Jaid really hated the launch. There was nothing to cling onto as they descended at life-shattering speeds, so her body clung and clenched to whatever other part of her body it could find. Thankfully before the impact, that would certainly kill any and all nearby inhabitants and probably those inside the pods as well, the braids on Izma’s coffin activated, turning into propellers that slowed their descent, eventually catching them in the air.
This certainly wouldn’t be possible without her obelisk’s tech, which Jaid still hadn’t been told the origins of. She just knew that the CP was desperately trying to recreate it. At the very least, they were close to making it so Lessers could survive the launch. Right now, only Fiends could handle the forces without their bodies turning to goo, so the launch had only had a small handful of riders.
The sequence still wasn’t quite streamlined either. They had to meet the scientists at their launch pad while they essentially glued pods to the sides of the coffin and an ignition system to the bottom. Their goal was to eventually make it a fully separate craft, but right now only that single sturdy piece could handle the trip without ripping itself apart.
Jaid and Dura had to each get into one of the pods and gel would compress around their bodies to reduce the shock, but it didn’t eliminate it entirely. They then had to wait while the makeshift rocket was pulled down a track so that it was launched far away from civilization. After that, they were sent flying and just had to sit and suffer for several minutes until they reached their destination—the flight length dependent on where they were going. To Jaid, it felt like the worst rollercoaster in the world.
Once they landed, she eagerly scrambled out of the pod and hugged the dirt for just a moment, wanting to be alone with the solid ground before Dura could fingangle himself free. “That was so much fun, Captain! Can we go again?!” the monk begged as soon as he got out of his pod. By that time, Jaid had gotten herself upright and tidy again.
“If you actually volunteered for more missions, you’d probably get to do it more often,” she suggested.
“Ehh, just Izma and me?” Dura disliked the idea. “I can’t see her reactions in that can of metal. She probably just ignores me anyways. No fun to talk to, not like you, Captain. Heyyy, Izma, can you hear me?!” He rapped his hand against the obelisk like an annoying solicitor trying to sell something at the front door.
One of the braids lifted up and bopped Dura on head. Even though the monk was upset and rubbing the pain away, from Jaid’s perspective, it looked like she was trying to pat him but accidentally used too much force. Actively manipulating the obelisk was something new to Izma, so she was still working out the kinks.
The braids flew around and pulled the pods off the side of the coffin, leaving them to be later retrieved by the Central Peace. All six then dug themselves into the dirt, lifting the metal cylinder up in the air, and the obelisk began walking in the direction of their mission, which reminded Jaid of their urgency.
It didn’t take them long until they found the local authority blockade—mostly police, but a few soldiers of Lulalan’s own military that had been deployed. They thought that the spider-like obelisk was a monster at first and drew their weapons, but stowed them once they saw the Fiends walking alongside. After a brief exchange of greetings and authority, the three of them were allowed past and into the freshly-founded monster’s den.
Things were pretty quiet at first, but the three of them progressed with hesitance and care, knowing eyes could be watching them from anywhere. Izma—not that they could see how she was feeling—seemed the most confident and bold in her movements, feeling safe and protected in her coffin.
They’d received word from the guards that the monster facility had been underneath an old farmhouse on the edge of a suburb. It seemed that they’d done a decent enough job in quickly establishing a perimeter in order to preserve most of the area, but as the Fiends got closer to the outskirts, some of the buildings started getting damaged, and by the end, a few were entirely destroyed. Fortunately, the CP had established Monster Insurance for all of its nations, and Lulalan was one of them—not that there were many that weren’t these days.
Jaid went to inspect one of the ruined homes and then felt the ground rumbling. She jumped out of the way just in time to dodge the snapping maw trying to munch on her legs. A clam? Was her first thought upon witnessing the monster she’d never seen before, but then it protruded a bit further from the ground.
If Laurim was still around, she probably would have named it something like a Garden Cleel. Most of its body was pretty much just an unimpressive garden eel, though quite long and about as thick as a utility pole. At the end was a giant clam around its head like a helmet. It was certainly one of the more uninspired monster fusions, like the two components had been manually stuck together.
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“Dura, the dirt,” was all the instruction Jaid needed to give for him to understand. The monk put his hands to the ground—all he had to do for his Curse to take effect. When the Cleel tried to pull its body back down, it found it couldn’t—at least not its wide head. Dura had increased the dirt’s durability significantly, making it impossible to break through it again, so the monster could only shift around in the hole it had already made.
