Chương 25: Violet, Damp, and Rotten Luck

When I get back to NOIR, I don't want to hear the word 'tunnel' even as a joke." He murmured, letting the platinum revolver with its blade-and-spur-wrapped barrel hang at his side. The watch cast light into the gloomy corridor he had thrown himself into. Communications were cut. Lance was alone underground.

"It's no different from the tunnels used during the war." His eye noted the same features as the last tunnel: long wooden beams, nearly rotten, and numerous lanterns abandoned to rust.

"Probably a separate passage." His footsteps echoed in the silent corridor as he gathered as much calm and clarity as he could. He had tied the coat around his waist to keep it from getting in the way and had unbuttoned his shirt entirely, leaving himself exposed from neck to abdomen.

"I feel considerably more vulnerable in this than in anything else… The suits at Arden Ring were far more reassuring." His complaint echoed off the rock as he kept glancing at the sleeves swaying around his hips. These were civilian clothes, and although they were constructed with a Lambdite alloy, they were far closer to ordinary garments than to the extravagant, unnatural uniforms of the agency.

"I don't even have the equipment bag with me! Damn it." He cursed, then deflated a moment later. His pockets contained only a handful of emergency flares, a grenade Noel had given him, and one of Maverick's other creations.

"Since your beloved Supplicium is far too 'loud' for a public setting, I thought I'd give you a brand-new prototype!" The engineer's smiling expression, mixed with the absent-minded manner that had caused him countless tumbles, materialised in his memory.

"I have the unpleasant feeling he's using me as a test subject." He thought, pulling from his pocket a small black rectangle barely wider than his index finger. Frequency flowed into it, and it snapped open, taking the form of a long blade, slightly curved toward the tip and almost as long as his entire forearm. The violet-tinged metal produced a faint gleam, almost invisible in the light of the watch.

"It could certainly prove useful, once I work out how to make it function properly." He looked at the bracelet on his arm, which had been shifting restlessly ever since he had come down here." I never managed to make this thing work... Sometimes I really believe it has some kind of will of its own." Lance shook Lachesi, recalling how it merged with the revolver without him noticing.

"I genuinely don't want to use it, though… Monica seemed really worried." The forced manner in which he had been made to promise not to use it had left a definite impression on him, but Monica, despite being a rather singular individual, had never once contradicted herself when it came to protecting those under her charge." How long is this tunnel?! I've been talking to myself for nearly half an hour!!" He exclaimed, realising that the time shown on his watch had advanced by an incredible amount."

There's something ahead." A sudden chill ran through his spine. He stopped, watching the walls expand outward into a gigantic cavity of circular shape. The tone of the walls changed radically, shifting from that terracotta brown to a black shot through with unsettling violet veins. The air was extraordinarily cold, and for some obscure reason, Lance's skin prickled as though electrified. Unlike the corridor, the room was faintly lit by a violet light.

"The Frequency in here is going haywire." The flow inside the room was lurching erratically, as though excited by something." Is this really the same maze of tunnels Maliard described? I feel like it's way deeper than before." A drop hit his shoulder while he was thinking. The liquid was warm and foul, and his nerves began to freeze. He raised his gaze slowly toward the wall at his back. His pupils dilated with terror as he saw the pairs of violet eyes fixed on him.

An unpleasant, grating sound preceded the hiss of one of the creatures. A skull landed at Lance's feet, missing most of the frontal lobe. With horror, he noticed it still had a few shreds of blood and hair attached to it. The creatures descended from the wall, accompanied by the drip of blood along the same surfaces." Are these another kind of Helspawn?" The massive beasts slowly advanced, wearing remnants of lab coats and laboratory garments. One of the creatures still held an arm between its mechanical jaws.

Lance looked around, noting the cracks in the floor and ceiling, then cast a glance at his revolver.

"If I miss… The whole place collapses." He transformed Supplicium back into its necklace form and fastened it around his neck quickly. In one swift motion, he raised the tip of the blade against the beasts. The metal flickered for an instant with a violet light.

"Maverick called it Gladiolus, if I'm not mistaken…" He vanished from the Helspawn's sight, reappearing at their backs with the blade gripped in both hands.

"Let's see what I can do with this!" He smiled, cutting through the scaled back of one of his opponents. Incredibly, the blade's edge passed through the granite layer of skin and crystal as though it simply did not exist. The air hissed, followed by the dull sound of the creature's torso hitting the floor, still twitching. Several jets of dense, cold violet liquid splattered across Lance's face. The creature crumbled to dust as he wiped himself clean.

