Baoba stood there, dazed. He had seen broken limbs before, he had seen his own bones before, but no injury ever put him through such shock.
After an instant of processing the situation, wich was already way too much time, he snapped out of it and frantically looked for new plans.
The problem resided in the horde of deadly monsters that was currently pursuing them at full speed. They had shown the ability to know their exact position before, so the only way to get away was to outrun them. To help with this, he even came up with several different ideas to slow the tide down with various traps and obstacles.
If they ran at full speed, they would surely get tired, as they had already walked quite a long distance from their city. So, Baoba had spent a long time calculating the appropriate speed at which they had to run to get home safely.
The verdict was : a quick jog. If they ran moderately fast, and could set up an acceptable number of hurdles, they would have a good chance of making it back.
But all of those calculations rested on the premise that they had precise knowledge of the terrain and dangers. And one thing was sure, Pando could no longer jog on her own.
She needed to be in contact with the ground to use her detection with a good range. Her blessing originally only let her get information on a single object she was touching directly, and only through meticulous training did she manage to start feeling the objects touching the first one as well, and could even go beyond this at the present.
Up until now, she had been using her blessing through her shoes, through the grass or rocks she was stepping on, and through the earth in a wide radius to detect animals and terrain shape.
But apparently, living organisms were hard to fathom entirely, so she couldn't feel the objects touching them very well. That is to say, it was harder for her to feel the ground through an animal than an animal through the ground.
Therefore, while Venus could technically carry her all the way, her detection range would be drastically lowered. At this point, they would do better just listening and paying attention.
Well, not quite, but it would still slow them down a lot. Too much, actually.
They could still attempt it, but they would not be fast enough.
Unless Baoba could some up with a new plan right this instant before their headstart grew insignificant.
'Dragging her at this speed will either kill her or slow us... Leaving her alone wouldn't help... Venus going solo might make it.. no, she would struggle too much with encounters.'
The probability of the Lord putting his entire troops in this single assault, leaving the rest of the forest in front of them empty, was basically zero.
If Venus ran as fast as she could alone, which was much faster than the rest of them, she would be slowed down too much by the battles she would have to fight by herself.
'Holding our ground is out of the question... We can't do another explosion unless Capcsium charges other detonators for three minutes... Plus if we keep doing this we're eventually going to die anyway.'
The chances of them being wiped out by two consecutive explosions had not actually been too low. It had been an acceptable risk, but repeating the experiment would not have been wise.
'Running is still a no... Doing breaks is too slow... We can't heal her right now... No large scale bomb we could drop on them..'
He was running out of options.
In fact, he already had run out of options a little ago. But he kept searching, wasting their precious time in his denial of reality :
They were doomed.
Meanwhile, Venus had put Pando on her back. The other two had not uttered a word since Baoba talked. The ambiance was grim. For once, that was the least of anyone's worries.
Baoba slowly ran out of even his delusions. Every scenario he tought of ended in their death faster than the last. He was almost out of breath from the burden on his mind.
Wincing from pain, Pando found the strength to break the silence.
"Sorry."
And for the second time today, Baoba's mind was silent. For a bit.
'Oh hell no.'
Why was she apologizing ?
It was his stupid explosion that broke her leg. It was his glorious plan that got them to this point. It was his responsibility to keep them alive at the very least, and yet he had preferred paying chess and sleeping over making a single semblance of a good decision.
He was the one who killed them all, so why the hell was she apologizing ?
'Fuck this.'
Baoba clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, and looked up.
They were dead. So now they just had to fight until every beast in this forest was wiped off this planet, and then they could just take a lovely hike back home.
What a brilliant plan.
"Capscsium ! You like fire, right ?"
The four of them looked up at him, confused. The enthusiastic tone the leader used was not only unfit for the situation, but also extremely uncharacteristic.
Only after did Capcsium realize she had been asked a question.
"Uuh... Yeah ? I guess ?"
He clapped his hands once and smiled wildely.
"Well, it's your lucky day, and bad news for everyone else ! I want you to stop restricting your abilities and throw as much fire everywhere as you possibly can ! Pando, you touch a tree or something, and find us a shelter right now, preferably non-flammable, but I won't be picky ! "
This behaviour was so out of the norm that the consequences of what their captain was asking didn't quite reach the brains of the soldiers in time. Baoba appeared to have completely snapped. But at the moment, he really couldn't care less.
Today, he was going to see the world burn.
Pando quickly found the general direction to go in, so the squad started running without any further delay.