Jaid made a circle of clones around the still protruding clamshell and then felt a surge of vitality run through her. Izma’s Curse normally required two people at the bare minimum for it to work, making Jaid the only one who could take advantage of it by herself—the woman’s ideal partner. Though, it seemed to have some diminishing returns since it was still just herself, meaning even having Dura standby in the group caused it to power up further.
The knight bashed at the clam shell from all sides. Just based on its toughness, Jaid felt that she wouldn’t have made much headway on her own or potentially risked damaging her sword. But thanks to Izma’s boost, she chipped through the shell like pottery, making short work of it and slaying the monster inside.
“Great work, Captain!” Dura was quick to approach her with praise. “Maybe next time I will get to fight it too! How many more monsters do you think there are?”
“If it was a small amount, we wouldn’t have been called here,” Izma actually spoke through the installed sound system of her coffin. The other two Fiends didn’t even know she had one, which went to show how surprised they actually were upon hearing her voice. With small strides like this, maybe she’d be a competent soldier someday—some very far day.
When they reached the proper edge of the suburb, they did a sweep of the houses, both destroyed and otherwise, not wanting to leave any monsters roaming before they headed to the facility. The only thing they found were some pretty standard Opossyotes, which quite possibly could have been living under that porch already before this all happened, but they still disposed of them anyways.
Finding the facility was easy since there was still a tower of black smoke pluming into the sky. The atmosphere got a bit more ominous as they approached, and even Izma’s coffin was practically on tiptoes when they peeked into the tarnished barn that seemed to be at the root of it all.
When they opened what remained of the door, they found countless bite and scratch marks. There was also quite a lot of blood and unidentifiable ooze that was putrefying the air so much that they could smell it through the smoke. At the center was a large crater. It was only one of the sources of the smoke, barely a trickle still coming out of it, but it was clearly where the monsters had escaped.
Jaid lit up her sword, swirling it with electricity, and then stuck the tip into the crater to try and see what lied beneath. They couldn’t really see much of anything, but there was a glint of machinery on the ground below. Since it wasn’t too deep, Jaid then stuck her sword into the nearby flooring as an anchor and then made a ladder of clones down to the bottom.
The rest of them held their swords out flat, making a spiral staircase for Dura to use. He probably would have been fine making the jump, but doing so into low-visibility enemy territory wasn’t the best idea—better to proceed with caution. But once Jaid and Dura were down on the solid ground and made sure nothing was immediately going to attack them, Izma’s obelisk leapt and landed with a hard thud that cracked whatever type of floor they were standing on.
She then lit up the coffin, both the glowing lines that flowed into the braids, along with a few external spotlights that had been added. But that just disturbed the nest that they hadn’t yet noticed. All at once, countless eyes opened around them, lighting up the last few spots of darkness that they couldn’t yet see.
Then all three of them doubled over in pain, clutching their ears as the endless screechy buzzing reverberated directly into their brains. Even Izma had lost control of her coffin for a second, and it slumped over to one side before she could activate the sound suppression systems and reorientate herself.
They were surrounded by a massive swarm of Bumblebats, some of the noisiest monsters in the world. And there were hundreds of them, all pissed off and out for blood. Quite literally it seemed as a few from the swarm dove in and tried to take some bites out of the incapacitated Fiends.
Most of them didn’t have much luck, since both Jaid and Dura were clothed from head to toe, but that did leave just a little bit of exposed flesh for them to sink their teeth into. Jaid was too preoccupied trying to keep her eardrums from bursting to fend them off, and Dura had turtled into his clothing to protect himself even further.
That meant it would be down to Izma to save them—her moment to shine and really show her value and competence. But that moment was robbed from her.
All of a sudden, the buzzing stopped. Not just that, but all noise ceased to exist. Jaid could barely even hear the thoughts in her head for a moment, but that was more out of surprise and disbelief. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, Jaid grabbed her sword and prepared to fight back, charging her sword to give them a good zap.
But that opportunity was robbed from her too. The volume was turned back up just in time to grace the Fiends with the sound of all the Bumblebat’s bodies being sliced through. Countless cubes of monster bits rained down on them like a fleshy hail. The sound of all that squishing to the ground was one Jaid wished had been muted as well.
Once it had all settled, there was one more squish as shoes landed on top of the pile. A young man with rouge-colored eyes smiled and handed Jaid a business card. “Hello there, I’m Dicatta with the Fiends For Hire. We’re here to save you!”