Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 413. The abandoned center

We walked up the stairs, with Henry hanging onto me, though he let go when we took the next staircase down.

The reason was simple: everyone was lined up in the corridor beside the entrance door, ready to bid farewell.

My grandma, the staff sergeant, Ethan, the kid who had apparently woken up at some point, and Kitty.

They stood or sat there as if this was an official parade.

"You all make me nervous by being so official," I chuckled.

"You are the first to cry when nobody takes care of you." My grandmother knocked the stick in her hands against the floor.

Ethan seemed to have allowed her to have one again, or she had overpowered him and snatched a stick—being the demon queen and all.

"Are these your last words to me?" I raised my eyebrows and put my hands inside the pockets of my black jeans.

"No." She started, taking a good look at my face.

"Hands out of your pockets!" The old dragon slammed her stick against my shin.

Well, here I thought for a moment that she had something nice to say.

She achieved her goal; I really took my hands out of my pockets to hold onto my shin.

Henry stabilized me from behind so that I wouldn’t fall—only he cares about me.

The kid, ignorant of my pain, lunged at me to hug me, and I speedily caught him while internally applauding my puppy for not pushing him away or something.

I lifted the kid up.

"Do you know where we are going?"

The kid nodded against my neck.

"Did you dream about it?" I asked him.

He nodded again.

"And how will it go?" I tried to flip the coin to get a glimpse of his dream, only to remember that my ability didn’t work on him.

The kid nodded again, which probably meant we would survive.

"Please call immediately if there is a problem; we will be ready." Ethan cleared his throat and repeated his words from before.

"We will." I nodded at Ethan before whispering into the kid’s ear.

"I have a name for you. I’ll tell you when we are back."

The kid leaned back to look at me with sparkling eyes and an ecstatic smile on his face.

"Mhm, it’s true." I thought about it and have found the perfect name (not Hannibal).

I put the kid down, and he obediently went back to Kitty.

Then I FINALLY remembered what I constantly forgot and addressed Ethan.

"Can you find the guy who was in prison with me? My sh—my cellmate. He was in there innocently."

Henry grabbed the back of my shirt when he heard me, and I sneaked my hand back to pat his to reassure the puppy with a bunch of abandonment complexes and the usual jealousy.

Ethan pushed his glasses up.

"I will look into it."

He glanced at my grandmother, who flat-out ignored him. With a defeated sigh, he then raised his hand, in which he held a leather bundle.

I took it, and after opening it, I found a packaged scalpel, disinfectant, and a bandage.

Whoa, very prepared.

I looked at Ethan before looking at my grandma.

"Thank you."

After touching it, I gave the little leather bundle back to Ethan, who took it as if he had anticipated getting it instantly handed back.

"I wish you a successful operation." The staff sergeant nodded sternly.

"Yes, sir." I made a military salute, or what I understood as such, and received a conspiratorial look from the staff sergeant in return.

"I will teleport to the smoking area," I turned back and told Henry.

"Mhm, I’ll find you," he said before letting go of me.

"Why the hell did this turn so solemn?" I chuckled before I teleported, hearing my grandmother yell,

"BE CAR-"

The next second, I stood in the smoking area, where Henry and I had made out in the past.

I chuckled and took a look around.

It wasn’t as long for me as it had been for the others; at the same time, it seemed like another lifetime.

Fuck, I already have so many lifetime-long experiences behind me; I am a fucking old man—though not as old as the dragon.

Henry instantly appeared in front of me and lunged at me just like the kid had, though he had enough decency not to let me carry him.

"Why do you want to find the fat man?"

"Be nice." I patted his back, looking up at the sky.

The sun was starting to rise; the sky was still mostly dark, nevertheless.

"Let’s get this done." I patted his back once again before forcing him to let go.

He hung on my back like a sulking child as we walked from the smoking area to the connected big garden—there was no reason for us to enter the building.

And I wouldn’t want to enter it either; the windows were partly smashed and broken, trash already lay in the garden, and the beautiful lawn had mostly become dried-up earth.

"What the hell happened here? Did they really abandon this building?"

"It seems like it. The Lawrence family surely cuts their losses." Henry chuckled, and we arrived in the garden.

The big space didn’t look much better, desolate and clearly abandoned.

The pool had no water in it from what I could see, just dirty residues from rain and other debris.

Well, here was where Henry had been shot, so I wasn’t a fan of this place either way.

