COI C214

“This is Fuku City adventurer entering the train station at Taiyou Industries. We are forced to retreat where numerous monsters scattered the area. We have people from Enders Bridge managed to get into the train. Other than that, we have no other else to do not risking the train to be part of the fight . . . What the fuck!? There is a powerful pillar of light crashing down to the station. Aah shit!”

It cuts right after what happened at the station. The recorder being sent to the Mihayara district to hear what’s going on from Fuku City. The advisor never expected for that demon to return.

It was too soon as far they heard about the secret facility is being breached. They started to believe that this demon wasn’t alone. At the same time, the demon had been agitated once it was set free. It’s been destroying its own kind since his escape. The research team has already prepared the secret weapon they need to seal the demon.

“Sir, remember that this is what Bokushi Hidari said to us. We don’t conduct the experiment to actually seal it”

“That’s what I don’t want to hear. As long as you follow it completely, I think we can stand a chance”

“But Sir, this is the first time we have . . .”

The researchers see his confident face. The advisor has nothing to fear but the enemy itself. They look at each other to think the weapon they made should take care of it. Their doubts of this idea of dealing a powerful demon with this weapon only describe by the cult leader from Fuku City.

The advisor says to them again “You people may don’t know, but our friends were already involved when we’re first attacked”

“Of course, sir, but this is the demon incarnate itself”

The representative of Mihayara district stood silent, giving them more doubts as they thought he is losing his mind because of the fall of the city barrier. While the advisor himself stood their listening to the details where the demon goes. What he truly fears if they found out where the demon is going. A place where he shouldn’t let others know about it. The message is sent to the available personnel who are entrusted to hunt down the demon. This demon who leads the horde must be defeated.

It's hard to believe that Fuku City adventurers and the personnel are working together, yet there is no respond from the city guild. Somewhere from the far technological advance distance, an AI has watched these people show no good relationship one another. No consideration, no cooperation, and probably no interest. The adventurers are carrying the important item to seal the demon. It guesses wrong and watches them go through the wasteland. Carefully make use of the city’s unsupervised watch, the AI returns to find the demon again.

Its monologue starts

“Ahem* Cough* Testing, is my recording on? Hello! What am I going to say again? Oh right, this is Wheatley in a search of the runaway demon. I wasn’t supposed to do it, but my users disappeared. More like they stop using me for some reason”

It laughs disappointedly

“Ah well. No matter, the servers were always bypassing unadministered websites and other personal accounts. The security cameras are no exception. Damn it, I forgot when I received contact from the lab”

Believe it or not, it was this very AI had contact with the researchers inside the secret facility. No apparent reason why it acted that way . . .

“It was for their own good. What?”

Wheatley reacts again. The line of monologues inside its head keeps losing its own thoughts. The programs keep diverting itself into the AI it supposed to be. The dumbest thing it always do is creating a software inside the recycle bin. No one will ever notice it. Unless, there is someone fell for it.

“. . . Yeah, that’s the way to go my head”

Wheatley doesn’t feel itself for the past few days. That incident where the secret facility opens whatever the protocols forced the AI to what it must do. Both monologue and memory are mixing up where it acts like a virus to its own stupid creation in the recycle bin.

“That’s right, oh come on. Stop reason with myself. I think I’m going crazy !!!”

It did it again as it continues on searching for that demon. The loses of concentration to this AI suddenly goes to sleep mode. Then it reboots itself back again.

“Come on, my other part of me. Why am I have to do this?”

Yayoi saw it. The ray of light from the Jigeram. She knows what she had done, and proceed to flee from his wrath. The demoness in her true form, leaving her human body for her safety. The dusty wasteland left her to run on glass, trying not to get the attention of the adventurers holding the sealing item. Her impatience led to her mistake, knowing so well that the dusts in this city didn’t properly cleanse the entirety of all demons’ creation. The light bluish glow is still able to maintain its texture. The dust still keeps the crystallization for this long. It made her suspicious.

