DD 302 Ch 38

We prowled down the hallway, only to pause as Crimson held up a hand and used [Eyes of Wisdom] to scout ahead. I used the moment to pull out my CID and check in with Penny.

Is everything alright? I asked.

We are all fine and safe. There have been no Threadspawn since you left. Penny’s message came back instantly.

Though we have barred the door for what little good that will do.

It sounded like it had been her idea, at least with a response like that.

I chuckled, only to get a sharp look from Crimson demanding I be quieter. I mimed zipping my lips.

“There’s a large number ahead,” Crimson said.

That caused me to stand up a little straighter and put my CID away. “How many is a large number?”

“At least two dozen.” She frowned. “Though the strange part is—they aren’t all Threadspawn. It looks like they’re forcing some of the captives to level inside the dungeon.”

“I thought the strength of the host didn’t matter. But… what if it does?” I scowled. That didn’t make any sense, until a thought hit me. 

“What do you mean?” Des asked.

“What if, even though they can boost the strength of the host, it still strains the host body? So they need stronger hosts?” I didn’t like that answer, but it made too much sense.

“That means there are some people down there we can rescue,” I said, coming to the next realization.

“Assuming they aren’t being controlled in some other way.” Crimson crossed her arms.

I couldn’t help but nod. We’d already encountered the doctor working under threat. It wasn’t a stretch to assume others were in the same situation.

“Alright,” I said brightly. “We’ll just convince them that what they’re doing is atrocious and they should stop.”

Crimson gave me a deadpan stare like she was asking whether I genuinely believed that would work.

“One can hope,” I muttered with a shrug. The other option was to slaughter them all.

“We can just revive them after.” Crimson’s tone, dry enough to start a fire, made it clear she didn’t agree. Crimson rarely believed talking would help, violence was usually her preferred grammar.

“I mean, they might be a little mad if we have to revive them. But it would be cleaner if we just plow through and treat everyone as an enemy.” Des said.

Crimson’s giant grin made it immediately clear which option she preferred. She even looked at Des like she might name her first child after her.

“Fine,” I conceded. “But only because we want this as clean as possible.”

Crimson bobbed her head eagerly, already itching to start murdering.

“Okay, let’s see the Threadspawn?” I asked, activating my own [Eyes of Wisdom]. The sight was not encouraging.

“There are a ton of them,” Crimson said, joining me in examining the scene.

At the entrance to the dungeon there were plenty of humans and human hosts working together. The threadspawn were standing protectively near some of the non-infected humans. While deeper in I could see even more.

“Why?” I muttered. “What makes helping these humans level so important?”

“Well, if it’s the host thing,” Des said, pushing my idea further. “So they need stronger hosts for whatever reason,” she continued. “They took over this facility. They’re acquiring more hosts. And the ones they aren’t using yet? They’re grinding them for levels.”

It seemed absurd. But [Eyes of Wisdom] didn’t lie and that seemed the most plausible reason for what it was showing me.

“Let me go in,” I said. “All of them we take out as quickly as possible. Silently if we can. Once we’re spotted, we focus on the Threadspawn. We assume the uninfected won’t be aggressive at first.”

Crimson nodded. “If they don’t get out of my way, though, I’m still bowling them over.”

I sighed. “Fine, Crimson. Anyone gets in your way, deal with them however you wish.”

“Enough talking. More skull-cracking,” Crimson declared, moving forward and forcing both me and Des to follow.

I activated [Camouflage], becoming a faint shimmer in the air. It wasn’t true invisibility, just an enhancer for all the stealth techniques my grandfather had drilled into me by helping me blend into my surroundings.

Thankfully, the threadspawn were overconfident in their dominance of the facility and weren’t even guarding the dungeon entrance.

I slipped up behind the first figure I could reach. My blade did the real work, silencing him with a swift slash across the neck.

Crimson was right behind me. Her whip, curiously quiet, lashed across the space and coiled around the neck of one of the Threadspawn. With a hard jerk, he crossed the entire distance back over to us, where Crimson’s blade split him in half from head to groin.

Des stared at the mess before her and sighed before she ripped open a portal around the corner and began hauling our two kills through it. “I want both of you to know that I get a lot of credit for being the one doing the disposing.”

I flashed Des a grin. “All the credit. In fact.”

“Damn right,” she said, and kept working.

Crimson and I were working swiftly in tandem. It didn’t take long for us to need to rely on each other, attacking in pairs and cutting down Threadspawn before they could even let out a yelp. For as powerful as some of the Threadspawn appeared to be, they were fairly inattentive to their surroundings. Perhaps you grew less concerned about threats when you could simply revive your hosts as easily as they could.

Of course, our stealth was bound to be foiled sooner or later as we pushed deeper into the first floor of the dungeon.

Crimson’s whip jerked one back.

Yet, despite the leather coils cinched tight around his throat he reached up, grasped the whip, and managed to struggle out a scream. “Help! Intruders!”

Apparently he was strong enough that Crimson’s whip hadn’t fully crushed his airway.

At his shout, no fewer than a dozen Threadspawn spun around, rushing us with unnatural agility, throwing their host bodies forward in a kind of reckless lean no normal person would ever use while running.

The first Threadspawn reached us and let out a strange, unnatural screech, like its voice was coming from somewhere other than its throat.

Crimson’s whip turned that one into paste before she spun, letting the coils spiral outward and send most of the charging Threadspawn flying.

Naturally, they had all rushed her. My Camouflage kept me well enough hidden that they hadn’t immediately targeted me, and I used that to my advantage, sliding behind several Threadspawn who had begun casting spells and sinking daggers into unsuspecting necks.

