NOVEL NEXT Book 3 - Chapter 38
Penelope sat down just before bright light washed over her.
The last two reset points had been chaotic. The one on the first floor had been with her, being trapped under the decapitated body of the last Demon. The save point on the second floor had been moments before Derek's team had tried to kill them all.
So when the Prime Fly had begun to waver under the barrage of attacks, Penelope looked for a place that she'd be comfortable when she restarted, since she planned on restarting this floor a lot.
"Made it in time." Jeru looked around. "You lost a lot of people, though."
More than we would've lost if we'd structured things differently and gone into the boss square?
"Hard to say." The blue Elf shrugged. "But right now, you need to find Freddy and head up to the surface. The barrier around the campus went down the moment the timer expired and the locals have probably arrested everyone on the surface already."
JERU! Penelope fumed as she <Blinked> down to where people were congregating.
"PEN!" Circe ran over to her. "Where were you?"
"Up there." Penelope pointed at the tower she'd been on. "I wanted to make sure my body was out of reach while I focused on my spells."
"Good cover." Jeru teased.
It's not a lie. Penelope mentally shooed the parasite in her mind away. I can focus better on my spells when I don't have to worry about keeping an eye on my body.
"Do you know where Frederica is?" Penelope looked around. "I wanted to talk to her."
"She went to go check on Patrick." Circe pointed at the wall. "Did you hear about Rae?"
"Yeah, we lost a bunch." Penelope tried not to think about just how many people had died as she moved towards the wall. Compared to the second floor, they'd lost a lot of people.
"What do you need to talk to Freddy about?" Circe skipped along next to her friend.
"I want to go to the surface and check on some things." Penelope motioned at the destroyed area. "I can't keep fighting or I'm going to break."
"Wow, you really are serious about taking some time off." Circe slowed down a little, then stopped, her voice dropping to just above a whisper. "Hey."
Penelope stopped and turned around. "What is it?"
"Are you still going to let me come with you?" Circe glanced around at the people busying themselves with the cleanup.
"Sure." Penelope took a deep breath. "It's going to take a little while for people to recover and for us to get things gathered up to go down to the next floor." She looked over at the brunette. "Maybe you'll have enough of me and be ready to get back to the fighting by then."
"Never!" Circe took a step towards the other woman but paused. "I mean, I'm not going down to the next floor until you do."
"In that case, let's go talk to the bosses." Penelope turned on her heel and headed towards the command room.
When Patrick had built the wall around the boss square, he'd built rooms for everyone to stay in so that people would be closer the morning that the barrier went down. Making rooms that went all the way up to the ceiling had given the wall more support. There'd been more wall than they'd needed and making store rooms when they knew that some of the wall was going to get destroyed had just been asking for their supplies to get destroyed.
For all the extra space, Patrick had made large, gathering rooms. He'd designated the biggest one on the top floor directly over the door in the wall to be the 'War Room' and that's where all their meetings had taken place. Considering it was three stories up, it had been a great place to watch the battle and had doubled as a medical room for the injured.
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<Blinking> into an area that she couldn't see was dangerous, so Penelope took Circe's hand and targeted the section of the wall that had been destroyed by the monsters.
The wall between 28D and 29D had a huge hole in it where the Porsel had smashed it in an effort to get out of the battlefield. The ranged people had brought it down, but not before it had caved in most of the wall in the middle of that section.
"Awww." Circe looked down at the people moving the large monster out of the wreckage. "This was the residential section."
"We weren't supposed to bring anything into these rooms except for our blankets." Penelope turned to walk down the hall. She stopped when she realized that her friend wasn't following her. "Circe?"
"Coming!" The other woman sang as she turned around and jogged down the hallway.
"What's wrong?" Penelope looked over her friend. She sighed as she read the dejected reaction. "Your room was down there."
Circe nodded.
"And you brought personal items with you." Penelope sighed. "Look, I'll help you dig it out later."
"You will?" The brunette's eyes lit up. "You're the best!"
"Just don't find it too fast on your next run." Jeru reminded her.
Penelope ignored the mental note and turned her attention towards getting down the hallway.
The War Room was a mess. The few cots that they had were full, so the rest of the injured were lying on blankets on the floor.
Skylar looked up from the man she was working on. "This one is stable; who needs me next?"
"Over here!" One of the other Healers motioned for her to come across the room.
Syklar vanished in a flash, then reappeared next to the injured woman.
I didn't know that the Healers could learn <Blink>.
"Helps them get the injured out of harm's way." Jeru chuckled. "Not all of them are going to have the Magic stat to do it, but she took a page out of your book." His lips turned up in a grin. "I think you have a fan."
Why don't you make yourself useful and find Patrick? Penelope huffed as she continued to scan the room.
"Over here." Jeru appeared on the far wall, under the window.
"They're over there." Penelope touched Circe's arm, then pointed at where the blue Elf was floating.
With a simple thought, Penelope cast <Blink> and brought them both to Patrick's bedside.
"PEN!" Patrick grabbed his chest. "You're going to give an old man a heart attack!"
"You're looking good for someone who almost died out there." Penelope looked the balding man over.
The current leader was dressed in an oversized shirt with a blanket over his lower body. His eyes kept looking out the window down at the harvesting and recovery efforts. His movements were sluggish, like he was still in pain or perhaps more injured than he was letting on.
"I'd be better if they'd let me out of this bed." Patrick grumbled. He glanced over at Penelope. "Figured you'd come in through the window."
Note to self, use the window next time. Penelope smiled. "I forgot it was there."
"Hmph." Patrick turned back to the window.
"Why don't you go down there?" Circe gestured at the window.
"Because his legs got crushed." Frederica interrupted before Patrick could reply. "Skylar fixed them, but he can't stand yet and really needs to sleep." The older woman sighed. "He's one of the lucky ones. That monster was…" She shook her head as her voice trailed off. "We weren't ready for that."
"Do we know how many people we lost?" Penelope swallowed.
"Twenty-one, eight of which were level twenty-one bystanders who were manning the traps." Jeru shook his head. "Survival should be the main goal. I'd bet way too many of them stayed in harm's way longer than they should have to try to prove their worth."
"No." Patrick huffed. "And if someone doesn't organize things down there, then we're never going to figure it out."
"Isn't King leading the recovery effort?" Circe piped up.
Patrick winced as he shifted, then a glare settled over his face as he looked at the younger woman. "I love the kid like my own son, but he's more likely to drop a building on someone that he's trying to rescue than he is to pull them out."
"Well, it's a good thing there aren't any buildings out there." Frederica patted Patrick's shoulder.
The older man turned his glare on her as he pointed out the window. "And what do you call all those towers I built, huh?" He looked over at Penelope. "And how many of them are still standing?"
"Not many." Penelope took a deep breath. "I can go down there and help."
"Thanks." Patrick gestured at Frederica. "And take the worrier with you. Heaven knows she can do more good down there than up here watching me." He turned back to the window. "I'll just stay up here and…" He leaned out the window a little. "HEY!" The balding man motioned for them to come closer. "One of you with good eyes, tell me what just came out of that portal!" He pointed at the blue portal that led back to the surface.
Circe hurried over to the window and squinted. "I don't know how the people are, but there are definitely some horse-people and lizardmen out there." Fear laced her voice as she turned away from the window. "Is the fourth floor coming to us?"
Jeru sighed. "And so it begins."