Vol. 3 Chap. 127 Pork Chop
Truth clamped his will down on his legs, locking himself in place. He had started to bolt before his mind had even processed what he was seeing. The monster was an ambush hunter. Running would only reveal where he was. He had to be patient. He had to think. Despite every fiber of his being screaming at him to get away. He had to think.
It was utterly alien. That was the only word for it. Alien. Nothing about it could exist naturally in this world. It followed no biological logic, nor magical sense. Or if it did, it was beastcrafting beyond anything he had seen or heard of. If it was beastcrafting, he would make a special point of killing its creator. That sort of diseased yet capable mind was too dangerous to be allowed.
Stop and breathe. Just try and not dwell on his mory of whatever that was. Silent infiltration was almost certainly out of the question. He might try to camp out and sneak in with a shipnt, but no, that was flatly not possible. No one that stuck that over their front door was going to miss soone sneaking in with a shipnt.
He could check the lake at the top of the mountain, but he refused to believe it would be any less dangerous. If anything, the danger would just be better concealed.
Breathe. Just breathe. Think, and breathe. The thing wasnt very smart. It had so level of intelligence as it was capable of ambushes, but it broke cover when a tree branch landed on it. Highly observant, highly aggressive, not very smart.
What was it? Demon? Didnt feel right. It had that mad disregard for conventional biology he associated with so demons, but this seed to be more than that. This was practically a negation of any sort of order at all. Just a blob which made what it needed as it needed it. Be it eyes or limbs. Or a mouth.
He could try and fight it head on. Head. Hah. It didnt have one of those. Not much had held up to Obliteration. Except Dr. Sun. Who, despite being stabbed a lot, including in the head, kept coming back to life.
And just how in the Hell did that work? So glitch in Obliteration? Sothing the spell just missed? Obliteration was a prototype spell, and sothing made in house by a security agency. Not exactly tested by the best minds in spell design.
He would not care to bet his life that the giant nightmare thing wasnt likewise immune. Seed like a weird security oversight otherwise, and there was exactly zero chance that Starbrite was going to be negligent with this place.
Alright, so drawing it out seed like the best plan. Not a good plan, but the best plan he had. Which ant that he needed so kind of lure. Was there any kind of anti-demon or anti-angel ward around this place?
Actually no. Which was odd. That was pretty standard. Sothing concealed in the dirt? Sothing that only deployed if triggered? Both seed plausible. Hmmm. Truth fought the urge to drum his fingers on his leg. He needed more information than what rkovah had provided, which would an actively testing the defenses here. Tests which might have terminally negative consequences for him.
On the other writhing pseudopod, what were the odds that Starbrite didn't know people knew he was dug in up here? This was a covert location, yes, but too much just wasnt adding up for Truth. This was the end ga. This is where the polite lies were done away with, and ugly truths revealed.
Why was the base here? Why not at Army Ford, or under a hospital in Harban, or on an island completely controlled by Starbrite? Why tunnel into an actual, literal, active volcano for your sensitive research project? Especially a volcano that wasnt entirely inside the country you hijacked. Why be covert at all? Tell the world.
We are proud to announce our Gaspin Island Advanced BioMagical Research facility. Here is Dr. Sun, noted best-person-ever, who will oversee the facility.
Dr. Sun, what will you be researching?
Why, how to keep people healthy in even the very worst conditions, naturally, as well as pediatric studies. I, famously, love children.
Aww!
Yes, there was so discussion about putting the facility inside an active volcano instead of a tropical island paradise filled with soft, fuzzy, friendly animals and just the cutest, friendliest demons ever, but thats dumb. Actually, thats completely insane. We are doing this for the children.
Sothing inside Truth went Click. A nasty, unpleasant sort of click, like your bully locking the door behind him as he ca in.
He was going to act a fool. That was the other lesson of Happori Village. Dont play by their rules- they are better at it, and the ga is rigged. Dont try to cheat yourself. Just flip the table and grab the money as it falls.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not ant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He nodded internally. He just needed to grab the girl. That was literally it. Everything else? Not his problem. That was, in fact, a plenty big enough problem. And now, having co to that conclusion, he was going to do what?
Well. Get the hell out of there for a start. He had a damn good idea where the door was, now. Ti to fall back and get prepped.
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He sat in the dim back room of what appeared to be a hardware store. There was the customary folding chair, shelves of excess inventory, and the general ss of workers who needed a break but didnt really have the ti to take one.
