Chapter 21, Happy Trails (Part 2)
The Grimm, whatever they were, were dark creatures. Of that Hakke was certain. They existed as the paragon ideal of the Deep; creatures dedicated to the extermination of all that was sentient and not them. The Fallen he had met fit the bill as well. Anytime there was a gathering of creatures that felt nothing but hatred and the desire to wipe out an enemy in its totality, there was the Deep. Its influence was like a cancer that dug its way in through unseen channels, carving away every option besides total genocide.
Despite these facts, neither the Grimm nor the Fallen were truly Dark. The Grimm were mindless, engines of instinct as far as he could tell. They had no chance of reaching the Deep's true end goal. The Fallen Houses attracted the Dark's influence like flies to rot, but they were as driven by survival and pride as they were by a desire to destroy. Not to mention the rumors of Fallen that had begun to toss aside their generational hate of Humanity, and with it the cycle of destruction.
Neither was truly Dark. Neither even approached the horrors of the Dark. Both, Hakke suspected, could act as an anchor for that paracausal poison. Unbidden, memories of the things that crawled through the depths of the Dreadnaught came up in his mind. Gradient things crawling out of black holes filled with arcane starlight; howling nightmares damned to burn in white-black fire.
He took in a shaky breath, the conversation between Cerulean and the Syndicate grunts thoroughly ignored. The Dark presence he felt was down below. Beneath the dirt. It wasn't as bad as anything he had felt back in Sol, which was a massive relief, although it was probably strong enough to put a damper on how fast he could resurrect if things got bad enough. Add the Barrier's influence on top, and he had a recipe for a bad time.
Still, a little Dark was a hell of a lot worse than no Dark.
"Hoss."
Wonderful.
"Hoss."
He sent two pings to Callie. Caution. Return.
"Hoss!"
"Is there a basement here?" Hakke suddenly asked, then caught himself as his mind brought him back up to speed. Hoss was his cover name. "Also, what? Yes?"
"You completely zoned out. Did you catch any of that?" His Detective partner asked.
A pause. "...not really."
"Do I even want to know?" Cerulean muttered.
"Probably not. You two." Hakke pointed at Basil and Hildy. "Is there a basement, and what happens down there?"
"Uh, yeah. There is." Basil answered.
"What do they do there?" Hakke demanded, a touch of bite entering his voice.
"We don't know, they won't tell us. They send people down there and they don't come back up." Hildy this time answered. "There were 15 of us at first. Then they took our Scrolls. Killed Olive when she tried to run. They've been taking us down there one by one, and like I said, they don't come back. It's just me and Basil left now."
"Who are they? Mercenaries? Someone higher up the Syndicate food chain?" Cerulean asked.
"More the latter than the former." A nasally voice said from an open door. As one, all four of them turned to look at the new person. Leaning against the doorframe was a man dressed in denim coveralls and large work boots. A pad of gauss was taped over his nose; the source of his abnormally nasal voice.
"Yeah, I heard your little conversation. And I gotta say," the man continued, shaking a finger at Basil and Hildy, "I'm a little disappointed with you two. You're not supposed to say those sorts of things to outsiders. Tut tut."
"And you are?" Cerulean asked. The two Syndicate grunts had seized up the moment that this newcomer had announced himself, and Hakke swore he could see the beginnings of a sheen of sweat on Basil's forehead.
"Name's Amos. Closest thing to a manager that Happy Trails has at the moment, although the real manager should swing by in the next day or so. You can wait for her, or you can settle with talking to me. I mean, you kept asking for a manager, so here I am." Amos rocked himself back to his feet and took a few steps towards them.
"Right. My name is Crim, and this is my partner Hoss. We are Private Investigators, and we are here looking into some fraud. I wanted to pick your brain about any odd additions to the equipment shipments this farm has been getting. We think it's part of a smuggling operation."
