It was dark. That wasn’t anything new. Jane had been used to seeing darkness for her entire life.

The scent, however. That was new.

Her lips curled in disgust as it wafted up and tore through her nose. It was the sickly-sweet smell of flowers crossed with the heavy stench of blood and death. Resisting the urge to choke on it, Jane instead clicked her tongue and listened. Quickly, a picture of her surroundings painted itself in her mind as the sound rebounded around and returned to her ears.

Around her, the walls pulsed to an unheard heartbeat, twitching revoltingly and oozing a thick layer of translucent sludge. From what she could tell, she was currently underground, the barest tips of what seemed to be stalactites peeking through the thick coating of artificial flesh above her.

An unknown fluid continued to drip down from them, and Jane thought her best guess was that it was blood. Each droplet wafted aura, a weak amount, but she could see it was there.

There seemed to be one else in the room with her, just a strange crystalline pole with a hook hanging off of it over to her left. Jane tried to move, but the only other meat hook in the small cavern moved about in her shoulder, goring the flesh even further and causing a sharp spike of pain. Fresh yellow oozed from the puncture wound, as she had been told the colour of her blood now was.

As each second passed, she felt the hook sap away her final dregs of remaining energy and weaken her further. Already, she was beginning to feel an edge of fatigue that she hadn’t felt in a long long time, probably back before she had first taken on martial arts when she was twelve.

Hissing out a breath, Jane delicately swung herself on the chain and garnered momentum. It took a few minutes, considering any movement to avid caused immense pain as the hook scraped the bone of her shoulder. Finally, though, her feet tapped onto the pole behind her.

Gathering as much power as she could into the tightly wound muscles of her legs, she pushed off the surface and launched herself forward.

With a sickening snap, the curved crystal holding her up cleaved straight through the bone and out her shoulder in a spray of ivory splinters and gore, forcing her to clench her teeth and stifle a scream. Her right arm hung down limply at her side as she landed, though she didn’t worry, as her Vitality would eventually fix the issue. She’d had worse injuries.

Hissing out a breath at the idle agony, Jane clicked her tongue once more. There was a tunnel leading to another room right ahead of her. She could see that aura was rebounded massively down from within it, wisps lapping at her face.

She crouched low and prowled onward, keeping her ears peeled for any sort of sounds, however quiet they may be. Absentmindedly, she noticed her blindfold had been removed from her eyes, and she couldn’t help but feel oddly naked. She had always hated the thought that others could meet her eyes, but she couldn’t ever meet theirs. It made her feel inferior and vulnerable, though she could never pinpoint exactly why.

Alas, that mattered little right now, and she readied herself for movement at a moment’s notice as she continued. The stench had appeared to have pervaded the entire area, and from what she could ‘see’, pulsing meat lined every surface, leaving none untouched. Upon clicking her tongue once more, Jane finally took notice of the brutalized corpses to her left and right as she approached them.

She grimaced deeply and wished them a safe passage to the next life.

Then, she clicked her tongue one last time, and the room right ahead was revealed in all its glory. Two individuals were residing there, one Jane recognized intimately as her friend Carrie, and the other as someone entirely alien. Terrifyingly, his aura was entirely hidden. Even her unique eyes were unable to detect a trace.

Regardless, she refused to retreat.

Currently, Carrie too was held upon a hook, with the man prodding and poking at her body with crystalline instruments, parting her flesh and watching as it slowly healed, before moving onto other, more painful experiments. Jane could vividly see the pained expression on Carrie’s face in her mind’s eye and she swallowed hard with rage.

Slowly, she stood from her low position and prepared to use her third Technique to take the man by surprise while he remained unawa-

A jagged spike wrought of crimson crystal instantly formed from the ground and proceeded to puncture cleanly through Jane’s abdomen, sending her flying back and pinning her to the slimy embrace of the wall behind her. A waterfall of yellow blood gushed from her mouth and dripped down onto her chest.

“Wait.” She through an unexpected bout of tinnitus and the rapid thudding of her heart, she managed to hear a single gruff voice filled with an otherworldly hatred before she finally fell unconscious.