Even the blood began to smoke and vanish, slowly evaporating from every surface.

"Rest in peace." He murmured, raising the weapon to shoulder height and pointing it at the second creature. Before it could launch itself at him, he felt his shoulder compressed with force. The jaws of a third beast had driven themselves hard into his flesh, making him stagger. At the sight of that moment of weakness, the other Helspawn leapt on him too.

"You're not getting my arm again!" He drove Gladiolus into the ground and freed his hand. He seized the neck of the beast, the one chewing on his shoulder and lifted it forcefully into the air, its mouth still dripping with his blood. Lance's knuckles drove through its jawbone, shattering it in a spray of scales and crystals. He spun on his heel, seized the hilt of Gladiolus, and drove it directly through the heart of the last remaining creature.

It writhed desperately, trying to rake his face with nails sharp as razors. It lay still on the floor after Lance drew the blade carefully from its chest. Both vanished in columns of smoke and ash, leaving behind only crystals.

"Vergehen." The remains gathered on his palms and faded away. Skin and bone regenerated instantly, leaving only the torn sleeve still hanging. He ripped it away with irritation and threw it into the dust." These… were all members of the institute?" Only shredded lab coats and old blood-soaked badges remained on the ground. Lance quickly grasped the nature of the room's luminescence. At its centre, a gigantic crystal burned, reaching to the ceiling.

Several ramifications, resembling arms in their own right, extended from the back of the enormous, near-black stalactite.

"... And what the hell is that?" He approached slowly. The light grew stronger the closer he got, as though it had begun to pulse. Inside it, a nebula of faint violet sparks shifted, their colour identical to Gladiolus's blade. Lance stopped. He looked with disgusted astonishment at the source of those pulsations. Anchored to the crystal was a gelatinous, tentacled mass, something between an octopus and a jellyfish. Rhythmically, it seemed to draw the lights inside the crystal, growing brighter with each pull.

In place of the usual suckers, human arms and fingers were fused by the liquid secreted by the creature's viscous skin. He raised his gaze, trying to find some trace of humanity, but the only thing he could clearly perceive was a profound revulsion. The head, if it could be called that, was wrapped in a length of lab coats held together by slime. It had stopped drawing from the crystal and was watching Lance. It clung to the ceiling by a branching network of transparent tendrils.

The little of the face that emerged from the hood of garments and blood was the farthest thing from human: a face of molten bronze, the original eyes covered over, with voluminous protrusions at the sides that were supposed to approximate a mouth. The creature panted, spitting blood and thick violet mucus with every breath. Lance raised his hand to his mouth, fighting back the nausea in his throat. His breathing grew heavy under the pitiful gaze of that abomination.

"What are you..." It was something far too grotesque and raw to be the product of mere corruption. He snapped his head up and threw the necklace aside. Supplicium took shape in his fingers at once.

"I failed… I'm sorry." He whispered through his lips, raising the barrel of the weapon toward its face. The enormous creature did not move away. If anything, it seemed almost to open its multitude of arms, welcoming the mercy offered by that unfortunate young man.

"Goodbye… Find hope somewhere else." He said, before squeezing the trigger with full force. The full force of the weapon passed through his arm, followed by an enormous blast like a thunderclap. The barrel was heated, but now it was only an empty trunk, in the process of turning to ash. Before it even reached the ground, the creature had reduced itself to dust and smoke, dissolving into the air. Lance knelt before the crystal and began digging in the earth in search of as many mementoes as he could find.

Badges, coat fragments, pins, necklaces. He didn't care. To find any memory of them, he would have dug all day and perhaps beyond.

"This… Is madness… This can't be real." He repeated, laying stones and crystal fragments over the remains. It was rudimentary, but it was the only way to build a memorial in that unknown pit of the earth.

"How many people will be forgotten? How many memories will never leave this place?" He added another stone to the grave, pressing in shreds of coats and uniforms.

"Is this really the world I have been living in?" He asked himself, knowing the answer already. He had been torn apart in a place like this, and here he was, burying victims who had suffered the same fate. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"All of this madness… I'll carry it. Every last piece of it." He clenched his fists and rose slowly from the ground.

"I will sacrifice myself alone so that the people I love can live." That was the promise he made toward himself, pressing his fist hard against his chest and listening to his own heartbeat.

"Jude… She will live in this world. I'll do everything possible to keep her safe." Footsteps at his back pulled him from his thoughts. He turned slowly, interrupted by an icy shiver at his nape. Beside him, the same figure he had had the misfortune of observing in his visions reappeared. Water coiled around his ankles, dragging him into terror.

