With a bit of practice, John was able to lift the massive stone sarcophagus off the ground with Geomancy, floating it in the air with a gesture like he was beseeching the heavens for assistance, palms facing upwards in prayer. Though he wasn't touching the rock directly, it still felt like he had a hundred kilos in his arms; his balance was briefly all over the place before he got it under control, and he had the sarcophagus float up ahead of him, perching it on the window sill where Claire waited. The girl stumbled over to her father, who cooed quiet reassurances at her, voice stained.

A high jump and an Air Step brought John up to the window sill, and then he stepped into the room. It was a pretty typical general practice area for a hospital, where a doctor would see patients throughout the day. Huge piles of medical supplies were stacked on the bed and desk, with plenty of spent wrappers littering the floor, none of which John could identify.

The girl had obviously spent much of her time since the apocalypse began here. Looking at her frail arms, pale skin, and hairless head, he couldn't help wondering.

"Has she not levelled up?" he asked, turning Curtis' sarcophagus slightly so he could see the man's face.

Thus, he got an unobstructed view of the man's grimace. "She doesn't have a system."

John blinked. "I assumed everyone had one."

Curtis' jaw was clenched so hard it looked liable to crack. "She did. Not anymore."

The girl was wide-eyed, her gaze flicking back and forth between John and her father. Her arms were trembling as she leaned against her father's stone prison.

Before John could give a reply to that, Mana Sense alerted him to a change: the monsters were moving faster, closing in at great speed.

Don't like this development, huh? John thought, glaring up at the burning sky. Well, that makes two of us.

"We need to move," he said aloud, turning back to Curtis.

"Are you going to let me out of this thing?" the man growled. He couldn't seem to decide whether he should prioritise glaring at John or showing a reassuring smile to his daughter. "I'll swear whatever promise you want me to swear, just let me get her out of here."

"I told you, I'm not sure I can trust you with that just yet," John said calmly. "And I have a lot more I want to ask you, besides."

"I'll answer whatever you want to know, too! Just get us out!"

John stepped forward and placed a hand against Curtis' sarcophagus, alert for any strange moves or sneak attacks. He didn't know the full extent of what the man was capable of; it was always possible he'd been holding back some short-range death aura, or something. No ambush came, though. Maybe because Claire was so close by.

"I need to put my hand on Claire in order to move her away," John said, holding up said hand and staring into Curtis' eyes. "I promise it won't harm her in any way. We're just going to teleport out."

Curtis stared at him. "You can teleport."

John nodded. "And I can take all three of us away. After that, I'll carry you and your daughter to a safer location, and we'll talk."

After a brief explanation of how Teleportation would appear from their perspective, involving a 'demonstration' that ostensibly was meant to show Curtis and Claire how the Spell worked—which they didn't know was also to test to see if it would indeed take them with them John as he hoped it would, because it would've been really awkward if it failed just as the monsters were rushing in. Regardless of what Curtis had done, John didn't want to get Claire killed—conversation tapered off as John brought them up to the roof, wanting to get as high up as possible before the big moment.

The building was only two stories tall above ground, but it was perched in a location that gave them a decent enough view of their surroundings. Bushey and Watford weren't exactly the most vertical towns, and the hospital was bordered on its east, south, and west sides by a large parkland besides.

Thus, they could see the waves of monsters coming from almost every direction.

The burning sky rendered the world a hellish landscape at the best of times. It gave everything an angry red tint, with occasionally flickers of yellow, orange, and little hints of white here and there. Unassuming houses became demonic; trees became ominous, looming things; even things like cars became menacing silhouettes that sometimes made you do a double-take, if you happened to only see it out of the corner of your eye. And always at night loomed that awful black circle hanging over the city, twisting reality itself to marginally darken the world.

The four swarms of monsters would have been intimidating enough without the hellfire reflecting off their chitinous bodies, but like this they looked almost like a living wave of burning oil with the vague shape of insects skittering around inside it. They didn't move in organised rows, was the thing. They were constantly flittering around, manoeuvring, changing position, yet somehow never once crashing into each other, keeping up their pace with unerring precision, as if they moved with one connected mind.

They probably do, John thought.

Standing on the roof and waiting for them to come was agonising, but it had to be done. He didn't want to jump the gun and put even more strain on himself. It was already going to be enough of a labour without making it harder.

He laid Curtis' sarcophagus down on its side, so the man's face was pointed to the sky, then had Claire and himself stand on it like a surf board. Crouching low, he had one hand flat on the sarcophagus, the other resting on Claire's shoulder. He glanced at her, noting her trembling arms, wide eyes fixed on her father's face for reassurance. She looked like a leaf would bowl her over. He really hoped Teleportation would bring her IV with them.

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The wait seemed to go on forever. Soon enough, the low rumble of a giant insect stampede started to drown out the crackle of the burning sky, and it kept growing, rising to a roar that challenged his own heartbeat in his ears. They poured across the park like a flaming oil spill, and kept coming. Their ranks were easily twenty metres deep, and the wave was wide enough that he wasn't sure he would've been able to run along the length of it before Accelerate ran out. Worse, they were coming from every direction.

Beside him, Claire whimpered. John couldn't blame her. He wanted to do the same thing, and he didn't have his father here to whisper comfort to him.

The four columns burst into the car park at the same time. Curtis was screaming at him to move, but still John waited. Only when the first ranks of monsters crashed into the hospital walls and started climbing did he activate the Spell.