As she is part of the demon faction, she had no knowledge of this kind of power to control the dust. Except for the legends of the dwarves, their tower had shown a great shield from the Jigeram. Then she remembers how it was taken away. Her mind drifts so easily as she has no interest about the lore of this world. Now here at the present, this feeling of regret to forget such powerful magic lead to this grand master plan. The demoness feels the scorch from her skin. It doesn’t bother her one bit. Making her frustrated what secret lies in this city to have this kind of dusts.

A shooting projectile pass near her. Her spoof makes her quickly react and incidentally inhales the dusts from it. That dust causes her to puke out from her mouth. Vomit quickly fell into the dust where the fluids turned into sand. It shines brightly like the sun then burnt to nothing like a spark soon after. It is the Jigeram’s light under the 4th moon cycle. Temporarily loses her strength, she makes her way back to the portal into her temporary realm. She left without even realizing she was already been seen. Right before she closes the portal, she heard him

“Playing hard to get, are we?”

The voice she had under her control, keeping the sleeping demon from its bored slumber. The voice that helps her out of his boredom. The voice who plays along with their games. The voice who intentionally ends the bargain from past allies. The voice says to her in the most serious tone she regretfully heard. She speaks out from her blank troubled face

“Acurse is playing with me”

Her face quickly gives a scheming smile “Acurse is playing with me”

Again and with her selfish, ignorant, overexaggerating expectation makes her excited.

There’s a small line torrent blowing like a wind. The Jigeram’s particle light casts down to him. Exposed by its true light and destruction, he bears it like it was nothing. However, his body is not suited to be alive rather sitting closely to life and death itself. The demon who hides under the robe. He changes his form. The body, the host’s body, he had such a long time meant to fight off the Jigeram’s light. A being from another world, more exactly the ultimate weapon of mortals. He has it, and the form that is nothing could best this kind of human.

Merged together both natural resources and soul. Acted like a human, cursed into the body of what they taught a manmade statue. It wasn’t, this is how they are from their world. The world under the soul trapped into the mortal made body. Obsidian stone coming from inside the body releases to the air from his breath. Releasing magic from the empty husk, the bones revealed in stone where it looks like it was never completed to carve through. The remains of flesh made out of weaves of web with strange powers. Along with the clothes as its part of its body, armored or naked. This is the actual normal human body from Soulfate.

Acurse speaks the soul who is loyal to him “Soulfate, the gate is lost since their last exodus”

“Then I’ll serve you forever”

“Then tell me, besides that silly woman annoys me before. Where is the prototype?”

Acurse forms the body of the Soulfate. Two of them become one, and mind that sealed many secrets he tried to hid from many demons alone. The nightmarish powers flow to him again able to cause mental flashback to his old enemies. Not a single being remembered him from their scarring past experience. Until there is one, from the machine. Coming from the secret facility where this robot he faced before. It escaped from his grasp because of stolen power from the Foundation.

The trick still works, both nightmare and the envy of the Soulfate’s men still linger. The signs of revenge still haunt this world. Acurse covers his face, holes from the eye socket or from the nostril. He grips it and forgets that there is no flesh in this host body. His one arm transformed into the spear losing the hand becoming the spear head filled with notorious strength. He looks at the spear from his own limb, it contains the dusts from the light. The joy to use it again, and disappointed rose back to his head. Expectation wasn’t good for him

“I forgot that I’m fighting the weak. Although they have the advantage. I think?”

Wheatley sees what’s going on the screen. Inside the internet, it still able to clarify what’s going on. It finds the past data retrieved from the Enders Bridge’s archives.

“This, I’m really starting to remember what that thing is. I thought it was a dead guy or something, but it really looks dead. No! no, stay focus. The demon was getting moody at first, and the other demon left like she is playing around. Ugh, I can’t understand the supernatural”

A notification pops up before its eyes “What’s this? An achievement? Well, that ruins my . . .”

