The journey back to the building took a much longer time than expected. Many streets were closed due to outbreaks of smallpox and the white mare plague. An infection that slowly killed the person through uncontrollable self-cannibalism that consumed the mind, accompanied by fevers and weakness, until they wasted away to mere bones. Death itself.

Districts were sealed off with yellow containment tape, under the surveillance of infection control personnel, led by plague doctors as they pulled carts full of black bags overflowing with corpses for cremation.

There were no protesting bodies, so they merely showed the medallions that granted them entry. The sheriff informed María that the troublemakers had moved to the Blackthorne residence, and others to the baron's armament factory, which reduced part of the surveillance on the building, and knowing the governor's character of not achieving a victory would increase the problems.

Arriving at the gates of the complex, they were met with accusing and fearful glances from resentful officers, whispers ignored by the guards, accustomed to such treatment given their origins. Valkyrie stood out due to her towering height, betraying her as a mutated being under a familial contract, synonymous with a complete renunciation of her previous life as a human and of freedom; she did not even attain second-class citizenship. They would have subdued her if not for the protection of Trisary, the nation of the guardians, and her service to a registered sorceress.

The double gate closed behind the guards once they were inside. They wore Devastator helmets, which had built-in oxygen masks donated by the sheriff. The only support they received, and what awaited them, was a canopy of twisted trees on both sides intertwined with each other. They formed a single canopy that blocked out the sun.

The undergrowth reached up to Valkyrie's knees, so María floated in the middle, and Tonatiuh brought up the rear due to his habit of covering his lover's back in every instance.

The organization fell under the command of the sorceress, appointed as the group's leader by an undisputed anime. Valkyrie, being the most physically powerful in her abyssal form, stood out in endurance and speed, so she took the lead.

She was armed with an automatic heavy shotgun and a chainsaw sword sheathed at her waist. She wore a grayish shirt with wide sleeves segmented in lines, cinched by a brown corset that lifted her bust, and around her neck she wore a leather choker, with a double strap on her arms holding a holstered magnum. Underneath the garment, she wore a snug black suit, and lightweight long boots to match.

María, the healer and tactical contact, was to be in the middle, with a staff of moonlit medina with runes and lapis lazuli jewels embedded in the shaft. Her position demanded avoiding direct combat as much as possible.

Tonatiuh found himself in a predicament; of the three, he had the greatest destructive power based on pyrokinesis, one that became dangerous due to the environment they were in. The stench of death became unbearable; they could barely stand it using the oxygen masks and their distinctive mutated qualities.

"And I thought the mushroom cut trend was the worst thing about this city," Tonatiuh remarked, appearing the most affected due to his heightened senses, so he took a few seconds to breathe in slight dizziness. "I already miss sunlight."

"By the ancient gods, Syltas has forsaken this land," Valkyrie pointed to the canopy of supernatural vegetation.

They didn't look like leaves, just intertwined branches. It seemed as though a huge layer of semi-hardened moss of watery hue was growing, from which slimy pieces dripped with the scent of decay and from some crevices through which sunlight filtered. A cave of green world with potent heat.

"A garden of decay... what exquisite taste the enemy has," Tonatiuh joked as he spun the axe with one hand.

All they could hear was the buzzing of flies, denizens of the realm of decay. Black clouds of swarms of insects flew among the twisted trees and disappeared into the sky toward the city to spread the plague. They even discovered vermin and crawling beings in the humid vegetation, some of them larger than normal.

"Filthy... very filthy..."

María swallowed hard as she adjusted the oxygen mask, her breaths coming in ragged gasps, on the verge of succumbing to a psychotic anxiety attack due to her obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her psychological training kept her steady, but her fear of disorder had her gripping the staff with clumsy hands.

She knew she'd need about five baths after this, along with several medical check-ups. Her legs trembled, brushing against her knees, not from the uncertainty of dying at any moment, but from being surrounded by the plague's filth, which simply disgusted her.

"Hey! Are you okay?" Tonatiuh asked, noticing her precarious state.

"Yeah! Don't worry..." She nodded hurriedly, thinking she could fool the lumberjack. "I'll be much better once we get out of here."

"I'll watch your back." Tonatiuh gave a thumbs-up, speaking with a friendly demeanor that María considered his eternal nature.

Hidden among the trees, they watched flies the size of medium-sized dogs carrying the carcass of a rat. When discovered, the flies flew away from the invaders' sight, only to be caught by the thorny herbal tentacle of a plant called "Ya-Te-Vi," a carnivorous plant resembling a giant fern with a toothed, pink flower and a lamprey-like mouth that sucked in food. They could appear on different types of trees and plants, camouflaged in the environment; surprise attacks, efficient and deadly.

Without hesitation, Tonatiuh threw Titan in an uninterrupted spin, cutting off one of the many appendages of the plant, eliciting a sharp, animalistic scream, and then returning it to his hands.

