Chapter 480: Mental Riot

Julius didn’t end his attack with just that. He went and plucked a few feathers as he went for another pass.

Bite from below, slash from above.

Bite.

Slash.

Salia felt like she was going crazy, for real.

.

.

.

"Help! Over here — someone, help!"

Ciel’s voice cut across the grounds, high and cracking with the strain as he carried Catalina. He kept an eye on his surroundings, sweating hard from overusing his spiritual power.

He had gotten Catalina clear from the worst of the situation; it was time to deal with the other problem. He could feel that something was wrong with her body.

She was too hot, burning even. She was even trembling. She was also reaching toward her head, but she was too weak to even lift her hand.

It was something Ciel recognized very well, but he refused to believe it was so. He could only pray for Pete or Thiago to come out and diagnose her for him.

.

.

.

Inside the living room, the situation had finally become peaceful.

The cluster of larvae that had boiled up out of Ethan’s powder had spread thin and wide, creating fewer problems for them. Or maybe they just lucked out that there wasn’t as much as it initially appeared.

Pete, Sarah, and Iris waited for a few minutes, but there were no new ones that came squirming up to replace the dead ones.

The two great sofas were overturned, and the table was a smear of fluid and chitin. The holographic screens still flickered uselessly between feeds, but the room itself was safe again.

It was Pete who heard Ciel first.

His eyes quickly turned to Thiago.

But Thiago’s hands were already full with just Helena alone. His sleeves shoved to the elbow and his hands buried in the work of keeping a Helena’s alive.

The sweat on his temples and the gray under his eyes already told him that Thiago was just barely managing the situation.

So Pete, who was not a doctor but was the closest thing to one, exhaled once through his nose. He said nothing and ran over to Ciel’s direction.

Sarah and Iris saw him bolt out of the building. After a single shared look, they also came after him—which left Thiago alone in the wrecked living room with his patient.

None of them liked leaving him either, but it had already become safer inside this building than any other place. If they left Pete alone outside, god knows what could possibly happen to him.

Pete approached Ciel, who was holding Catalina. He knelt down and hurriedly checked Catalina.

And behind him, Sarah looked too, and burst into tears on the spot.

There was no mistaking it.

Across Catalina’s semi-transformed body, where the proud markings of her tiger-form should have lain smooth and dark over her skin.

But those patterns had a visible split. Fine fractures ran through the stripes, branching and spreading. From each hairline split seeped the faint, dark shimmer that Pete knew very well.

The dark shimmer was then dark impurities that were threatening to get out into reality.

But these only happened when one was having a mental riot.

Ciel looked at Pete, and his expression already told him that he was right. He hoped that Catalina’s trembling might be something simpler, shock, medical disease, or just pheromone shock due to her body being overwhelmed by terror.

Those would be a much better outcome. But not everything you hoped for could come true. Judging by the cracked tiger marks and how much it had spread, her mind might have been greatly strained and fighting.

How to get through this was kind of similar to a dominant alpha needing an omega. But for a mental riot, instead of omega, Catalina needed at least one of the two things.

And one of those two things was an emergency sedation injection.

Pete’s gaze went in the direction of the basement.

The emergency medicines were down there. He was sure that there were all kinds of medicines there.

Those were kept in places like this precisely so that on a night like this one, no one would have to die for something preventable like this.

However, he wasn’t sure if there was even an emergency sedation injection.

But the entrance to the basement was already ruined. No one could possibly enter that place anymore, nor did they have enough time to forcefully create an entrance to the basement.

Pete looked at Catalina and knew that she wouldn’t even last an hour in her current situation.

Sarah, who looked at Pete’s troubled expression, recognized that her mother was having a mental riot. She didn’t know if Catalina was fortunate or unfortunate.

Because in this kind of situation, if there wasn’t an emergency sedation injection, a family member or bond partner would be the next best thing that could comfort a person having a mental riot.

Sarah quickly dropped to her knees in the dirt beside Catalina and did the only thing left to do. She opened up her own glands and pushed, flooding the area around them with her floral pheromone.

Although Sarah could help Catalina, she could only do so properly if she was in the right mentality. But Sarah wasn’t calm at all. She clumsily mixed her pheromones with her mother, albeit missing 4 out of 10 tries.

She also tried to calm down, but her eyes just kept rising and catching a glimpse into the far distance. It was where her other family member was, Lilianna, who turned into Salia.

Salia, being pinned and torn by Chronos and Julius while wearing her sister’s face, was not good for her health.

How could she calm down in the face of this dilemma?

But still, Sarah tried her best, albeit clumsily and smelling desperate.

Pete could see and feel it too. So, he clung to the least desirable option. Because it could potentially cause a backlash, especially to someone with a permanent mark like Catalina.

"Iris." He called. "Keep Sarah calm as long as you can. Don’t let either of them slip up."