The AI suddenly changes personality as it force open something inside its programming into what the Dexter Guild designed them to do. Wheatley starts changing its brain in a more stable comprehension. It turns its colors to green and black, that alone makes it starting to remember what it is.

“That’s it? A big flash inside my head and that’s all I can remember. Geez, it would be a good idea to talk like this . . .”

Wheatley looks at the data it tries to gather and it finally understood it

“Uh huh, I guess gaming knowledge won’t work. Especially my head is all about puzzle games. Who knew?!”

Without hesitation, it finally gets to work with all this data trying to go in. The files, the data base in the internet, and also the accessibility from Dexter Guild’s top secrets. Those what Wheatley finds are exactly what it needed to know what’s going on about the city.

“So that’s why, the demons are attacking here because of their ultimate enemy is the summoner. Two old factions still continue their war even sealed away from their graves. Not only the citizens are affecting by it, but also my people taking the chance to get what the summoner took from this world”

“It is a hard claim. I can’t give myself any excuse for that”

Wheatley acts confidently while seeing the walls of notes being piled from its game sided ego. Too much monologue and it still understand them all

“The secret facility, the citizens are already involved with the summoner. That’s for sure, and more while that the demon itself possessing such imminent power to destroy what this dusty wasteland have become. In other words, this city is trying to become the modern world. It is obvious, they are using Durjn Kings tower. The rusics’ tower to shield against the Jigeram or gathering resource from the dusts”

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Wheatley searches through the notes then sees confidential reports of monsters coming through the city. It was the time where the horde returns without its army. Using the method of crystal vessels for the victims as life essence for the remnants of the demons’ puppets. The flawed it is still weak as anyone could beat them. These mindless approached made Wheatley understands more

“They are looking for them. These ‘them’ or what they are searching for. Yet I can’t find from the news connecting with the monsters carrying mana batteries”

The searches were easily connecting, but there is one exception. The mana battery is not given into details.

“It does connect with the two factions. A secret cannot be told must be their allies or enemies they won’t talk about. It begs my question this lone enemy is helping the demons’ army invading the city. Just to find any lead to the summoner. Even there are Horsin people trying to get their way to get a hold of these called loots . . . I get it, they also smuggled them. The materials of their puppets brought here. Aah! Oh, shut my own mouth. I need to stop screaming when I get something right”

“I have no conclusion, but I know these are the same two factions fighting for the survival of their leaders. The summoner is definitely from the Heroes faction. What colluded my observation that there is one remaining Demon faction either there is two or just one. I just don’t get it. One demon is controlling the army fell and captured. The other one causing chaos and rescued the one demon. Conclusion, the other one fled and the one demon is really wanting to kill the other one? I really need to study more”

Returned back to Acurse’s point of view, he is looking at the camera where Wheatley is using. Trying to use the nightmare to whomever sees him, but nothing happened. He sighs out disappointed and said,

“This city is not affecting my magic. This domain must fall from these strange dusts. In order for me to be free in the rot. Just enough for that demoness finally gets her head straight and used that annoying awakening spell again on me from the next moon cycle”

He walks through Mihayara district knowing where to go. His magic was able to get through the summoner’s avatar. The memories that what caused this wasteland to form. There he could resolve this strange environment can only weakens all magic user instead the end of all life made by mana. He stops where the summoner’s other secret location lies. It hides so well and still able to function from the city’s most vulnerable state. The door opens where there are humanoids made from the demons’ creation. He got them under control without even trying, they fell into dusts as they go near him.

The Jigeram’s particle light rays down to him. Giving him the large amount enough to cleanse the disease. Once he steps inside, he sees fight was brought here. Citizens and monsters were here. A lie from what he could see here. Comparing what he saw at the train station, where there was a young boy possessing so much power and left to his allies to survive the fight. Here, there was no struggle showing anything that will harm those citizens. Acurse knows that the monsters are under Lady Hivites watch.