The plant spat acidic secretion, efficiently contained by a magical barrier just raised by María, while the guardian prepared and fired an enchanted arrow that, upon connecting with the stem, incinerated the aberration.

The root tentacles twisted in a burst of high-pitched screams, capable of shaking the guardians and the abyssal. With chattering teeth, María pulled out an instant spell card.

"Torrent!" She activated the spell, releasing a high-pressure stream of water that extinguished the fire, leaving behind only a blackened root surrounded by ashes.

María had never been fond of that element, much less of using pre-recorded spells from other conjurers, who sold them at outrageous prices. They were precisely used to control collateral damage caused by the pyromancy of the solar god. Never in the midst of battle.

The scrolls and cards tended to be simple magic, with basic functions that wouldn't present anything beyond a support complement. Tonatiuh saved up to buy them on behalf of his girlfriend, being the only one with a license. She could work using simple spells, open to the public gifted as long as they could register and clarify the related profession: monster hunter.

"Either that or a reverse barrier... replacing hardness by sealing it off from oxygen, reducing my stamina. With these things, I can save a bit... they may be weak spells, but they have their usefulness... and to buy them, I'm going to have to sell the whole liver of a skong for a pack of cards," María reflected on her reasons for what she saw as stooping to borrowed magic, and the satisfaction of being able to extinguish the fire on her own.

"Giant animals... monsters that shouldn't exist in urban areas," Tonatiuh analyzed the situation, having more experience given his experiences in the jungle. He had fought many Ya-Te-Vi, so he knew how to deal with them.

María approached the tentacle cut by the axe, and with tweezers, she took it as a sample, putting it in a jar she pulled from her tactical belt. She could create medicines for infections and wound healing using the remains. Thinking about the contract, like the faint joy of looting for her second job, which was selling medicines as a sorceress, distracted her mind from the repugnant environment.

"Any idea what we're up against?" Valkiria asked. "I received some data from my residence... I have no doubt they could be one or more imps."

"Nothing concretes at the moment... not knowing the exact number of opponents puts us at a disadvantage."

María spoke softly, tilting her head. She knew that if they had a capable enemy, they would mark her as the first target, so she had to be doubly cautious. She felt they were being watched, without knowing from where in that pestilent forest of a forage full of tall, pale mushrooms that threatened to touch the ground.

"The enemy must be intelligent or very powerful to have dispatched all response forces," Tonatiuh added.

"It's possible... they might already know of our presence," María said, fixed on the remains of the annihilated monster. "That plant was just a sacrifice for our arrival... if they had so many snipers... it means there must be multiple objectives... possibly led by an Alpha, and that one must have the noble girl... if she's still alive."

"Good deduction..." Tonatiuh praised.

"It's nothing..." she continued. "When they crossed paths, they must have eliminated the creatures around and then got rid of the remains out of the public eye... so everything must remain in the building as the only forms of life. I bet those things only came out at night, which facilitated the cover-up."

"That means..." Valkiria connected the dots, stopped when she came up with the idea that shook her, and turned to where the path led. "The people who lived there..."

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"Probably all dead..." María completed with seriousness, a hint of sorrow flashing in her eyes. "And somehow they're looking for food by making people disappear... the question is... if the thing ruling has enough power to move around the city undetected and how it does it."

They discovered no obstacle as they climbed a stone staircase, which led to a double-tiered fountain full of a mixture of mud and excrement. At the other end was the door of the building wrapped in roots.

"Well... Ready for the fireworks?" Tonatiuh took an arrow from his quiver and tensed it on the collapsible bow, stopped by María's staff.

"Use the axe... in the normal way," she ordered. "The place doesn't look very stable."

"If something doesn't blow up... I'll go crazy." He returned the tools to their sheaths and, using Titan, cut the roots blocking the way and finally knocked down the door with a kick. "An explosion would have been more... fun."

"I fear that desire to blow things up may be pathological, master Tonatiuh," Valkiria said, entering first and crouching as she crossed the threshold, like every door she passed through. She could see perfectly in the darkness and secured the area by pointing her rifle, finding nothing suspicious and indicating they should continue.

"Please, woman... of all our team divided by this stinking country... yours is to gallop, Alice's is music, Sheila's is eating, Drake's is the field, and Lance makes bets he ends up losing... mine is the Boom!" Tonatiuh yielded to María in a chivalrous act.

"As long as you can control them... and if you ask me, I think you're better in the kitchen," María had accepted that peculiarity long ago. "I don't have a problem with that... wait! And what about me? What would mine be?"

"Until now, I don't know what your best quality is..." He choked on laughter. "You've done so many things to me."

"Tonatiuh... we're working," she silenced him, blushing.

"I suggest you focus," Valkiria kept her weapon at the ready, moving slowly.

