Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 157: I Command the Privilege to Have It Both Ways
I blinked away the lingering, peaceful ghost of my childhood hallway just as the freezing reality of the mess hall crashed down on my shoulders.
I stood right in front of the main exit with my hand locked around the cold iron handle of the door, while its massive locking bar lay discarded on the floorboards beside my boots.
And straight across the dim room, Garek hung pinned against the far wall by my own writhing roots.
And as soon as I snatched my fleeting senses, I instantly severed the mana supply to the spell and the roots immediately withered, crumbling into dry, lifeless dust, dropping Garek straight to the floorboards with a crash.
He groaned in agony as his blood began pooling on the dark wood beneath him.
[Shit!] I instantly let go of the door handle and sprinted across the room, sliding to my knees right beside the massive Cultivator, as he bled heavily from multiple deep puncture wounds driven right through his armor.
Quickly reaching into my inventory, I pulled out the small capsule in my palm with a soft blue shimmer, holding the 0.5 mL of the Grade-2 healing potion.
I shoved the capsule right against his bloody mouth.
"Bite down on this!"
Garek weakly opened his mouth and crushed the glass between his teeth, swallowing the bright red liquid while staring up at my empty hand. "So you do have a spatial storage artifact."
I ignored him, pushing myself off the floorboards and scrambling across the room toward my discarded shotgun, while my heart threatened to jump out of my chest, each time Mitsuki’s muffled scream rang in my ears. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮
Clutching the shotgun, I immediately flooded the entire weapon with my mana, dumping my absolute maximum capacity of 65 MP/s straight into the gun.
Deep inside the barrel, the runes began to light up, rapidly glowing with a blinding, white-hot intensity while Mitsuki’s muffled, agonizing screams continued to bleed through the thick walls outside, each shrill cry sending a fresh spike of pure panic straight into my chest.
The Grade-2 potion took immediate effect across the room. Garek gasped loudly as the liquid rapidly knit his torn flesh back together.
He pushed himself off the floorboards and stood up to his full height while panting heavily.
Garek growled, looking around the freezing room in complete confusion, "What the hell exactly happened? You were supposed to be-!"
"Not the time," I growled right back as I turned my back on him and walked toward the front door with panicked, massive strides.
I had barely taken three steps before a massive metal shield blocked my path.
Garek stepped right in front of me, planting his boots on the floorboards, and completely blocked my line of sight to the exit.
"Where are you going?" Garek demanded.
"To save your wife," I spat back. "Are you stupid?"
I sidestepped around his massive frame, and Garek immediately shifted with me, throwing his thick arm out to block my path again.
Though his entire massive frame trembled, and he clenched his fists so tight that his thick leather gloves audibly creaked under the immense pressure and yet-
"I cannot let you open that door," Garek said through gritted teeth.
My paranoia instantly redlined, and the freezing temperature in the room seemed to drop another ten degrees.
[Wait a second,] I thought, my mind racing through the worst possible conclusions. [Is he doing this on purpose? Is he the fucking cultist?]
It made perfect sick, twisted sense in my panicked brain. If Garek was the Entropy Cultist, keeping me trapped in here while the Outsiders slaughtered the priestess was the perfect move.
And I felt my temper violently snap. I immediately raised the shotgun, pointing the glowing, white-hot barrel straight at his head.
"I will count to three, Garek," I warned him, keeping my voice dangerously low. "Back off."
Garek stared down the glowing barrel of the shotgun, and his eyes slowly began to tear up, but an immovable resolve remained over his face. He did not look like a crazed fanatic. He looked like a man standing in front of a firing squad.
He did not flinch, and he absolutely refused to step away.
"One hundred and thirty-seven..." Garek said, his voice breaking slightly through his clenched teeth. "That many people will die if you open that door."
"And your wife will die if I do not!" I yelled, stepping closer until the hot metal almost touched his nose. "Garek, back the fuck off!"
"She knew the risks!" Garek roared back, thick tears finally spilling over his scarred cheeks. "We all knew the risks! If you open that door, the Outsiders will immediately flood the quarters... One hundred and thirty-seven people, Nico! Miners who just want to feed their families. My brothers and sisters in the Iron Vanguard who trusted me to lead them... I will not trade one hundred and thirty-seven innocent lives for one!"
I stared at the broken man standing in front of me.
And I felt my raging suspicion completely vanish, but in its place, a sickening wave of absolute disgust took over.
He was not a cultist. He was just a desperate leader playing the numbers game.
He was fully prepared to let the woman he loved die completely alone ripped apart by those Eldritch things, just to fulfill his self-appointed sworn duty.
He was actively choosing the many over the few, forcing himself to sacrifice his own wife for the greater good of the camp.
And I absolutely hated him for it.
"She is pregnant, you dumb bastard!" I screamed right in his face.
Garek completely froze.
The air left his lungs in a sharp, painful gasp, and I saw that immovable resolve crack.
His wide eyes stared at me, empty and hollowed out.
"She is pregnant..." I repeated, my voice dropping into a vicious, judging sneer. "You are supposed to be a father. Motherfucker, act like it. Get your priorities straight!"
Garek trembled violently, his massive shoulders slumping forward as the absolute reality of his choice crushed him.
He looked back at the locked door, listened to the muffled screams of his wife slowly dying outside in the dark, and then squeezed his eyes shut as a broken sob ripped through his throat.
"But even so..." Garek whispered, his voice completely hollowed out by absolute despair. "Neither you nor I can fight off so many of them. Opening that door is just pure suicide."
I looked at him with absolute, unadulterated disdain.
"Do not lump me with the likes of you," I said coldly.
I lowered the glowing shotgun slightly, glaring right into his tear-filled eyes.
"I will go out there," I declared with absolute certainty. "I will rescue her. And I will butcher anything and everything that comes up to try and stop me."
Garek looked at me like I was completely insane.
"So sit your ass down on a chair," I commanded him, pointing a finger toward the ruined tables. "And let me save your wife. Because, unlike you, I am strong. And I command the privilege to have it both ways."
Garek stared at me in stunned silence before looking down at the shotgun vibrating with power in my hands, and then at the sheer, unapologetic arrogance burning in my eyes.
He trembled one last time before slowly stepping aside, finally clearing my path to the wooden door, lowering his eyes, as if he could no longer bring himself to look me in the eyes.
"I..." Garek swallowed hard, adjusting his grip on his halberd. "I will cover you."
"Like I said," I replied, refusing to even look at him as I walked right past his massive frame. "Sit your ass down, or that kid’s gonna grow up calling me papa."
I kept my eyes locked entirely on the doors as I marched straight toward them, gripping the glowing shotgun tight against my shoulder, prepared to kick the wood open and unleash absolute hell on whatever stood waiting on the other side.
And just as I took my final step, and raised my leg to kick the gates of hell open-
-BOOOM-!
That deafening roar of explosion detonated right on the other side of the wall, sending out a shockwave of pure, fiery force that blasted the heavy reinforced doors completely inward, along with hundreds of lethal, flying splinters of wood.
The concussive force hit me like a runaway freight train, lifting me completely off the floorboards in an instant, sending me flying through the air, and crashing me into the tables.
My vision whited out, and a high-pitched ringing completely drowned out the sound of the blast as I crashed heavily against the center table, violently splintering the solid wood under my weight before rolling onto the cold floorboards.
I lay there in the debris, gasping for air, staring blindly at the burning doorway as my brain struggled to process what just happened while an unbridled agony rippled through me.
And right through the ringing in my ears, thousands of unnatural, overlapping shrieks ripped straight through my very soul in pure, as though screeching their unadulterated elation.
