DD 302 Ch 16

The announcer walked with a smirk on his face. “I had known you were going to kick his teeth in, but that was even more fantastic than I expected.” He grabbed his jacket lapel with both hands, puffing himself up. “You really outdid yourself, boy.”

“Yeah, the level difference wasn't doing your people any favors,” Penny said conversationally as we went past the kitchen, where chefs were working with a pointed disregard for the bloody body I was dragging through their workspace.

I was fairly certain this was some sort of health code violation, not that anyone was concerned about that here.

We came out the other side into a hallway that was suddenly filled with a dozen threadspawn–infected adventurers, all deadpanned but glowering like they were ready to take a piece out of me.

“Director Ametto has been impatient,” Penny spoke cautiously, and her words made the announcer’s eyes flicker with uncertainty. But the words weren’t for him.

I spun around and landed a punch squarely on his chin. He was not as tough as I had hoped; his neck spun further than I expected as it cracked and he went down in a dead heap. His men pounced on me a second later.

My blades were out and ready before they got their chance. My pair of daggers flashed as I slashed through the hamstrings on half of them, and by the time Penny chilled the rest into shivering, icy messes, it was honestly anticlimactic how easy the threadspawn threat was to remove.

The announcer’s neck twitched back to life and he tried to sit up, only for me to put a dagger across his throat while another plucked several of his tendons until he hung like a limp marionette.

As I picked him up by the scruff of his neck I smiled at him. “Do me a favor and don't scream.” I said as I stuffed his tie in his mouth before he could even try. Then I began dragging him and his fighters to a freight elevator, of course making an even greater bloody mess in the process.

“What are you doing?” he managed around the gag, his disdain only moderately convincing as he sputtered. “You participated tonight.”

I decided not to give the game up just yet. There was no telling what he’d resort to if I told them I knew they were threadspawn. Until then, it seemed they were content to continue pretending to be human. “Using adventurers like this is illegal and, quite frankly, disgusting.”

We got them all in the freight elevator and brought it down to basement two, where Director Ametto was waiting, tapping her healed foot while two security personnel from the building tried to get her to leave.

The woman wore a tight blouse and pencil skirt with a pair of glasses that scrolled text in front of her eyes while she waited. She was a consummate professional.

The guards trying to get her to leave were worthless in the face of her authority. She completely ignored them as she stood waiting in the garage.

“Ah, there he is, finally,” she said, giving me an exhausted look and waving forward.

Several high-level adventurers rushed out of a van and into the freight elevator, snatching up the frozen and disabled bodies we had left inside.

The security guards grew even more concerned, jumping in front of me and trying to stop what I was doing.

I smiled as politely as the situation allowed. “You'll forgive me if I ask politely once for you to get your hands off of me. After that, should they remain, I will simply remove them.”

“You cannot kidnap people,” one of them protested.

I knew he was just doing his job, so I wasn't too harsh. I grabbed his fingers and bent them backward, away from my clothing. He had no problem suddenly getting the other one off me without my help.

“Wonderful.” I straightened my jacket that I’d avoided getting blood on during the fight. I didn’t need the guards to ruffle it. “Director, I assume you can handle it from here. I need to get back upstairs before I am missed too dearly.”

“You simply can't--” The two guards were trying to block the director, only for her to smile saccharine sweet at both of them.

“That is where you two are desperately incorrect. I can and will do whatever I want,” she said with a chuckle as she simply pressed past both of them.

One of them tried to put a hand on her, only for a man with long greasy hair to appear like a flash and simply snap the man's arm as if it was a dried-out twig before vanishing again. I recognized Selene’s father, who was not in the best mental state. I noted that this man was another reason to interact less with the director. I did not need her father getting the wrong idea.

“Yes, I've got it from here, Ken. Please return to your party upstairs, though do think about inviting my daughter sometime in the future. Unfortunately that girl can, at times, wear her heart on her sleeve.” The director shook her head sadly, and it would have been much easier to take her seriously if there wasn't a man screaming on the floor in front of her. Perhaps that sent a very different message than she ultimately wanted.

“I'll think about it, but I am unfortunately incredibly busy.” I tried to wiggle my way out of any commitment.

The director clicked her tongue. “Shoo, back to your party.” She waved me away as the guards hunched over the injured one protectively while scowling at the director's back.

If she minded the glares, she didn't show any discomfort. She simply walked away, her men dragging the bodies behind them with as much care and concern as they would a bundle of trash bags.

I tried not to think about what came next, but it did jump into my mind that these people would end up being experimented on. I tried to remind myself it was for a good cause and would likely save others in the future.

Right now they were simply threadspawn wearing human bodies and actively endangering myself and so many people in the dungeon. Even if they looked human and perhaps the hosts could be saved, they were the enemy in the present moment.

I turned back to the elevator, straightening my suit and hitting the button for the ballroom floor again. Hopefully I could make it up there without getting my shoes too covered in blood.

“Do you think we did the right thing?” Penny asked me as the service elevator clanked and rose up through the floors. She’d stayed back to keep it from going anywhere.