One after another, the battle was brief. Between Crimson’s whip and my ambush, their reckless charge turned into a bloody massacre. Most of these threadspawn were low level adventurer hosts and while they might be stronger with the Threadspawn in them, they were squishy for my blades.

“Well, that was wonderful,” Crimson said, dusting off her hands.

Des looked absolutely dumbstruck at the carnage. “Wait. Do I have to clean all this up now?”

I stared dumbly at the ground as one of them tried to revive.

Crimson’s whip snapped down and killed him again before he fully regained awareness.

Des folded her arms waiting for an answer as more blood splattered.

“Yes… Please?” I hesitated.

Des scoffed and opened another portal. “Don’t think you get to wiggle out of helping,” she warned, glancing over her shoulder.

Crimson immediately began whistling and walking away like she hadn’t heard a word.

I scowled at her back.

Only for her to peek over her shoulder with a bright smile and scurry off like a child about to be scolded.

I was just about to sigh and get to work moving corpses when a boom shook the dungeon.

Crimson snapped back to us as several powerful figures appeared from the stairway to the 2nd floor.

One was a massive Orkai, bigger than any I typically saw among the already large green race. He glared at me with eyes full of baleful hate, far different from the usual disinterested gaze of Threadspawn.

“You,” he said, pointing a thick finger at me like an accusation.

I pointed at myself, then checked over my shoulder. “Me? What’d I do? And how do you even know who I am?”

“You killed my—” He opened his mouth and let out a strange screeching noise that sounded like it was coming directly from the Threadspawn and not the Orkai’s own voice box.

I blinked. “And… what is that?”

“My—!” he screeched again, which clarified nothing.

“All right, well I’m certain they were a nuisance. But that means nothing to me.” I blinked.

“It is so laborious to speak of it with universal language or even your crude human speech,” he hissed. “But it would be the equivalent of my mother’s sister’s uncle’s grandfather’s sister’s grandchild’s cousin twice removed.”

I blinked several times, my weapons limp in my hand from surprise. “And… you have a word for that?” This was the chattiest any Threadspawn had ever been with me and, admittedly, I was a little curious.

“Of course we do,” the Threadspawn scoffed. “Unlike humans, we have considerable affection for one another and place emphasis on our relations far beyond any paltry human association. Or demon, for that matter.”

“So the reason you’re upset,” I said slowly, “is because I killed them. And who exactly were they again?” Really I had no idea which threadspawn in my killing spree it might be, which posed a certain moral dilemma that I’d killed so many that I couldn’t be sure who they were talking about.

He screeched again, and I assumed he was correcting me for not using their word. “She was here on Earth spawning more of our kin to use your people as hosts. A great honor for your weak race.” he said.

“Oh,” I said in understanding. “She was the creepy one in the bathtub with all the worms. Makes sense.” I nodded along with the fakest smile of my life plastered on my face.

“Ha!” the Orkai-Threadspawn barked a laugh. “So you admit you killed my screech. Prepare to die!”

With that, he pulled out a battle-axe as massive as his body and shot forward.

Now, I wasn’t exactly an expert on judging Threadspawn strength but he moved aggressively enough that I had to assume he knew how to use that weapon.

I raised my blades to block, but at the last moment used Dodge to slip to the side instead, running my blade along his arm and slipping around behind him, trying to activate [Triple Breach].

However, he moved out of range just as it went off, and my ability barely scratched the hem of his shirt. He slipped out of reach and swung that axe with the kind of power that I knew would be too much for me to block.

So I did the only thing I could, using [Shadow Phase] to absorb whatever damage I was about to take, and going wholly on the offensive. I tried to strike him down and get more out of the exchange than I lost. Both of my blades punched into his chest before his axe caught me in the side, twisted me up, and threw me hard with a bone-shattering impact.

A whip snaked around my leg and pulled me away even as the Threadspawn tried to follow up with another ability.

“Not bad,” Crimson taunted, swishing her whip through the air as she deposited me behind her.

The Threadspawn seemed completely unfazed by her taunt and instead doggedly pursued me.

“Hey now, I don’t appreciate being ignored,” Crimson snapped, kicking at the Threadspawn. He blocked her strike with his massive axe, but at least it pushed him several feet to the right.

Only for half a dozen spells hailing from Des to slam into him from the other side.

Enough of those included curses that I gained marginally more room to work with as his speed slowed. Though I could feel one of my lungs was punctured and fairly certain I was going to be black and blue tomorrow.

“Ken!” Des shouted. “You need to fuck him up! He doesn’t hit that hard,” she added with a chuckle.

A portal opened beside her and Charlotte bounced out, already casting a heal on me, while Penny came out behind her spraying frost on the Threadspawn and doing her best to get its attention.

Suddenly, the Orkai-Threadspawn, though powerful, seemed far less intimidating with my group behind me.

I followed up Des’s attack and Penny’s assault with my own, my blades dancing off the Threadspawn even as he spun around, swinging for the fences and trying to take me out. It seemed he had a particular grudge against me.

Even as his blade descended, Crimson got in the way, red lightning crackling off her skin as she met his axe with the stiletto of her heels. There was an explosive impact as the Orkai stumbled a few steps back, and Crimson tumbled through the air, landing in a sliding stop.

“Damn,” Des whistled from behind me.

I turned to scowl at her.

“What? That was a badass kick.” She looked at me as if daring me to refute it.

Of course, that would be silly.

“Down, girl,” I teased only to earn a smirk from her.

“I’ll try,” Des teased, “but no promises.”