The interior of the building showed no signs of plants entering, repelled by the perpetual darkness. They traversed the cream-colored walls and dust-stagnant wooden floors of the corridors. It seemed like no one had been doing maintenance for years, contradicting the fact that the possession hadn't lasted an extended period.

They entered the lobby, finding the reception desk and two paths. A pair of staircases, one going down and one going up, beside the elevator turned into a void from which cables and chains hung. The only remaining light was a flickering bulb, emitting a serpentine hiss.

They found broken glass from crystal windows scattered on the floor, adorning the sides of the hall leading to a cafeteria and a lounge. Stains of dried blood tainted the walls and floor, with small pieces of flesh standing out from the rest, their origin unknown, all under that undesirable stench of decay, but without any bodies. As they walked, they discovered a mutilated hand in an advanced stage of decomposition lying on the floor. María kneeled in front of the remains and turned to the group.

"Get ready."

She took a bag of salt and a pen with ink made from the blood of an imp from her luggage; parasitic creatures capable of tracking sources of stigma through pheromones, where they would capture more prey to possess.

She drew a runic pentagram of equations, reciting a spell in which, with an iron arrow smeared with runes and powered by a purple amethyst in the center, began to move, searching for the source of the evil.

Where the most stigma was concentrated, this type of magic was used to track the imps and crystals used as the heaviest energy element in the industrial world. The radar pointed to the left, to the descending stairs.

After picking up the item with his hands, María took the lead, getting closer to whatever brought chaos to the place, making the radar tremble more violently. They descended in complete alertness, the two heavy guardians not liking the idea of the sorceress taking risks, so they agreed that one would pull her away and the other would attack anything that bothered them before asking questions.

They entered a carpeted corridor with various rooms, all numbered with increasing single digits for each door. María used the projected light from her staff to illuminate herself, not possessing senses as developed as her companions'.

Valkiria kicked down each door, inspecting the simple bedrooms always with the shotgun raised, most of them generic with just a bed, a desk, a dining table, and a bathroom, with no signs of life. The process was repeated with every step they took. The arrow trembled upwards until they reached some stairs that led to the laundry room followed by the boiler room.

Once there, darkness swallowed all traces of light, and they found pipes emitting steam trails. In the vicinity of the hot place, the gadget went crazy with tremors to the point that it slipped from the gloved hand and fell pointing to a darkened hallway.

After cursing, María wanted to retrieve the object, but she was held back by Valkiria and Tonatiuh, and it was agreed that the latter would go first. With an axe in hand, the guardian walked stealthily, searching for the vibrating item. Upon picking it up, he discovered a hole in the floor made by sheer brute force. They were unaware if conventional methods such as a pickaxe were used or something else.

"We have a lead..." Tonatiuh said, and they descended again one by one, entering a tunnel stagnant with turbid water that reached their ankles. The sewer.

"For the ancient gods... I should have left this job to the other guardians," María ran her hand over her face; she wasn't willing to get soaked unless necessary, so she decided to float instead of walking. She would need therapy afterward.

Guided by the stigma detector, they ventured through watery passages over the turbid water, through the tunnels for a prolonged time. In the end, they discovered a large crossroads and horror made its presence known.

They found walls covered with a fleshy coating to which voluminous purple cysts were attached, some already deflated once they hatched, from which decomposed pieces of flesh hung. The egg coverings felt soft to the touch, gelatinous and moist in texture. They couldn't distinguish what was inside. What would petrify the guardians and make their flesh pale was the result of the experiments.

A pile of emaciated human bodies lay stacked on top of each other in a corner of the room. They had no eyes, only skeletons with greenish skins full of bruises attached to the bones, and jaws that hung like abnormally elongated limbs and rotten fangs. That teratoma lay attached to the scattered biomass on the wall, in a parasitic fusion.

"Test subjects..." María deduced, swallowing hard. She took out a knife and a jar from one of her pockets, wanting to take a sample of the eggs. "Was the baron's daughter... or someone from the complex practicing illicit magic?"

"María! What are you doing?" Tonatiuh startled. "Let me... don't risk yourself like this."

"I need something that..."

As she took a step near a range of five meters from one of the eggs, all the heads of the mass rose in unison, some attached to others, with a bone-cracking sound. Necks stretched as long as snakes and focused their blind gaze on the sorceress. The bodies opened their mouths impossibly wide and emitted a cacophony of inhuman screams, from which oily saliva dripped. The multiple legs and arms tangled with each other, creating amalgamated tentacles from which curved stakes of yellowed bone, dry blood, and pulsating nerves protruded.

Somehow using the strength of the fused limbs, it tore itself from the ground, moving forward, leaving behind a bubbling slime that emitted a dense vapor of acidic stench. It tore the flesh that kept it connected to the wall, protecting the nest, and lunged at María, who couldn't help but scream in terror, accompanied by Valkiria's and Tonatiuh's furious exclamations as they grabbed their weapons.