**

Surprisingly, Russia wasn’t just all snowy wastelands like Brock had seen commonly in movies. On the contrary, he had never seen a more barren, desert-esque place in his life. As of current, as he gazed over the expanse, he felt like he was standing on the set of the latest Mad Max movie. That’s how arid this place looked to be.

Flora was a nonexistent presence, and not even the sorry sight dead grass was around to be seen. For what seemed like kilometres and kilometres, cracked earth stretched out around him, as though it had been scorched and purified of the life that inhabited it a long time ago. The idle smell of charcoal filled the air and Brock wondered if he should have actually listened to Adam.

Although, he certainly didn’t feel an immense amount of energy, like the diplomat had mentioned. Quite the opposite actually. The atmosphere here was so devoid of it that Brock thought the lack thereof was almost suffocating.

To his left, Fon bent down and prodded the dirt with a finger. Harry just opted to whistle at the sight, subtly impressed by the scale of destruction. Their one and only Frenchwoman sprinkled the dirt to be swept away by the soft winds and met Brock’s eyes.

“It’s faint, but it was definitely an Augment that caused this.” She went silent for a moment as her eyes unfocused and she seemed to turn her attention somewhere else, “A really powerful one too.”

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Fon’s expression became exceedingly grim, and Brock thought she had a pretty decent reason why. Aside from that, she hadn’t mentioned it - perhaps unable to feel it as she herself lacked an Augment - but he could feel the subtle oppression this area imposed against his own two Augments. Whatever Augment had done this, it was certainly far stronger than what he possessed.

It was only a weak trace, yet it was enough to oppress his Augments. He shuddered to think of how powerful it’d be in person.

He ran a hand through his hair, before sighing loudly and continuing to walk forward, “Well. This’ll be the opposite of fun.”

Add listening to people to your list of things to work on. He wrote down internally.

Harry nodded quietly with acceptance and Fon cracked an amused smile, and both chose to trail behind him. Dry earth crunching underfoot filled the void of background noise, and repeatedly, Fon mentioned how the density of the Augment was becoming progressively higher over the next few hours. Brock thanked her but didn’t really need the comments anyway.

He was already well aware. Within his chest, the orbiting balls of power that were his Augments dimmed and weakened under the pressure. It wasn’t enough to render them unusable or make a significant difference, but it would certainly dull the overwhelming power they had displayed so far by a fair amount.

Brock had no idea what had been in the area, but as time moved on, he was increasingly certain that it was something equal to or even more powerful than the Tyrant of the Sky that he had slain a few months back.

Or Little Shit. He chuckled. I can’t get over how the System decided to keep that name.

The man looked up to the sky and gave a covert thumb up.

More powerful or not, he had slain that stupid bird, and he would slay whatever was awaiting him as well. Brock definitely didn’t think himself invincible, far from it, but he knew he had to be if he wanted to save those he cared about. He certainly wasn’t happy about his first month under the System, but he had to admit that without it he wouldn’t be who he was today.

Idiotic and with more power than sense. And that was just the way he liked it.

Unsurprisingly, throughout the trip, all three of them had no luck spotting even a single beast roaming about. It seemed survival instincts warned them far away from this place. Most probably, it applied to Skin Walkers too, since Genesis used the same ‘instinct principle’ to ward them away.

Either way, the place was well and truly devoid of life. The only solace Brock found was that the sun’s rays weren’t beating down on their backs, instead obscured by a thin coverage of clouds.

“This is kind of… off-putting…” Fon commented from the side as she surveyed the land.

Harry hummed in agreement, “There’s nothing out here. Like anywhere.”

“Very astute, mate.”

“Thanks.”

“He was being sarcastic.”

“Yeah.”

“You were?”

The banter didn’t cease even as they continued through the dreary place. Days passed by and the terrain was yet to look like anything but something from the game series of Fallout. Brock had played it a few times on his little brother’s PC, and he had to say, using the title as an adjective for this part of Russia was rather fitting.

