Up until the shockwave rested, Chris had been doing exactly what a vanguard was supposed to do.
He had his big arms hooked tightly into the collars of his two teammates, his legs planted firmly against the base of the concrete in the ground.
He was acting as a human anchor against the tearing winds, gritting his teeth as the sheer force tried to pry them off the road.
He could feel Julien straining on his left side, the young rchant’s coat pulled taut as he fought for grip.
But on his right side, the sensation was entirely different. Alice didn’t have a physical coat to grab, so Chris had wrapped his thick fingers around her spectral wrist, relying on the mana to maintain a solid hold.
Then, the resistance simply vanished.
One second, Chris was holding onto the ghost, and the next, his fingers closed around empty air.
The violent red energy laced within the shockwave had brutally disrupted her form, tearing right through the balance of her existence.
"Chris!" Julien roared from the left, his voice barely cutting through the roar of the collapsing buildings.
"Sothing is wrong with her!"
Chris didn’t hesitate or calculate the risks.
He didn’t think about the blinding storm of brick, sharp steel, and flying rubble whipping through the air. His hand released the iron grip on the concrete barricade, abandoned the only piece of solid cover they had, and threw his massive body forward directly into the hurricane.
Through the thick, choking clouds of red dust, he saw her.
Alice was tumbling backwards, entirely at the rcy of the wind. Her pale dress and translucent body were flickering violently, glitching out of reality as the heavy, aggressive energy of the Red Gate actively rged with her own spectral signature.
She couldn’t anchor herself and was phasing right through the abandoned cars and falling debris like a broken projection, completely unable to stop her montum.
Chris pushed his legs to their absolute limit, his heavy boots hitting against the cracked pavent as he sprinted into the teeth of the wave.
The Tier 1 Iron Skin potion was working overti, its blue patterns flashing continuously across his arms and face as it deflected the worst of the blunt impacts.
But a potion could only do so much against a literal storm of shivs. A piece of twisted rebar whipped past his guard, slicing a deep wound across his forearm. A group of shattered glass rained down like razor blades, tearing through his sturdy clothes and biting into his shoulder.
Blood began to freely trail down his arm, mixing with the heavy dust, but the giant didn’t even slow down. He just kept running, his eyes locked entirely on the fading ghost.
"Grab my hand!" Chris shouted, reaching out with his bleeding right arm as he finally closed the distance.
Alice extended her arm, her single visible eye wide with genuine terror. She reached for him, her fingers stretching desperately to et his.
Their hands collided at that mont.
And passed right through each other.
Chris stumbled, his eyes widening in horror as his fingers phased entirely through her wrist without eting even a fraction of resistance. The portal’s chaotic energy had completely hijacked her tangibility.
From thirty yards behind them, Julien was screaming over the deafening wind. "Use the ring!"
Alice heard the rchant’s desperate shout, but panic was fully overriding her logic. She looked down at the heavy erald ring glowing on her finger, the artefact that anchored her to the physical world and allowed her to manifest.
She didn’t know how to channel it properly to fight off the red mana and didn’t have ti to figure out the intricate system chanics of cursed jewellery while flying through the air at terrifying speeds.
So, she chose the most drastic option available.
She grabbed the erald and yanked it completely off her finger.
The reaction was instant and violent. The mont the ring left her hand, her mana entirely evaporated. The flickering, untouchable ghost vanished, replaced abruptly by a very real, very vulnerable physical weight. Gravity and montum slamd back into her all at once.
Her back violently struck the side of a half-collapsed brick wall with a sickening noise, knocking the breath completely out of her lungs.
A massive sheet of shattered window glass flew straight toward her newly solid body.
Chris threw himself through the air, diving entirely over her just a fraction of a second before the impact. He curled his massive fra into a protective do, using his broad back and the lingering effects of the defensive potion to shield her.
The glass shards shattered harmlessly against his back and the brick wall, raining down around them in a dangerous shower.
He braced his hands against the wall on either side of her head, breathing heavily and looked down and realised he could actually feel the fabric of her dress brushing against his arm.
"I got you," Chris grunted, wincing slightly as the bleeding cuts on his arm stung fiercely.
Alice looked up at him, her chest beating as she processed the fact that she was currently trapped in a physical state, entirely dependent on the giant bleeding over her.
Before she could even thank him, a horrific sound echoed above them.
Chris and Alice turned their heads, looking back down the ruined street toward where they had left Julien.
The wave was finally starting to pass, but the destruction it left in its wake was catastrophic.
Caught in the dying throes of the kinetic blast, five heavy, armoured transport vehicles, the kind usually reserved for military blockades, had been picked up and tossed down the main intersection like discarded toys.
And they were tumbling through the air directly toward their position.
Chris’s jaw stiffened. He planted his boots firmly onto the ruined asphalt, his muscles bulging as he shifted his stance to completely shadow Alice.
Behind him, Alice quickly shoved the erald ring back onto her finger, her eye narrowing with imminent focus as her spectral aura flared back to life, ready to do whatever she could to help the person who had just bled for her.
anwhile, huddled behind the heavily cracked remains of the concrete barricade, Julien was watching the exact sa tumbling vehicles.
He was just a regular guy from the sector who didn’t have superhuman strength like Chris, and he couldn’t phase through walls like Alice. If those armoured trucks crashed into their area, the resulting explosion of shrapnel and fuel would wipe his entire party out before the monsters even had a chance to spawn.
He swiped his bruised hand through the air, pulling up the glowing gold interface of his Infinite Warehouse. His eyes darted frantically across the Tier 1 item registry, ignoring the cheap potions and standard weapons.
His gaze landed on sothing buried at the very bottom of the utility list.
Julien’s lips pulled back into a fierce, determined grin.
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