Truth clamped his will down on his legs, locking himself in place. He had started to bolt before his mind had even processed what he was seeing. The monster was an ambush hunter. Running would only reveal where he was. He had to be patient. He had to think. Despite every fiber of his being screaming at him to get away. He had to think.

It was utterly alien. That was the only word for it. Alien. Nothing about it could exist naturally in this world. It followed no biological logic, nor magical sense. Or if it did, it was beastcrafting beyond anything he had seen or heard of. If it was beastcrafting, he would make a special point of killing its creator. That sort of diseased yet capable mind was too dangerous to be allowed.

Stop and breathe. Just… try and not dwell on his memory of… whatever that was. Silent infiltration was almost certainly out of the question. He might try to camp out and sneak in with a shipment, but no, that was flatly not possible. No one that stuck that over their front door was going to miss someone sneaking in with a shipment.

He could check the lake at the top of the mountain, but he refused to believe it would be any less dangerous. If anything, the danger would just be better concealed.

Breathe. Just breathe. Think, and breathe. The thing wasn’t very smart. It had some level of intelligence as it was capable of ambushes, but it broke cover when a tree branch landed on it. Highly observant, highly aggressive, not very smart.

What was it? Demon? Didn’t feel right. It had that mad disregard for conventional biology he associated with some demons, but this seemed to be more than that. This was practically a negation of any sort of order at all. Just a blob which made what it needed as it needed it. Be it eyes or limbs. Or a mouth.

He could try and fight it head on. “Head.” Hah. It didn’t have one of those. Not much had held up to Obliteration. Except Dr. Sun. Who, despite being stabbed a lot, including in the head, kept coming back to life.

And just how in the Hell did that work? Some glitch in Obliteration? Something the spell just missed? Obliteration was a prototype spell, and something made in house by a security agency. Not exactly tested by the best minds in spell design.

He would not care to bet his life that the giant nightmare thing wasn’t likewise immune. Seemed like a weird security oversight otherwise, and there was exactly zero chance that Starbrite was going to be negligent with this place.

Alright, so… drawing it out seemed like the best plan. Not a good plan, but the best plan he had. Which meant that he needed some kind of lure. Was there any kind of anti-demon or anti-angel ward around this place?

Actually… no. Which was odd. That was pretty standard. Something concealed in the dirt? Something that only deployed if triggered? Both seemed plausible. Hmmm. Truth fought the urge to drum his fingers on his leg. He needed more information than what Merkovah had provided, which would mean actively testing the defenses here. Tests which might have terminally negative consequences for him.

On the other writhing pseudopod, what were the odds that Starbrite didn't know people knew he was dug in up here? This was a covert location, yes, but too much just wasn’t adding up for Truth. This was the end game. This is where the polite lies were done away with, and ugly truths revealed.

Why was the base here? Why not at Army Ford, or under a hospital in Harban, or on an island completely controlled by Starbrite? Why tunnel into an actual, literal, active volcano for your sensitive research project? Especially a volcano that wasn’t entirely inside the country you hijacked. Why be covert at all? Tell the world.

“We are proud to announce our Gaspin Island Advanced BioMagical Research facility. Here is Dr. Sun, noted best-person-ever, who will oversee the facility.”

“Dr. Sun, what will you be researching?”

“Why, how to keep people healthy in even the very worst conditions, naturally, as well as pediatric studies. I, famously, love children.”

“Aww!”

“Yes, there was some discussion about putting the facility inside an active volcano instead of a tropical island paradise filled with soft, fuzzy, friendly animals and just the cutest, friendliest demons ever, but that’s dumb. Actually, that’s completely insane. We are doing this for the children.”

Something inside Truth went “Click.” A nasty, unpleasant sort of click, like your bully locking the door behind him as he came in.

He was going to act a fool. That was the other lesson of Happori Village. Don’t play by their rules- they are better at it, and the game is rigged. Don’t try to cheat yourself. Just flip the table and grab the money as it falls.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He nodded internally. He just needed to grab the girl. That was literally it. Everything else? Not his problem. That was, in fact, a plenty big enough problem. And now, having come to that conclusion, he was going to do… what?

Well. Get the hell out of there for a start. He had a damn good idea where the door was, now. Time to fall back and get prepped.

____________________________________________________________________

He sat in the dim back room of what appeared to be a hardware store. There was the customary folding chair, shelves of excess inventory, and the general mess of workers who needed a break but didn’t really have the time to take one.

