Chapter 260: Heading Home

Pale, sickly grey dawn bled through the mouth of the cave.

The bitter, less polluted winds of the Dead Zone had subsided slightly, replaced by the damp, briny chill of the ocean. Far below the granite ridge, dark waves crashed rhythmically against heaps of rusted metal and crumbling concrete breakwaters—the skeletal remains of an industrial seaport abandoned since the dawn of the Gate Era.

In the shadows against the cave’s inner wall, Kiko stirred.

A sharp, panicked gasp tore from her throat as her eyes snapped open. Her hands flew outward to guard her face, her breath catching as the memories of the falling facility, Arius’s brutal grip, and Hide’s monstrous, scale-clad visage flashed across her mind.

She braced for the agonizing fire in her crushed left leg.

Nothing hurt.

Kiko blinked in confusion, slowly lowering her hands. She looked down at her boots. Her pant leg was torn and coated in dried mud, but beneath the frayed fabric, her left leg was completely back in good shape. There was no swelling, no bone protruding through flesh, and not a single trace of bruising. She cautiously flexed her ankle, rotating the joint without feeling a speck of resistance.

“You’re awake.”

The flat, quiet voice came from the mouth of the cave.

Kiko flinched, snapping her head toward the entrance.

Hide was sitting on a flat boulder overlooking the shoreline. The terrifying armor of scales was gone. He looked like an ordinary, exhausted young man with disheveled silver hair, dressed in a blue, blood-stained jacket.

Kiko swallowed hard, her gaze darting toward the center of the hollow.

She was sure there was another person, Hide’s friend. She didn’t know her name. “Where… is she?” Kiko asked a bit hesitant.

“She’s gone,” Hide said without looking back, his ocean-blue eyes staring blankly at the mist over the sea. “No one will ever put her in a cage again.”

Kiko pulled her knees to her chest, her fingers curling tightly into her sleeves. She didn’t press for details. Having seen Arius’s being killed in seconds, she seemed a little terrified.

“How did you heal my leg?” she asked softly, her voice still rough from the dust.

“That’s none of your business,” Hide replied flatly. He turned his head slightly, his gaze fixing upon her. “You said back in the crater that you came to save me because I helped you during the tournament. Your debt is paid. My debt to you for bringing that bread is paid, too. You don’t owe me anything.”

Kiko lowered her head, looking at her clean, scar-free boots. She was silent for a long moment. “I don’t have anywhere to go. By now, I am sure Walter knows that Arius is dead, his unit and the Corporation will hunt me down as a co-conspirator. I have no family or home to go back to.”

Hide remained silent, listening to the tide rolling against the rocks.

“I’m leaving the Central Continent,” He said, rising to his feet. “The airfields and transit hubs are crawling with corporate sentries. I’m crossing the ocean back to the Southern Continent. But I don’t know how to control a ship, do you?”

Kiko nodded, scrambling up onto her feet. She tested her weight on her left foot, amazed that it felt as sturdy as iron.

“Before Julian scouted me, I lived in the salvage yards down along the main city on the other side. There was a port near my house and I snuck into it a few times. So, I know how to pilot older maritime vessels. If there’s an intact boat with a manual rudder in the docks below, I can steer it across the channel.”

Hide nodded once, stepping out of the cavern. “Let’s move.”

They descended the rocky ridge, navigating a maze of dead and alive trees until they reached the ruined port.

The harbor was a desolate graveyard of oxidized iron. Massive shipping cranes hung frozen like giant skeletal beasts against the grey sky, their cables snapped and dangling over collapsed piers. In the sheltered berths near the inner seawall, dozens of small patrol cutters and fishing trawlers sat half-submerged in the murky water, their fiberglass hulls rotted and cracked.

Kiko moved systematically along the concrete piers, checking vessel after vessel.

After twenty minutes of searching through collapsed boathouses, and killing almost 15 beasts that were trying to ambush them, she stopped in front of a heavy, steel-hulled deep-sea patrol boat moored inside an enclosed dry-dock bay. The roof of the dock had shielded the vessel from falling gate debris, keeping the reinforced hull remarkably intact.

Kiko vaulted onto the deck, prying open the pilot cabin hatch. She inspected the helm, the mechanical battery terminals, and the analog engine dials.

