Chapter 225 - A Long Awaited Reunion
"..Here goes nothing." Said Daniel before tightening his hold on the sound sphere, and with a sudden twist of his wrist, pulling it out of the formation. This was only possible because he had a key to operate it, otherwise, the formation would have had the same defensive power that the internal defenses of the ship had. As a sixth stage immortal cultivator, he would have never been able to forcibly break a something that was supposed to resist the attack of anyone below the eight rank.
After Daniel pulled the sound sphere out of the formation, a sudden sound wave exploded from the bridge, and traveled through the entire ship. From that very moment, everybody that was on board could feel it.. The defenses on the walls and doors were gone. Hopefully, people had gotten used to the idea of being quiet and to avoid using their immortal essence, and Daniel hadn't caused anybody's death.
With the sound sphere in one hand, and the key to operate the helm in the other, Daniel turned to look at the woman, and said "Are you sure you want to do this? He could do it instead, if you don't feel comfortable with it."
"Has he ever seen the landing of a spaceship, or performed the veering of one?" Asked the woman in return. Her tone clearly marked with nervousness and a large amount of fear. She was breathing heavily, and her fists were clenched tightly around a part of her sleeve that was threatening to tear.
Daniel let out a soft sigh, then handed the key over to the woman. "Tell Jerigh again what we have to do once we reach the area of the propulsors." Daniel then asked while focusing on covering the powerful sound sphere with his own sound essence, and then putting it in one of his pocket.
The reason why he had asked the woman to explain the procedure to Jerigh and not him, was because ever since the very moment he had removed the sound sphere from the formation, he was constantly required to suppress its power.. He needed an extreme amount of focus in order to do that, as well as a strong mind, as it meant having to hear the extremely loud sound that the sphere kept sending out in waves.
He could have easily limited the control over sound around the sphere, but that would have made it impossible for him to do anything else but that. He would have not been able to move, or even think about anything else but keeping his sound essence from letting any of those sounds out, and turn them into a beacon for all of the monsters within the ship.
Once the woman repeated the instructions to Jerigh, as well as the direction they were supposed to take in order to reach the area of the propulsors, the two quietly left the bridge and went on their way.
The propulsor room was pretty close to the area where the bridge was, but it required them to walk through dozens of corridors deep in the bellows of the ship. Their first step, was to climb down the ladder which Der and the two little girls had taken in order to reach the bridge..
-----
Eighteen days earlier, crew's living quarters.
Der and the two young girls had been hiding in one of the cabins of the crew for four full days. After the black-haired young man had left the reception, the hundreds of monsters had started to, once again, hunt for prey, and Der could see many of them walk in front of his cabin every few minutes.
At the end of the fourth day, the situation had become a little more quiet.
Slightly relieved, he attempted to leave the cabin along with the two young girls, but right as he was about to walk out of the door, he heard a noise come from behind the corner. This noise wasn't one of those that the monsters made, but one made by humans.
*Pssst.. hey!*
At this point, Der's reactions was to instantly move back into the cabin, and sure enough, right in front of him, a monster appeared and started to slowly walk through the corridor in front of his door. It clearly had heard the noise, and had gone to check.
While he was expecting to hear screams and a few noises of fighting, in reality, nothing happened. The person who had made that noise was clearly lucky enough to have survived. Unfortunately for him, that person had also attracted a few monsters towards the corridor where they were hiding, and therefore, forced them to be blocked in the cabin once again.
Unknown to him, he would soon come to thank the person who had made that sound, because only a few hours later, the monsters started to dash through the various corridors like crazed beasts. The reason for that, was the announcement that was playing out through the entire ship.
"Hehe.. I knew you were still alive, brat." Muttered Der to himself before starting to carefully listen to the announcement.
Once the announcement was over, he did not wait further and decided to go back towards the bridge, where he was sure he could find Daniel. So, along with the two young girls, he left the cabin, and made their way back.
This time, while walking back, he had seen multiple people try to reach the deck, and the majority of them were able to reach it without a problem.. But unfortunately, not all of them. At least a tenth of the survivors he had seen walk by had died, and virtually all of those that had died, were wearing clean clothes, and appeared a lot more terrified than the others, indicating that they probably were the 'lucky' ones that had managed to stay in their cabins for more than a week without noticing anything wrong going on outside.
