Hello everyone! How are you doing? I hope you are all doing well!
Without much to say, here is chapter 108. As always, I wish you all enjoy it!
Thanks a lot for following/ reading/ favoring the story. You are all awesome!
See you all next week in chapter 109. Until then, be well and have fun!
It took less than half a minute for Blake and Velvet to reach the Xiao Long couple outside the diner. As soon as they saw the pack of Ghouls and the hulking horror that accompanied them, their eyes narrowed.
Without any words, Yang and Blake walked to the front while the other two girls stood on the rear. Velvet quickly materialized a projection of Crescent Rose's rifle form and aimed its barrel towards the monsters.
Said monsters moved slowly. They jumped on destroyed cars and piles of rubble, jaws dripping saliva and mist accompanying them while the taller monstrosity stood by, observing them as they circled their prey.
"What an intelligent way of attacking" Velvet whispered, her eyes fixed on the Ghouls that advanced on them like a pack of trained military dogs. Weiss nodded "they are taking their time checking our reaction."
"Of course they do… they had proven to be quite intelligent even back in Yugure" Blake, sword ready to attack anyone that dared come closer, said. "Slowly move towards the diner. We can use it to escape them."
"What if they trap us?" Yang took a couple careful steps to the back "if you remember, they are pretty good in trap-" all of a sudden both she and Blake remembered a very important detail about those Grimm.
"ABOVE YOU!" both girls turned around and screamed. Their friends raised their heads just in time for them to see a smaller pack staring at them from the diners' rooftop with feral red eyes and dripping jaws.
The next moment, both packs charged at the huntresses. "Evade and retreat!" Blake commanded "use only high-powered dust on them!"
Weiss thrust upwards with her blades, quickly opening her stance to form a hemisphere-like pattern. Following their motion, an umbrella of pure blue ice burst up, halting the Ghouls that pounced down at them.
As if she expected her to do so, Velvet jumped back and took aim. Her accuracy was not as good as Ruby's, but the partially immobilized and half-frozen enemies were easy targets for her bullets.
On the other side, Blake and Yang danced around each other. The tall girl punched a couple of them away, allowing for her partner to slash at them quickly and then blink back to safety as three more attacked her.
The first two reformed in an alarmingly high speed, joining the other three in charging the Bumblebee pair. Four broke from the main pack and circled the huntresses' formation, trying to bypass Yang's defense.
At once, Velvet and Weiss blew off their heads with a couple shots and glyph-propelled missiles. Yang grinned as she spun around and kicked two enemies back. She then rolled on the floor, towards her back.
That movement allowed her partner to make a horizontal cut with her falcon sword. The extended blade passed over the rolling girl's body like a sharp razor, decapitating the remaining three with a single strike.
Yang jumped back on her feet, next to Blake. Weiss quickly jabbed two approaching that had broken through the ice shield. Velvet shot them at the legs, making them fall down. The pale girl charged Myrtenaster and Crown with fire dust and impaled them, turning both to ashes.
A low, eerie sound echoed in the empty street, as the larger Grimm's mouths opened and started whispering in a hushed, abhorrent voice that made their hair stand on edge even by listening to it.
At once, every Ghoul that survived fell back, returning to their previous positions. The ones that had been caught in Weiss' ice trap and weren't shot dead by Velvet bit off their own parts and ran away, the black mist reforming them as they returned on the rooftop to observe the girls.
"Did you see that?" Weiss asked with a terrified expression. "It's giving them orders- despite being a different species" Blake agreed. She then let her eyes take a quick look of the situation around them.
Not only they were surrounded, they were also outnumbered and had no clue as to how strong their enemies were. She felt her heartbeat slowly and steadily increase. They were in a dire situation already, huh?
She sent a side glance at Yang, who firmly stood by her side. She could not see, but she could easily imagine Weiss and Velvet standing behind them, staring at the rooftop menaces. Her chest started to throb.
She felt the towering Grimm's gaze fall on her. The Ghouls all followed suit at once, turning their sinister eyes at her. All of a sudden, the girl found herself in the mercy of dozens of hateful, malevolent red orbs.
I am like a beacon of negativity. Realization hit her; it was her fault that those things were so fixated on her. We have to escape. But where? If they have entered the diner, we will be trapped! What would Ruby do?
