"That's right," I grinned, my vertical pupils flaring with emerald Prana light as I prepared his compression seal. "Someone built a pen full of knockoff monsters down in the dark. How about we go down there and show them what a real Cretaceous king eats for dinner?"
Chintu threw his massive head back, letting out a deafening, cavern-rattling roar of pure, untamed excitement.
Squeeeeeeeeeeak.
With that now-familiar sound of a punctured inflatable mattress, Chintu's forty-meter bulk rapidly deflated. The immense, mountain-crushing bone density folded neatly into a miniature spatial manifold, leaving behind our chubby, three-foot-tall green mascot.
He sat with his bottom on the grass, blinked his large amber eyes and sneezed out a single spark of sulphur which set the dandelion on fire.
Look here," I picked up Chintu under my left arm, holding him like an awkward, scaly bag of flour, "he's compact, aerodynamic, and fully compliant with the municipal tunnel regulations."
"Master," Lu Xiaoran sighed, rubbing his temples as he adjusted the scabbard on his back, "every time you treat an S-rank Calamity Beast in that way, a little bit of my martial common sense dies away and fades."
Martial common sense is merely a remedy for those who don't have a understanding of spatial geometry, Xiaoran," I replied indifferently, while brushing a dusting of pollen off the white lapel of my coat. "Lina, how is the spatial tether?"
Lina was on her knees in the soft soil of the Great Fire Forest, her hands positioned over a circle of brass survey rods which had been pushed into the ground. The faint azure runes, visible through her thick magnifying goggles, were spinning in concentric circles and matching the coordinates that Noah had written on the parchment.
Master, Lina whispered, as she moved her fingers over a set of dampening dials. "The spatial exit has been aligned with the old drainage sluice, which is ninety metres below the outer edge of West Oak City. The level of ambient runoff is moderate and there are no active sonar arrays picked up from the city's defence grid."
I assigned Roman to the forward guard position, Xiaoran to the rear watch, and asked Noah to remain on my right flank. In the case of spotting a family ward, you are to leave it alone—just call it out. Then I gave Pushpa a gentle scratch under her chin.
If you experience any discomfort at all, please let me know, okay. So she meowed in reply, and I have to be careful with my pet because she might not be able to tolerate the foul smell of those sewers.
System: "Host, your pet Pushpa is an outer god level entity."
Phew! This system and his misapprehension—I can't quite understand it but it has always referred to Pushpa as some kind of eldritch thing, although up to now I haven't seen anything my pet has done that's wrong except for scaring this useless system.
It seems that there were sewers underneath her imperial residence, but she agreed to put up with the annoyance in order that the forthcoming entertainment might take place.
Lina muttered about opening the gate.
Fwump.
The gap between the brass rods resembled wet silk in its twist. At once the warm, pine-scented breeze of the forest disappeared and was taken over by a blow of cold, underground dampness which had the unmistakable, irritating odour of putrid canal water, rotted copper, and alchemical vinegar that had gone bad.
We stepped through.
There was no sound at all during the transition.
We appeared on a narrow, smooth stone gangway which ran along the curved side of a huge ancient aqueduct. Below, in the central ditch, water the colour of bruised plums moved slowly, foaming with thick areas of iridescent yellow scum. The masonry in this area was enormous, consisting of interlocking blocks of obsidian bound together with mortar that had faded—this was typical of Bloodborn architecture from two centuries earlier.
Noah at once knelt down and put two of his bare fingers against the slimy mortar of the wall.
A very faint crimson pulse flickered under his fingertips and then died out within half a second as the remaining Bloodborn wards acknowledged his touch before smoothly switching themselves off without raising an alarm.
Vik said, "Don't forget about Noah; avoid any direct confrontation with Ruby. We must first launch an attack and then retreat, gradually wearing down the luck of the chosen ones. Never engage in a direct fight with members of the chosen ones; this is an unbroken rule for all of my disciples."
Noah: "I know master."
"Noah whispered that the secondary sluice gate was forty yards upstream. He then got back to his feet, his hood drawn down and his eyes shining with that calm and frightening red clarity. Beyond that gate is the lowest sub-level of the ancestral vaults—the same old fermentation chambers in which our clan used to age blood-lotus wine."
"Now it's an illegal chop shop," Xiaoran grumbled, crinkling his nose in disgust as he pulled his collar over his mouth. "By heaven, what a smell that is! It smells as if a butcher's shop has been burned down inside a tannery."
I calmly diagnosed it as synthetic amniotic fluid mixed with a low-grade necrotic solvent, stepping over a patch of bioluminescent purple mould with my clean boots. Chintu, under my arm, wiggled his two-inch arms excitedly and snuffled the foul air with true culinary interest. I gave his nose a solid tap and said, "Chintu, you mustn't eat from the floor since you don't know where that bile has been."