I steered us to the middle of the garden, which was also the center of the track field.

"They didn’t care if homeless people or anything lived here in the meantime? Why wasn’t this place closed off?"

There had to be someone living here because where did that trash come from?

"And surely a few junkies. The Lawrence family has destroyed what makes this place interesting or dangerous; I bet they removed the water tanks as well, so there isn’t much information to gain from here. Maybe Ethan got rid of people being here at night." Henry shrugged when we arrived in the center of the field.

"Mhm, we talked lightly about them making preparations, but look at them doing so much, even with the mentioned roadblocks." That we naturally couldn’t see from here but will surely profit from.

We arrived in the center of the field; every door leading to the garden had been opened.

"Ethan deserves a raise."

"You forgot that we are doing the actual work." Henry let go of me and grumbled.

"Nope, you both are doing it. I am just here as a blood bag. The moment you feel a little weak, you are free to take a bite." I turned to him and pointed at my neck.

"Mhm~ I will gobble you up~ " He broke into a grin.

"Shut it. So what about the earth? Can you do the shield like in the vision we saw? I don’t want them to come up from under us."

"No problem. I’ll make a whole sphere."

"Perfect. Please start; I want to go back home already." Somehow, maybe because it was so early in the morning and the caffeine had lost its effects, I just wanted to be back under the blankets.

"Here I go." Henry conjured up the crystals, and soon we were surrounded by a shield.

It was apparent that the shield didn’t just stop at the earth but cut through it so that we were successfully locked in.

"Perfect." I repeated and conjured up the bundle Ethan had given me.

I opened the package of the knife, and Henry, standing behind me with his chest against my back, hugging me, winced quietly because of what was about to come.

"Don’t worry; it’s just a cut." I assured him.

"My blood won’t pass through the shield, in case it seeps through the earth, right? We don’t want to risk nurturing them."

"No, I decide what goes through and what does not."

I nodded and threw the package of the scalpel on the ground while Henry held the leather bundle for me.

Okay, now I am again a bit pumped up; let’s fucking go!!!

I cut into my left arm from the wrist ten centimeters up before Henry grabbed me.

"That’s enough."

I cut deep without puncturing an artery, so after a moment, blood pooled out of my arm, falling on the ground.

I watched the red liquid fall, thinking of the absurdities this blood had caused until now, even before it had been laced with the giant’s full powers.

It had destroyed the kid’s life.

Henry observed everything right behind me, and when I had bled quite a bit, he again repeated that it was enough.

It was fascinating that we could even control our wound healing, for example, stopping the wound from healing just with our thoughts.

He took the bandage out of the bundle with his arms still around me.

"That won’t be necessary." I would have let the leather bundle disappear, and my wound would have healed anyway because I had received it ten minutes ago, making it a ten-minute-old wound.

However, I didn’t want my blood to disappear from the ground or dry up or something, so I just concentrated on the wound, and we saw it healing before our eyes, not even leaving a scar behind or deforming my tattoos.

"Looks like a ’special effect.’" I commented.

Henry threw the leather bundle on the ground to have his hands free. I will let it go back to the past later anyway.

"I know, it’s really a sight to see. Are you alright?"

"Mhm, not dizzy or anything." I conjured up the arrowgun, ready for the first rats to appear.

The ground didn’t tremble like it had been inside the tunnels, but when I tilted my head to listen in, I could hear them coming already.

"Tell me the moment you feel weak," he implored me while taking a look at our surroundings.

"You as well."

The dome, or the sphere shield, Henry had produced was especially see-through, the crystals exceptionally smooth to give an accurate view of our surroundings.

"They are coming," Henry whispered in my ear.

"Mhm." I heard the little feet running with all their might, a steady stream that started with lesser rats and continued with a greater number.

And there they were, the first dark and pink rats, about twenty, running through one of the big open doors that led to the garden.

They had to have entered the center and come through the corridors inside the garden.

And they did; they managed—willingly approaching their demise.

I waited for them to come a bit closer.

"Ready?"

"Mhm. Just fire." Henry gave the go.

I started firing, the arrows traveling smoothly through the surface of the shield.

But who am I kidding?

The steady stream of rats continued and turned overwhelming much faster than I had hoped; after the twenty, there were another fifty rats, after the fifty, a hundred, and so on and so forth.

Well, there had been a reason why we had been buried by rats inside my vision.