"Blake?" Yang returned the cat girl's stare with one of her own. It took her a mere moment to realize her partner was not doing well. "Let's go into the building!" she screamed at once, startling the faunus.
The moment she did, the Ghouls opened their jaws and took one step towards them. "No!" Blake protested "we must make them lose us; not have them go after us!" she shouted, fighting her growing anxiety.
The Grimm took another step. Velvet cocked her materialized rifle. A gulp came down Yang's throat, audible enough for the two faunus to hear. The tall Grimm stood still. The Ghouls on the rooftop hissed.
What do I do? What do I DO? WHAT. DO. I DO?
"We can hold them until you make a plan" Weiss whispered. Another step was taken by the monsters. They would soon get into firing range. The pale girl stowed Myrtenaster away. Velvet took aim at the roof.
"Run inside!" the cat girl shouted after a second. "Weiss; Velvet! Cover fire!" the response was immediate. Crescent Rose's blueprint was at once swapped for Gianduja's. Crown's canister turned at the red vial.
At once, the Ghouls charged forward and jumped down at them. Yang shot a couple missiles and used their kinetic force to jump back. Weiss and Velvet opened fire to all directions, pinning the monsters down.
Dodging the friendly fire and jumping around to slice any enemy that started reform among them, Blake ran towards the back. Her chest was heavy and her muscles stiff with tension, but she pulled through.
"Seal it!" with a flick of her wrist, the ex-heiress activated her earth canister and raised a series of slabs that started throwing the Ghouls away. She then skated to the back, Yang and Velvet running after her.
All four girls jumped inside the hopefully empty diner, crashing through its windows. As the monsters pounced at them, Weiss raised a stone wall and sealed the store off from the advancing monster horde.
Blake managed to send one last gaze at the hulking monster that was still standing there, its hundred faces glaring at them as if mocking their imminent demise, before the rock slab blocked their vision.
-o—
"Get up!" ignoring the pain from their hands and knees stepping on the broken glass, the four girls followed their leader's command. "We have to find a way out from behind!" Blake added, hand still at her chest.
They dashed to the back, running past the spilled food, bloodied floor and messy tables. They passed through the staff area and Yang quickly opened the personnel entrance in the back of the store.
Blake's quick reflexes were the only thing that saved the blonde from being bit by a Ghoul that stalked the exit and charged her as soon as the door got opened. Nightfall cut off its head and Weiss dragged her fiancée back before Velvet slammed the entrance and locked it tight.
In the split seconds that had passed, Blake had managed to see at least ten more Grimm running towards them. "The building is surrounded" a panting sound escaped the faunus' lips "we are trapped like rats."
A loud bang on the metal door made her gasp. Yang grabbed a staff locker and dragged it behind the door leaf as Velvet supported it with her shoulders. "It will not hold much!" the lilac-eyed girl announced.
"Seal it" the team leader commanded Weiss. The alabaster woman did what Blake asked and raised another stone slab, sealing off this exit as well. Then, all three of them turned to stare at the black-haired faunus.
Calm down she commanded herself. Think. She heard the scratches on the metal door behind the slab. Her heart thumped. She stared around and met only determined faces. She took a deep breath- and looked up.
"Velvet" she asked "take out the map please." The bunny girl complied and opened the city map with hasty, trembling fingers. With her breath being held and her heart still running a marathon, Blake's eyes ran over the paper, carefully searching for a way out of their predicament.
A few tense moments passed, with Yang standing guard in the back door and Weiss making sure nothing had passed through the front one. Velvet kept sending side glances at her leader- until she saw her smile.
"I think…" the yellow-eyed girl coughed to relieve some tension "that I found a way out of this. We have to reach the rooftop first, however" she explained to her teammates.
"How are we going to do this?" the brunette asked "I told you before that there is no access to the roof from here. Not to mention there are a few of them waiting for us up there." Blake licked her lips.
"We make one" she turned and smiled at Yang, who grinned "now you are talking, kitty." "As soon as Yang makes the hole, I want you both to deal with the Ghouls; don't waste time killing them, focus on throwing them off the rooftop" she addressed Velvet and Weiss, who nodded.
"Ok" Blake sniffed a little more of her cinnamon-vanilla vial "let's get to business, before they realize what we are going to do." She stared at the door. A loud bang and the sound of metal being bent were heard.
