Chapter 595 Hard Choices

Looking at the hundreds of terrified people who were the current target of the far-reaching tendrils of the Doomsday Worm, Marcus was left with the tough choice of picking who to save.

At most he might be able to cram forty of them on his back in his form as a caladrius, and maybe pick up a few dozen more with his iron threads.

But there was simply no way he could carry all of them out of here fast enough with his abilities.

He would need to move pretty fast to get away from the tendrils and make it Loursend. And if he tried pilling all these people up on his cataclysmic iron sword there was no doubt they would fall off.

And even if they could hold on, they would probably all freeze to death in the blistering cold as they were buffeted by high-speed winds without any protection but the clothes they were wearing.

He simply could not enlarge his mana barrier far enough to encompass that much area, and without it the wind chill would kill anyone without a decently high level.

‘Fire Storm.’

Turning around Marcus used his widest ranged spell to send a huge blast of flames towards the ever-encroaching tendrils to keep them at bay for a little bit longer while he finished figuring out how to save as many people as he could.

Normally he would have refrained from using such a devastating fire magic spell here, but since the Doomsday Worm was eating the forest anyway, and there was snow everywhere, he figured the chance of starting a forest fire were minimal and pretty inconsequential.

‘I will take those that are the youngest and tell the others to move as fast as they can. Maybe with a lightened load and with the fear of death put in them they will move fast enough for some of them to survive.’.

With his plan made Marcus began appraising the group of people, picking out those who were the youngest and the least likely to survive on their own.

“Those of you who want to live should listen to me and not ask any questions while following my orders. The monster controlling those tendrils is going to send more now that it has found you and I need to get all of you that I can out of here.” Marcus shouted, getting control over the panicking people. Some of whom had already run off.

He then quickly made a platform out of his iron threads that could hold around eighty people if they squeezed together tightly.

“I will take the youngest among you first. Any who want to live should get onto this platform and I will fly you to Loursend.”

Quickly getting over their shock of seeing Marcus’ magic since their lives were in immediate danger, the towns folk urged their kids onto the platform and soon it was filled with eighty-six children ranging from age zero to fourteen.

However, one unruly man stepped forward, and said, “Hey, why is it that you are just saving them? Those kids are not even technically citizens of the kingdom yet. You should prioritize us working and tax paying adults.”

As this man who had a unkept appearance and looked like he spent the majority of his time at a tavern and not working said this, others began murmuring among themselves.

Those without children were definitely feeling slighted and wondered why it was that they were being left to run for their lives.

But before any more dissent arose, Marcus held up his hand and a darkness bullet flew out which bored a hole in the unruly man’s head.

In an instant he dropped to the ground dead, and his body quickly dissolved under the corroding properties of the darkness magic.

Many of the people gasped and some even screamed as they saw this, but Marcus yelled out and said, “I do not have time to make this a discussion. I am going to save those that I have chosen to right now and come back for everyone else later. If you wish to try and force me to save you as that man did. Then you are free to meet his same fate.”

Absolute quite permeated the people of Trostenwald after Marcus said this.

Truly he felt bad to have done so, but he did not have time to deal with a riot, and people who were fearing for their lives often acted out against those trying to help them when there were limited resources.

But now that Marcus had made it clear that any bad actors would be killed mercilessly, they all shut up and allowed him to do what he could.

“Now I can take forty more people as I have a skill that allows me to transform my body into a flying beast. I am going to transform now and the rest of you that I have chosen will get on my back.” Marcus said.

Though before he was able to transform the tendrils of the Dread Burrower caught up with them again and this time in greater numbers.

Marcus knew he needed to use a lot more power to keep them at bay this time, and activated his supreme skill and pulled out his focusing lenses.

‘Rending Void, Quasar Blast.’

Combining his two tier six light and darkness magic spells, Marcus created a massive spiraling blast of magic that tore through everything in its wake for miles.

It was by far his most destructive attack, and it left all of the onlookers absolutely flabbergasted.

Still, that was only going to by time a little bit of time until the tendrils had reformed and came right back for them.

‘Now those of you that can hear me, get onto my back and bring the female knight with you.’ Marcus said with his telepathy to the forty people he had singled out.

Quickly they did as he told the fear of death giving them motivation to do something so terrifying as get onto the back of a giant beast that was actually a person.

Once these people had gotten on top of him, Marcus created his mana barrier around them and the people that were on his iron thread platform.

Slowly he rose into the air, and right before he took off towards Loursend he used his telepathy to address the remaining people.

‘All of you leave everything you do not need behind and make haste towards Loursend. I will come back to get more of you once I have dropped off those I have with me now. Go as fast as you can and do what you can to survive.’

After saying this Marcus took off into the sky and did not look back as the tendrils approached the group of people he had left behind.

Quickly he soared through the sky at a bit over a hundred miles an hour

Normally he would have gone faster, but any more speed and he would not have been able to keep the platform made of iron threads from unraveling.

It was already taking all of his focus just to keep the spell going and to enlarge his mana barrier to the largest he could.

In a couple of hours, the outskirts of the city came into view and even from here Marcus could see that the place had erupted into chaos.

Parts of the city were on fire, and he could see that large groups of wagons were moving all around.

Some people were even fleeing the city in all directions.

Looking at this he was pretty sure that most, if not all of those leaving the city were doomed to die.

Of course, there were a huge number of people that had refused to follow the directions that Gwyneira had relayed.

It was crazy and sounded suicidal to most to enter into a dungeon for their own safety and they would rather try to escape out of the city.

Still, as he looked farter beyond the city in the northwest corner there were equally large groups of people entering the Ocean Bluff Temple.

Flying towards the western part of the city, Marcus let the children and young adults he had taken down and directed them to head along the wall until they made it to the people lining up to enter the dungeon.

He of course hated the idea of directing all of these people, some of which were too young to speak to enter a dungeon, but there was no other option.

“Now I will try and go to retrieve your parents and be back with them in a few hours. And make sure to keep the knight there safe until she wakes up. She is a friend of mine” Marcus said as he left the still unconscious Clarisa in the hands of one of the young adults.

He then launched himself back into the air staying in his human form this time and flying much faster now that he was unburdened.

Within just half an hour he made it back to the area he had left the rest of the people fleeing Tralenstein and saw the carnage that was left.

When he had left, he already knew this would happen, but not a single person had escaped the tendrils of the Dread Burrower

All that was left were empty wagons and strewn about items that had been scattered in the snow amidst the chaos.

‘I did what I could. Now I just have to do my best to prevent as much death as possible.’

Turning towards the direction the Doomsday Worm was Marcus flew forward with renewed determination to stop it.