Chapter 73: March

"But still, I need to give you that. Your quick reaction right before you collapsed was the one thing that saved your life. You should see what's left of the stage…"

Pavlo gathered his people far faster than I expected. While I could guess that the entire force of the Baskar family came rushing to my church once they learned about the events here I decided to keep silent about this possibility. Even though there was only so many professional fighters in our group, the furious crowd marching behind us was quite a nice bolster to our forces.

"Hmm? What reaction do you mean?"

While I should be wary about my surroundings, I could somehow tell that there were no enemies separating us from the town hall. Maybe it was the last cry of information that my bracelet infused me with before refusing to work anymore? Once again, I was limited to guessing.

"Come on, I know I passed out for the majority of the fight, but I managed to wake-up just at the moment to see it. But man, I would never expect that you could jump like that from such a position!"

Once again referring to something that didn't make any sense to me, Pavlo provided me with yet another clue about my situation. While I faced everything that was going on with the expression of some expert that was perfectly in control of the events, I was lost just as much if not more than everyone. 

"I still have no idea what you are… Oh, that!"

Struck by sudden, complex enlightenment, I instantly changed my narration. In the end, keeping silent about anything unexpected would allow me to maintain my pose of some wise sage that the crowd took me for.

But the general idea that came to my mind in order to explain the discrepancy between what I remembered and what Pavlo saw wasn't simple by any means.

During the second fight for the mansion, my dark emotions found the way out of my system. It happened for the second time… Yet this time, nothing came to stop me. Or rather, there was a chance that some force appeared. There was a chance that Ayda's spell once again attempted to pull me right into her arms, to let her attempt calming those wild emotions of me down. 

But the forces that were tearing me apart back then, were just too powerful for Ayda's relatively small witchcraft to even be noticed. Only when I snapped after performing what seemed to be some kind of resurrection ritual… 

That moment had to be the key to all the things that confused me. My blackout was the only period of time during which I couldn't observe things. And that meant, whatever happened then was the reason for all my confusion.

"Hmm… So it's like that…"

With my mind spinning from overthinking the situation, I happened upon something that looked like a trial. Speaking to myself under my own nose was just my body's expression of my emotions right now.

Once I passed out, the forces that I held together would come apart. There was also a chance that I simply took too much on myself, resulting in those forces themselves tearing my consciousness away. The second option would also explain why did my bracelet stopped responding. Just like a computer, once put through overwhelming stress, the circuits were bound to warp. Small defect like that could render the entire system useless.

But it would answer my primary question, what kind of dodge was Pavlo talking about?

If all the forces that centred around me were to suddenly disappear, there would be only one remaining. The spell not controlled by my own will, but something ingrained in my emotions by Ayda. For this one brief moment, before I let go completely of that emotion dark blob of emotions, it was the sole ruler of my magic.

"Either way, I think we are not completely done yet."

Moving my sight up, I could already see the small towers of the Town Hall. Back in the days just a fancy part of the museum of the city's history, now their role returned to its origins. With the barrels of the heavy machine guns glistering in the windows, even a huge crowd of soldiers gathered at the courtyard didn't make a huge impression on me or the crowd behind me.

"This situation kind of sucks… But we don't really have much choice."

By the time most of the people in the crowd could see the army at our destination, most of them was moving forward only because of the momentum of the entire group. Once only three crossings separated us from the confrontation, only about a half of my peasant army continued our march.

"I wouldn't be so sure. My family isn't the only one that noticed the change. This fight… No, our fight will decide how this city will look like from now on. Everyone's bound to take sides."

Shaking his head in denial to my words, Pavlo nodded it to the side. Following his gesture with my eyes, I noticed that the frontal part of the crowd changed by a lot. Even though there were way fewer people in the entire human mass, nearly a third of its entire volume consisted not of some random citizens, but armed mercenaries and bodyguards.

Quite reassuring sight, even in my situation I couldn't disagree with such a point. But it wouldn't be enough. 

After a few attempts, I had no other choice but to accept the fact that the bracelet from the apocalypse refused to cooperate. No matter how hard I wished to open or at least restart it, nothing would happen. 

What was even worse, after my onslaught back at the mansion, I couldn't feel any emotions at all. A quick scan of my inner state at least confirmed it was just a temporary numbness caused by overstressing my own, natural circuits. Nevertheless, in the coming fight, I was deprived of two out of three sources of my power. Right now, I could only count on the force of faith, the only one that I could somehow use yet had no idea how to properly invoke it. 

And right now I was about to face not only the remaining military of the city but also the designed governor of this place. One of the cronies of the group that took power after the apocalypse. One of the people that used their insane, starting advantage in cultivation to obtain most of the useful resources for themselves.

In other words, if I wasn't greatly overestimating the governor's strength, I was basically marching to my own death that only another miracle could stop. And given the situation, I had absolutely no option to turn back.

I could only march forward, right at the barrels of the guns, with no way of stopping the bullets from reaping the lives of half of the crowd in a single instant.

The reality cracked… And then it snapped.