That very moment, her partner took out a small fire shard and carefully pierced her shoulder with it, encasing her body in flames and filling the whole store in immense heat.
-o—
The Ghouls standing on the roof were hungry. They had nothing to eat since they were formed a couple days ago and their undying thirst for human flesh and blood drove them insane.
Their prey had been sealed inside this box of rock, trapped yet far away their reach. Their fellow Grimm made circles around it under the Husk's command, trying and failing to find a way inside.
Could they remember their days as diner workers, they would curse the store owner's stinginess and refusal to make a proper rooftop exit. On the other hand, having such an exit could have prevented them from falling to the man-eating beasts to begin with.
And now, all that remained were their empty husks; cursed from the power of Nyctos to forever roam the world of darkness, insatiable yet reveling in the pain of others until the end of time-
The rooftop floor started glowing. A searing sound was heard. All of them turned their heads and opened their mouths wide as they could sense the delicious breathing of their prey from beneath.
The Husk wasn't commanding them now, focusing on the ground ones, so they acted purely on instinct and ran towards the very source of the heat. A moment later, the floor gave out and flames burst out of it.
Instead of punching the ceiling, Yang had decided to push it while she utilized her dust-powered aura to overheat the surface. As a result, she managed to open a significantly large hole without exploding anything.
Out of that hole jumped Weiss and Velvet. The pale girl rapidly formed a series of gravity glyphs on the floor, having all Ghouls lose contact with the ground, finding themselves airborne albeit for a few seconds.
For Velvet, it was more than enough. Using both Mercury's Talaria and Yang's Ember Celica, she rapidly propelled her body around the Grimm at immense speed, punching and kicking them all off the roof.
No sooner had she landed that the Bumblebee pair jumped up through the opening. "Good job you two" the faunus said in a more professional manner than she intended to. The girls smiled in acknowledgment.
The team quickly ran to the back side of the roof and stood at the edge in order to both verify the surroundings and avoid being easily detected from the larger Grimm that still hulked in front of the building.
They peeked down at the streets below. The Ghouls had torn down the metal door but the fall of their pack mates had made them stop trying to tear Weiss' barrier and looks up to the roof instead. As soon as their hungry gaze fell on the humans, they let out a loud, unearthly howl.
Blake let her feline eyes drift across the street. The nearest rooftop was a good ten meters away from them. That was ten meters over the mass of hungry, salivating predators that would for sure follow them at once.
"Can you catapult us all on that roof?" she asked Weiss, pointing at it. "I can, yes. But-" She cut her off at once "no 'buts'. They are coming" she pointed at the predators who now tried to climb on the iron ladder.
"Let's go!" They all stood up- and then the massive amalgamation of dead faces and screeching mouths let its long, thick arms crash down on the other side of the roof, making the edge crack under its might.
"GO!" Weiss formed the glyphs right behind them at once. She then did a quick thrust forward, charging all arrays with gravity dust. Meanwhile, her teammates started shooting down the Ghouls that climbed up.
The towering skull-like head glared at them from behind. Its eyes shone like dark gems and its breath was so putrid they almost choke breathing the green, nauseating fumes coming out of its nostrils and mouth.
Blake turned around to shoot at it, but her bullets got deflected on the massive skull. She tried to aim lower, but came across a spectacle that made her heart freeze in her chest and her mind scream in terror.
One by one, the protruding heads grew out long, clawed arms that they used to detach themselves from the Husk's torso, tearing off the thick flesh and making large wounds that oozed thick, dark blood on its body.
Then they started climbing up its hands, using their clawed appendages to drag their legless parody of a body towards the huntresses with an unimaginable speed and their jaws open wide in abysmal hunger.
Wasting no more time the faunus started gunning them down while her other teammates held the line, kicking and punching away the few monsters that had scaled the wall and pounced on the rooftop's back.
And then, without any prior warning, she heard a melodious voice that recited a few harmonious words. Her soothing mannerisms and gentle, brimming with ancient authority, cut through the hellish battlefield.
"Our radiant wings we can't deny,
For we never forget the brilliant sky"
All of a sudden, a shimmering light filled their eyes, as Weiss' glyphs turned a shining platinum-white color. The next moment Blake, Yang and Velvet felt their bodies being carried away by Weiss' Lancer Queen.
