Mechanical Instinct Disastrous

In the sky above Louwoods’s canopy, a large ball of blue radiance erged, emitting sparks akin to fireworks while producing loud detonations. This was the signal all hunting teams had been given before venturing into the forest. The simple breaking of a stick-like item was all that was needed to produce one of such masses of light and sound.

All other teams imdiately knew that this ant that the target of extermination had been found, and all began rushing to the area. This was without exception, but so noticed sothing weird about the signal…

“Isn’t it way lower than normal?”

Hortus made the remark first, as the scout of the team, he had used such signals before on many occasions. Normally, these signals were supposed to be much more highly elevated than what he was seeing. This one was only a few asly ters above the canopy.

“If I rember correctly, they manifest at a specific distance from the person using the item, no? So this must an that it was activated by soone in a place lower than the forest ground… Unless they fell into a hole, then it must an that there is a cave”

Yeldt was quick to respond with the most logical explanation, and indeed, once they arrived underneath the blue shine, they discovered the open cavern, as well as spotted another group ahead of them entering into a passageway.

“Those guys… They’re rushing to get the kill”

Hilene clicked her tongue.

“Can’t bla them, the reward is higher than anything we’ve seen… Since anything I’ve seen since I was born, actually”

Gontra hit her shield with her fist.

“Do we wait for another group to team up with, or do we try to catch up to those guys we just saw?”

Slayer Blade almost said that they should go with the latter option, but she had a sudden feeling of impending doom. Making her frown.

“...Let’s wait for another team, I have a bad feeling about this”

Hilene hadn’t felt threatened in a long while. Ever since all known dungeons had been destroyed, she had never really encountered anything truly frightening or intimidating. The enclosed spaces of dungeons had been a big factor. Taking on extermination requests out into the wider world simply wasn’t the sa.

Everything was too open, and the possibilities to take care of a target were too nurous for her to be under any amount of pressure when working, but for so reason, her instincts were screaming out that this cavern was dangerous…

Yeldt felt sowhat the sa way after a little while. He was able to sense the shifts in distant ambient mana, and it was clear that the situation down there had quickly turned chaotic. The team ahead of them had encountered sothing dangerous enough to throw their cohesion into disarray completely. Mages were chain-casting spells like there was no tomorrow, and the healers were also constantly using their magic, which could not possibly be a good sign.

“What the hell is happening down there…?”

___

With a coughing fit ca a surge of blood. The normally crimson liquid was thicker and showed patches of abyssal blue.

The rcenary leader clenched his fist as he lifted his head enough to see what was happening inside the room. Another group had shown up, and although less nurous than he and his rcenaries, they were clearly more experienced in monster extermination, but they were struggling nonetheless.

…The Abyssal was far stronger than they had been told. It might be lacking in its ability to corrupt, but otherwise? It was monstrously powerful.

The rcenary felt like he had heard sothing about this before… So Abyssals weren’t capable of efficiently spreading corruption, but that was by design. Their abyssal matter was instead geared toward strength and sheer killing capabilities. Unfortunately, the initial belief was that this particular one was just part of the much more common, weaker creatures from The Abyss.

It didn’t make sense for an entity outside of its environnt to be able to grow so powerful, in such a short amount of ti. Clearly, the problem hadn’t been the creature itself, but the form it had been taking previously… As it had said, it had changed how its body was put together and went ‘closer to its roots’.

“What a fucking ss…”

He muttered to himself in disbelief. His fellows had been slaughtered, and he himself broken, not because they were weak, but because the damned creature they were after had realised its true potential away from the public eye.

This sounded like a bad joke, but this bad joke had shattered his bones and left him nearly completely paralysed whilst slumped against a wall, only able to use his senses to watch another group be swiftly dismantled by the Abyssal.

It–Or rather, she was an absolutely awful opponent. Her abyssal matter was incredibly compact and solid. It made her far less capable of shifting her form on the go, but it, in turn, made her incredibly fast, strong, and resilient beyond belief.

Magic appeared to be nearly completely ineffective against her. The mont it made contact with her, it not only had to deal with her high resistance to what seed to be all forms of damage, but it was also significantly weakened as mana was easily corrupted compared to a living being.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Only fire magic seed to have so effect, and even then, that was questionable. It seed like physical attacks were sohow the best way to deal with her, but with her three ters in height and athletic body, she was able to move around like a damned speed devil.

A single side-step for her could cover enough ground to put a lee combatant way out of range, and she clearly knew this very well. Even if her movents lacked true martial prowess, it didn’t matter. She had overpowered his entire rcenary group within just a few minutes.

They surely could have held for longer, but she had gone for the healers and mages first, essentially grabbing them all into a chokehold… The sa thing was happening to this other group.