We moved up the catwalk in total silence.
Roman moved about like a ghost even though he was very large, his boots making no sound on the wet stone. He held the Ivory Cleaver in his right hand with the blade directed downwards, its pale surface taking in the faint green light of the sewage without reflecting a single spark. Lina walked directly behind him, her fingers continuously brushing a small brass compass that showed the arcane resonance of the walls.
"Stop," Lina breathed.
The catwalk concluded at a heavy sluice gate fitted with an iron grille covered with layers of rust and mineral deposits. However, someone had lately used an alchemical torch to cut through the bars and had substituted the central part with a crude curtain made from stitched grey rubbery hide.
Under the disguise, the heavy steam pistons produced a regular, mechanical thumping thumping thumping which spread through the stone floor, together with the dull, unnatural groans of something that sounded completely non-human.
I held up one hand to stop the group.
I pulled a hair-thin needle made of pure Prana from within my sleeve and, with a gentle flick of my wrist, pushed it through a seam in the stitched leather, which allowed my senses to extend into the room beyond.
The thing on the other side caused my vertical pupils to narrow down to microscopic slits.
The ancient stone hall with its vaulted roof—measuring about eighty paces in width—had been completely destroyed. The stone racks, which had previously been used for storing the wine of the ancestors, were now broken and had been substituted by a large number of tall, cylindrical glass vats secured to the flagstones by thick copper cables. These vats contained bubbling emerald bile and were lit from below by sickly green rune-plates.
In each vat there floated grotesque, half-formed silhouettes.
In one vat there was a four-legged lizard as big as a carriage with the muscular forearms of a human warrior attached to its shoulders, the flesh held together by thick brass screws and bound with black stitching that was weeping. In the other vat a huge, double-headed dog dangled in the liquid, its spine split open and fused to a glowing group of human spiritual roots which emitted erratic and unstable lightning.
In the middle of the hall, six rogue cultivators, their leather aprons stained with blood, were gathered round an iron dissection slab.
A young and severely thin rogue cultivator was tied down on the slab, his chest having been forced open with brass retractor clamps. A middle-aged alchemist, who had greasy hair and wore thick iron spectacles, was carefully employing a pair of enchanted forceps to remove a glowing, fibrous thread of spiritual root from the victim's lower abdomen.
"Keep the suppression clamps in place!" the oily alchemist barked, his voice carrying clearly above the hiss of the steam valves. "The Lady ordered that this batch of wood-affinity roots must be grafted onto the Mantis-Stalkers before midnight! If the host's vitality falls below twenty per cent before the graft has taken root, the core will reject the marrow, and you know what the system does to people who waste biological assets!"
The assistants shivered and tightened their hold on the struggling, half-conscious cultivator.
Next to me in the dark tunnel, I noticed that Noah's breathing ceased.
Not because of fear, but because of a deep and suffocating rage which almost broke his self-control. He clutched his hands into fists, the crimson lightning deep within his bones winding itself like a cobra ready to strike.
I placed a calm and heavy palm on his shoulder and poured cool Prana into his meridians, which immediately stopped his aura leak before it had the chance to set off the room's sensors.
"Control, Noah," I whispered, my voice causing only a faint rustling of silk against his ear, "for anger makes you loud and precision makes you fatal."
I turned my attention to Roman and Xiaoran.
"You, Roman, are to take the main dissection slab and must make sure that the person on the table doesn't receive a stray shockwave. Xiaoran, go through and clear the catwalks around the perimeter, and remove the valve operators before they can set off the emergency vat purge."
"As for the vats, Master?" Lina asked, her brass tablet emitting a soft hum. "Shall we break the glass?"
"Never by any means," I said, my lips curling in a cold and sharp smile which contained not the slightest bit of humour. "Breaking the glass would cause three thousand gallons of acidic bile to spill over our boots, damage my robes, and kill the biological specimens before we had the chance to study their cellular architecture."
I looked down and saw the fat, three-foot-long green lizard wriggling under my arm.
Chintu has been following a very strict diet consisting of roasted mutton and spirit grass for four days and he needs more roughage in his system.
I softly put Chintu down on the slippery stone floor of the catwalk. The little T-Rex looked up at me, his small two-inch arms waving about excitedly as he gave out a barely noticeable, squeaky "rawr."
I whispered to Lina to seal the drainage sluice behind us with an acoustic ward while I released the first layer of Chintu's compression seal, my yellow pupils shining with emerald brilliance.
"Roman. Xiaoran. Leave the room. Dinner is ready."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Author's note:
Hi everyone, this is your favorite author Hlovecraft.
Today's chapter is officially live—I really hope you all enjoy where the story is headed!
Sorry, everyone, for the late upload. I really got any time for writing after working a continuous shift of 12 to 14 hours.
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