"Weiss!" Blake heard Yang scream, running to the pale girl who stood in the front, using her willpower to direct the Queen. It took no more than a second, however, for Weiss to start stumble and her summon to fade.
"I told you to not use it inside here! Magic is dangerous in the presence of the Eldergrimm!" "SHUT UP!" sending out a burst of energy towards all directions, Weiss averted the Lancer's demise "WHERE TO GO!?"
Yang grabbed her beloved fiancée to support her as much as she could and Velvet turned to the back, making sure they had left the Grimm as far away as possible. "Crumble Park!" Blake pointed to their right.
"Okay!" nose dripping blood and head spinning in agony, the pale girl managed to maneuver her summon for a few more seconds before she released her control and the mighty Grimm faded, sending team BLWS dive headfirst between the trees and into the pond of Crumble Park.
-o—
A huge splashing sound scattered across the silent, empty park as four girls crawled out of the pond. They were soaked, dripping murky water from head to toe, but quickly jumped up to their feet in full alert.
The surrounding area was unsettling, to say the least. The park's grass, usually vivid green and rich, had withered and turned a sickly yellow-grey color. The tall, proud trees had lost their thick leaves, gray-white marks of ruin and decay carved over their mold-infested trunks.
Numerous benches that couples used to frequent up to only a couple days ago, now stood there rusted and full of slices. Blake remembered Sun taking her out here for one of their first dates and shivered.
Street lamps, full of rust and grime accompanied the littered tile paths. Their lights were broken, lamps shattered and cables hanging from the top. Some of them were bent in half, pressed to the ground by force.
On top of everything else, the area was full of gore and bloody remains. Dried-up pools of brown-red color along with bloodied footprints and claw marks could be seen on almost every object their eyes fell upon.
Of course, there were no people around here. No lovey-dovey couples, no happy families and no everyday people taking a morning stroll. Only a deathly, grave silence that chilled their bodies even more than the dripping cold water on their skin permeated the always lively Vale Park.
Trails of blood and signs of struggle could be also seen in every corner, but the immense amount of red-stained remains left little room for the huntresses to even consider they would come across any survivors.
"Baby, do you feel ok?" Yang's concerned voice made Blake's head turn and look at Weiss, who was currently spitting out water from her lips.
"Yes…" she hastily wiped off the blood from her nose and forced a thin smile "sorry for raising my voice back there, Blake." The faunus blinked in surprise and then coughed in her fist.
"I was in the wrong too; I shouldn't have pressed you more than you did on your own" she replied and then turned to look just behind the pond "we can discuss all these later; we have to get moving at once."
As if to confirm her words, a loud, cacophonous screech came from far away. It was the same direction they had flied here from; the Grimm-infested diner that they had escaped from barely a few minutes ago.
Everyone tensed at once, staring at the blood pools around them. "I agree; this is not a safe place" Velvet commented, looking out for any indication of enemy movement "do you have a plan, Blake?"
"Follow me" she ran ahead, making a quick turn around the large pond. Her teammates rushed after her, Yang being the last one as she waited to make sure her friends were good to go first.
They trekked across the grass, passing by the trails of blood that led in the bushes. "Why is everything so rusty and decayed?" Weiss asked without breaking her pace "I remember it being much more beautiful!"
"It has to be magic" Yang answered from behind, her eyes darting from the decayed grass and ruined benches to her- currently silent, much to her relief- left arm and back again to the park "or the Eldergrimm."
"I agree with that; at least until we manage to get more information on the dome and everything included. We also have to not forget our main objective; finding Nyctos and stopping it, along with its followers."
The rustling of the grass that got trashed under the huntress' footsteps soon came to a halt, as their leader stopped in front of a small outing that was paved with once lustrous, now cracked and dirtied, white tiles.
In its mid was a rectangular facility made of bloodstained glass. A large staircase with a railing running down its mid led underground. A rusty, old-looking, blood-splattered sign hung on a pole by the entrance.
"New Vale Subway- Crumble Park Station" the girls all stared at the cat girl who sent a quick gaze to their back, her sensitive ears picking the sound of heavy footsteps far away "do you see a pattern?" she joked.
Yang, having caught wind of the girl's attempt at humor, let out a deep sigh before one after another the huntresses climbed down the ladder, once more delving into the bowels of the earth.