The best lies were always made with parts of the truth. He nodded along with Cerulean's words, equal parts approval at the lie and agreement with his PI partner's story. At the same time, Hakke's fists drifted down to rest on his hips. A natural, relaxed looking pose, but one that would allow him to draw his pistol from the small of his back at a moment's notice.
Amos let out a sharp laugh. "Oh please, spare me the cover story. Basil, Hildy, you two have plenty of work that needs attending. Why don't the two of you go and see to that? I'll see to our police friend and her… I'm not actually sure where you fit into this." He looked back to the Syndicate grunts, and stabbed behind himself with a thumbs. "Go on and get to it. Oh, and Hildy, pretty sure Burgundy needs your help."
The young woman's face paled at that, but it didn't stop both of them from filtering out the same door Amos had appeared from, disappearing from view without so much as a glance backwards. The Warlock's teeth ground. He suspected that wherever they were going wasn't to do their chores, they were most likely going to get murdered. And two potentially fantastic streams of data would go with them.
He would need to go after them. But that would mean leaving Cerulean alone, which was barely a feasible option. It was almost guaranteed that this Amos and Burgundy both had Aura, and the severe increase to resilience and strength that came with it. Asking Cerulean to fight someone like that on her own was like asking a civilian from back home to solo a Guardian: a death sentence.
He needed Callie back. He needed a real gun.
"You seem to be under the impression you know who we are." Cerulean said carefully as she wound her way to a more advantageous position. One that places several desks between her and Amos. Good, she was thinking roughly the same thing Hakke was. "Why is that?"
"Oh come on. There are only so many boar Faunus cops in this city. Only so many actual pig cops. You've got to be Detective Serena Cerulean. And this young man here has to be that troublesome stranger who just won't die. Brains and brawn. A dynamic duo for the ages. Gotta ask, 'Hoss', how did you get away from the Butcher? That fight got recorded, I watched her turn your head into red mush."
"Got lucky. Or she's just terrible at her job." Hakke answered. At this point the current conversation had thrown up so many red flags that he was actively ignoring most of them. Although Amos had managed to answer one of Hakke's own, irrelevant questions. Cerulean was a Boar Faunus. That didn't explain why he was calling a police officer a pig though.
Amos laughed. A genuine laugh at that.
"That's some luck you got there." He admitted. "Darn shame your wisdom isn't as good."
Something in the air changed. He could feel it. A slithering presence had wormed its way in, drifting on unseen black tendrils, all emanating from Amos. It buffeted against his psyche, against his Light. It was the sort of presence he expected to feel from creatures of the Dark, the things that had truly been enveloped by its influence. It was a presence he was familiar with. The thug's hand had begun to spasm, a pale glow flickering through the bones of his hand.
Hive magic.
A smug grin had begun to plaster itself along Amos's face, and his eyes lit up with a sickly green light from within. But just for a moment. The grin faltered, the spasms halted, and the glow subsided as he struck Hakke with a dumbstruck look, as if he was attempting to process something that he couldn't understand.
The conclusion struck Hakke faster than it struck Amos. The Warlock didn't know what Amos was specifically, but he knew a worshipper of the Dark when he saw one. Evidently, the worshipper in question had been ignorant of the existence of his polar opposite, or at least he hadn't been expecting to encounter someone like a Guardian today.
Well, Amos seemed to realize what he was facing now at least.
"Whoa, what did you just -" Cerulean began, alarm evident in her voice. Made sense, he had learned that the whole 'glowing eyes' thing wasn't normal. It was also secondary.
Amos snarled something in a language Hakke didn't know. A harsh language consisting of guttural gnashing and brutal consonants. A deep part of the Warlock's mind registered what it was, even as Hakke began to instinctively draw his gun. Amos in turn threw his hand palm up at Hakke, a glob of light green flame congealing there. The criminal was fast, but Hakke was faster; a single bullet tore into the base of Amos's neck, causing the flame to dissipate as he stumbled back with a startled choking sound.
