"So you're offering sanctuary for what's left of us?" Babushka Maria says. She is maybe in her early 60s, whitening hair, very slightly plump with hints of wrinkles on her gentle face. She is pale and have clearly lost a lot of weight. I remember her, I had bulli—fought a team of combatants that included her granddaughter, and rendered the girl a crying mess the last time I were here. Right now; she had taken it upon herself to become the moral support of her subjects, their babushka—AKA. everyone's grandmother.

"And we have your words, no! Your guarantee that we will be treated humanely?" A thinly middle aged man, probably below 50 years of age. Trendy with a casual gray checkered suit despite his malnutrition, asks me yet again, as if the thought of being sheltered whilst still a free man is beyond his understanding. It's only been 5 months since The System integration, unexpectedly so much has changed with the way people think.

"Well, I don't really manage how Rumah does things, so I don't know for sure. But you definitely won't be free—free, y'know. They can't afford to have people consume resources and waste away in return. So you'll have to work and contribute to the growth of our Territory, and pay taxes on trades. But you're free to leave anytime, or work on what you wanna do and stuff." I tell Edmon.

"Ah, that sounds much better than our current circumstance. Even if it is only half as good as you described it." He replies gentlemanly, turning to look at Maria. "Perhaps we may give this a chance?"

Babushka Maria nods to Edmon. "Yes, anything is better than being under Polina's mercy."

"She has none." Edmon chipped.

"Well," Maria opened her mouth to speak when a loud crash caused the whole room to shudder… we run outside to check, rather, it might be the whole underground caverns shuddering.

"GATHER EVERYONE," Edmon yelled at the few available guards—who had been the healthier people I saw previously called in to manage the pile of food—who also started yelling to control the panic caused by falling pieces of the cave ceiling. "FORM UP, THIS IS NOT A DRILL! WE ARE LEAVING!"

"I am afraid we'll have to take you up on that offer, right now! Please do save them!!" Maria tells me from my left, her eyes never stopped looking out for her grandchildrens even as they droop in exhaustion, I have reasons to believe she can move things with her mind somehow. Very obvious to my Mana sense and near childrens especially, where I can detect slight unnatural movements of the falling rocks. Though only within about 30 meters of her. Like something is nudging them away from causing major injuries. A rock falling for a little girl's head; a smaller rock somehow knocked it off course so the larger rock only grazed by her forehead instead. A teenager holding a bread knife tripped as he panicky rushed for his little brother mid-snacking, the guy would have impaled himself with his own knife as he attempt to break his fall. Instead his hands slipped from the non-slippery floor and he falls on his stomach. Unharmed bar a few bruises and scraped up fingers.

How is she doing that!?

Maybe she'll happily tell me if I help these people… Blink; A falling wall reattaches onto its rightful place. Blink; a little girl's mother is freed from fallen debris. Blink; a massive piece of the cavern roof is caught. This one I compress and form into a massive pillar, then an uncountable number of my Trilattic Swarm is conjured to form a hexagonal tent of sorts, using this rock as the central support. A 50 centimeter opening is available for entry on all six sides of the tent. What one layer cannot withstand 10 or 25 can…

But, even as people are rallied and brought into the makeshift shelter I realized that the construct has put us at an impasse—not to mention the disadvantage is ours. This is definitely an attack, an attempt to force these survivors out of their shell or to hide and perish within; which means we need to leave! At our current situation, I have to maintain the shelter while everyone else can only wait. The combatants may have a chance at rushing outside, but can they survive through what awaits out there?

Come on, think! A better solution. The ground? Or the walls? Imagine having an inner world of sorts, and being capable of simply drawing all these people in. I am instead reminded of traversing the Torterrene's regenerating flesh. We are surrounded by mundane earth and rocks, nothing is stopping me from making an escape tunnel on the move. "Igor, do you know if we're below or above the ground outside?"

Maria had fainted only a few minutes since her miracle was triggered, and it is now un-triggered while she now lay on the ground unconscious beside me. Makes sense that something that powerful is very unsustainable for low leveled people. Edmon and several of the stronger peoples are moving around, coordinating most things and doing what they can to ease the crowd. Igor just happened to be currently nearby… At my question, he paused to think for a moment before taking out and consulting a map.

"I believe the initial plan was to stay as center point as possible while building compact sturdy rooms. Only opening up another floor when more space is necessary. But we got carried away and ended up creating larger and larger rooms as we dug lower." He explained, "the tunnels end up being longer, to maintain structural integrity. But we are definitely still above ground; our entrance is about three quarters up, we dug maybe half the mountain's height, which leaves a quarter more to go till ground level."

"I would have been content with just those few last sentences." I tell him jokingly, albeit with a serious face. But it's good to know they still had the mind to spread around the hollowed areas out somehow, though I'm also not too sure if that helps. "And is there a closer side from where we are?"

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But he was unsure. Given time, Meteran would have provided us an answer but as things goes. I decided upon the closest wall and proceeded to shape our escape tunnel by parting about 2 meters of rocks, 30 centimeters to each side at about waist height. The tunnel itself is slightly triangular; wider nearer to the ground and comes to a point above our heads, it is made to easily slope downwards. I even go out of my way to make it curve very slightly. After an hour or two, I could finally feel the outside at the periphery of Mana Sense's maximum range. Noticing that we are still far above the ground; our straight tunnel becomes a downward spiral.

