Chương 21: Chapter 20.2 – The 11th floor incident (part 2)

Biscuit skidded across the metal floor, claws scrambling for purchase, and crashed directly into Astarielle's legs. His tail wagged so hard his entire back half moved with it.

"Biscuit!" Astarielle caught him, kneeling down.

"Oh, hello, sweetheart. You wouldn't believe how happy I am to see you." Everyone's hands went to their weapons.

"Guys! Damian!" Chris's voice echoed from somewhere ahead, bouncing off the identical walls. Footsteps followed, quick and light, and then he appeared around a corner, grinning, with a half-eaten ration bar in one hand. He looked the same as last time. Brown hair, freckles, lanky build. Bow over one shoulder, knife at his hip. He wore the same heavy jacket, though it had acquired a few new stains since last time.

"I knew you'd come back!" He jogged up to us.

"Peace said you'd be back today. She was right."

"Of course she was," I muttered. Sarah lowered her sword, but her expression stayed guarded.

"The boy again."

"His name is Chris," I said.

"I remember. I'm asking why he's here. Again." She looked at me.

"In a fortress. On a floor that should be empty of civilians." Chris either didn't catch the suspicion or didn't care.

"Peace brought me! She had business on the upper floors, and she said I could explore the fortress while she worked. This place is a lot of fun!" Biscuit barked, slipped from Astarielle, and ran back to Chris, wagging his tail. Henrik's glasses pulsed.

"Fun? This maze is fun?"

"It's not that bad once you figure out the trick." Chris took another bite of his rations bar.

"The corridors have a vibe to them. You've got to follow the same feeling, even if it leads backwards. Let me show you. Come. You're going up, right?" We all stared at him. Well, we weren't going anywhere, but we did want to go up.

"Also," he added, scratching Biscuit behind the ears, "Biscuit can smell the difference. The corridors that go somewhere have air moving through them. The dead ends don't." Henrik's left eye twitched. He looked at his holographic map, then at the dog, then back at the map. He closed the projection.

"Come," Chris said, pointing vaguely behind him.

"I've also found a maintenance route. It's like service tunnels or something. It bypasses most of the maze and goes almost straight to the upper levels, all the way to the waystone."

"You've seen the waystone?" Sarah stepped forward.

"Yeah! It's on a pedestal thing, in a round room. There's a guardian there, so I didn't go close, but the waystones all look the same, anyway." The five of us exchanged looks.

"The boy's information was accurate on our first visit," Liu said.

"The directions he gave led us directly to the open cavern and the fortress." Sarah studied Chris. The kid looked back at her with an open, earnest expression. Biscuit sat at his feet, panting.

"He's sincere," Sarah said. She said it like a diagnosis, not a compliment. I looked at the timer. Still had a couple of hours. Enough to clear the floor if the shortcut actually existed. I stepped after Chris.

"That sounds great. Let's go up then." The rest joined me. We passed through a corridor, another one, immediately walked back, crossed a room, and entered a staircase. The maintenance route. The walls here were different. Rougher, unfinished, with exposed conduits and pipe bundles running along the ceiling. Service tunnels, built for workers who maintained the fortress, not for anyone important enough to use the main halls. We moved fast, as the path was just a long staircase.

"This is pretty great, isn't it?" Chris asked, half-jogging to keep pace with the rest of us.

"I couldn't believe it when I found it." Biscuit barked in agreement, his claws clicking on the metal steps. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"That's actually brilliant," Henrik admitted, sounding slightly annoyed about it. Astarielle laughed. Actually laughed, not her usual performative chuckle.

"The stairs don't lead all the way to the top. We will need to cross a bit of the floor later," Chris said.

"There might be some bugs there, but you can help with those, right? I had to sneak around them. But you're all so much stronger than me, so we might not have to sneak."

"Yes," Sarah said.

"The unclean machines won't hinder us." Chris fell into step beside me as the staircase widened. Biscuit trotted between us, tail swaying.

"Hey, Damian?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think I could learn magic? Like, real magic. Not what Peace does, she says hers is different, but like what you and Astarielle do." He glanced up at me with those earnest, freckled features.

"Liu said I have a spiritual root. I don't know what that means, but it sounds like it means I could, right?"

"It means you have potential," I said.

"Whether you can learn depends on a lot of things."

"I'm a fast learner. I learned to track in two weeks. Peace said that was impressive."

"Tracking and magic are slightly different skillsets."

