Chapter 666 - Anyone home?

Io stares at the drawing in the dusty window, then at the brown-haired girl, who meets his gaze for a brief moment before lowering her head, letting her hair fall into her face. Her presence weakens further, to the point I’m sure someone with a low level would likely not see her even if he were staring directly at the spot where she stands.

It isn't camouflage or anything like that. It's just that strange field around her, the one that almost makes your senses stop sending signals about her to your brain. Though I'm sure there's no mind manipulation involved. It's just far too strange.

Tacita moves with the same swift, elegant, and almost dance-like motion and gets behind my back, an arm’s reach away from me, but without touching me at all.

The whole time, the six-armed thylarin keeps tracking her without saying a word. After a few moments, he finally coughs and breaks the silence.

“As I said before, being so rudely interrupted, we are on one of the Last Elf’s smaller bases and…”

“What is a replica of the Last Elf?”

This time, he turns to me, but unlike with Tacita, I don’t mind it at all.

“Look, we have heard you are important and everything, but you’re too pompous and take too much time to answer simple questions,” I say.

In reaction to that, a demon woman nearby sneers, and noticing her attempt, I finally allow our eyes to meet. And it’s exactly as expected. The maniac looks like she wants to fight. Her red eyes shine as she moves her hair off her face, her gaze switching between where my hearts are and my eyes.

"I’m with the human on this," she says. "You six-armed thylarin always act like you're so important."

“I do not want to hear complaints about anyone else’s personality from a demon,” Io cuts her off.

That only amuses the demon woman more. "If that bothers you, you know what to do—if you've got the balls for it."

“We are here on a cooperative Beyond quest. There won’t be any fighting. Not now..”

“I wouldn’t mind it.” I rejoin the conversation.

Once again, he turns to me, and the demon turns as well, her heart already beating more quickly. Familiarity with Min-Jae’s abilities tells me that it is likely a Gravitational Demon Heart.

"What?" I ask Io. "You know how these maniacs are. Beating the crap out of them right away makes things easier in the long run."

“We will properly assess the situation. If it’s confirmed we don’t need all of us to cooperate to complete the quest, you can jump at each other’s throats right away,” he answers firmly.

The way my Handler talked about him made him seem powerful. After all, she mentioned he almost became an S-rank a few times and that only a specific weakness of his prevented it. So I would even expect him to be able to do this quest on his own. But I guess that weakness stops him?

“Whatever, bluey. As if I’d let you order me around. Let’s fight and…” The demon takes a few steps forward and then, to her surprise, disappears, only to reappear a few steps back.

Just like me, she quickly figures out what happened and moves faster this time, but the result is the same. Just as she’s about to reach Io, she vanishes and reappears in front of one of the walls. Her momentum carries her straight into it, and she crashes, then bounces off.

Before she can do anything else, she disappears again and reappears near Io, who grabs her by the neck with one of his arms and throws her against the opposite wall.

While still in the air, she disappears and reappears again, this time above the ground, and crashes down hard from her own momentum.

More than hurting her, it confuses her senses. There are no wounds, and she gets back on her feet, smiling widely. Her heartbeat intensifies. She takes a step, only to disappear again and appear in front of Io.

She expects it and attacks him, but she disappears three times in a row before she can hit him, each time facing a different direction. On the last one, Io punches her in the face, sending her stumbling back with a torn, bleeding lip.

The thylarin is extremely fast, and whatever kind of forced teleportation he is using, I have a hard time identifying it or figuring out how to defend against it.

Just as the fight seems like it’s about to get more exciting and I start placing mental bets on who would win, the door into the room creaks open.

Only then do I realize Tacita is missing. Turning toward the door, I see a smoothly cut lock, a flash of her dagger, and her figure as she disappears into the base. At that same moment, an alarm rings through the area.

It isn’t even that loud, just a deep vibration sent through the structure in a way that almost feels like I’m sensing it through my bones. A multitude of fields begin activating in the area around us as well.

I feel a presence heading our way, and Io disappears, this time teleporting himself. I spot his figure in outer space, just beyond the window, right behind where Tacita drew her emoticon. He grabs onto something and moves along with it.

Did... did he run away?

Staring in his direction, I start wondering if I would be able to survive it, and what kind of defenses he uses to spacewalk. I also wish I had more knowledge about outer space. How was it? Super cold? Or super hot when exposed to direct sunlight? Some kind of radiation? Breathing out all the air to protect the lungs?

In the worst case, I’ll just use Subdermal Combustion and outheal the damage.

The five of us remaining in the room seem confident enough to face our opponent. It is a bit worrying, with our possibly most informed and strongest member disappearing instead of confronting it, but I guess that explains why everyone else looks like they’re preparing an escape route.

Of course, everyone except the demon woman, who already seems completely ready to fight.

As always, I find that demonic, reckless drive to die strangely endearing. Maybe even a little cute, even now.

The lanky, gray-skinned man whispers quickly, "The Elf’s replicas are dangerous, even if they aren’t high level. The stronger they are, the more of his memories they unlock. But even the weaker ones have plenty of those, along with a ton of extra knowledge."

Everyone slips into their battle pose, and I can sense a few of them preparing for a quick retreat if needed.

A human man with brown hair even moves a few of the cube items floating around him. They stick against the wall and start to hum. He’s also carrying multiple bags and several weapons, and he pulls out a hammer in one hand and a strange orb in the other.

