Uriel felt bad for leaving Luna and the rest to 'manage' the 'chickens' at the factory, but the low battery warnings had been driving him crazy to the point where it beca his top priority. It would have been one thing if the system prompted a text on his field of view, but the beeping sound was impossible to ignore.
Unfortunately to him, just crushing flux orbs wasn't going to fix his problem. When crushed, the flux orbs had the ability to repair and recharge structures, but it didn't work with his smartphone. It didn't an that flux orbs weren't useful as they were one of the materials needed for crafting batteries, but the process to charge a battery required an extruder and quantious amounts of orichalcum.
Had that been all, Uriel would have been safe since he had the equipnt needed at the Pegasus and he also had plenty of orichalcum to spare, but the process was painstakingly slow and he needed an imdiate fix to his situation.
"Hi, I'd like to..."
"Back so soon?" Bear greeted Uriel with a sympathetic look on his face. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"What? No, my friends are fine, they're still busy at the factory. I'm just looking to buy so batteries."
"That's going to be difficult, we do have so... but we set them apart for the rangers. They're the ones keeping the peace in whatever is left of this city after all." Bear said in an apologetic tone of voice.
"Can I speak to your boss, maybe we can figure sothing out together."
"She's not back yet," Bear awkwardly scratched the back of his head until an idea popped into his mind. "Why don't you join one of our defense team!? You'd get a free tier 1 battery and enough rations to last you a week."
"Just one battery isn't going to cut it, I really need to speak to your superior..."
"Listen man, I really want to help you because you're friends with Miss Sage, but there's nothing I can do."
Uriel felt completely distraught, not because he expected that acquiring batteries would be easy, but because the low battery warning was pushing him over the ledge of sanity. Thinking he had no choice but to wait for the boss of the agency to co back, he decided to grab sothing to eat at the cafeteria only to find it was obviously not working.
Nothing worked in the city, the power was out, the shops were either destroyed or ransacked, the roads were filled with debris and half dismantled cars. Needless to say, the only way to get his hands on sothing to eat was to scavenge it himself, which shouldn't be difficult considering how the entire city was ripe for the picking if not for a single detail.
Uriel had been spending his own flux energy to charge his smartphone in a last ditch attempt to make the annoying warnings go away. Because of that, he was far from being in shape to fight against cryptids, hunters or anything for that matter. Still, joining the defense like bear proposed would only grant him a single tier 1 battery which ant he would lose more battery than he would gain.
Right outside the agency, Uriel spotted what he assud was a hunting group getting ready to go on an incursion, though it could be argued that just being inside the boundaries of what used to be the gacity of Texas was already an incursion. After all, now that the wall was breached in several places there was no telling on what kind of cryptids lurked in the seemingly abandoned city.
"I'm telling you, this is truly the golden age for hunters!" A man exclaid as he loaded his shotgun.
"Shut up, Johnson, millions died, thousands were left wounded and those lucky enough to survive are now holess in that weird place. The least you can do is have the decency to do your job in silence."
"My bad." Johnson apologized, though the grin on his face showed he wasn't regretful in the slightest.
Just when Uriel was about to approach the group and offer his services, another hunter beat him to it.
"Hey, my girlfriend and I are looking for a job. Can we join you guys? The more people, the easier it will be to scavenge a building after all." The young hunter said with a dazzling smile, one that was t with a scowl from the party leader.
"What are your ranks and specialization?"
"I'm an ascended combat engineer and my girlfriend is a field dic."
The group greeted the newcors with pats in the back and wide smiles, though when Uriel tried to join in the conversation he was t with a completely different reaction because he completely forgot he was still concealing his energy signature.
Needless to say, they ignored him altogether and left the scene, leaving Uriel inwardly cursing at his forgetfulness until an idea began forming in his mind.
Other hunters didn't perceive him as a threat and the sa applied to cryptids, this ant that he was basically invisible and should be able to scavenge on his own.
He took a few seconds to ponder about the most likely places where he could find batteries and ended up deciding to go to college, since they kept batteries in storage to power their experints and so students even made their own batteries as assignnts.
With a faint smile on his face, Uriel followed pretty much the sa way he followed many tis in the past from the Cryptid hunting agency to college. However, the sight in front of him once he arrived at his destination differed greatly from what he was used to. There were cracks on the windows, the vegetation grew wildly and there were cracks in pretty much every building.
Thanks to Luna, a lot of the students were evacuated before the downfall of the city, which ant the place was supposed to be empty. This didn't turn out to be true as Uriel confird when he walked instinctively towards his dorm, only to find evidence that so people still lived in there.
Mostly, it was garbage piled out right outside the dorms, which would obviously remain there since there weren't any workers to pick up the trash.
Uriel hesitated for a couple seconds about whether or not he should go inside. Other than a few garnts there was nothing of his back on what used to be his room, but there might be survivors who could give him so useful information about the situation in the city.
Unfortunately, just after crossing the entrance Uriel noticed the stench of putrefaction coming from inside, which ant there was no one there anymore.
'So, this is why the army always burns the trash. It must be easy to cryptids to follow our trash tracks...' Uriel inwardly thought. Although unknown to most citizens, hunters knew full well how deviously smart so cryptids were and they always took asures to avoid being followed.
Without anything else to do in that building, Uriel headed straight to Fermi's workshop. He knew the way by hand since he attended so of his lectures and he also knew where did they store the batteries. Besides, Fermi might still be around there since he refused to evacuate when Luna invited him claiming his research was too important to be abandoned.
As many tis in the past, Uriel placed himself in front of the reinforced alloy door and placed his hand on the handle that would recognize his ID and let him in, though that wasn't the case this ti. Whether the door lacked electricity or if his na was taken out from the whitelist was a mystery, but Uriel already expected sothing like that and proceeded to take out the Red thread of fate.
"Orichalcum beats alloy." He said as he started cutting the door with the ease only a heavenly rank hunter could, though it wasn't a fast process by any ans. The screeching sound was pretty annoying and made Uriel's teeth hurt, but even that was less annoying than the ever present beeping sound that warned him his battery was off.
When the door finally collapsed Uriel rushed in directly towards the storage where they kept the batteries and ran at it like an addict looking for his fix. Thankfully, the locker that kept the batteries inside was only made of steel and it opened easily with a popping sound.
"Ahhhhh!" Uriel let out a pleased sigh as soon as he activated the tier 3 battery next to his smartphone. A battery like would serve to feed many devices like that for a full year, though Uriel's smartphone sucked up to the last drop of flux energy contained in the battery.
[System notice] Battery level 35%
It wasn't what Uriel hoped for, but there were still a few batteries lying around and he just needed to find them. However, now that he was free of the annoying sound that kept him on the verge of insanity for days, Uriel finally realized sothing terrifying.
There was a particular sll inside Fermi's lab, one too familiar to Uriel.
"This blood is fresh..." Uriel said after wetting his fingers on the gooey substance that stained the walls.
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