He tried to speak, but all that came out was a wet gurgle from the hole in his neck. Amos stumbled, grabbing a desk in a futile attempt to stay upright before finally collapsing to the ground.
"Hakke!" Hissed Cerulean.
Hakke's gun was still leveled at where the man had fallen. "He spoke Hive." He said in a shocked monotone.
Amos could speak Hive.
That… was bad.
"What the hell was that?" She demanded. Her tone was equal parts freaked out and professionally indignant. "Why did you kill him?"
"If he finished that little chant, we'd both be dead right now. Or worse. Frankly I'm surprised one round was enough."
She didn't respond, instead she walked past and kneeled over the body and placed two fingers against his neck. After a moment, she retracted them.
"Gods damn it Hakke."
"We should find Basil and Hildy. I don't trust this place." He said, heading out the same door that they had vanished down. He should respond to her question, he knew. She deserved to know what this was turning into, but time was of the essence. Answers would have to wait for when they got off the farm. Away from the Dark.
She grabbed his arm, stopping him. "You had a reason, I know that. Whatever happened there freaked you out, and I know I haven't known you long, but I've been stuck in more life or death situations with you than with just about anyone else. I've never seen you like this, not with Murex, not with the Butcher. When we're out of here, you're telling me everything."
He stared at her, before finally nodding. He had a feeling things were only going to get worse from here; she would need to know what they were up against to survive. "I'll take point. That gunshot won't have gone unnoticed."
"Okay." She said, drawing her own gun and taking position behind him. "Let's find our gangsters."
He turned and began making his way down the corridor, pistol and baton drawn. He cleared each opening and turn in the bland hallways as they passed along, seeing no one. It didn't make sense. The place felt half finished, like all the life had been drained from the facility. After the overindulgence of character that every other building in Vale had displayed, it felt like walking through an alien and sterile environment. There were sections of wall where he could see beneath the white paint, sections of color appearing in hard to reach cracks. They had chosen this aesthetic specifically. This was deliberate.
The whole place was eerily silent. He turned to check on the Detective, and saw nothing. She was gone.
He cursed under his breath, sweeping the area he was in and finding nothing. She wouldn't have wandered off down one of the featureless corridors on her own, she wasn't an idiot. Which left the very unpleasant probability that she had been grabbed by someone stealthy enough to get by him. Normally he wouldn't have put much merit there, but the chance that a Semblance was at play was very high.
Not Hive magic, however. The display Amos had put on had been sloppy compared to even the crappiest Hive Wizard of Sol. Undisciplined, untrained, and uncovered. He hadn't expected that Hakke would recognize what he was up to, or have an actual plan to deal with it.
Another mental ping to Callie. Things were rapidly going to hell with a hand grenade it seemed. He could either continue down the trail he had been going, or backtrack to find Cerulean. Not that hard of a choice for him. The two grunts were less important than the Detective was.
He began backtracking when a familiar, nasally laugh echoed out behind him. He spun about, seeing nothing.
"I never did get your name, Hoss. Your real name that is." Amos was sounding pretty fantastic for a guy with a hole in his throat. Looks like he would need a second application to make that stick properly. Hakke followed the voice through a doorway and into a large open room, a staircase leading to a second floor on the opposing wall.
"Now, I'm curious. Do you know what the most important question that anyone can ask is?" Amos continued in his irritatingly nasal voice.
"Where the hell are you?" Hakke called out, walking out to the center of the room.
"Not even close, Hoss. The most important question you can ask anyone is: Can I kill you, or will you kill me? Which of us is more deserving of a continued existence?"
Hakke paused. "Sword Logic." He stated. "You're a follower of the Sword Logic."
"Oh hoh!" The voice called out from the second floor. Hakke pointed his gun at the figure that emerged and prepared to fire, but stopped as the same voice continued from a door on the first floor. "So you are familiar! I had you pegged as more in the know than the Detective."
