Luca DR
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Edge 156
🕑 Added 2023-12-20 13:02:10 +0000 UTC156 – Help
Albert grinned as he pulled a fat block of C4 from his inventory. Truth be told, he did not have nearly enough of it stored to blow up the room and make sure that whatever hid under the water was truly dead, but converting some of the energy contained in a nuclear weapon into more lower-yield explosive was quite trivial. Especially when one had mana and Doom cores to fuel the transformation.
In fact, the resulting C4 was much more potent than the real thing, which was exactly what Albert needed. Jeff even helpfully calculated the amount of energy contained in the small, 2-kilogram block, and seeing that his tampering resulted in a 50% increase made Albert smile.
Making sure Lina did not come to know where most of the energy contained in the block of C4 came from, he held it aloft for her to see.
“Explosives.” His face was thoroughly pleased at her concerned expression.
“I think you like explosions and explosives a bit too much,” she said, her mind going back to several instances of him using explosions to fix problems. He could literally see her list all the times he said or used explosive weapons to fix problems. Chucking, he refrained from mentioning just how many times he kept his mouth shut or how many times he used explosives in the past, when they were truly more common.
For instance when he blew up a stone dragon with a nuke. Good times.
Meanwhile Lina went through all the times she did see him use bombs of some kind. Not too many, but still more times than one without a powerset based around them should. Now, as she looked at him studying the rectangular thing in his hands with an expression halfway between reverence and trepidation, she felt in danger.
“Don’t worry about it.” His calming words did not placate her worries. “I’ve yet to meet a problem that cannot be fixed with the right application of explosives. Watch.”
With that, he threw the thing into the room and raised the barrier behind it. The package landed in the water with a heavy splash, like it was made of solid rock. Then, for several seconds, nothing happened.
Lina called herself lucky to have seen Albert reflexively flinch mere moments before he activated the explosives. There was no way she could have known what would have happened after he pressed the button on a small device he held in his hands. Fortunately he did, and even though he didn’t need to brace for impact now that he was powerful, his brain did not care and his reflexive movement alerted the woman about the severity of the explosion.
Even behind her eyelids Lina saw an almost blinding light. But no sound or shockwave followed. She opened her eyes tentatively when the orange light subsided and found the corridor she was standing in perfectly intact. Not even the air had been disturbed.
Albert looked as puzzled as she was. As one they both raised their head to look at the room.
“Ah, right.” Albert scratched his head awkwardly. “The barrier.”
A solid sheet of fire was licking at the translucent barrier, which flickered blue where the intense heat tried to sap its energy, sapping the energy of the fire instead and diminishing its light with each second that passed. A few more moments later the flames died down and the corridor returned to its preternatural flat light.
Scrappy rejoined them in the material world. Gingerly the trio made their way towards the threshold, where the barrier was still up but invisible, now that there was nothing challenging its integrity. Albert let go of the skill and yet another core crumbled in his pocket, leaving him down to just two. The most powerful two, but just two nonetheless.
“Minimap says the room is clear.”
Inside, the water had been turned into a foaming pit of vegetation, rot and mud. All the walls were splashed, and the lush plants and vines had been singed and dislodged from the walls, revealing holes and cracks in the concrete where they had managed to find a foothold. A few fires still burned here and there where the water had been unable to put them out in time.
The sparks from the electrical line were gone, as was the line itself.
Nothing moved.
“I think whatever it was, it’s dead now.” Lina said.
Albert looked at her with a smug smile. He didn’t say anything, but his face seemed to want to say: see?
Lina shook her head instead. Scrappy stared at the water. “It’s dead, that it is.”
There was fascination and awe in her voice. Lina groaned in frustration.
“Albert, is this the sort of example you want to give to a young, impressionable mind?”
Albert rolled his eyes. “She’s not young. And yes, this is exactly the sort of example I want to set for someone like her. If you have explosives, then you can do whatever you want.”
Lina inhaled loudly. Albert chuckled. “Come on, let’s go.” But he did not walk forward. “Actually, no, give me that first.” He held out a hand, pointing at a discarded tentacle from the now-dead monster.