A 3-D render of the world unfurled in his mind's eye, but he didn't bother taking any of it in. Instead, he drew the target straight up, pushing it to the very apex of its range, and then, mentally crossing his fingers, confirmed the Spell.

With a rush of air, the view around him changed. All of a sudden, he was overlooking the world from a hundred metres in the air, directly above the hospital, allowing him to see for miles in every direction. Watford, Bushey, and the other local satellites towns sprawled out like a great smudge on the green landscape. To the south, it seemed like London could stretch on forever.

His stomach swooped as he found himself in free fall for a fraction of a second before Geomancy reasserted itself, and he took magical hold of the stone sarcophagus beneath him. The strain was immense and immediate. It felt as though he'd just had to catch a 100kg sphere someone had thrown at him like a basketball. Every muscle in his body went taut. It was all he could do not to let out a grunt of pain. If he hadn't already tested this and learned what to expect, he wasn't sure he would've been able to hold it.

As it was, the best he could do was slow the stone's descent to a crawl, falling at no more than a few centimetres per second, by his reckoning. His dreams of flying around on a stone platform were still a far-off thing, apparently. He didn't know if that was down to the level of the Spell, the level of his Strength, or some other factor entirely. Maybe that just wasn't the intended function of Geomancy at all. But he wasn't going to give up on the idea just yet.

Beside him, Claire had practically collapsed, pressing herself to the sarcophagus, trying to get as close to her father's face as possible for comfort. In turn, Curtis was cooing quiet, reassuring words at her that John couldn't make out over the cacophony of the burning sky, stampeding monsters, and his heartbeat thundering in his ears.

Below, the waves of monster weaved through each other with preternatural precision. They looked kind of like one of those fancy marching parades, where two regiments strode right through each other without breaking pace. Except this was even more impressive, in a way, because the monsters weren't marching in regimented lines. Each wave was still moving in its own chaotic mess, seeming so close together there couldn't possibly be any more gaps to fit through, yet somehow there were still no collisions, and it didn't even look like they were deliberately making room.

John had to wonder whether this was a quirk of these specific monsters—given they were insects and all, and some insects exhibited hive behaviour—or if it was a more wide-spread thing. He thought back to the other hordes he'd encounter so far, from the mob the centipede had called, to the Underworld, the bus depot, and everything in between. There was just as much evidence they weren't all connected, though. If they were, then monsters would have come running to every encounter, swarming any stragglers immediately.

Unless they're all toying with us, trying to make it more entertaining, he thought grimly.

It didn't take long for the monsters to all pass through each other. They barely even broke stride, flowing through the hospital and then onwards, seeming to pick up speed.

The sarcophagus slowly floated down with all the weight of a leaf. John stayed perfectly still, crouched on one knee with both hands resting on the impromptu platform, trying not to show the strain he was feeling. He didn't dare set them down until the monsters were well out of sight. He was keenly aware of how the monsters had specifically sped up to force John and Curtis into some kind of action, and he was wary it could happen again. Until the monsters were out of Mana Sense's range, he was going to treat the situation as if they could turn around and come back at any moment.

Claire regained some semblance of calm after it became clear they were neither going to fall from the sky nor get torn to shreds by monsters, and she sat upright and shuffled over to the edge of the platform to peer down at the monsters, ignoring her father's panicked protests. Shortly after, he could feel her gaze on the side of his face.

+2000 Aura

Well, he thought, holding back a wry smile, at least I impressed the little girl.

The amusement almost immediately wore off when she went and presented him with a problem. It wasn't malicious. All she did was speak to him.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

It was an innocuous question, on her part. Entirely innocent of malice. Nothing more than a little girl who saw a guy who was maybe looking a little red-faced and pained, and wanted to make sure he was alright. If anything, it showed a kind heart on her part, considering he'd just been beating up her dad less than ten minutes ago.

Admittedly, her concern could also stem from the fact that the man looking red-faced and pained was powering the Spell currently keeping them from abruptly plunging 80~ish metres to the ground. He could understand why she was worried.

Unfortunately, it put him in a position where he had to either ignore her, or risk the strain of the Spell he was currently maintaining causing something awful like a voice crack.

Gonna have to meet in the middle and hope she buys it.

Arching an eyebrow and putting on his best smirk, he nodded as confidently and smoothly as he could.

The girl bit her lip, eyes searching his face, but she soon turned away, looking to her father for comfort once more. From this angle, John couldn't see Curtis' face, and didn't exactly want to.

It took a good five minutes to reach the ground. Partially out of an excess of caution regarding the monsters, but also because John didn't want to mess with his magical grip on the stone. Better the trip be a long, awkward one than a short, deadly one. He'd survive with one of his many Spells and Skills to bail him out, and maybe Curtis had something that would save him too, but he doubted Claire would make it. Any chance of peace between John and Curtis would be gone, then.

He set Curtis down just outside the reception, in the same spot where they'd first encountered each other. It felt like hours ago, but really hadn't been more than a few minutes.

"Here's the thing, Curtis," John said, leaning closer. "If I believe that you're going to go out and kill more people if I let you go, then putting you down right here is the morally correct thing to do, regardless of what happens to your daughter."

Curtis' eyes burned with fury, but John shifted a slab of dull grey rock up and over his mouth to muffle any raging words.

"For her sake, you need to convince me that letting you go isn't going to end up saddling my conscience with more lives than hers."

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