There were two Amoses now in the room. Hakke took a cautious step back, keeping his gun positioned somewhere between the two identical men. Another door opened, and two more of the same man entered. Then another from where the Warlock had entered.
The second floor Amos laughed, every other word coming from one doppelganger or another. "Pretty neat, isn't it? Before I was given the truth of the world, I was a weak man protecting even weaker men from the doom that was their destiny. I used to only be capable of minor things, one or two doubles at most. But now, now that I know the purpose of this world? I'm capable of becoming a legion of one."
They had him surrounded now. "Good for you. What did you do with my partner?"
"I - or one of me - grabbed her. Now, I wouldn't be worried about her, I'd be worried about you. After all, we've got to get to the bottom of my question!"
Hakke eyed the growing swarm of Amos that was forming a perimeter around the room. Most were armed. Some with cheap looking guns, others with various melee weapons. It couldn't literally be copies of the same man, there had to be some form of trick, some illusion to this. Either way, it was pretty obvious to him that this was a fight neither of them would be allowed to run from. Either Hakke or Amos would be dead in the next few minutes.
He readied himself, pooling Light into one of his hands. "My money is on me, Amos."
"Is that a fact?" Amos chuckled as the horde wordlessly charged.
It took time to dredge up enough Light to generate a grenade, time which had been so thoughtfully provided by his enemy. He rewarded that time by throwing a ball of nuclear fire directly into the pack of swarming Amoses, where it latched on to the arm of one and burned its way in.
He ran towards the next cluster, ignoring the muted explosion of Solar potential tearing apart his opponents behind him, and rapidly began firing rounds from his pistol, bullets tearing their way into unprotected heads. He leapt over the worst of them, dashing off center towards an Amos with a gun. He emptied the rest of the Grendel pistol into that one, before grabbing the next one and slamming them against the wall.
"Ain't this a surprise!" The pinned Amos giggled. "You've got a killer instinct if I ev-"
Hakke shut the man up by forcing the barrel of the cheap rifle under Amos's chin, and holding down his trigger finger, a spray of Dust rounds annihilating the man's head in a spray of sharp metal and black blood. He pulled the rifle from the still struggling Amos and sprayed it into the ever-approaching horde. The rounds chewed through them, taking out chunks from torsos and tearing limbs from uncaring men.
Bullets roared from the gun as he held it in one hand, he extended the baton and slammed it across the face of the closest Amos, the blow snapping his head clean backwards. And yet he still attacked. Hakke repositioned and sent a palm strike into the chest of the Amos with the broken neck, caving it in and launching the still twitching body back into its fellows.
They weren't dying. They didn't have Aura, of that Hakke was certain, but the wounds he was inflicting just weren't stopping them. As if to hammer that point home, the Amos he had beheaded with bullets grappled him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides as the rest swarmed in.
He looked at the men attacking him, they looked like flesh and blood, even felt like it, going off the one grappling him. But the shattered limbs laying on the ground told a different story. The black blood that had splattered against his face confirmed it. The limbs were robotic, crude and rusty things made of cheap acrylics and soft steel, the 'blood' reeked of artificial hydraulic fluid. These weren't men. They were machines.
He leapt off the ground and then dashed, carrying his grappler with him. A quick twist in the air ensured that it was Amos that would take the brunt of the impact of returning to the ground, and had the added benefit of dislodging his grip.
Another gun lay next to him. He rolled over and grabbed it, and proceeded to fire both rifles from the hip, tearing the legs out from under the attacking machines. He paid attention to how the rounds hit, how the rounds did their damage and tore the metallic legs out before the actual spray of viscera erupted.
Machines with a glamour. An illusion to make them look like flesh and blood, like Amos. Whatever it was, it had to be the man's Semblance at play, letting him disguise these machines as himself; letting him hide in the horde. He just needed to figure out how to properly kill them, and then he could hunt the real person.
On the positive side, that meant he could tear through these things with wild abandon.