On the way, Capcsium took out the wooden balls from her pouch. She looked at them, frowning, for a little while. She sighed and reluctantly started charging, then tossing them all over the place.
And so, they left a flaming trail of destruction on their way. No one looked back.
Capscsium, especially, lowered her head and stared at her feet. Her billowing scarlet hair was hiding her expression as she ran with her group.
Now they were not only running from the monsters, but also from the heat. Clouds of smoke hid their trail as the fire spread uncontrollably.
Not far from there, a regular brown deer and its baby were gently munching on grass, ready to run from predators at any point. They were not ready, however, for hell to roll upon them.
In another place completely engulfed by the flames, a small river was flowing. After a while, the surface started simmering, as the fish inside fled as fast as they could while their bodies were slowly cooking.
Behind the crew, numerous disgusting mutilated beasts ran desperately trough the impossible heat. They sacrificed a staggering number of monsters in the the front to lessen the flames with their blood and lower body temperature and kept chasing no matter what.
This flock truly looked like a flesh tsunami now. It was properly revolting.
Baoba jumped with a full spin to take in the infernal spectacle. He could feel the heat on his face as the red devoured more and more of the peaceful forest. Above, the smoke cloud went to join the normal ones. The sky almost turned yellow.
This red was not bad either.
He landed perfectly and kept running full speed, laughing openly despite his ragged breath.
Eventually, they reached their final shelter. It the entrance of a cave. The floor was flat before suddenly taking a violent dip into the actual cave. Only flying monsters would be able to attack from here, and those didn't appear until way further in the forest. On the other hand, those diviners had been wrong before, so there was no sure way to know nothing would come out.
The ceiling was four meters high in the center, and gradually lowered to meet the floor on the sides. The sound of steps resonated as Baoba entered the cavern first, still giggling.
The crew, though, was grave.
Venus clenched her fist and asked in a controlled tone : "Mind telling us why you're laughing ?"
Baoba stopped walking and said without looking at her : "Oh, yeah, no, it's just.. How pathetic are we ? Condemning the whole ecosystem just because we're doomed..."
He glanced back at them above his shoulder: "Imagine if all animals did this. It would litterally be the end of the world..."
He laughed a bit more and sat down in the middle, facing a wall. Rubbing his face with his right hand, he added : "We're no better than humans right now."
No longer calm, Venus started walking to him angrily. "And whose fault is that ?"
"Huh-" She grabbed him by the collar and effortlessly pulled him up.
"Whose fault is it that we're dead, huh ?"
He scoffed without resisting. "Mine, obviously."
She got surprised enough to drop her anger on the spot. He continued : "It was my dumbass plan that got us into this mess. I guess I could've made the explosion smaller... Maybe the landing could have used some work ? Or I could just have stopped our advancement the moment I suspected something was wrong. Anyway, there's no question, it was my half-assed strategies that got us killed."
"... I'm sorry."
He really couldn't find a better apology than this. What could he say, when he stole their future like this ? He knew they wouldn't forgive him. In a little while, it likely wouldn't matter anyway.
Venus was stunned. She said, in disbelief : "You actually believe that."
She dropped him, and looked at her captain as if they had just met. She squatted and let his eye level.
"I thought you were supposed to be smart. Do you really not see the actual issue ? Your plan was brilliant, moron, that's not it. You wanna know how you could've avoided this ?"
After a slight pause, she added : "You could've warned us. Back there, we had no idea what was going on. God, you made me craft a box with ridiculously sturdy nails while you were all putting your lives on the line to protect me, and expected us to just follow your call !
"And then we did, and you told us to lie down on an explosive with no further explanation ! And after we did that, you didn't even tell us anything in the air, we had to figure that shit out by ourselves ! No wonder someone got injured, it's a miracle this didn't outright kill us !"
Her tone got louder and faster by the second. She had clearly been ruminating this speech for some time.
Baoba felt a little insulted. "You think I don't know that ? Based on previous operations, I knew you could follow orders no questions asked, and the result followed my predictions ! But no, I couldn't have told you, because our sworn enemy was watching the whole time ! Who knows if it can also hear us ? Did you want me to divulge our only plan to the world to see, and make the situation ten times worse ?"
She scoffed, and got up. "That's not the real reason. If you were worried about sound, you could've passed a note. If you were worried about some kind of interception, you could've coded it. No, the real reason you didn't tell us, is that you don't trust us. Us, the people YOU chose !"
And for the third time today, Baoba's mind was silent.