"Yeah, but the principle's the same, right? Pay attention, practice, don't give up." He broke off a piece of his ration bar and tossed it to Biscuit, who caught it midair.

"I just think it'd be cool. To be able to help people the way you guys do. Not just tracking bears, like, actually protecting people." I looked at him. Sixteen. Hunting bears for old ladies, scouting monster-infested fortresses with nothing but a bow and a dog. Talking about protecting people like he wasn't already doing it.

"We'll figure something out," I said. He grinned so wide his freckles rearranged. The service stairs wound upward through the fortress's guts, bypassing the shifting maze entirely. Through gaps in the walls, I caught glimpses of the main corridors, the same featureless hallways we'd been lost in, now visible from above and behind. We reached the end of the stairs and entered a room. Chris headed straight through it to the next corridor.

"The bugs are two rooms from here." We followed. Nothing seemed off about this room. Tiles, both on the floor and on the ceiling, lit up. What the— They exploded. Heat and shockwaves tore through the room. My shields automatically stretched to maximum, force still getting through, pushing me sideways, throwing me at the wall. Pain shot through me, a grunt escaping my lips. The blast killed Astarielle, instantly unsummoning her. Parts of Yukiko flew across the room. She got zeroed out.

Through the smoke and the ringing in my ears, I saw Yukiko. What was left of her. Her remains flickered, the emergency extraction kicking in, pulling her broken body out of the simulation before death became permanent. She'd make it. The system had her. Chris's head hit the wall next to me. The body in parts, scattered across the room. A chunk of a body covered by the brown-and-white fur, all that remained of Biscuit, landed near Chris's head. They didn't have a pod to extract them. My stomach lurched.

Something hot and acidic climbed my throat, and I swallowed it back down because I didn't have time. I didn't have time for any of what I was feeling. Henrik knelt on one knee in the room, surrounded by a shield bubble, blood flooding from the corners of his mouth. Liu stumbled on his legs, holding his left shoulder with his right hand, his left arm nowhere to be seen. Sarah held her shield with both hands, her back smashed into a wall. A black crystal flew into the room through the ceiling. Peace's crystal.

White beams fired from it, one at each of us. My shields blocked it, straining at the point of impact. The beam pierced Henrik's shields and his head, zeroing him out. Sarah's shield glowed, blocking it. Liu leaned sideways, dodging. Astarielle! Ashy! They both appeared in flashes of light. Astarielle instantly readied a spell. Ashy looked around.

"Oh, shit shit shit shit—" she started turning into the sword. The crystal fired five more beams. Sarah and I blocked. Liu dodged. Astarielle and Ashy got hit, instantly destabilized, and unsummoned. The crystal flew into Sarah. Energy exploded from it, throwing her through the wall. Liu turned with an open palm strike, releasing a wave of golden energy. Astarielle. Ashy. The crystal flew straight through Liu's attack and through his chest, zeroing him out.

As it did, it fired three more beams, one for me, two for my succubi. Once again, it eliminated them before they could do anything. It flew at me, directly at the chest. I summoned Astarielle and Ashy to my sides. The crystal beamed them out of existence the split second they materialized. It hit me in the chest. My shields absorbed the hit. Energy exploded from the crystal. A bit of pain shot through me, but the shields held, and the crystal bounced off, hovering to the center of the room.

Heels clapped on the floor. Peace slowly walked in. Absolutely unbothered, pristine in her suit-style pants and pumps, white shirt, and heavy, leather coat draped over her shoulders. Her face looked serene, calm, as if nothing was happening. She stepped over Chris's body parts without looking down.

"We seem to be in an interesting predicament. The shard cannot seem to pierce your shields, but your summons cannot stay up for long enough to do anything. We might have to call this a draw." I glared at her. My jaw hurt from clenching.

"What the fuck are you doing?" She walked to the debris inside the room. She ducked, picking up the beacon Sarah carried.

"Collecting artifacts, one might say."

"How could you do this to Chris? He saw you as a mother. He trusted you. He loved you." Peace straightened, the beacon in her hand.

"To him, I was the mother he never met. To me, he was but a pleasant distraction to pass the time until the climbers appear. Now that you are here, I have no further use for distractions." She raised her hand. The black crystal flew above her shoulder. A beam of white light descended from above, enveloping both Peace and her crystal. I looked up. A humongous steel snake, obviously the overseer of this floor, had its mouth open, emitting the white beam.

Peace offered me a faint smile before she vanished in the light.

"May you find peace."