He threw his baton and speared an Amos through the chest, before catching the weapon arm of another mid swing. A quick palm strike to the shoulder removed the limb, with which he uppercut its previous owner before yanking the sword it had been wielding out of its hand.
"Well, ain't this unexpec-" Another Amos began, before Hakke silenced it with a two handed slash that nearly bisected the robot. What Light he had he sent coursing through his arms and chest, forcing his muscles to move faster and hit harder. Even that wasn't enough to fully compensate for the fact that the sword wasn't powered. Despite the extra strength, he wasn't capable of cleaving through multiple robots in one chop.
Each slash mangled another robot. Each slash blunted and bent the sword even more. He supplemented the sword hits with palm strikes and regular punches, shredding the machines and slowly whittling them down to scrap. They landed blow after blow into him as he transitioned to pure offense, letting his Light take the worst of it.
He finally thrust the sword up to its hilt onto the chest of one, and used its body as a shield to push his way out of the horde. When he tried to pull the sword out, it broke at the hilt, prompting Hakke to simply slam the entire robot into the floor like a ragdoll. He turned to face what remained of the horde once more.
They had broken off the attack. Whatever illusion had been humanizing their injuries had long since stopped; the illusion simply ended wherever a wound was present to reveal the dirtied white plastic that made up their outer shell. There Wasn't a single machine that didn't have some degree of damage on it, ranging from missing limbs and heads to traumatic impacts along their chests. There were even a few that had reverted to crawling, either from Hakke having removed or damaged their legs to a high enough degree.
Hakke breathed slowly. Only a handful of the things were actually dead, most from the fusion grenade he had thrown earlier. Or at least, that is what he assumed, seeing as the grenade tended to vaporize whatever was caught in it's blast zone. Regardless, more than one machine lay unmoving on the ground, it was just a far lower number than he had hoped to see.
"Well goddamn!" Amos said, all amusement gone from his tone. "The hell are they feeding you these days?"
He continued saying things, but Hakke at this point was more than willing to tune it out. There had to be a processing unit, or some other control center in these things that would allow him to properly kill them, instead of damage them. He would need to find it fast as well, the longer he was delayed here, the more likely the gangsters and Cerulean would be dead.
"Their main processor is located on the right side of their chest, right where their breast pocket would be." A voice said into his earpiece. "Sorry I'm late, this place is even more messed up than I thought it would be. I'll fill you in when we're done here."
He nodded slightly before tuning back in to Amos.
"-and I don't know how the hell you have so many little tricks up your sleeve, but I guarantee they aren't going to save…" The man stopped as Midnight Coup transmatted into Hakke's hand. "Oh. Bull. Shi-"
Hakke was enjoying interrupting Amos mid sentence. It was probably the best part of this whole multi-person nightmare. His shot blew a fist size hole through the Amos-bot, right where Callie had informed him the processor was. Both her advice and his aim proved true, as the 'bot toppled over without another word.
"Shut it." He said, and the fight started anew.
The first row of robots fell to Midnight Coup as he launched round after round into their mass, but it simply wasn't enough to kill all of them. He began to reload as a machine closed the distance to attack. He surged forward in a crouch, using its momentum to bodily toss the robot over his shoulder and slam the cylinder closed again. He slammed the side of his hand against the hammer of the hand cannon, forcing a faster fire rate out of it.
In the back of his mind he registered that not a single one of these machines had the wound that the first one had. Not one of them had a hole in the neck. As another robotic head exploded, he came to the realization that the first one was probably the original.
And the original wasn't dead, just using these very subpar robots to slow him down.
And they were subpar.
The acrylic armor was brittle, shattering on the lightest strike. The steel was rusted and covered in corrosion pits. Now that the glamour had mostly fallen, he could hear their servos whirr in protest to the extreme action demanded of them. They were slow, they were fragile, they were barely fit for the most mundane actions an autonomous Frame back home would be expected to do, let alone fight. Hell, even the weapons they had were awful, ranging from old and worn to the sort of stuff shyster merchants would peddle on the street.
