Beneath the roof of willowing leaves and swaying branches, two figures flew through the air in silence as they left shadowy blurs in their wake. Anna willed the wind as her carriage, all the while listening to the spirits around her and receiving strange visions in her mind.
Ever since the incident more than a week ago with Barem Village, news had spread throughout the entirety of the empire about the recent invasion of monsters from the Northern Wilderness to its surrounding villages. Outrage had spread amongst the common folk as plans about clearing out the monsters of the forest - at least the ones nearer to the empire’s borders, should be done.
Anna knew that this wasn’t because of the monsters of the forest. She could deduce that this was the actions done by the unknown organization behind the attack on Barem Village, and as reports about missing corpses in the village entered her radar, she started to worry.
Perhaps the monsters had simply eaten those bodies, yes, but she would rather assume the worst than believe in some fantasy that deludes the reality of the situation.
So, she started to do her own investigation, albeit with some help from Noel with his teleportation. With the spirits, the two managed to glean more information about the mysterious organization by teleporting from one village to another and even got a clear view of one of their members, but that didn’t help much at all since they were covered head to toe in dark clothes along with more layers of anti-divination measures, rendering their vision useless.
Any leads the two found were a dead end, so Anna was about to give up her search, when all of a sudden, while she was questioning all of the spirits she could find throughout the capital, she encountered one spirit who fled from the Peaceful High Woods and got another lead - and this lead is strong.
According to the spirit, while it was roaming around the underground with its fellow earth spirits, they managed to notice a strange area underground that subconsciously affected their minds, and the spirit noticed that peculiarity since they were planning on going further north but somehow decided to move east away from the area in front of them.
The spirits aren’t as smart as humans, but with the way their minds functioned, a minor peculiarity as that was a bit more apparent to the weirdo earth elemental, so then they decided to check that place out.
What happened next was apparently blurry and hazy to the earth elemental, but it could faintly remember meeting something, like darkness encroaching upon it and wiping its mind. All it could remember clearly was it running away at breakneck speeds, with the condition of his fellow earth elements remaining a mystery.
“What if it’s just a monster?” Noel asked, annoyed by this needless investigation that Anna begged them to do. He could understand why she wanted to do this, it was to follow her righteous heart or whatever, but for all Noel could care, this didn’t mean anything to him at all. Fuck those dead villagers, he still has research to do.
He was indeed curious as to who they were, but that’s below the list of his needs. Unlike goody-two-shoes Anna here, he was a busy man with arduous goals.
“What if it’s them?” Anna retorted. “You don’t have to be so cranky about it. Who knows, maybe that supposed monster of yours is something super rare and you’d make the discovery of a lifetime.”
“Hmph,” Noel snorted. “Such bouts of luck are rare, and I’d rather rely on myself to make such discoveries over some uncontrollable event.”
“Wait!” Anna whispered as she paused and pointed down at the ground. “We’re here.”
“Sigh, let’s just get over with your detective work,” Noel mumbled and willed his mana to cover his eyes, casting some sort of divination spell. Immediately, he looked down at the ground to see the mysterious space the spirit told them of, and well… “Nothing, it’s just the ground.”
“What?!” said Anna. “What do you mean nothing? There should be something there.”
“It’s too… nothing,” Noel mumbled, confused and intrigued by the tone of his voice.
“So there’s something?” asked Anna hopefully.
“I’m not so sure, it’s a bit similar to the way those people back then set up their anti-divination systems. Over ten spells and no results came,” said Noel. “Keep your guard up, now I’m actually curious.”
Noel and Anna then disappeared as he cast an invisibility spell, and the two floated down to the ground and passed through the floor like it was air. Anna silently followed Noel as they approached the place where the earth spirit had supposedly found strange, but the more they wandered, the less they found.
‘Nothing’s here…,’ Anna said through their telepathic link.
‘Wait,’ said Noel as he paused floating through the solid ground. ‘Our minds are influenced!’
‘What?!’ Anna shouted in surprise.
‘My mental protections had even disappeared and I didn’t notice it! Only an expert in mind magic could do something like this,’ Noel said, his tone frosty and cold. ‘I hadn’t put much interest in mind magic before, partially due to its illegal nature back then, but this is just…’
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
‘Cover me,’ Noel said quickly and proceeded to prepare a complex spell.
Anna hurriedly floated right beside Noel and ordered the earth spirits to surround them. Noel gathered the pulsating ball of pink light into his hand and crushed it, dispersing the light into a tidal wave of pinkness that spread outward in a circle.
As the light disappeared, the two immediately noticed the small pocket of empty space ahead of them, along with a dungeon entrance placed inside it.
This was it.
This confirmed that there was indeed something here.
Anna and Noel immediately launched their attacks in tandem, with the earth splitting into two while a disintegrating beam of purple light erupted out of Noel’s hands. A large, rocky tunnel soon formed in front of the two as they managed to get a clear view of the portal in the distance, and with its faint mana trace, they could deduce that it was merely an F Rank dungeon.
Their curiosity quickly disappeared, because, from the shadowy corners of their newly made tunnel, two humanoid beings came into view, with bodies made out of wispy shadows, with no eyes, mouth, hair, ears, or any features, really. Strangely enough, they also wore white lab coats similar to those of scientists.