The thing extended numerous appendages with rotten claws that missed María, who pulled her body back using flight magic, passing by her stunned companions. Valkiria opened fire with the shotgun protected by Tonatiuh's cover, tearing and cutting the tentacles with precise blows from the axe.

The bullets exploded on the flesh mountain, elevating the screams in pain, but not stopping its rhythm. Anger rose with one of the shots connecting with the eggs, bursting them and spilling a purulent liquid that smelled of death.

From the various heads, in the center a cluster of eyes of different colors and sizes surrounding a rough, long tongue stretched as the epicenter of the monster. It emitted abominable moans, exhaling that nauseating stench of decay.

Despite the colossal mass, it managed to move, lashing out with its tentacles, causing the guardians to retreat. One of the tentacles connected with Tonatiuh's torso, marking silver lines on the armor from the numerous claws and pushing him to fall backward onto the ground.

Valkiria exploded one of the tentacles with a shot from her gun, a combination of various limb claws, and drew her sword to dismember another that was coming toward her stunned companion.

María rose away from the hands and jaws. She raised her staff and conjured an electric shock, enveloping the human hydra in a sparkling glow that made it release a demented cacophony while writhing like a rat on fire. Tonatiuh stood up, drawing his shortened shotgun and blessed it with his magic before pulling the trigger aimed at the main head.

The two golden bullets, upon impact with the spiral of eyes, generated an explosion that ended up bursting part of the biomass and scattered the remains everywhere. A muddy mixture of guts, blood, half-digested food, and excrement splattered on walls, mixed with black water, and splashed Valkiria and María excessively. The thing stopped moving, under a flatulent haze of deflated flesh, and the silence was only filled by the survivors' agitated breaths.

"Ugh."

Valkiria suppressed a gag as she wiped off some of the remains from her face, seemingly unaffected. On the contrary, her mistress, paralyzed in a defensive position, trembled with nerves and let out sharp, intermittent screams that crescendo into a full-blown outcry.

"Shit! Shit!! Fucking shit!! Not again! It got in my mouth!! Somehow this thing got in my fucking mouth!!" María raged. She removed her mask just to vomit on the floor, getting rid of the body remains. The stench made her empty her guts again, and she put the mask back on after drinking a calming potion to get rid of that repulsive taste that lingered in her mouth. She had never felt anything so disgusting in her entire monster hunting career. "This job is not worth it! It fucking sucks!!"

"Hey, hey!" Valkiria ran to her aid, only to realize something obvious that, upon stopping for a few seconds, seemed alien. "Did she just curse?"

"What the hell does it matter?"

She cleaned her clothes as best as she could with a rag from her belt bags, casting a spell that removed some of the dirt from her clothes, at least as much as possible in that short amount of time. She would need cleaning utensils to complement it.

"It's just that you never... use profanity?" Tonatiuh shrugged, and when he was completely clean, María's anger surged.

"I swear I'm going to rip out the fucking guts of whoever did all this shit!!"

María vented all her hatred by blasting a beam of light at the flesh mountain, pushing it to crash against the wall, leaving behind a blackened, smoldering burn marked with small, flickering orange lights.

"Calm down! I'm here..." Tonatiuh took her by the shoulders. As they looked into each other's eyes, they nodded, mutually relaxing. "Everything will be fine... okay?"

"Yes... yes..." María nodded, calming her breathing.

"Next time..." Tonatiuh swapped his rifle for the axe. "...let me make sure everything is safe before taking samples."

"Yes... deal..." María nodded, still shaken.

"I hope so... they're going to apply what they've learned very soon."

Valkiria indicated a path once blocked by the carcass, from which they heard in the distance a terrible, echoing scream, half human and half porcine. Tonatiuh made a deep incision in one of the egg sacs, from which an unrecognizable deformity fell out, a mountain of red flesh with exposed bones that crudely imitated a human being.

"The guests..." María deduced as she took a piece of flesh from the body and filled a jar with the mucus covering it.

"And the people of the city..." Tonatiuh continued. "... and the scavenger must have realized by now that we killed his guard dog."

They crossed the passage, entering a long tunnel, delving into a labyrinth guided by the stigma detection arrow. As they advanced, the thick concrete walls turned into rocky caverns with dripping ceilings.

"These... are passages that lead to different areas of the city," said Valkiria, tilting her head, and the three of them descended in one leap.

"Maybe that's how they've been able to move," María deduced again.

She felt something strange in the structure, anti-living nature in that pit of filth and blasphemy, where they discovered gigantic rats, as well as abandoned imp nests. Fleshy cobwebs accumulated on the walls, from which empty shells resembling adult mollusks mixed with ticks, covered in dried blood, hung.