“Honestly, I have no clue,” I said, turning to Penny and kissing her cheek. “But I think as long as we at least stay concerned, then that's something. Maybe it would be good for us to double-check on the UG and their plans for these people. If nothing else, then to give us some peace of mind that we aren't the bad guys.”

Penny nodded along as the elevator dinged, heading back up to the top floor. When we reached the floor, I plastered a smile on my face as I stepped off and scanned the floor for any more threadspawn with [Eyes of Wisdom]. Thankfully, there were no more I needed to take care of, at least here at the party.

This encounter had given me thoughts as to what I should do with the rest of the time I had while we were on this media tour. Perhaps I should be exercising my abilities a little more.

***

My group was all back at the hotel, having managed to escape hours of socializing later. The only one missing was Bellaire who went off to track down Director Ametto.

“Human parties are weird,” Felin said, plopping down on the couch and immediately half-burrowing herself in the pile of my dirty clothing. “The Nekorian parties are much better,” she insisted. “People come in, you feed them good food, you make bonfires, and dance.”

Misha pointed at Felin. “Honestly, that sounds like a much better party than what we just went through.”

“All human parties are not like that,” Penny said quickly, before they got the wrong idea. “That was a very strange party for us as well.”

“But the real question is, you got them?” Des pointedly asked me after having downplayed the issue all night.

“I got them,” I confirmed.

And Des pumped her fist in the air. “So maybe we should celebrate?” She bounced her eyebrows, and I knew exactly how she wanted to celebrate. Des had a very common theme in the way she liked to celebrate.

“Down girl,” I teased. “No. I don't feel much like celebrating after that.”

“Don’t let them completely ruin your mood,” Des urged, pouting as she leaned over the counter. Damn she was tempting.

“Kind of a little hard, Des. That was disturbing, to say the least, not to mention that the threadspawn has me seriously bothered.” I told her.

Misha perked up on that. “Why? Because they have clearly invaded your people and are going to continue to invade and enslave your people into mindless hosts? I guess that's reason enough to be in a bad mood.”

“More than enough, if you ask me.” I gave the rambling Whaleryn a scathing look. “No, what I'm mostly thinking about is how I can hunt threadspawn.”

I blinked and activated [Eyes of Wisdom]. They glowed, and I could use them to track threadspawn all around Earth if I wanted. But more than anything, if they had invaded the wealthy here, they could do quite a bit of damage. And as an adventurer who dove deep within the dungeon, I was feeling some responsibility to stop them from getting a stronghold on human society.

“Well, whatever it is you want to do, I have your back.” Penny said, drawing her sword out of her CID and resting it point-down in front of her. Even in her dress she still looked statuesque.

“Well, thank you for the vote of confidence, Penny. I'm not entirely sure what we are going to do yet, but I don't think I'm willing to sit still, not with this threat so evidently thrust before me.” I told her.

Several of the other ladies in the room nodded along, which at least made me feel like I wasn't going crazy.

“What can we do?” Des asked. “Go around assassinating people?”

I gave her a guilty smile because that may have been exactly what I was considering.

“Assassination?” the Whaleryn gasped. I remembered then that her people were pacifists, or at least as pacifist as was possible when diving the dungeon.

“I would think of it as, ” I hedged. “More like taking care of escaped dungeon monsters, if you ask me.”

The Whaleryn paused to consider my words for a moment before she gave in and nodded. “Right, your average person here on Earth can't deal with this. At least not on their own.”

“Correct, and I have the ability to track down the threadspawn.” I tapped the corner of my eyes. “If I have the means and the ability to solve a problem, it feels like I should go ahead and resolve it on my own.”

Misha cleared her throat and nodded, suddenly finding her feet far more interesting than her rebuttal.

“Well, if you want to hunt them down, Ken, I suppose we could do that easily enough,” Des shrugged. “It's not even really about the challenge of finding them or dealing with them, it's more about the challenge of moving around the city. It's not like you have portals that you can pop open and jump around to all the locations.”

I shrugged. “Then we'll just have to figure that out. And I do have portals I can jump around with some. It just has to be rooftop to rooftop within my line of sight. Which is better than physically jumping between the buildings.”

“But you're going to go assassinate people?” Penny asked.

“Well, I suppose we're not actually killing them. Penny, if I knock them out, can you freeze them so we can drop them like the rest? I'll probably call the UG to get more space prepared wherever they are putting the others.” I spoke with the air of someone who aimed to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

“Oh, Ken, we might get in a decent amount of trouble,” Des teased. “Hopefully you all don't mind getting dragged into it.” She left unsaid that she was behind me the whole way.

I looked around the room at some of the more cautious members ready to sell it only for Charlotte to raise her hand.

“I’ll come along and make sure no one we don’t want winds up permanently dead. Give me a few minutes to get snacks ready.” She requested.

“The snacks sounded great. With that, let’s turn back to the task at hand.” I focused on the group which included a half asleep Felin and a slightly reluctant Penny.

Misha raised her hand, “How strong are these people?”

“Not that strong.” Des answered. “But they might have some decent security.”