“Woah oh!” the one on the left exclaimed in surprise, covering his mouth with his hands and looking at the other humanoid creature to the right. “It seems like we have an intruder, Guard 2!”
“That’s right, Guard 1!” Guard 2 nodded their head sagely, their voice warped and distorted as if Anna was hearing shrieks stemming from the abyss. “So, dear strangers, we kindly ask you two to leave!”
“We don’t want any needless fights now, do we?” Guard 1 chuckled. “After all, only dumb self-righteous heroes would try to stick their noses into something they aren’t needed to deal with, right?”
“Correct!” Guard 2 crossed his arms and nodded his head.
“Who are you guys?” Anna asked coldly as rocks floated around her body.
“Us?” Guard 1 looked at her and laughed. “I’m Guard 1, and this hot stuff right here is Guard 2!”
“Oh stop, you,” said Guard 2. “I might just actually accept your proposal if you keep doing this.”
“R-Really?!” Guard 1 widened his eyes and trembled in joy. “Woah mama! It seems like life is turning for the better! Perchance… I’ll get to be a father by the time the year ends!”
“Hmph, questioning is useless, it seems,” Noel said coldly. He then silently raised his arm, and out of nowhere, numerous beams of light shot forward, turning and twisting in its path to illuminate the dark tunnel.
But, at a speed Anna couldn’t even begin to process, she heard a loud crack and an incredibly cold hand grabbed her by the neck. Her eyes landed on Noel, and she saw the same shadowy figure wearing a lab coat standing behind him, with their hands piercing through an invisible barrier and just a few inches away from landing on his face.
“Dumbass,” Guard 2 said as they raised her to the sky. The humanoid entity looked at her in the eye, snickering with its non-existent mouth, and added, “We told you to not stick your noses, right?”
“Hehehe,” Guard 1 chuckled from the side as they rapidly disappeared, and Noel hurriedly reinforced his broken barrier with a trickle of cold sweat dripping down his forehead. “You really sound like a villain!”
“Right?” said Guard 2, their hands tightening around her neck. “But I’m not dumb enough to let this go on so I’m gonna kill her already-“
Anna clenched her teeth as earthen spikes erupted out of the ground, stabbing right into Guard 2 who was holding her by the neck. Guard 2 seemed mildly surprised by this attack, but they remained motionless, grabbing her tightly around the neck.
“How original,” Guard 2 said blandly, and as his figure started to disperse into shadowy gas, he clenched his other fist, and grinned madly, “Here’s my gift for Guard 1!”
“Kuwak!” Anna dropped to the ground, coughing out blood as she felt her innards ache in severe pain. She struggled to breathe, her eyes rolling to the back of her head as she dangled between consciousness and unconsciousness.
“Fucking hell! You bastard! You really want to spice things up so badly. Fine, I’ll annoy the original as well for giving me this shitty job!” Guard 1 shook his head in dismay and simply went along with the flow. From deep within his core, he pulled out strands of mana and formed two long blades. He clashed them against one another, swung them to the side, and declared loudly, “Come, you maggots! Taste the fury of a master swordsman!”
…
“Ugh, those two ingrates,” Rob sighed, dismissing the live feed of Guard 1. He could understand them, and couldn’t really begin to hate them, since in essence, those two were him - albeit only with an infinitely small fraction of his memories and experience.
“He should die pretty soon. No matter how advanced the guards are, compared to that Noel fella, he’s severely outclassed,” murmured Rob. Ignoring the issue altogether, he calmly observed his most recent - and most successful test subject with a delighted smile.
“Subject 324 - data has shown your physical strength had risen around ten thousand times your body weight plus the weight of the biological armor itself, just like a dragon beetle. The defense had also risen through the roof, and vitality is on par with those of Weredragons. Your genetic makeup is also pretty easy to modify later on, so it wouldn’t be too hard to add in the vitality of a vampire or a troll, the poison of a hydra, or some other weird power I want to add to this chimera bio-armor,” hummed Rob. He tapped the glasses over his eyeless face and analyzed the results further.
In front of him, hovering above the plain white ground, was a tall monster wearing a black, carapace-like armor, and a head vaguely reminiscent of a dragon’s head, albeit more human-ish since it was made for a humanoid being to wear. Rob then carefully traced his shadowy finger across the chest of the motionless object, altering some cells here and there before he finally that it was perfect.
“Warning, warning!” a static, distorted voice boomed across the entire laboratory. “Two intruders had invaded! The Guards have been dispatched. Researchers, please evacuate the premises! We don’t want your expensive bodies now to get wasted, don’t we? Yes, the original had specifically ordered me to mention this because he doesn’t want to spend a painstaking few hours to create us all again.”
“Bruh, I was prepared to fight to the death!” one researched sighed, and packed his items.
“Tch, how boring,” another one groaned.
“Just fucking do it, you smart-ass researchers,” the voice crackled.
“Fuck you too, announcer! You just sit in that room of yours all day and speak to the mic!”
Rob muted out the cacophony of arguments echoing in his ears and instead walked towards the floating husk of armor. It squirmed and moved like living flesh, and deep inside the armor, Rob could see Subject 324 get swallowed and devoured by the armor of living flesh, adding on to its already great vitality.
Now, all that was left to make this living abomination his.