Truth had taken pains to avoid the part of Minzu he had been in before. Trying to keep away from any familiar place. Make the hunters and secret policen work that little bit harder. The store was chosen at random. Tomorrow, the clerks would co in here and discover absolutely nothing. Hed even lock the door behind him.
He just needed a quiet place to think and to work. His first thought, continuing on the Happori Vilage line, was to summon an angel. Starbrite was already down a load of higher level people thanks to the last one. However, he strongly suspected he survived because the Angel let him slide, not because it was really mad at Starbrite. There was no reason to think another angel would be as broad minded.
Devils? Summoning a bigass demon had a definite appeal. How he would manage the sacrifice, he didnt know. Hmm. There was actually so potential there.
Could he trigger the volcano sohow? How did one trigger a volcano anyway? Presumably a TON of fire and earth demons could do it, but he had never heard of it being done. Perhaps it was seen as an offense against the planet.
Alright, he wasnt going to one-shot the whole base. What could he do for a lure? He looked around the hardware store. The thing popped into sight for a falling tree branch. Could he do sothing more with that?
He slowly smiled. Maybe not with hardware store supplies, but this was a city with a grocery store. He could expand his options.
One surprisingly high value act of shoplifting later, Truth was prepared-ish.
He had to jump a counter to get to the at. There wasnt anything you could just pick up off a shelf. It was all behind glass and you had to pay in advance. It shouldnt have been shocking. He had seen how at was getting more and more expensive. For so reason, the notion that they would completely change the layout of grocery stores to protect the at felt very alien. Like reality had scored a brutal victory over the forces of just buying whatever, whenever and however.
He grabbed a wide selection of stuff. Not that he expected any of it to poison that unnatural thing, he just wanted to see if it would react differently to anything. In a fit of giggling madness, he also picked up air fresheners and cleaning solvents. Why not? One heavily loaded backpack later, he stowed everything in a walk-in refrigerator at a closed restaurant, grabbed a few hours sleep on the floor, and was back at it before the sun rose in the morning.
Making his way back to the presud entrance was no less nerve wracking this ti. After all, what if they moved around? He got as close as he was comfortable, and watched. It took a long, long, long while, but he was fairly confident he spotted so ripples of invisibility.
Breezy again today. Was it because they were so high up? Maybe. The treeline was nearby. Truth pulled out a half kilo hunk of beef and threw it at an angle to where he guessed the creature was. The wind pushed it over a smidge closer. Truth hoped it would persuade the thing that whatever had landed on it was coming at an angle ninety degrees from him.
No reaction. He threw another piece. There was a very faint twinge from Incisive this ti. Not a risk-free manuver, then. Was there an extra shimr on the ground? A hint of movent? Even with Truths excellent eyes, he couldnt tell for sure.
He threw another chunk of at. Ribs, this ti, the short rack pinwheeling through the air, then catching a gust and blowing violently sideways. The blob revealed itself again. Its myriad boiling and subsiding eyes locking on the flying at. A whip tendril slashed out and wrapped around it, filant tentacles sprouting and burrowing into the at and bones.
A hole opened in the side of the amoeba-like blob. It made a jagged mouth, filled with irregular, gnashing teeth. Jagged, misshapen things, none smaller than a mans forearm. Teeth made by sothing with only a faint understanding of mouths, but endless knowledge of crushing and tearing.
The ribs vanished inside the dark-water interior of the blob. Truth waited. He wasnt going to risk throwing another piece of at while the eyes were open.
He watched another tendril extend along the ground. Was it looking for sothing? Yes, it found the other at. Interesting. Truth waited until it hid itself again, and launched so at down slope. He then trailed it back up towards the creature. He dumped so cleaning products on the at just to see what would happen.
A slightly bigger spike in Incisive this ti, when the at landed near the blob.
The thing reacted faster, tendrils whipping out and, to Truths quiet alarm, eyes started boiling out of stalks and tendrils all over the blob. Whatever it was, it wasnt that stupid. The at was coming from sowhere, and it would find it. Truth watched carefully. As the pseudopods extended, the main mass shrank.
Was that a cave behind it? Or a tunnel? Looked like it. The critter didnt seem troubled by the solvents, though. Not surprising, but a pity regardless.
Truth smiled down at the remaining at in the sack. Ti to do a little creative engineering. Draw the beast from its hole. Then take a look inside. Then think about planting just a ton of bombs everywhere. Because he did not feel like playing with these people, and since there was a literal mountain of energy to work with, he would use it.
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