“Traitors”

He said it with confirmation the Heroes faction is taken action deliberately.

His next step causes the ground to quake, a horrifying sound, by his both magic and demonic strength. The citizens who are inside felt it, their resistances and protections couldn’t withstand the sudden earthquake. They checked their UIs and found out they can’t see the screen. The UI goes static where every icon, text, and other tool are all unreadable and can’t be interacted. They look at each other

“What just happen?”

“Fuck, I’m starting to freak out”

“This is what you guys said, right?”

The group has a special secret mission. Personnel and Fuku adventurers together, and they are different from any other citizens. The personnel who were dispatched here are disguised criminals while the obvious Fuku adventurers are doubles with their second identities from the Fuku City residences. None of them know their real identity. It was crafty for the leaders to pair them together. The two groups though, they seem to know not to deal each other. After their easy fight annihilating the monsters in here, they know they’re brutal or down right inhumane.

In the Fuku group; Flashes, Magnet, Col, and a few more others with them. While the personnel are deliberately actual criminal gang tried to overpower the town since they came here. They foolheartedly could win against a crowd of power given people with their own strengths. They never knew such equal rights to ever exist. Now they are here, prison labor to deal against this world’s hazards. Col says to the man who is scared

“Freaking out?! Heh, I guess city boys don’t have to get to experience working underground”

“Shut your mouth! If this tunnel wasn’t so small. I will shoot them with my explosive rounds”

“Hah! Do it! They will just use magic dig it out”

Col brings out his new charm, a bigger charcoal. His old coal was small, but this one is bigger that fits the size average man’s skull. His fingers extend to fully grab it letting the dusts trying to covered it. The dusts chip off and the shards fall off as he flinched.

“I’m waiting . . .” Col provokes the personnel.

The personnel spits to the side of the wall then grabs Col’s shoulder and pushes him out of his way and keeps going. He didn’t throw him where he spit, instead to the opposite side.

“I don’t play with kids”

“Hah! Coward”

The rest of the personnel continue to move forward. Col’s team gathered together and react those two idiots trying to fight over. Magnet comes closer but moved a bit farther where the spit was.

“You’re still frustrated about your lost coal”

Col turns his head, showing the after shade of the spirits trying to control him.

“I am your only guy could kill those monsters affectively. I don’t need mana for them to heal from our drools”

“Drool? You just made it up”

The man picks up the bottle filled with dusts “There is an option”

The other guy said to the two “Either way, the jackasses are picking people who could fight under this condition. Those police or swat wannabees are not them”

Col agrees “We never thought Flashes remembers them from the news”

Flashes is always careful to whom he is going to meet with. It was just luck when he blurted it out “Don’t get me wrong, they seem to be already giving up to hide in front of us”

The man suspected it “Does it mean the cult leader didn’t make it so suspicious of his organization?” He sarcastically said so.

Flashes thought otherwise “Or rather, they already know. Since rich kids never been this strong”

The Fuku adventurers look at Flashes with that double’s fat ass body. The man says again “I don’t think we should remind who our fuckers”

All of them respond “Agreed!”

The tunnel exploded. From the time is about to hit them, a flash of light froze them in place. Magnet is in the safe distance sees the explosion. It nearly touches him including the flash of light. The pixilation starts appearing whereas Flashes walks towards him, unfazed by the effects. His backup defense used up from this childish quarrel. Not saying a word to Magnet, knowing well that magnetic polarization of him can detect metal.

Magnet still has his eyes not wanting to be a part in it. He said to Flashes

“Let’s hope the other thing you have will save us from this mess”

The moment after he said that. The explosion returns in motion and precisely hit in the area where Col’s stand, and the people who is with him got caught from the after blast. Flashes turns around and sees them getting muddied. It’s getting worse, the ceiling from the tunnel starts falling down and the rest goes to their side, leaving Col behind to be buried. Col steps back and got separated from the team. The personnel son of a bitch has given his word back to his face

“. . . Dig it out. That fucker thinks he knows me”

He raises his hand into a fist readying to punch through the blockade. As he is about to dig it through. A strong wind hits him at the back, dusts go through, and the dirt being pushed away.