Der had considered more than once if he should have simply left the two young girls to one of the groups that seemed to be calm and experienced enough, to walk through without alerting the monsters, but every time, he was never able to do that. He was terrified that these people would decide to abandon them in fear that they would be scared at the sight of the first monsters they would meet, and scream.. So, he kept them with him instead.
That was, of course, until they found a certain group.
They were now walking through the exchanging hall, and resting at a corner within the gambling hall, was a group of about seven people. Each of these people seemed to be rather calm, despite a few of them had clear anxiousness written all over their faces.
The moment the two groups saw each other, the one within the gambling hall quickly started to make quiet gestures, and giving hints for Der's group to walk over, but those gestures suddenly stopped when this group noticed that Der and the two young girls, were going towards the bridge, and therefore to the direction opposite to the stairs for the deck.
Not a word was spoken, until..
"MOM! DAD!" Shouted the youngest of the two girls in elation. She had just noticed that, amongst these seven people, were her parents.
For as much as Der would have been happy to see parents and daughters reunite, he didn't have the time to, now. The very instant the word 'dad' left the girl's mouth, he grabbed the two girls by the back of their shirts, and threw them towards the group.
*HWIIIISS*
Without missing a bit, the two girls' powerful parents rapidly grabbed their two daughters with their arms, while the noise was covered by the sudden whistle that Der had let out.
Knowing that he only had instants before one or more monsters dashed towards him, and that he had no way to run, Der simply bent his knees and made himself as small as possible. This decision was one made out of instinct, and therefore, he had no time to hope to survive.. But a miracle happened.
With tension above the roof, the group looked as a monster's spike brushed against the back of Der's lowering head, cutting a stripe of his hair down to his scalp, and once through, ended straight into the chest of a second monster that had arrived from the opposite direction.
Just like they would usually do, the two monsters quickly started to exchange blows, and stomp with their collective eight legs, all around Der, and making him believe that he would die at any given moment.. But that didn't happen. Instead, the monsters lost interest as usual after a few blows. They roamed around the room for a few minutes, and left from the first corridor they found.
The group looked at Der with eyes opened wide in shock. They couldn't believe that a human could be that lucky. He was still crumpled up into a ball, and his clothes were all torn apart, as many of the attacks hadn't simply missed.. But had actually missed by just a few millimeters.
Der quietly stood back up, and let a back-twisting shiver run down his body. He hadn't only survived the most tense moment of his life, but also the most disgusting, as he was covered in the rotten pieces of flesh that the monsters had ripped off of each other.
He silently took off the external part of his clothes, and remained with a simple shirt, pants, and shoes, which while had been worn for days now, they were rather clean when compared to his outer robe.
The group approached Der, and as he noticed the middle aged couple that was hugging the two little girls, he said through a wisp of sound essence. "I thought that all of the officers had left along with the captain."
The woman looked at her husband with an enraged expression. She clearly wished that she could let out all of her frustration for something that had happened in the past, but she couldn't, as she had no comprehension of sound essence.
On the other hand, her husband, which was the second in command of the entire ship, looked at Der and said "We would have never left while leaving our two girls here.. We have tried to stop Captain Nura, but he didn't listen to reason."
"Well, they haven't made it far.. We have seen the shalop explode the moment it tried to go through the ship's shield four days ago." Responded Der.
"You've protected our girls for so long.. I have no words to thank you.." Said the man with a calm voice, and yet showing a face filled with emotions. His mind had crealy been taxed by not knowing whether his two daughters had survived this massacre or not.. And for the majority of the time, by the idea that, in his mind, it might have been better if he had never found out the truth.
As the woman heard her husband thank Der, she quickly put the youngest of her daughters down, and quietly gave him a heartfelt hug. She was fighting as hard as she could the urge to cry, and express her thanks out loud.
After a couple of minutes spent talking, Der decided to split from this group and try to reach his friends, but as he was about to walk towards the bridge, the father of the two girls stopped him.
"Blocked?.." Der said after finding out that, when this group had ventured out in order to reach the bridge where Daniel was, they had seen a small group of monsters buried underneath the corridor that ultimately lead to the officer's cabins, and the bridge, blocking the passage completely.
"You are the second in command of the ship.. Can you tell me what the guy that is sending out the announcement needs to do in order to follow his plan?" Asked Der with hurry.
"If he wants to veer from the planet.. He will need to reach the propulsors, and activate them." Responded the man plainly.
"Okay.. okay.. Can you tell me how to get there?"