“The hull is solid,” She called out, leaning over the railing. “The battery still holds a charge, and the manual ignition can bypass the fried electronic keys. But the fuel tanks are bone-dry. We won’t even make it past the harbor breakwater.”

Hide stood at the edge of the pier looking out. There were almost 100’s of ships here. He was not gonna search all of them. So, he activated the Doom Overseer’s shared skill and saw through each and every one of them.

Some three hundred yards out, wedged against the outer rocky shoals, sat a colossal, half-sunken military fuel tanker. The gargantuan ship was tilted on its starboard side, its rust-streaked hull cracked open near the bow, but its reinforced mid-section fuel reservoirs remained sealed beneath the waterline.

“Wait here,” Hide told her.

Before Kiko could respond, Hide kicked off the concrete pier.

He blurred across the water, using Weightless to lightly skim the surface of the rolling dark waves, clearing the three-hundred-yard gap in seconds and catching the rusted railing of the stranded tanker.

SKREEE!

The moment his boots touched the tilted deck, three bloated, amphibious Calamity beasts—mutated crustacean horrors with razor-sharp pincers and shell-plated carapaces—burst from the flooded companionways.

SWOOSH.

With two blinding sweeps of his bare hands, dark mana condensed around his fingers into razor-thin arcs of energy. The beasts were cleanly sliced into halves before they could even screech, their carcasses tumbling off the listing deck into the frothing foam.

Hide kicked open the heavy hatch leading into the ship’s lower engineering hold. Dropping through the dark shafts, his True Sight located the massive, sealed petroleum reservoir in the tanker’s central belly. The mechanical valves were rusted shut, fused by centuries of salt and decay.

Hide could not take this whole thing, he didn’t need to, he simply commanded the abyssal slime.

The slime dropped onto the deck, expanding rapidly into a massive, viscous black ribbon. Operating under Hide’s mental directives, the adaptable creature squeezed through the microscopic cracks of the rusted fuel valves, seeping directly into the dark tanks below.

Then it created a semi-permeable cellular structure upon its outer surface that acted like a living sponge, rapidly absorbing hundreds of gallons of dense, refined fuel. It sealed the volatile liquid internally, preventing any leaks or vapors from escaping.

Within minutes, the slime swelled to the size of a small carriage, rolling out of the fuel hatch and sliding obediently beside Hide’s boots.

Hide grabbed the outer membrane of the slime, hoisted the heavy mass, and bounded back across the waves toward the dry-dock.

Landing with a heavy thud on the patrol boat’s deck, Hide gestured toward the open fuel intake port beside the stern.

Kiko watched with wide, bewildered eyes as the strange black creature extended a narrow, hose-like appendage directly into the boat’s fuel tank. With rhythmic, hydraulic pulses, the slime smoothly pumped the clean, extracted fuel into the vessel’s reservoir, filling the tanks to maximum capacity without spilling a single drop onto the deck.

Once empty, the slime shrunk back down, sliding up Hide’s body and returned to be his body suit beneath his jacket.

“That… that thing is alive?” Kiko stammered, gripping the cabin doorway.

“It’s really useful,” Hide answered simply, climbing into the cabin. “Start the engine.”

Kiko pulled herself together and gripped the manual ignition lever. She pulled the heavy steel handle down with a sharp heave.

CHUG-CHUG-CHUG… ROAAAR!

The old combustion engine sputtered violently, coughing thick black smoke through the exhaust stacks, before settling into a deep mechanical roar that vibrated the hull. The analog dashboard gauges lit up with amber backlights.

Kiko grabbed the heavy wooden helm, threw the throttle forward, and steered the patrol boat out of the dry dock.

The boat sliced through the dark coastal waters, slipping past the rusted breakwaters and out into the open, endless ocean.

Hide stood alone at the stern, the bitter sea wind whipping his silver hair across his forehead. He watched the jagged cliffs and burning plumes of the Central Continent slowly shrink into the horizon.

He had never been on a ship, this was the first time. And clearly he preferred the air journey better, things looked smaller from there, and much cleaner.

But all that dwarfed the feeling of nervousness creeping into him. He was heading home.

Home to the Southern Continent. Where perhaps, the headlines called him a monster. Perhaps nothing is left there after two months of the escalation of the war.

And perhaps his friends believed he was dead.