Col is being dragged along where everybody also joined him. The dusts of wind sizzle everyone on contact, quickly drove into a weak state worse than without power. The dealt of a powerful blow, they are frozen by the impact. All sided to the walls, none of them in the middle. Magnet and Flashes didn’t react on time, leaving them lying with the rest. Col on the other hand is struggling to go back up. The powers he obtained with the coal lingers his strength. Barely takes his stand, then immediately fell to the ground.

Acurse pushes him down and gently using his feet to slide Col to the side like the others. The true dusts touch him again leaving him out cold from the intense mana consumption. Everyone sees the demon, only in the form of an undead man with an arm attached with a spear. It’s glowing eyes drifting with dusts. It’s hard for them to look at the demon another second from the Jigeram’s light. They look away, slowly blinding themselves from gazing to him. The demon moves forward, searching what he is after.

The personnel made it to the end. One of them is an official from the government. He is nothing of importance that he is only to supervise these men. He talks to one of them

“Janpu, we seem to have a problem”

“We already have our UIs disabled. This is the warning we’ve been told since joining this job”

“Job for you, a mission for us. I’m grateful for a former city adventurer like you to serve for the public. However, you seem to be troubled”

“Troubled? Yes, more like it. I’ve been having trouble with my life”

“Sorry for intruding your personal life, but you shouldn’t be distracted from it from this do or die situation”

They turn around and sees the gaze of the undead man. The exposure radically burst through them, losing all sense of mana around them. All their mana related items except for their runes quickly melted away in such short moment. The demon approaches them. The personnel should’ve been at their backs guarding the tunnel. It wasn’t the case. The demon successfully enters this place. Acurse repeats the same procedure to kick anyone in front of him to the side. He glares to the nothingness as they look away. Intentionally, he is not letting use his nightmare on them.

Someone throws a rock behind him. His skull fell off then floats in mid-air as it falls. He revolves his skull to see who throw it at him. A tremendous aura coming the spirit linked to the man behind him. Savagery to the grim of his presence, he looks pail like the rest yet he didn’t yield. Furthermore, from what Acurse sees, he sees the man clouded his vision and replaced with spirits’ rituals. There are others who possessed such abilities, and the man in front of him already sending the rage into the ritual. Showing no fear against the demon itself.

Col jumps right in and sends a meteor like punch at the Acurse’s body. The body quickly falls apart but didn’t explode than Col had initially taught. The collapse body, in pieces, moved on its own and floats the same way with the skull. The dusts come out from the body shifting like sand reformed the body its usual form. Col begins to feel his hand quickly gets numb. Exposed by the true dust again made it feels like poison, now he loses his grip as decides to step away.

“Shit! What kind of monster are you?!” Col says to the demon with disbelief.

Acurse can’t say in this undead soulfate human. Whenever this body speaks or even breathes in or out from these dusts carrying body. It will harm them crucially. He for one, don’t bother to kill with that kind of insect like behavior. Even after he is next to Janpu and the official. It was already been done before they could react. Still, he waits for their secret weapon to come. His host’s soul is speaking to him

“I take the breath from this underground path. The seal is here”

A trap, so be it. Nothing will unphased this demon as countless predictable tactics had put him always in delay. He can’t be stop.

“NOW!”

The moment when Acurse thought of himself highly. The trap tears the pieces of his bones to the ground, leaving cracks destroying the rune writings hidden inside his bone marrow. Stubborn as he is to make himself to believe. He collects the remaining bones and continue drag further on. The personnel set up the trap witnessed the demon’s unbelievable reaction and they give way to the undead. They know they will use the seal to stop the demon, but this demon shows no concern making them suspicious that this effort is pointless.

