Chapter 958: A Lot Harder Than Anticipated

Ilyin found his passage up the elevator shaft discomforting, lifted as if by a disembodied hand. It didn’t help that, to grab him, Asano had suppressed Ilyin’s aura first. Reaching the surface, he passed through the hole his team had jackhammered to access the elevator shaft. It was in a warehouse that had been built right over the bunker system.

They had cleared some space on first arriving in the warehouse, and more room had been made now. Shelves stacked with construction materials meant little to gold-rank strength, and several gold-rankers were present. Normally that would have set Ilyin on edge, but he had bigger issues to deal with today.

If the gold rankers wanted to make Ilyin’s life hard, all they would have to do was push out with their powerful auras. In Ilyin’s experience, gold-rankers liked to throw their weight around, with auras being a favourite way to do that. This group had theirs retracted, leaving just enough to announce their presence. These auras were also smooth in a way he wasn’t used to. Ilyin focused on one gold ranker, kneeling over Team One.

“You a healer?” he asked the man.

“Yeah,” the man said. “You their commander?”

His no-nonsense tone and failure to look up was comforting to Ilyin. He’d met combat medics before, and the sense of familiarity at the attitude was a comfort on a day that had gone to hell eight different ways.

“I am,” Ilyin said.

“Neil Davone,” the man introduced himself. “Your people will be alright, but the vampires left them with a lot of the lesser vampirism curse. Jason cleaned it out before it took hold and turned them, but you’re looking at real recovery time here, whatever magic you use.”

“Thank you.”

***

The concrete storage room lit up as Travis entered, a glow stone floating over his head. His escort, Humphrey, nodded to Jason. Aside from the three men, the only things in the room were a large crate and some ominous stains that glistened in the light. They mostly covered the floor, but also painted sections of the walls and ceiling. Travis gave them a leery glance as he moved to the crate. The wood gave way to his silver-rank strength without resistance as he tore the crate to pieces, casually tossing them aside to look at the contents.

“Yeah, this is a nuke,” he said. “Some minimal magical enhancement, but inexpertly done, and some time ago at that. Too faded to offer any measurable performance increase at this stage.”

“Does that matter?” Jason asked. “We’re talking about a nuclear weapon.”

“It matters,” Travis said. “Setting off a conventional nuke deep underground, in a magically reinforced bunker, will do massive damage with a nasty radioactive aftermath. But a magically enhanced nuke, going off on the surface? It’s the difference between Melbourne being devastated, and Melbourne being gone.”

Jason nodded.

“Neither is a great option, but I take your point. It’s in our hands now, though, so we won’t let either of those scenarios happen.”

“Do you want me to destroy it? Or you could feed it to your cloud flask.” Travis asked.

“Disable it but leave it intact. Anna wants me to hand it over to the Australian government.”

“Aren’t they the ones who sent mercenaries down here in the first place?” Humphrey asked.

“It’s complicated,” Jason said. “Anna thinks that the Prime Minister won’t last after this, and helping the government save face will improve relations with whoever replaces him. So, leave something to hand over, but make sure it isn’t operable, and never will be again.”

“I can do that,” Travis said. “One of my abilities lets me play around with material for creating weapons. I can render the fissile material inert.”

“Thanks. Humphrey, keep an eye on him while…”

They all turned as Colin entered in his blood clone form, looking like a red-eyed Jason. There were four of him. Below diamond rank, he couldn’t permanently expand his biomass, but he could do so temporarily, if he fed on enough life energy. At gold-rank, that that temporary lasted longer than before, and consuming a vampire lord had loaded his reserves nicely.

Jason had sent Colin and his extra bodies on the hunt through the complex. Now they returned, each carrying bodies slumped over their shoulders. Colin lowered them to the ground, setting them out in a line.

“There are people here,” he said. “A lot of people.”

Jason, Travis and Humphrey came over observe the corpses.

“They look homeless,” Jason said. “There are a lot of them down here, you say? I can sense something out there, but it’s unclear. I certainly didn’t pick up on a bunch of homeless people.”

“They had something inside them,” Colin said. “It was controlling them, making them stronger.”

“Sounds like when the Builder shoved clockwork cores in people,” Humphrey said. “Make them stronger and turned them into unwilling slaves.”

“I can feel the thing inside them, if I get close,” Colin said. “I can leech it out of them. Devour it. That’s what I did to these people. They died, but not immediately. If we had a healer, maybe they could save them.”

Jason looked up from the corpses and put a hand on Colin’s shoulder.

“You really are a good boy.”

Colin’s bashful smile looked odd when he had Jason’s face.

“I’ll fetch Neil down here,” Humphrey said.

“I’ll bring the others from the ship,” Jason said. “Just the team is fine if we’re hunting vampires in the dark, but if there’s a bunch of puppeteered victims we can potentially save, we’ll want all hands on deck. Especially the healers.”

***

The bodies had been moved from the storage chamber with the nuclear weapon to the large central chamber of the complex. Three of the corpses had been placed inside ritual circles and complex patterns of light were now floating over them. The patterns meant nothing to Jason, but there was a group of magical healers peering at them, muttering between themselves. Along with Carlos and Neil were Arabelle Remore, Claire Adeah, from Rick Geller’s team, and Sigrid Volaire, who was both Prince Valdis’ team healer and wife.

Their teams were present as well, but not yet moving out. Until they knew if the enemies Colin reported were victims that could potentially be saved, they didn’t want to move into the deeper reaches of the complex. The entrances were being watched by Humphrey’s summons, who looked like human-sized golems made of bone, garbed in ornate blue and gold armour.

At gold rank, Humphrey’s Spartoi power could call up a hundred of the dragon tooth warriors. They weren’t up to the task of defeating an elite adventurer of their rank, but were perfect for battling enemy minions or when a large security force was required. Right now, they were securing the room against potential intrusion and patrolling nearby tunnels and chambers. It allowed the adventurers to gather and discuss without needing to watch the entrances, while waiting for the healers to be done. Once they were, Carlos gathered everyone together.

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“It would appear that Colin’s postulation is accurate,” he explained. “It seems we’re dealing with some kind of monster or other entity that can implant victims with organic material that controls them and floods them with power. Think of it like being affected by a spirit coin for an extended period, giving them a temporary false rank.”

“As you’d imagine,” Neil said, picking up the explanation, “that is very bad for you. The good news is, it looks like these are normal-rank people. As with using spirit coins, the less magic you have of your own, the less severe the conflict between it and the introduced magic. Our best estimate is that there are a few more hours before whatever has happened to these people will kill them outright.”

“Our recommendation is to split into four groups,” Carlos said. “We have four teams here, and Colin has four bodies right now. Having Colin extract whatever this is from the victims will be critical to keeping them alive. Colin, how long can you maintain those extra bodies?”

“So long as I can feed on more of the things implanted in these people, then indefinitely.”

“Then let’s get going,” Carlos said. “I’ll set up a triage station here, using the dragon tooth warriors to secure our foothold in the complex.”