Chapter Thirty - Chosen of the Eidolons at Play

The bear warlock moved out of the room while the others were still plotting and planning. He timed his exit to coincide with a pair of cultists walking past. It was probably for the best, because while the cultists were mind-addled and clearly confused, it was entirely possible that they'd notice the warlocks and raise the alarm.

The warlock ran out, grabbed a man by the head, and proceeded to smash said head into the far wall with enough force to leave a bloody smear behind. The second started to shout, but a swift mule kick sent the cultist stumbling into the room we were all in.

The others jumped on him, and a dozen kicks and a few stomps beat him into silence.

The two cult members had guns and knives. Those were quickly reappropriated and shared between the warlocks.

I was happy to see that even though they were all working for different eidolons, they were all willing to work together to get out of here.

"Let's go!" the fox warlock said. He slipped out of the room. The others followed, with varying levels of enthusiasm. Alyssa was the last one out, which might have been for the best. The warlock just before her ate a trio of bullets to the chest and crashed down onto the ground, very much dead.

"Things are going to be loud here," I warned. "If Jenny has any plans for a distraction, now would be the time to set them off."

"I'll let her know!" Sharp said.

I hopped up and scampered after the warlocks. If it were possible, I would have warned them about the blocked stairwell, but there was no real way to do that, so I followed behind them as they stared down the corridor.

The cultists here were all armed. They were also still lethargic and sloppy. Most had machine-pistols, and I suspected that whomever was organising all of this preferred that kind of weapon because the high rate of fire at least gave them a vague chance of hitting something.

The warlocks flung spells forwards. Balls of laughing fire, a few concussive blasts. The woman that had summoned those yellow flowers cast something that summoned... a flight of small canaries. They shot forwards, leaving glowing trails behind them before they crashed into some cultists and started to tear into their flesh in a very un-canary like way.

Alyssa had picked a gun off of a corpse and was taking potshots at anyone sticking their head out. It turned the corridor into a loud echo-chamber, the cracks of gunfire reverberating through the entire place and likely carrying to the floors above and below.

There was no chance that we weren't going to be noticed.

So I did the smart thing and kept to the corners and moved from corpse to corpse, body held low in case a stray bullet came my way.

One of the cultists flung a grenade our way, but it was batted back out of the air by a quickly muttered spell.

The explosion had my ears folding back and made my bones rattle. It also shut down half the lights in the corridor.

At least it had stunned the cultists more than anything.

The warlocks made it to the stairwell, kicked the door open, and stomped in... only to discover the blocked stairwell. "Anyone got anything for that?" the bear warlock asked.

"Not tired as I am," canary-woman said.

The bear-man looked at Alyssa, but she just shook her head, as did fox-boy and the others. "Well, let's keep moving. The elevators still work."

"Unless you've got great hacking skills, I wouldn't trust it," canary-woman said. "It could be shut down with the lot of us in it, and then we're all screwed. There has to be another stairwell down."

"The windows?" one of them asked.

"I can fly, you lot can't," the canary warlock said, and that was the end of that particular idea.

They filled out of the stairwell, took a few more shots to keep any cultist heads down, then started running. They were halfway down the corridor with me trailing after them when the elevator dinged open and a dozen cultists stumbled out.

There was a bloody gunfight. I spent most of it sensibly using some poor idiot's corpse as a meatshield. "How are things on your end?" I asked. Things weren't progressing well here, and I was hoping for some good news.

"Jenny has a rocket launcher," Sharp said.

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I blinked. That... was not the kind of good news I was hoping for. "What do you mean, she has a rocket launcher?"

I heard it a second later. A distant screaming whistle, then the entire building shook. I heard faint screams from afar, even over the spellfire and gunshots.

Well, that would serve as a half-decent distraction, assuming she had more than one rocket. It would also call down a lot of attention on Sharp's head. "It might be best to back up," I said.

"I don't think I can! Jenny gave me a gun and she told me to shoot. I don't know how to use guns!"

I was about to scold her when the floor shook under me. I stuck my head out and blinked as a wash of dust passed me by. When it cleared, there was a massive hole in the floor revealed. Bear-guy was below. His arms glowing a bright green. He was covered in blood, and it looked like he had been shot in the chest a few times, but that wasn't keeping him down. Had he just blown out the floor?

The other warlocks, those that were left, moved to the edge of the hole and pushed themselves down, some with more acrobatic finesse than the others. Alyssa paused, sitting on the edge of the hole, and glanced back my way.

Sighing, I darted out from behind the corpse and ran over to leap into her arms. She slid down and crashed to the floor a moment later.

There were more cultists, but they seemed still unaware and very much unprepared for a drawn out gunfight. The warlocks made short work of the few that stood out, then there was a charge back to the stairwell.

It wasn't blocked on this level, and the group was soon stretched out in the stairwell as the faster ones ran down the stairs and the slower ones stumbled after them.

Alyssa dropped me down after a few flights. I was mostly just happy that I didn't need to walk all the way down by myself.

On reaching the ground floor, we found ourselves in a charnel house. Cultist bodies were scattered across the floor. The front entrance was a smoking wreck, and the bear warlock was off to one side, roaring psychotically as he beat a corpse up with its own arm.

I decided not to interrupt. Instead I kept close to Alyssa as she stumbled forwards towards the exit. "We're almost out!"

"G-got it!" Sharp shouted back.

The moment we were out Jenny's van came rushing out towards us. It stopped with a screech. "Aly! Get in!" Jenny shouted as she rolled the window down. The back door was slid open revealing a wide-eyed, dishevelled Sharp holding onto an assault rifle. "G-get in!" she said.

Alyssa stumbled into the van, then fell to the ground. I hopped in after her, then turned to look out.

Sharp, grabbing the gun in exactly the right way if her goal was to break her wrist, opened fire in the general direction of some cultists pushing out of the blown out entrance. She missed every shot, but it was enough to make the smarter cultists dive for cover.

"Hang on!" Jenny shouted.

I was almost thrown across the floor as she gunned in. Sharp struggled to slam the door shut, then threw herself down as a scattering of gunfire smashed through the backdoor and over our heads.

We were around a corner and relatively safe a few moments later.

"Aly! Aly, are you good?" Jenny asked.

"I feel like run-over shit," Aly said from the floor. "But I'm alive, and the moth isn't too pissed at me."

Jenny just laughed, uproarious and happy. I suspected that she was close to tears, which didn't bode well when she was the one driving.

"Are you okay?" Sharp asked as she plucked me off the floor and placed me on her lap.

"I'm fine," I said. "But we might not be if we stick around with these two for too much longer. I don't need their questioning."

"Right," Sharp said. "You did really well in there."

I huffed. "Obviously. I'm an expert. Given some time to actually plot and plan it wouldn't have been half as messy, of course."

Sharp grinned. "Of course!" she said.

Then both of us gasped as we were suddenly hit by a wave of notifications.

Anima Has Levelled Up!

Anima 1 > 2

Body Has Levelled Up!

Body 1 > 2

Cat Has Levelled Up!

Cat 3 > 4

Combat Has Levelled Up!

Combat 2 > 3

Magic Has Levelled Up!

Magic 1 > 2

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