But the net held for only one second.
On a leaf of the World Tree, Yezi's eyes snapped open, bloodshot.
She tried to raise her hand. Her fingers twitched, but her hand wouldn't lift.
She opened her mouth, trying to say something, and bloody froth spilled from the corner of her lips.
"I can't keep going..."
She fell backward, the back of her head striking the leaf with a dull thud.
The vines she had spread, the ivy covering almost half of Mechanical City, all drooped at the same instant.
The vine tips stopped spinning, and the red veins inside their stems stopped pulsing.
Their leaves hung limp, turning into a mass of ordinary plants.
The zombies trampled the vines and kept charging.
A few zombies lowered their heads to look at the vines underfoot, seemingly remembering their fellows that had just been drained to skeletons.
They hesitated for less than half a second.
Then...
The zombies behind them pushed them forward, and soon...
They put that flicker of hesitation behind them.
The instinct to feed overwhelmed everything.
But Yezi's one-second burst had already saved enough people.
The survivors snatched from the zombies' jaws.
The soldiers who had come within a hair's breadth of being devoured by the eerie entities.
They were now running desperately toward the Core Area.
Some looked back as they ran, their eyes reddening at the sight of the vines drooping on the ground.
"What was that?"
"I don't know... but it saved us."
"Is it dead?"
No one answered.
Meanwhile, Mechanical City's defense system finally activated in full.
Boom...
Turrets began turning along the alloy walls.
Cannon barrels concealed inside the walls extended, their dark muzzles aiming at the zombie hordes in the streets.
The first volley fired.
Shells exploded among the zombies, sending