He was down to the last few machines now. Two quick shots destroyed two of the machines still standing, and a stomp killed the last of the crawlers. The last Amos-bot dropped its gun and held up its remaining hand in a mockery of surrender.
"Well. That went about as well as I could have hoped. Didn't peg you as an actual Huntsman, would have stuck around myself if I had realized that."
"Where is Cerulean?" Hakke demanded.
"Oh, a little here, a little there." Amos said through his machine, a wry grin flickering along the remainder of the illusion. "You have to realize we are not going to let you leave here alive, right?"
Hakke remained silent, stomping forward towards the last machine.
"Of course you have to realize that. Not you, nor the Detective, nor the two little traitors you seem to think are now on your side are leaving this farm alive or in one piece. I personally can't wait to taste what flavor y'all will bring to the Raw. I personally find that the -"
Hakke grabbed the machine by the head and said one word.
"Enough."
Solar Light poured down his arm and into the machine's head. Where it touched, it kicked off a cascade effect of destruction, atoms separating from one another to break apart themselves in an unstoppable nuclear inferno. Hakke's fist clenched where the Amos-bot's head used to exist, and the machine drifted backwards as it converted into a hellstorm of paracausal flame.
Hakke rifled through the broken ruins of machinery for a rifle that looked at least half decent, before Callie stopped him.
"Don't waste your time with those. I grabbed one of the Theon rifles from the van." She said as Hakke felt a weight appear on the magnetic holster on his back. He holstered Midnight Coup and pulled out the rifle, his hands instinctively racking a round into place.
"Okay, Cerulean, then Hildy, then Basil. Get me their locations and a sitrep on what I'll need to deal with on my way there." He said as he yanked his baton free of a robot and began to make his way towards one of the doors.
"I can't. There's a jammer of some kind preventing most sources of transmission from going anywhere. We'll need to destroy that to pinpoint the others."
"Can you find that?"
"Of course. A jammer that strong has a traceable signature all its own. Short wave by the looks of it, it's in another building and down below ground."
"Is that where I'm feeling that Darkness from?"
"Probably. Gather your Light Guardian, this one is starting to feel like back home."
"Unfortunately, I think you may be right." He agreed. Callie began to feed him directions through his earpiece. He wished his helmet was still functional, or in his possession to be honest. He had completely lost the Prodigal Hood helmet back when he had fought Magenta, what with her having knocked it clean off his head and him falling into the river to die. He made a mental note to either make a new helmet, or devise a system to get a radar back up and running.
He moved at a quick pace through more of the same looking bland corridors, each one blurring in with the others. There had to be a reason they made the building like this, it was too purposeful to be on a whim, and far too thorough. It made navigating way herder than was necessary, and sent a strange tremble down his spine.
The longer he was here, the worse he felt. The more steps he took towards the jammer, the worse he felt. He really didn't like this farm, all things considered.
Finally, after too much time running through empty white hallways, he opened a door leading to an outbuilding that seemed to have been constructed to specifically house a single steel hatch. More a steel slab to be precise, it was almost the size of a garage door placed on an angle, obviously large enough to fit bigger machinery into. It was built atop a solid concrete housing, and was currently wide open. He walked over and peered down. Despite the hatch leading to a gradual and well lit ramp, Hakke felt a very particular sense of vertigo come over his body.
"That's a Darkness Zone down there." Callie whispered into his ear. "You know what that means."
"Yep. Can't die down there." He replied. Darkness Zones weren't common back in Sol, but they weren't rare either. Wherever Dark forces gathered, or where the worst of the Collapse had occurred, Darkness Zones made their home. Areas where the opposing force of the Light had taken root and actively suppressed certain abilities a Guardian would have otherwise enjoyed. Zones where the Dark's take on reality held prevalence.
Regardless, the farm was too big for him to search manually by himself, at least not on a timetable that would allow Cerulean to survive. That jammer had to go. He steeled his will and began to descend.