"You again?!" The woman, wrapped in the same white robe, fitted with a golden hood, bowed before the grave. She looked at the stone-and-crystal memorial for a moment with her head lowered. Her white fingers disappeared inside her robe and emerged with a rose of deep, vivid black. She laid it at the base and turned toward Lance without rising from the ground. Her face still covered by darkness, but for some obscure reason, in Lance's eyes, the image of a smile was beginning to form, hidden behind that veil.

She began to extend her arms toward him, trying to reach him. Lance raised his weapon against her at once. In a surge of fear and anger, he fired two shots. The wall and the ground fractured with force. The water vanished from under his feet, leaving only the sound of falling rock to keep him anchored to that atmosphere. He was gasping, hungry for air. His arm had absorbed three shots from his revolver, but it trembled by instinct, driven by some primordial form of fear. The unknown before him terrified him.

"Damn it." He stamped the ground hard and arranged the grave one last time. He took a step toward the exit. Then the alarm seized him again without warning. All at once, the earth began to tremble and was ripped apart with fury. An enormous blade-shaped limb drove itself into the ground. A black, gelatinous body emerged from the opening. It was in every way a gigantic arachnid, except for the pair of human torsos at the top of its back.

They writhed and shook their arms, trailing their lips with a silky drool" Is there really a singularity down here?!" It was the only thing Lance could murmur from the depths of his dismay. He seized his blade with extraordinary force and took his pistol in the other hand. The spider noticed him, rattling its chitin limbs on the ground, scattering darts of rock throughout the chamber. It jumped toward him, trying to flatten him under its weight.

The creature's blades sparked on impact, trembling with surprise at the absence of blood on the ground.

"Up here!" Lance shouted from the air above the spider, his legs wreathed in a faint glow of white and black sparks. He pointed the revolver at one of the creature's violet eyes and fired a single shot. The recoil threw him against the wall with great force. The spider swiped its legs across its own face, dripping blood, only for the wound to regenerate almost immediately.

"The armour is thicker than expected… I can't hit the nucleus from here." He realised, hanging from the wall by the extraordinary grip of Gladiolus." Judging by the size and overall frequency, I guess this thing is around the lower end of the Monstrum classification..." Lost in thought, he barely noticed the enormous chitin-and-iron blade that had just grazed his face. One of the creature's legs had shot toward him with lightning speed.

Lance drove his arm into the ground, seized Gladiolus with force and drove it through the thin membranes between flesh and iron in the limb. Blood ran freely, and he used the opening to launch himself directly at the creature. His blade's edge severed the leg entirely as he slid closer, cutting the limb completely off. The spider struck him from above with enormous force, slamming him into the ground. He squeezed the exoskeleton tight in his grip, hard enough to force the pulp out from the extremities.

The beast snapped another limb through the air, approaching dangerously close to Lance's neck. His blade met the creature's blade with a shower of sparks. His grip on the hilt held firm, yet he kept being pushed sideways. His feet cut furrows in the ground, raising an enormous cloud of dust.

"Move… Move!!" With force, he threw the spider's leg aside, severing it precisely in half. He seized Gladiolus with even greater vigour and swung it through the swarm of the beast's strikes. His arm was barely visible in the motion, present only in the cluster of sparks. Slowly, he gained ground, pushing the creature steadily back. The hissing intensified, buried under the sound of the slashes. Another leg fell, landing next to Lance as he pressed the assault. His eyes flared gold.

The spider charged directly, closing its mandibles around Lance, who was trying with force to cut free with his blade, wedging it between himself and the sharpened jaw. A silky thread began wrapping itself around him rapidly.

"LET GO!" A white light wrapped his knuckles, which brutally tore away one of the pincers. His nails dug through its skull as he launched himself onto its back. He leapt toward the pair of torsos and severed them with his blade. Even cut free, they continued to endure Lance's assault. He drove his blade into the back, carving with brutal precision through flesh and outer armour until he could see the bluish innards. He aimed and fired a single shot. The nucleus was wiped out, along with the rest of the creature.

The flesh flaked, followed by a mighty column of smoke and boiling organs. The creature collapsed to the ground, sinking into the ground. Lance took a breath, quickly descending, realising that he was covered in cuts and injuries all over his now almost-clothed body.

"I'm sorry... You deserve rest, too." He smiled, walking away from the smoking corpse. He was close to leaving, but another eerie presence gripped his heart. He didn't have time to become aware of it before he found part of his side removed, in a flash.