Lucky these people divided up the supplies I had dumped real fast, as that helped sustain them during the march. Eventually, after another few hours, we find ourselves at approximately ground level, where I stop to think. Edmon approaches to ask, "why are we stopping?"

I slightly expand the tunnels and open a few small holes to the outside, hopefully it will suffice to function as makeshift air circulation. While telling him and blending with the background, "wait here for a moment."

Blink, Micro Flight. Within ten minutes of circling the mountain, I managed to locate my hidden Tower—It was unfortunate that I ended up taking the long way around. Finishing the circle to return to the group, an open tunnel is unveiled before me. The Solntse refugees are milling about and are loud enough they might as well give themselves over to the Vampires. I land near Edmon, pointing agresively at the caves. "What part of wait here did you not understand!?"

"People were getting claustrophobic." He answers righteously.

"Good job then." He snorted as if it was a given. "You've successfully alerted the enemies of our location."

"He is a good teacher academically, but slightly lacking in thinking long and hard about the consequences of his actions. Don't you agree?" A female voice comes from above.

"Don't know him well enough to answer that," I say to the familiar Vampire lady that had just dropped down from above, several other people followed her descent. "But in his shoes, I would've told the few hundreds of people to hold on, or at the most, further expand the tunnel. Maybe subtly create more ventilation."

"So are you some kinda right hand woman of the Vampire boss or the boss in person?" I continue to ask.

"Be humbled, I'm the boss herself!" She poses photogenically, "In the blood!"

"Weren't you the person who welcomed me previously at Luselene? The boss back then was 3 mysterious people hiding under cloaks."

"Never blindly believe in what you see." She replies cheerfully. "So you're the Hero they're placing their hopes on?"

"Not sure about being a hero, but I don't mind helping out when I can. So why did you hide last time, but show yourself now? Kinda inconsistent don't you think." I question her mockingly.

"Shaddap! I'm stronger now!" She snapped. "Hero or not. Soon, you'll be washing your neck and begging for me to take a bite!"

Not a single shred of friendliness left, they are showing their true colors and going all out now. "Ah, my bad. You weren't being inconsistent, but just being a coward. Hiding from the strong and---"

"SHUT! UP!!" Hmm, I believe that was a pretty good Taunt. Humans, or ex-humans, are so much easier to insult than unfamiliar creatures such as Goblins or some living barrier turtle wannabe. "DIE!"

She summons a red-ish scythe out of nowhere and charges at me in unrestrained fury. Damn she is fast! Much faster than anyone I've seen so far, not even Ludovica the god of war wannabe. Unfortunately for miss Vampire here, I'm much more dangerous than an Olympian Gods fan---the tip of her curved blade was caught between my thumb and index finger, her momentum went from over 9000 to 0 within a mere fraction of a second---just a casual gamer and fiction fan. "A scythe wielding Vampire? Can you get anymore cliché?"

Taunt. Not that I really think that way, but she makes it so easy. Proven instantly by the way she yelled even louder and lost herself yet further to her fury and initiated the attack, while her allies looks at each other in doubt. Like this, we clashed numerous times… Even after the first slash I caught, she has the upper gro--air, but I am currently smaller in size without a single penalty in strength or speed. I dodge another slash while conjuring two Magico Disks for its range, control, and versatility. One Beam Torrent for a strong charged up attack, and one Invaseviction that is just OP versus humanoids like the one I am facing here.

"Those fancy magic won't save you!" She screams, coming in for another slash. I simply Parry the flat of her blade with an open palm and both target her esophagus with Invaseviction as well as send a supercharged Magico Disk flying at her. The construct-maw lashed forth and took a bite while she narrowly dodged the speeding Disk. She also detected the invisible spatial attack the instant Invaseviction's maw bites and somehow destroyed the connection between said maw and I. All I could tell was several strong movements in her internal mana flow before the Spell ends.

"Sure, I'm the one that needs saving." I reply flatly. At the same time, parrying her next swing with the insides of a heavily modified Magico Disk that boosted its durability, it's more of a hoop at this point. My Beam Torrent also finished charging its first load and it's got her name on it, whatever that name is! As she slashes to cut the beam in half, my Magico-Hoop travels up the scythe blade onto the upper handle and constricts to attach itself onto the weapon. She did not notice, probably.

Blink. I conjure and release another empowered Disks at her midsection while at the same time subtly manipulating the hoop on her weapon at opportune times to keep her off balance. Our exchange continued, between Blinks, empowered Magico Disks, my Beams and my weapon, I kept her busy. "Dammit! How are you messing with my weapon!?"

I guess I'm not that subtle... All pretense of that gone, I yanked her weapon and pulled it towards me. She puffed like a dragon-wannabe—"I believe you were supposed to stall for time." A heavy voice can be heard coming from slightly above, again… Two people suddenly came out of nowhere, they were not there one second and there the next fraction of a second.

"Now look at your pitiful situation." The other offers his wisdom with an arrogant smirk and an awkward pitched voice. "Your weapon is gone, your subordinates are dead, and you are losing your mind to mere mortal insults."

"You mere lowly slaves dare run your mouth before a genuine Vampire Lord!?" My opponent exclaims.