Truth had taken pains to avoid the part of Minzu he had been in before. Trying to keep away from any familiar place. Make the hunters and secret policemen work that little bit harder. The store was chosen at random. Tomorrow, the clerks would come in here and discover absolutely nothing. He’d even lock the door behind him.

He just needed a quiet place to think and to work. His first thought, continuing on the Happori Vilage line, was to summon an angel. Starbrite was already down a load of higher level people thanks to the last one. However, he strongly suspected he survived because the Angel let him slide, not because it was really mad at Starbrite. There was no reason to think another angel would be as broad minded.

Devils? Summoning a bigass demon had a definite appeal. How he would manage the sacrifice, he didn’t know. Hmm. There was actually some potential there.

Could he trigger the volcano somehow? How did one trigger a volcano anyway? Presumably a TON of fire and earth demons could do it, but he had never heard of it being done. Perhaps it was seen as an offense against the planet.

Alright, he wasn’t going to one-shot the whole base. What could he do for a lure? He looked around the hardware store. The thing popped into sight for a falling tree branch. Could he do something more with that?

He slowly smiled. Maybe not with hardware store supplies, but this was a city with a grocery store. He could expand his options.

One surprisingly high value act of shoplifting later, Truth was prepared-ish.

He had to jump a counter to get to the meat. There wasn’t anything you could just pick up off a shelf. It was all behind glass and you had to pay in advance. It shouldn’t have been shocking. He had seen how meat was getting more and more expensive. For some reason, the notion that they would completely change the layout of grocery stores to protect the meat felt very alien. Like reality had scored a brutal victory over the forces of just buying whatever, whenever and however.

He grabbed a wide selection of stuff. Not that he expected any of it to poison that unnatural thing, he just wanted to see if it would react differently to anything. In a fit of giggling madness, he also picked up air fresheners and cleaning solvents. Why not? One heavily loaded backpack later, he stowed everything in a walk-in refrigerator at a closed restaurant, grabbed a few hours sleep on the floor, and was back at it before the sun rose in the morning.

Making his way back to the presumed entrance was no less nerve wracking this time. After all, what if they moved around? He got as close as he was comfortable, and watched. It took a long, long, long while, but he was fairly confident he spotted some ripples of invisibility.

Breezy again today. Was it because they were so high up? Maybe. The treeline was nearby. Truth pulled out a half kilo hunk of beef and threw it at an angle to where he guessed the creature was. The wind pushed it over a smidge closer. Truth hoped it would persuade the thing that whatever had landed on it was coming at an angle ninety degrees from him.

No reaction. He threw another piece. There was a very faint twinge from Incisive this time. Not a risk-free manuver, then. Was there an extra shimmer on the ground? A hint of movement? Even with Truth’s excellent eyes, he couldn’t tell for sure.

He threw another chunk of meat. Ribs, this time, the short rack pinwheeling through the air, then catching a gust and blowing violently sideways. The blob revealed itself again. It’s myriad boiling and subsiding eyes locking on the flying meat. A whip tendril slashed out and wrapped around it, filament tentacles sprouting and burrowing into the meat and bones.

A hole opened in the side of the amoeba-like blob. It made a jagged mouth, filled with irregular, gnashing teeth. Jagged, misshapen things, none smaller than a man’s forearm. Teeth made by something with only a faint understanding of mouths, but endless knowledge of crushing and tearing.

The ribs vanished inside the dark-water interior of the blob. Truth waited. He wasn’t going to risk throwing another piece of meat while the eyes were open.

He watched another tendril extend along the ground. Was it… looking for something? Yes, it found the other meat. Interesting. Truth waited until it hid itself again, and launched some meat down slope. He then trailed it back up towards the creature. He dumped some cleaning products on the meat just to see what would happen.

A slightly bigger spike in Incisive this time, when the meat landed near the blob.

The thing reacted faster, tendrils whipping out and, to Truth’s quiet alarm, eyes started boiling out of stalks and tendrils all over the blob. Whatever it was, it wasn’t that stupid. The meat was coming from somewhere, and it would find it. Truth watched carefully. As the pseudopods extended, the main mass shrank.

Was that… a cave behind it? Or a tunnel? Looked like it. The critter didn’t seem troubled by the solvents, though. Not surprising, but a pity regardless.

Truth smiled down at the remaining meat in the sack. Time to do a little creative engineering. Draw the beast from its hole. Then take a look inside. Then think about planting just a ton of bombs everywhere. Because he did not feel like playing with these people, and since there was a literal mountain of energy to work with, he would use it.