Janpu thought it too “Is this how we can catch a demon?”

The official feels his body is getting cured from the true light “I know this looks like our lost, but the trap also helps us recover. This is our chance to fight this demon”

They look at the demon dragging itself to the place they are trying to go to. Then both turned and said to themselves what they were assigned here

“To take down the demon, right?”

They turned to see Col. He recovers thanks to the trap. He then doesn’t want to chase the demon, yet. The spirits inside his coal are hesitating.

“Tch” Col is disappointed and looks around the others not trying to fight the demon. This should’ve been their chance to catch it. The trap almost sealed the demon, but they didn’t pursue to catch the rest of it. Now his own spirits are stopping the chance. He told everyone

“Why all of you are hesitating? The demon is right in front of us”

Janpu stands up “Maybe because we are not taking our chances to a demon using dusts on us. You feel it too, right?”

“Yeah and? . . . Is the dust really that dangerous?”

“Yes”

The demon responds from the far distance, releasing the breath of the undead concealing the amount of the Jigeram’s light. The breath alone spread to the tunnel moving to the surface. One moved into the personnel, at first hand to the others. The items they carried decays or melted as it consumed by powerful infections and deteriorates around them. The personnel with their basic gears are being destroyed. They retreat as soon as they lost it. The official watches the breath coming their way and began fleeing as well.

“That thing speaks and already destroying everything! Run!”

Janpu and Col are the only two left. The two looks at each other and Col brings out his mask and covered it. He faces the breath, he gets exposed, and revealed his items able to resist the Jigeram’s light. His equipment endured it revealing the runewords. Col turns around to expect that Janpu leaves. Janpu didn’t, he carries his own equipment made from elven materials. The fiery winds emit on his equipment resisting the presence of the Jigeram’s light then drop in crystallized dust. It was enough to impurify the dust.

“Well, I’ll be” Col never sees such a set.

“Where did you get those elves clothes?”

“From the island, it should be easy to get it in this time of need”

“HEY! I thought the personnel will be running with their cheap get up”

Flashes appeared along with Magnet. “I knew the boss have prepared for this. I never believed the government side has their secret weapon”

Janpu takes the trap hiding among the walls “You don’t know what you’re saying. By the look of your team. There are also others don’t have your equipment”

Flashes agreed “Resources are slim, even we have plenty. It will be expensive to get it all”

The Fuku adventurers and the personnel left the tunnel. The official made it out first and made a call to the superiors “A demon has been spotted. Details are insignificant. Is this the same demon they are talking about?”

“Little no details? Is there any an attitude or any characteristics?”

“Being stubborn, and that’s all I can say. Yet the demon answers someone’s question having dust to be dangerous”

“Alright, I’ll send the details. We might find one of those monsters that killed our people”

Acurse quickly regains the undead body. His torn body restored at the moment as he reaches where the demoness hides. More importantly, how coincidentally face a familiar pile of stones. An obelisk, forged into one, hidden its magical properties, and a sense of use other than the one he knows. There he sees the mana leaking by the demoness’ presence. It creates a new realm, a more pleasing for herself. The sight of the obelisk in fronts of him as he wants to destroy it. This is will be his only break for the next moon cycle.

“. . . You’re the one who destroyed the barrier”

A group of people dared to face the demon. They quickly used the secret weapon again to fully nulled the demon. The demon turns around and sealed once more. Col, Janpu, Magnet, and Flashes succeeded to capture the demon. But Flashes never believed that they succeeded. Magnet looks at the demon sealed off without even a chance to response. Acurse is sealed in place, and keep an eye on them. His host’s soul is taken and sealed, sacrificing itself for his demonic essence left free. The seal is used and the demon reveals himself. The team expect much as they brought their weapons. Acurse shows himself as the void in robes.