The Abyssal saw an opportunity and brute-forced her way through it, getting to the healer of the band and kicking the poor fool straight into the ceiling, his body exploding into a shower of blood and gore as disembodied, shattered limbs ca crashing to the ground.

Next, the front-liner in heavy armour was picked off the ground and launched across the room… It was a bloody massacre, but once the key mbers of the team were slain or otherwise incapacitated, the monster’s aggressiveness went down, grabbing the remnants of the group and attempting to corrupt them.

Thankfully, she was impressively bad at this. Only one of them didn’t turn into blue goop imdiately.

She noticed him still breathing.

“You are quite tough, Mister rcenary”

He coughed.

“You don’t survive in my line of work otherwise…”

“Hopefully, your toughness will allow you to resist the abyssal matter I am going to inject into you. As you see, I lack the ability to properly control my corruptive capabilities, but all by my loneso, I can not rely on any of my brethren to fulfil this role for ”

The bandit leader sighed. He was fairly certain that she had already infested him by accident when she slamd him into this wall and shattered far too many of his bones. He was only alive because he was remaining perfectly still for the most part.

“Say… Before you do your thing, I am curious about sothing…”

“What is it? I do enjoy conversing, so ask away”

At least, he would have t a freaking talkative abomination before dying…

“Why the hell do you look like that? It’s been bothering , but did you really have to look like this?”

The sapient mind worked in mysterious ways, and during this entire confrontation, he hadn’t been able to stop wondering why in damnation an abyssal would choose to shape itself into the silhouette of an attractive woman–This thing had a damned hour-glass figure and seed to be trying to sowhat imitate muscles with her proportions.

He was also fairly certain that the monstrosities from The Abyss were just monstrosities. They weren’t male or female, they were just twisted abominations. They didn’t reproduce. They crawled out randomly… As far as the rcenary was aware, anyway.

“Oh, I once t a very nice, very special woman–Although she didn’t look human, I had the feeling that if she did have a human form, she would look a lot like this. Of course, I let my abyssal side shine through as well. Imitating the appearance of a True Void Being was simply silly on my part. It went against my very nature and made weak”

“She… I used to revere her, but I think I view her as a friend now, even though we’ve barely interacted together… Mmh… Ah, more people are coming”

“That is a bit annoying, you people gathered together to kill , didn’t you? I don’t intend on sticking around and seeing for myself if there is soone who can defeat amongst you lot. Hurry and accept the gift of The Abyss, Mister rcenary”

___

Hilene had been right to wait for another group to show up, as several teams had arrived at the sa ti, including so with so truly powerful individuals. Hilene was well-known for her swordsmanship, but she didn’t consider herself to truly be in the top echelon like those people.

With them, there was nothing to fear, and they all ventured deeper into the cavern, only to discover that the passageway had collapsed. A mage used a spell to split all the rocks into pieces, but things still slowed down as the tunnel had truly been completely blocked off, requiring several more uses of that spell before they ended up inside a wider chamber.

This was where the battles had taken place, but there were no motions anywhere. There was only a sort of shrine in the shape of a large raven, and a pile of body parts sticking out of a mass of abyssal matter.

The pile was burnt without hesitation, but apart from this, there wasn’t much else. There were faint signs of abyssal presence, but it was only superficial. It was going to quickly degrade without being able to spread.

“Looks like there used to be sothing inside of that statue-thingy, the remnants of abyssal matter are stronger there”

“Damn, did our target take its stuff and run away? Where could it even have gone?”

“Huh… There’s a tunnel behind the platform”

Everyone gathered in front of the entrance to the tunnel and spotted sothing carved into the wall above it. A sort of drawing depicting so monster posed as the guardian of what were probably young girls.

“What other monster was in this forest, again? The Mother Sothing? Whatever the na, it seems like it was the one who made the tunnel…”

“...Anyone wanna volunteer to crawl first into this tunnel? It looks rather spacious”

“Are you insane? Inside a place like this, everyone here is easy pickings. Is anyone here a good earth mage? Is there no way to figure out where this tunnel leads through so vibration spells or whatever?”

“Is that a thing?”

“Of course it is!”

There was a slight mont of silence.

“Aherm… I am not that good at earth magic, but I know how to use a bit of it…”

“...That’s better than nothing. Why are earth mages so rare?”

“They all work in construction. The pay for them in this sector blows out of the water anything they could get from our line of work”

“Keep quiet, everyone, let him focus on casting the spell!”

The mage with a modest amount of experience and natural affinity with the earth magic spent a few minutes completely silent and still, sweat dripping down his face and back, before he opened his eyes and stumbled forward a bit.

“It goes straight to the surface. I can lead to the exit”

“Perfect, then let’s go!”

The teams of adventurers, rcenaries, and the like all rged into one small army as they rushed over in an attempt to be the ones to earn the reward. Their lust for riches guided them forward.