"What?" He climbed up, holding back the excruciating pain, the figure that had appeared behind him. A humanoid, with pincers instead of a face, covered entirely in dark scales and equipped with an eerie pair of thin, transparent wings. His sharp claws assaulted him, finding themselves amputated by Gladiolus, which had already recovered. The metal and the growth on the fingers met, pushing against each other. They both gave up for a moment, only to go face-to-face again.

They snapped along the walls, shattering them further. Their figures mingled with each other, leaving ruts and gaps in the ground. The sound of iron echoed across the huge room, followed by a powerful vibration. The humanoid had begun to soar through the air, hurling stingers and nails in all directions. Lance found himself impaled in several parts, snatching them off with his sword, swinging it in the midst of the dart storm.

The same white sparks reappeared as Lance sprinted into the burst, burning the ground beneath him. He found himself under the wasp, looking at it for a second, before splashing into the air.

"Now you go down…" The instep of his foot crashed forcefully into the creature's neck, throwing it to the ground with immense power. Without wasting time, he channelled as much energy as possible under his legs, bursting a small Frequency bubble. He slipped on the ground, bypassing the humanoid, which had risen with a hole in its right wing.

"It ends here and…" He channelled all his energy to the maximum, leaping against him with the blade facing downwards, so much so that he scratched the tip. The exchange happened in an instant. Lance found his hand pierced by his claws, unable to move. The vespoid's jaws snapped, perhaps in happiness. Lance reciprocated warmly, his eyes completely golden. The blood on his palm became a sphere of quills, which severed the creature's claw, leaving it groggy enough to deliver a final blow.

"... NOW!" His blade cut his trunk in two, exposing the core near his sternum. He swung Supplicium between his fingers to explode another cartridge case. The core was wiped out, along with the rest of the creature.

"I managed to do it... My blood as a weapon..." Lance slumped to the ground, exhausted and exasperated. Supplicium returned to its normal form and rehung itself around his neck while Gladiolus shrank back to its small rectangle.

"How do I explain this to Jeanne and the others?" He asked himself, pushing himself up and dragging toward the exit, picking up a fragment of Lambdite along the way.

"Excellent performance. Bien joué, bien joué, Lance Klint." A voice called to him from the tunnel, with a slow round of applause. The same man he had chased all the way down here was standing in front of him. Malcolm van Jir.

"Malcolm… You." He called out, his voice practically a growl.

"Come now... It was only a small examination." He smiled, in that classically flat and hollow tone of his. His suit was dropped to the floor, vanishing before it touched the ground. Now he wore only an off-white shirt, leaving his tremendously muscular forearms exposed.

"It was a test for Sober's creations. Nothing to take offence at." He drew steadily closer, pointing toward the crystal.

"Sober?" Lance demanded, tightening his grip on his blade in compressed form.

"One of my subordinates. A rather eccentric scientist… At least he sees his work through to completion." He replied, his pupils fixed on Lance's face, motionless.

"This, for you… Is it just some sick method of conducting your experiments?!" Lance shouted, spitting at the ground near Malcolm's feet, who continued to stare at him with an expression of inhuman amusement.

"ARE THESE PEOPLE'S LIVES GENUINELY THAT WORTHLESS TO YOU?!" He began moving toward him, Gladiolus snapping open in his hand, only to feel himself stopped by a horrible sense of defeat. Malcolm didn't reply, laughing softly, covering his mouth with the back of his hand in a slow, mechanical gesture. Even in that moment, his manner of moving seemed barely human.

"You sound just like Maverick… Factory copy." He uncovered his face, that trace of a smile still on his lips. Lance went silent, unable to find words before that unsettling, ruinous figure. His fury was being displaced by something closer to terror.

"Oh, don't worry. He has nothing to do with you… We were only fellow soldiers in the war." He answered the question Lance had been about to ask.

"To answer your question... I don't value human lives above any other plant or animal. All are subject to calamity, all are destined to break. My client and I have agreed on a controlled sacrifice." The reply arrived with a coldness that froze the blood in the boy, who stopped looking at him altogether.

"Oh, I know you'd like to learn about our business associate… But I'm afraid that's classified information." The air grew heavy and unbearable, wrapped in the nefarious, unsettling aura of Malcolm himself, watching Lance wilt.

"I'd like to ask you some questions, Lance Klint… I hope you'll be willing to answer them." He smiled before a dark sphere appeared in his palm.