“The replicas are known for experimenting on themselves, causing mutations, and using items and monsters under their control. If you see a replica, it’s either because you are far more powerful and caught it off guard, or because it believes it can win.”

The gray, lanky man doesn’t finish his words. Instead, he touches his shadow on the wall and disappears into it. On that same wall, that shadow moves quickly across the surface until it settles into one of the normal shadows and becomes nearly unnoticeable unless you know what to look for.

The demon takes a step ahead and stands beside me, her eyes glowing with excitement, just as a being appears in the hallway Tacita had vanished into.

Right away, it's clear that this isn't one of the Last Elf’s replicas. Instead, it's a wolf-like creature with four legs, a massive maw, and a head level with mine. Its entire body is gray, including its pupils, the whites of its eyes, and even the inside of its mouth and teeth. It almost looks like it's made of stone, with large and small cracks running across its surface.

The golden halo floating over the creature’s head makes a striking contrast to the grayness of its body.

[Gilded Huskwolf - lvl ???]

So, at minimum, it is over level 350, even though it feels much stronger than most monsters around that range. It is one of those “named” types, bosses, or elite monsters, as some would call them.

As it looks at us, it barks. The sound is deep and grinding, making the window showing the outer space vibrate.

My [Eclipse] spreads through the area, and my eyes activate as I detect the signal it is trying to send and resonate with it to suppress and cancel it out. The human man uses some of his floating cubes as well, and a kind of jamming field surrounds the wolf.

The demon charges in, her steps covering far more distance than they logically should. She reaches it first, but when her fist crashes against the wolf, her bones crack and break, while the wolf doesn’t even move a single step.

Its head becomes a blur, and the next time I see it, it’s holding a piece of flesh in its maw, blood dripping down onto its gray body and the floor.

Taking a step back, the demoness grabs her side where a chunk of her waist, roughly the size of a football, is missing.

The wolf becomes a blur again, and this time, it appears in front of the human man. It bites at the item, creating the jamming effect while trying to emit its signal again.

Another cube floating near the man moves in to meet the wolf. When they collide, the wolf halts as a web of mana threads explodes from the item and binds it to the floor.

The threads snap, and the wolf is about to move again when Tacita appears behind it. With a dagger made of pale white bone and a jagged surface, she cuts into its neck smoothly and separates the head from the body. The dagger cracks and turns to dust.

Even as it falls, the wolf doesn’t die immediately. Now I see flesh and lightning-like veins running through its body, but they are all the same shade of gray as the rest. The body moves on its own and swings at Tacita, but she is faster and avoids it.

The wolf's mouth still snaps open and shut as its head slides across the floor toward me, while its body lunges at the human man using the items.

I watch it creep toward me in a disturbing slide, its mouth wide open and snapping with force strong enough to damage its own teeth, but still with no emotion in its eyes.

There is a presence reaching out to both the body and the head with that same familiar, unnerving feeling I felt a few moments before. The same way as it did with the demon, it ignores the wolf's natural and active defense against the teleportation.

Just before the wolf is teleported away, I launch a tricolored orb I’ve been forming straight into its open mouth.

Both parts vanish and reappear several miles away in open space, floating weightlessly and twitching as they try to move back.

Then my orb, filled with a sizable chunk of my mana, explodes.

A silent bloom of blinding tricolored light expands outward, with arcs of raw energy spiraling through the dark. The wolf’s head and body twist mid-float as translucent shockwaves ripple through the vacuum, tearing them apart.

There is no sound, no fire, no vibration reaching us here. Only the brilliant flash of light, slowly fading. It pulses once, then fades completely.

Even the epicenter of the explosion drifts miles away, as the base we are on continues moving. Now that I observe it more closely, it feels like we are in orbit around the planet below us.

[You have defeated Gilded Huskwolf - lvl 375]

[Lvl 323 > Lvl 324]

[Lvl 324 > Lvl 325]

Io appears in the room again.

“I went ahead and disabled the alarm and checked for the guards. I’m not naive enough to think we haven’t been detected, but this should limit how much information they gather on us and partially obscure our location,” he says, shooting an ugly look toward Tacita, who squats near the dust left from her bone dagger and works with some strange black crystal.

The dust clings to the crystal like metal shavings drawn to a magnet. I watch as, slowly, a dagger shape begins to form out of the dust, very slowly solidifying. The process is almost mesmerizing. Bit by bit, the bone dust binds to the crystal, reshaping itself into the curved and jagged silhouette of the dagger Tacita had used only moments ago.

I push the thought aside and quietly apologize to Io in my mind. Then I focus on the golden halo I managed to grab with one of my Ley Lines before Io teleported the wolf away.

Synaptic Relay Halo (Low Arcane) - Synaptic Relay Halo is designed to be affixed above a deceased monster or deceased and altered being. It creates a mental link between the host and a controller. It enables direct command input, shared vision when active, and a faint feedback loop. The device allows the controller to issue passive, but complex behavioral routines to the bearer. When activated, it can also trigger dormant protocols within deceased altered beings and monsters.

I see. I see.

I stare at it a moment longer before raising it and placing it above me. It floats into place on its own, adjusting slightly until it hovers steadily just above my head, in a similar way my crown used to.

(Anyone home?) I reach out with a thought.

***

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