Thankfully, there was both color and texture down here, something he hadn't expected to have been missing as much as he was. The passage led downhill and was more cramped than he had expected, electrical conduit and an assortment of strange piping lining both walls in a fashion that clearly indicated that they had been installed after the fact. There was still enough room to get larger pieces of equipment down the corridor.
Increasing the likelihood that this was where all the expensive machinery was going, there were literal tracks built into the flooring. A mechanized system to haul the heavier equipment deeper in.
The Darkness was oppressive now, pressing in from all directions and only increasing in intensity as he made his way towards the heart of this subterranean chamber. Hakke gritted his teeth and clenched down on the handle of his rifle. This place put him on edge in a way he hadn't been expecting. All his time on Remnant had been miserable, sure, but it had been lacking in the cosmic dread that permeated so much of his home. To suddenly find it here too was alarming.
The corridor finally opened into a large, squat room. Various manufacturing and medical equipment lined the center between raw steel support beams, and an assortment of equipment he didn't recognize the purpose of lined the walls. He paced forward, looking at a series of strange, large drums stacked along one wall. There were pipes and tubes running inside and out of each one, giving them a lopsided appearance, and each one was labeled with some sort of permanent marker.
HM-F-No14. FM-F-No13. HF-F-No12. FF-F-No11.
He continued past even more processing equipment, each machine aiding in some unknown way to make...whatever they were making. Finally, he came to a large, wide machine that seemed to be the centerpiece of the whole operation. Innumerous copper pipes wormed their way through the thing, with points to add different fluids and materials to adjust the end product scattered throughout the entire thing.
Two things caught his eye, both near the same spot on the machine. One of the barrels was fitted on the machine near the end of the process, most of its access ports taken up by tubing from the machine itself, except for one at the bottom. That one led to a smaller vial, approximately a two liter capacity container with a clear glass viewport in a strip running up its side.
It was half full of a material Hakke had been looking to get his hands on for a while now. Glowing a pale green, with a drop splashing down into its interior every second or so, it was a full liter of Boost. The Aura steroid.
This was where they were making it, he realized. He walked over and took a closer look. Disconnecting the bottle seemed shockingly easy after he took a moment to observe it, as it seemed that a single switch controlled the flow of Boost into the container. He flipped the switch and disconnected the vial, before turning his attention to the drum that had been feeding the vial, labeled FM-F-No10.
It seemed that one of the steel sections on the drum was to cover a viewing port, so he reached over and pulled it to the side. And stared, horrified.
It seemed that he had just solved the missing person case plaguing Vale.
Like I said, more intense than last week. Well boys, here it is, the first legitimate dip into horror that this story has had. Boost is about to become a lot more prevalent to the tale at large from here on out. Also, not including these author notes and review replies, the story has officially crossed 100k words. God damn, I am surprised by that fun fact. Feels weird.
Either way, more fun plot stuff is coming up, stay tuned, or logged in, or what have you.
- RangoTango
Yowsers! Review Time!
Master-ofmanga - Truthfully, knowing how terrible the Brother are, and how awful Hakke's luck is, that is a far more likely answer than you realize. Which is equal parts hilarious and horrible for everyone involved.
ThePolishSausageRoaster - Oh yea yea, it's Sword Logic time. That and the first batch of villains who hang around for more than one chapter increments at a time! While the Hive species isn't present for this particular dungeon crawl, their influence certainly is.
aLostWanderer07 - Thanks, and I'm sorry. On both accounts. Either of those things are capable of destroying free time like nothing else.
BigThirteen - Beanpost
The Baz - Wack of the Warlocks. Yeah, Osiris has been acting the fool this entire season, hopefully what happens to the Last City is nowhere near what I have planned for Vale.
DarkMegatronXX47 - Well, you're certainly right on the money on most of those predictions. Regardless, things are yet again going to get more complicated for our High-Int, Low-Wis Hero.
sundew112604 - Bruh, same.
