said Felix, smiling at us.

I looked at Felix in surprise.

He looked… different.

Not just a little different. Anise had looked different, with two eyes and strawberry blonde hair.

Felix, however, didn’t look like the same person at all.

He had a slimmer, more delicate-looking form, and his hair had changed from black to a reddish-white color I hadn’t seen in this area at all. His facial structure and body shape had almost nothing in common with how he usually looked.

He seemed to notice my gaze.

he said with a sigh.

I winced.

Felix shook his head. Felix paused for a moment, and then I saw his Status Screen flicker into view in front of me.

Physical

Strength: (20+112)

Grade 6

Agility: (20+114)

Grade 6

Fortitude: (40+123)

Grade 8

Mental

Intelligence: (40+98)

Grade 6

Willpower: (40+81)

Grade 6

Perception: (40+99)

Grade 6

Essence

Absorption: (20+75)

Grade 4

Manifestation: (20+111)

Grade 6

Binding: (40+82)

Grade 6

Alteration: (40+96)

Grade 6

I scanned his status screen, before wincing. Felix had… pretty much been carried by his Market bought stats in most of the categories that mattered. It wasn’t a huge deal - a few bowls of Sallia’s noodles could round up a few of his more awkward rolls, like Perception and Intelligence. But it definitely wasn’t the ‘ideal’ set of rolls, either.

At least he had rolled well on Fortitude, which was a plus.

asked Felix, bringing me out of my thoughts a moment later.

I nodded.

said Felix.

I asked, as I grabbed another few guns from the guards and stuffed them into my bag.

said Felix.

I frowned. Multiple guards in this base had already mentioned ‘Aplos,’ and when I had used illusions in front of them, it had seemed almost as if they were convinced they were facing Aplos. They seemed afraid of the creature. However, the alchemists and guards outside of this base displayed no fear of ‘Aplos,’ even though they clearly knew about this base.

Curious.

I quickly shared my observations with the rest of the group.

said Felix.

asked Anise.

I said, after a few moments of thought. I had no idea how security and information clearance worked in this world. But I still felt something was very weird about this.

I shook my head. I thought about the strange sound deeper in base, which sounded almost like an unnatural heartbeat mixed with the thump of machinery, and shivered.

I spent a moment thinking over all of the ‘oddities’ in the facility that I wanted to grab on the way out. The swords, Anise’s magic orb, and the javelin-lightning bolts were all probably valuable and useful for us.

I had originally wanted to explore the base a little more, because I was incredibly curious to know what they were doing in this base. However, I was starting to get a very bad feeling about this. Something about this base didn’t add up, and I was starting to think it might be better not to pick at the hornet’s nest.

Felix paused, and looked around.

Felix sighed.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

asked Anise.

I said.

I turned towards Sallia, who was already working on reopening the door behind us.

A few moments later, the door opened, and the three of us started running.

As we moved into the hallway with the javelin-lightning bolts, I paid for a moment to teleport a few of the lightning-javelins over to us. I stuffed a few binding and a few manifestation lightning bolts into my dimensional pack and waved away a System notification. Then I frowned.

I asked.

asked Anise.

asked Felix.

asked Sallia.

I said.

said Sallia.

said Felix.

I heard a loud ringing sound start blaring through the base, followed by the sound of bells ringing and objects crashing against each other.

I asked.

said Sallia.

I felt my heart start to tighten. I said. Something was causing me to feel a faint sense of danger, and I didn’t think it was just from the people in the base.

I heard something bang against something else in the distance. It sounded like a cannonball colliding with a giant steel door.

Or, perhaps, it sounded like an elephant ramming itself against one of the walls of the base.

We looked at each other, and I stopped stealing lightning bolts. We started sprinting towards the entrance as fast as we could. The strange, almost-heartbeat sound in the distance also started to get louder.

I asked Sallia and Felix.

said Sallia.

I tried to concentrate on the distant sound of twisted thumping, but it didn’t sound like an illusion at all. I frowned in confusion as we reached the next door.

Perhaps whatever was creating the illusory sound was just better than me at doing illusions, and that’s why I couldn’t detect anything wrong with it? If I could hear it but Sallia and Felix couldn’t, that meant something was wrong. I just couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what was wrong here.

As I was trying to figure out what was going on, I heard another, much louder crashing sound. And then, Sallia frowned.

“The door isn’t opening,” she said out loud, startling me as she broke the silence we had been maintaining apart from all of the gunshots. “Something changed about the flow of binding essence in the building.”

Felix grimaced, and put his hand against the wall.

“I think they shut the building off somehow. They made every door in the base impossible to open,” he said. “I doubt they would do this just to contain me.”

I heard another loud crash in the distance.

“My first guess is that ‘Aplos’ decided to break out at the same time we did,” I muttered.

Felix and Sallia’s face tightened, but neither of them contradicted me. Clearly, they also thought the same thing.

“So… based on the reactions of the guards, as well as the fact Miria and I can hear a strange sound that we can’t… it’s some sort of illusion-wielding person?” asked Anise.

“Since they created me in this lab, it could be an artificial life form of some sort,” said Felix. “Maybe it has an ability similar to those derived from potions? But if it’s just an illusion based monster, I don’t know why the guards would be so afraid of it. And I don’t know why the researchers outside of the base would be kept in the dark about it. Ability potion research isn’t anything super confidential or rare. Something about it still seems weird to me…”

I heard gunshots in the distance.

