Gamer of the Dead

Book 2, Chapter 76:

After a closer inspection, Marylou realized that Bobby is hanging on something flying. A drone maybe? She wasn't really sure.

But everyone started shouting when weapons began falling from the sky. Everything from standard short swords to trident and nunchucks.

Ian shouted orders and guns blazed upward. Malou jerked upright when a great massive ax fell just 2 meters away from her, And this galvanized her to start moving. Suddenly, the rest of the civilians around her started panicking and running in all directions.

But unlike the others who are running away, she was running towards the child who is still tied up in a nearby pole. The child wasn't scared at all, demonstrating her innocent and complete trust again to Bobby up in the sky.

Malou wasn't so sure since, in her experience, adults usually don't think rationally when they are angry.

Buu's chubby face returned to frowning though since she could not figure out the puzzle of the rope that held her. She keeps wiggling around the cord, but the strong knots held.

"Ah! Hello, neighbor!" Buu said delightedly when she saw her again.

Malou touches the child once on the shoulder to reassure her that she will be okay. Or is she reassuring herself? Malou didn't know and didn't want to know. She didn't bother to say anything to Buu and instead went behind the captive girl and studied the knot behind her. It was a complicated knot, and there is no easy way to untie it. The bastard probably didn't have any plan to untie the rope and burn the child with the line in it, so there is no need to untie it in the first place.

Malou look around and remembered the ax and run to get it. Barely any of the civilians are left, and the only ones who are staying behind in the compound are the combatants.

And her. The idiot.

She came back with the ax and shouted to the child to lean away.

"That's cheating!" the child said with a giggle.

She started to hack through the thick rope while the child watched her with a smile on her chubby face. "You're pretty," Buu declared, and despite the situation, Malou admonished herself for becoming self-conscious with the girl's observation, and she started blushing.

The heavy crashing sound distracted Malou as a group of men walked without hurry towards her, shrugging off bullets after bullets and retaliating by grabbing the weapons on the ground and chugging them back to the shooters. They were moving in an inverted V formation, and everyone was scattering around them.

At a closer glance, Marylou realized that the men walking towards her are in fact not men at all but humanoid automatons. He'd seen them once in the apartment and Bobby had called them claymen.

They drove inexorably closer to the child and to Malou's complete surprise, surrounded her and Buu like a queen. She was still getting over the odd behavior of the claymen when another surprise hit her.