“We can mow down any security they might bring to bear. Unless one of them has Crimson on call, I doubt we’ll struggle with them.” I said, only to get a chuckle from a few in the group that Crimson would let anyone have her on call like that. “Keeping them locked down might be the harder part.”

“I guess I will come.” Misha said. “I can petrify people and encase them in stone, which might be an effective way to deal with this issue.”

“Thank you for your help, Misha. I know this is not the easiest thing for you.” I told her genuinely.

She waved a hand. “It's not about attacking people or kidnapping them. It's about dealing with the threats from these threadspawn, even if that means being a little aggressive,” she said with a look of consternation, like she was struggling internally even on that simple statement. “Now, what's the plan?” Misha said slowly.

I smiled and cleared the counter off as Charlotte came out of the kitchen with a tray of chopped vegetables that Bun-bun pounced on and covered in hair before we could get anything. “Well, the first part is to plan.”

***

Five adventurers turned as a red streak passed them by, only for it to stop next to them with glowing blue eyes.

“Appologies.” Crimson moved in a flash, striking them hard enough to cut off blood flow to their brains for a minute. She had a portal open a moment later and used the toe of her shoe to kick each of them through.

“Another batch?” A guard asked, standing relaxed to the side. He was high enough of a level that most people wouldn’t be able to make it a step before he had them on the floor.

Crimson shrugged, as if she couldn't hear him. Then she pointed to the headphones that were currently blaring heavy metal. It felt appropriate for this work. Crimson disliked being the UG’s dog, but in this instance, it needed to be done and having their support in containing them all was an opportunity for Crimson to clean up a threat to her people.

He chuckled and shook his head. “Damn. You’re fucking cold.”

Crimson knew that was intended to get her to break her silence. She didn't like what she was doing. But it was important. She needed to get this done. She needed to find a solution to the threadspawn threat before someone she cared about had a worm in them.

“You don’t need me to tell you where they go.” The guard hit something in his pocket and the massive metal door behind him slid open. He didn’t move like he was going to help at all.

Crimson grunted and grabbed each of the bodies’ hands, hauling the five through the door. It was a small mercy that the ground was smooth.

Crimson walked into what looked like a school nurse's station and set them down gently.

A gruff healer, who looked like he hadn't slept in weeks, meandered in. “Infected?” He asked with a wheezing cough.

“Yeah. These two.” Crimson pointed at two of the five. “The other three are collateral.”

He rubbed his eyes and checked his CID.

Crimson leaned over the table, smacking a hand down to get his attention. “Three not infected.” She pointed to each of them slowly to make sure he got the idea.

“Shit. I, yeah. Not infected,” he said to himself and shuffled about to get some colored tags and put on each of them. “We’ll take them and make sure they are comfortable until this is over.”

To keep panic from flooding the news, instructions had been to take the whole party and release them later once the research was done.

“Are you making any progress?” Crimson was getting tired of this game. They had tried healing the hosts, removing disease and poison, all kinds of methods. Heck, someone had even used a ‘remove parasite’ ability, but that hadn’t worked either.

Apparently, these Threadspawn were very good at mimicking their hosts bodies and blending in. Even when they had sedated the host and tried to cut the worm out it wouldn’t hold still.

Any attempt to kill the host resulted into the worm shooting into their head so that they rode along for any revive.

“We tried chasing the worms into a limb and removing the limb recently. No luck. We have several other ideas for isolating the worm and removing it before bringing the host back to full health. Right now there’s just a lot of red tape before we start doing some of the more… extreme procedures.” He coughed again.

The doc needed to get some sleep. Crimson was fairly sure he hadn’t slept in weeks.

He held his head like coughing had been too much. “We are trying what we can. We do still think that the people can be saved, whether it's chemical or abilities. What we know is that the worms are suppressing parts of the mind. They are essentially putting the host to sleep and superseding some of the brain's functionality.”

Crimson rolled her hand. “That means absolutely nothing to me, doc. What I need you to tell me is if all of this is making a difference, or if I am just stacking up a bunch of bodies you are going to butcher later.”

He scowled at her. “We don’t ‘butcher’ anyone. Thankfully, none of the additional members of the party have shown signs of becoming infected. So it does seem that if there isn’t a live worm in the party member, they are not infected.”

“That’s something.” Crimson muttered.

Even how the threadspawn spread was still a mystery to them.

“We must be careful and move cautiously. I know you are in a hurry. If nothing else, we do need to identify and remove all infected adventurers from the dungeon. I can guarantee the Orcai and other races are doing the same. We know for sure that the Elves have discovered the threat and are working to resolve it themselves.” The doc was talking to her like she was a wild animal, one fast movement from swiping his head off.

Perhaps Crimson needed a break. This was particularly draining work. It would be nice to go see Ken, but… no this needed to be done and time was of the essence. “I do hope you’ll have better news for me next time.” She warned and ripped open a portal in the room, only to step back into the dungeon. She caught her glowing eyes off the steel tables in the room, making her seem like some danger in the night as she headed for her next target.