Albert it in the water with the other end fastened to a metal support beam by the door. “Not electrified anymore.”
It was at that moment that he realized that since the tentacle was conductive – although plant matter was more of a resistance than a conductor – it would have cooked them alive when they fought it, had it not been for some fortuitous circumstances. Scrappy escaping in time, Lina’s blades being made of crystal and not metal, and him having Jeff handle the details.
He did not say any of it out loud. He would have to be more careful next time. It was true that having Power was making him complacent.
They proceeded through the room. As if ignoring his own warning about complacency, Albert made use of his Power and floated in the air until he reached the other side, while Lina and Scrappy were stuck wading through the dense muck. The explosion had churned the waters, rendering the stagnant pool an even fouler mix of rot and vegetation dislodged from the bottom.
By the time the girls made it to the other side, they were glaring daggers at Albert as if they were trying to burn a hole into him with their eyes alone.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a tone that was too amused to actually be sorry. With a snap of his fingers he dried their clothes, and the dirt fell off to the ground. “Flying three people is beyond me at the present time.”
Lina glared at him, and this time Scrappy too seemed to doubt her esteemed Sir Albert.
“I would rather say that you are enjoying it.” Lina said.
Scrappy nodded along. “I would too, Sir Albert. That was cruel.”
Albert’s mouth hung open. “Cruel? You don’t believe poor old me?”
Scrappy shook her head vigorously. “Not after that talk about explosives, that I don’t. If you can blow up a room, you can help us through, I say.”
Albert scoffed. “Youngsters these days. Back in my time—”
“Which was millennia ago.”
“Point taken, Lina. Let’s proceed before I start wishing to solve this issue a-la-maniera of explosives.”
***
The group suddenly stopped halfway through the corridor that led to the final monster room before they finally reached their prize. As one, all three stopped moving and dropped into a fighting stance, looking around to find the source of the sudden noise.
It wasn’t like there were many places to look. It was either behind them or ahead. But in the gloom of the tunnel, which was devoid of light, the ancient furniture and wall fixtures produced shadows that played tricks on the eyes.
“Is it just me or this sounds like—”
The sound echoed through the tunnel. It was like a groan, low and pained, distinctively unnerving.
“Is that… a voice?” Lina asked, pale.
The groan echoed again. This time, albert was sure he could somehow hear words mixed within the inhuman noise.
“It’s a woman’s voice.” Scrappy said. “It sounds like she’s in pain, that it does.”
The echo repeated itself yet again, low and ominous. It was impossible to pinpoint where it was coming from, as it seemed to reverberate through the structure itself of the underground facility.
“It says… it says help!” Scrappy said, suddenly alarmed and looking at albert with wide, frantic eyes. “It says help! We need to go help her!”
“Wait!” Albert called out, but it was too late. Scrappy had broken into a run. “Fuck.” He cursed, and followed.
Behind him, Lina followed as well. He didn’t see her face, but her steps did not feel confident. After the fight in the last two rooms, he could understand why.
“Scrappy!” He yelled. “For the sake of the fucks slow down!”
“Can you stop her?” Lina asked.
Albert shook his head, still running. The half-groan half-plead for help reverberated again. “Out of juice. Was about to call for a rest stop when this happened.”
“Shit.” Lina cursed. “It’s gotta be a trap.”
Albert kept running. Ahead, Scrappy was running on all fours. “I don’t even know where the fuck we are.” He said, his voice cracking.
His mask of cool was slipping, and Lina noticed. “The tunnel. Was it supposed to be this long?”
Albert shook his head, but his eyes were fixed ahead. In the weak light of just his sword, there appeared to be an infinite amount of darkness just meters ahead of where he was running. And Scrappy was nowhere to be seen.
It was due to this low visibility that he didn’t notice when the darkness became even more oppressive. He didn’t look at his minimap, worried as was about Scrappy. Had he done so, he would have noticed that Jeff had changed the render of the corridor to take into stock the abnormal length, and he would have realized that there was no fifth room between him and the core fragment.
Had he known all that, he would not have run headfirst into the final room, where a single red dot was waiting for him, together with the core. But all he could think about was the sound of Scrappy’s whimpering.