“Couldn’t Aplos have chosen some other day to break out?” I said, cursing the creature in my heart.

Why now of all times?

But I didn’t have time to curse our crappy luck any more before Sallia swore. Instead of trying to fiddle around with the delicate internal mechanisms of the locked door, she simply reached out with her absorption essence and started ripping the door apart.

“We’re abandoning stealth,” she said. “This door needs to go.”

Moments after Sallia deconstructed the door, we pushed through the ruins of the once-solid metal wall.

On the other side, we came face to face with over twenty soldiers. Unlike the sloppy guards we had seen earlier, these people were no longer screwing around. Ten of the soldiers were in front, and were laying down and leveling guns at us, while the other ten soldiers were standing upright and pointing their weapons at us. To the side, I could see two more soldiers staring at us - but while they also held guns, I could feel traces of absorption essence in their bodies.

Ability-potion users of some sort? I cursed. The soldiers were perfectly arrayed to avoid obstructing each other’s line of sight, and they had grim expressions on their faces. They looked ready to fight to the death.

“Aplos! I see it! Fire at whatever you see in front of you!”

The soldiers opened fire.

My spatial eyesight expanded, more out of instinct than out of any real planning on my part as I panicked and activated my perception ability.

I saw dozens of bullets flying towards us, as well as a streak of lightning. At the same time, I felt something eat at the edges of my thoughts, as if someone was trying to invade my mind. It was weak compared to my Willpower, but I could still feel it slowing my thoughts.

One of the ability users.

I split my mind and concentrated on as many of the bullets as I coud. Unlike earlier, I didn’t have the leeway for mercy.

Six of the bullets and the lightning bolt disappeared into thin air, before reappearing in front of the soldiers. I heard soldiers scream, but I started panicking.

I had been overlooking one problem when I thought about our combat prowess in this world.

I could only teleport so many things at once.

I stopped six bullets, but couldn’t stop the others.

Sallia blazed with absorption essence, and another eight bullets halted in midair. Unlike the bullets I had commanded, Sallia’s bullets didn’t counterattack their shooters.

The other eight bullets whizzed towards us.

Felix stopped another one using his metal control alteration essence. I could see him trying to reach out for more, but without the vision-related boosts Sallia and I had created with our other rune abilities, trying to ‘catch’ a bullet using magic in midair was nearly impossible. It was a miracle Felix stopped one.

I jumped in front of my friends. My dress would absorb the impact of many of the bullets, and so I was suitable for standing in the front lines. A few bullets cut into my dress, where they sank into the water and didn’t seem to cause any harm.

At the same time, a hot streak of pain ripped its way into my arm, and another into my shin.

I cried out in pain, but managed to turn behind me.

Anise was doubled over, clutching at her stomach as blood bloomed. She coughed wetly, before glaring at one of the soldiers. A moment later, the air in front of her rippled and a magic missile shot out of her hands.

I heaved a sigh of relief, even as most of my body writhed in agony.

Anise hadn’t died, she was just injured.

Felix and Sallia looked fine. The soldiers had missed them.

Sallia also looked pissed.

“No one hurts my friends,” she hissed, and raised her hand towards the soldiers.

The floor of the facility twisted itself, then spears of metal ripped themselves out of the ground and impaled several of the shooters.

Felix joined in, and a huge chunk of the ceiling fell off and smashed into the soldiers. It wasn’t large enough or heavy enough to kill them, but it definitely looked like it hurt.

Several soldiers were now dying, screaming in pain, or desperately trying to take aim and fire at us. I didn’t have time to process who was dead and who was alive.

I gritted my teeth and pushed through the pain. I was getting used to fighting while injured. I used my third rune ability to leap into the eyesight of one of the soldiers, then hijacked his vision. I created an image of us jumping over his head at an incredible speed and then fleeing as fast as possible.

With another push made of absorption essence, an illusion made of light copied my image.

Some of the soldiers were distracted by my image. Five soldiers retained control and fired another volley of bullets at us, but five bullets was much more manageable, even if I was in a lot of pain.

I teleported three of the bullets to return them to the soldiers who had fired at us, killing them on the spot, and Sallia stopped the other two. The distracted soldiers instead fired at the illusion I had created, giving me enough time to throw a few extinguishes at the strongest surviving soldiers. Two more soldiers died, before Sallia and Felix sent another wave of metal crashing towards the soldiers, and Anise managed to get in a few magic missiles that killed or maimed any stragglers. We successfully ended any vestiges of resistance, leaving only heavily injured or dead soldiers.

I turned back towards Anise. I noticed that her stomach injury was bleeding a lot, but it wasn’t as bad as I had first thought. It looked more like the bullet had grazed her side, causing her stomach to start bleeding but not heavily injuring her. I crawled over to Anise and started dumping alteration essence into her body, to close up the wound. I also started healing up my shin. I was going to need it to keep running away.

We had defeated the first wave of guards, but there were still two hallways left we needed to cross.

And then, the doorway in the hallway behind us ripped open. And on the other side of that door was something. Something that my mind instinctively recognized, but couldn’t comprehend, for it was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

Aplos.