't feel his hands or feet anymore, and he had to use up more mana in [Physical Augmentation] just to avoid freezing to death, deciding to use pure mana instead of lightning-attuned. The small film of lightning that the latter created around Al's body helped raise the temperature a little bit, but it barely helped in comparison to the boost in general resistance the former gave him.

The pitch-black night slowly started losing some of that darkness, and soon Al started to regain some visibility. The sun hadn't come up yet, but it would happen soon. Al's mana had hit an all-time low though, having long been in the single digit percentage.

Al didn't know when, but the river current had slowed down, and at some point the river became shallow enough for Al to reach the bottom while standing up. He barely had any mana left, but he warded off the two remaining fishes with it, shutting down his [Physical Augmentation] completely.

The sudden coldness perked him back up, and he slowly and painfully started moving his way towards the shore. The sun was coming up, hitting Al in the back, slightly warming him up. It was like taking some drops out of a filled glass, but it encouraged Al to keep going.

He had never made such full use of his Will until now, since he had already managed to move almost 100 meters through shoulder-deep freezing water with a severely injured leg and late-stage hypothermia, added to mana depletion.

'Come on, I can see the shore... I think. Everything's blurry. It hurts. Come on, I have to get there...'

Then Al touched something solid. Using up all his remaining strength he propped himself up, finally exiting the freezing water. Then, he immediately fell unconscious.