Over the time they trekked, they had passed through the devasted remains of a small handful of towns, the stone scorched and slagged, and the wood and people living there turned to dust. There wasn’t a single building they had seen that hadn’t crumbled, and Brock realized that the situation might be a tad bit worse than they had originally thought.

While it wasn’t exactly as bad as the Skin Walker issue that had plagued what appeared to be the entirety of the new ‘mainland’, the fact that an unknown being was converting Russia and its inhabitants to ash was certainly a troublesome one. Brock could feel a headache coming already.

Of course, Daddy Brock is here to fix your problems. He snorted bitterly. What else is he for anyway?

Eventually, they were forced to settle down once more as the fatigue of walking for days on end caught up with them, and they held a private feast of expired left-over protein bars, cheesy beans and various rations they had bought from the quartermaster in Paris. Other people had acted like they weren’t cheap, but with his number of Shards exceeding 7 million, Brock barely noticed the decline in his funds.

Despite that, he still had no idea if he was actually rich or not. Was 7 million a lot in the Multiverse, or was it not? Considering it was only money gotten by killing F-Grade beasts, assuming they were the shittest grade, he was pretty sure he was actually dirt poor.

The next day, mid-way through, they finally happened upon life once again. Or, what once was life, he assumed. It was a single insectoid corpse, looking rather similar to a praying mantis, with sharp, scythe-like arm blades on all four of its lithe appendages. By Brock’s estimates, it had probably been around two meters tall before something had cleaved through its chitinous green flesh and bisected it.

It was immensely hard to tell what colour the blood had been as the corpse seemed to be fairly old, but Fon’s best bet based on her energy senses was yellow. No one knew what kind of powers yellow Shards gave yet, at least those in the group present, but they couldn’t exactly say that they were eager to find out.

From experience, they knew that Purple seemed to give Ascendancies based on space or time, what with the teleportation and future sight they’d witnessed so far. Orange was still somewhat up in the air, even though Harry was an Orange user himself. As far as they could tell, Red was either manipulation or conjuration or both.

Green had been shown to be healing related, as the medics in Alice Springs had displayed a while back, and Blue, like Orange, was also up in the air. The only verified Blue user Brock had seen so far was the ‘scryer’ in Adelaide, and that was just because her magic sigils were blue. Otherwise, he had no idea what Blue actually did.

It was times like these when Brock wished he had access to some sort of galactic encyclopedia of basic knowledge of the System. Maybe he’d put that one in the cosmic suggestion box. He’d probably even receive an extravagant ‘fuck off’ in return.

That aside, they investigated the carcass for only a few more minutes before moving on. It didn’t take them travelling very far to find even more, some even slain by what Fon sensed to be the use of Augments. Of course, along with the increased number of dead insects was also a number of deceased humans who had taken part in killing them.

Torn asunder, cut into chunks, decapitated, even half-chewed upon. This slew of humanity had had their lives extinguished in a variety of gruesome ways, all of which Brock had no doubt were extremely painful to those directly affected and horrifying to those watching. Sometimes, when he saw sights like this, he wished the new world wasn’t so disgustingly savage.

It had felt decidedly wrong, but the three of them rummaged through the pockets of the corpses. They didn’t take any of their possessions of course but were instead looking for clues of their identities and where they had come from. Fortunately, one of the stronger looking individuals were carrying a folded map of directions in her pocket.

Brock compared it to his own, remarkably oversized map and found the location of ‘Sanctuary’ - as it had been named with messy writing - only a little way left of a directly straight route through Russia. In the end, he decided that it was best they at least visit the town and see if they can help them since they weren’t really all that far out of the way of their destination.

Sure, he was wasting time doing things that were unnecessary, but he could only respond to the logic of it with a simple thought.

If you do nothing, when you can do something, you’re just as bad as the problem.

His mother always used to say that when he got home after being bullied. Sometimes, Jordan picked on him because he was his favourite target, and other times, it was because Brock tried to stop him from picking on other kids. While it hadn’t exactly made the scrapes hurt any less, it had certainly made Brock feel like what he did was worth it.

And it made him certain that sometimes, you have to help people because they don’t possess the strength to help themselves.

“On a trip we go, I guess.”