Chapter 103

The wooden door slowly opened, swinging on rusty, creaky hinges. The action revealed a barren floor, concrete walls, and no windows, with a lone incandescent lightbulb providing scant orange light that barely reached the edges of the room. At the far corner was a single, large oak chest with an iron lock and a hole for a key. It looked inviting, alluring, as if daring anyone to approach it and claim the treasure that awaited inside. It was clearly a trap, but its effect was strong, only resisted because all the men present knew that the chest itself was a magical anomaly.

The two teams slowly flowed into the room. They had no standard weapons, but their magic was at the ready should the chest suddenly come to life and attack them. However, despite the tense atmosphere, nothing happened. Muffled voices came from outside, but the Operators’ focus was absolute: the men had trained in the dungeon and knew the dangers magical creatures could pose.

While the teams deployed a wide array of instruments, Johanne arrived at the site.

“She always seems to be at the right place at the right time, doesn’t she?” she heard Travis murmur to Michael.

Her lord shrugged, but she knew he could see the presence of Elemental energies around her and make an educated guess—something nobody else could do, not even those with magic sight, given how esoteric her use of already rare elements was.

She watched the men move about from the threshold, observing the Operators and making sure they didn’t mishandle her precious equipment. Some of it was standard, non-magical, mundane stuff. Necessary nonetheless, of course.

Most of the equipment, however, was experimental: a fusion of magic and technology, most of it bound to either not work or not yield any meaningful information. That was why there was so much equipment of all shapes and forms; they needed to see which worked best for next time. This was their first away mission, and everything was completely untested.

She ignored the military men making comments about her. They were, apparently, unused to the presence of women in the field. She heard one of them, a particularly unpleasant man, mention how they used to dissect people like her back in the day, in labs hidden from the public. Did they know she wasn’t from Earth?

She didn’t know, nor did she care.

Instead of displaying anger, an emotion she knew people in her position would usually display, she simply looked behind her with a bored expression, her usual neutral face. Travis locked eyes with her for a moment, while the soldiers took her reaction as an invitation to talk more. Even though she didn’t care much for what they said about her, she thought their behavior was disrespectful to Michael. But her lord wasn’t reacting at all, a hint that perhaps something subtle was at play here, and she knew she wasn’t good at catching subtle hints about people and their behaviors. She let the matter rest, for now.

In the end, they concluded what she already suspected. The chest was not a chest at all, but a predatory creature Michael insisted they call a “Mimic.” When poked and prodded, its true nature was quickly revealed: it was made of living flesh, and its lid was actually a mouth of sharp, mismatched teeth made of a patchwork of enamel and rusted metal. Inside its mouth, a long tongue like a prehensile tentacle snatched up the first couple of probes they used to study it before the Operators could react.

“I see green energies there as well,” Michael stated cryptically. What he meant by green energies, Johanne didn’t know, as she didn’t see any color to magic. She knew, however, that everyone saw the esoteric and the arcane differently. He continued, “It means it can probably heal, as long as it has mana. Better go in with overwhelming force.”

At that moment, however, Travis pulled him close.

“What?” Michael questioned.

“Kavanaugh and the general,” Travis muttered softly enough so that the soldiers wouldn’t hear them. “Where are they?”

Michael looked around. Indeed, the two men were gone, alongside a few soldiers.

“We left nothing in the cars, right?” Michael inquired.

“Nothing of value,” the former CEO confirmed. “But they don’t know that. You should go look; I can handle this.”

Michael wasn’t too happy about it. “Dammit,” he grumbled. “I wanted to see.”

He was already irritated by the events in the dungeon, and now this happened.

“Take Johanne as well,” Travis added. “What if you need to track them?”

Michael nodded and motioned for Johanne to join him. Always happy to do things with her lord, the woman immediately abandoned what she was doing and followed him upstairs.

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

Behind them, the sound of fighting erupted. Magic, distorted gunfire from Travis’s Card, and the inhuman roars of the mimic. As Michael and Johanne reached the road through the abandoned orchard outside the old house, the sounds became more and more muffled to the point not even Michael’s enhanced stats could pick them up. The basement was solid concrete encased in soil, too isolated. But according to what Michael had seen, the chest shouldn’t be a problem for the Operators as long as they played it smart, and surely not with someone like Travis there to oversee.

“They are not here,” Johanne reported, already casting some tracking magic.

“Nor are the SUVs,” Michael observed. “All of them.”

An explosion rang through the building like a gong.

“Track them,” Michael ordered. “I’m going back in.”

He rushed back inside, almost flying down the stairs. By the time he got to the basement, there was a stench like sulfur in the air, alongside the smell of burnt wood and flesh, plus a subtle hint of unpleasant bodily fluids. Michael saw Travis finishing off the last remaining OA soldier with a blade of sinister red energy, made of an element he didn’t immediately recognize and conjured by his Card.

The other soldiers were all dead. The door leading to the mimic’s room had been blown off its hinges by a powerful explosion that had also taken out a part of the concrete wall. Seeing this, a sensation of discomfort began to radiate through Michael’s skull, traced back to the newly upgraded Unity skill.

The Truth facet didn’t like what it was seeing.

The door was blown inwards, which meant Travis had summoned a weapon and torn it off from the outside. Michael squinted as fire’s smoke clouded his eyes, making them sting. There were Operators on the ground, hurt.

His operators.

His aura flared to life. In an instant, the smoke cleared, and healing energies invaded the bodies of the operators, consuming their stock of calories to restore them to perfect health. In a matter of seconds, they were back at full health, if hungry.

Except three of them were missing.

Anger overtook Michael. That’s what was wrong here. The smoke, the smell, Travis killing everyone. This had been a setup. They had been ambushed.

In a burst of violence, several dead bodies were brutalized and charred by [Candle Light] flames.

“Fucking chest,” Michael muttered menacingly. His gaze settled upon the mimic, still happily chewing on what remained of an Operator.

His skill flared to life. The chest deformed, flattened to the ground by a force it had never experienced before. It hastily spit out the Operator’s arm it was chewing on in an attempt to pacify the monster who had clearly been upset by its latest meal. It was no use. As the aura pressed on it, Michael seemed to teleport. One moment the chest was resting on the ground at the same spot it had always been, as if immovable, the next it was launched against the wall with enough force to partially embed it in the concrete. A torn piece of rebar stuck out of the dying mimic, the monster desperately burning through its remaining mana to regenerate.

“Take it away,” Michael commanded, turning to Travis. Travis nodded to the remaining Operators, who commendably sprung to action, showing their training. This was no time to mourn or be prone to anger, Michael thought, realizing in shame just how green he still was, given his outburst.

Of course, retribution would come later.

The camera footage they reviewed after fetching more cars and being brought back to Site 00, showed what preceded the scene of the massacre Michael had walked into. The cameras on the Operators’ helmets recorded everything in excruciating detail.

Izzy Reyes, leader of Team Locke and now deceased, was walking towards the mimic. His teammates flanked him on the right, while the Operators of Team Welles were to the left. Magic floated around him and the others, manifesting into all sorts of powers.

“Something’s wrong,” Izzy remarked. “Why is it not moving?”

“Advance slowly,” Val Thorne, who was in control of the operation, directed.

They did. When they got close enough, they all began to hit the chest with their spells. Some rushed to it to overwhelm its regeneration with close-quarters attacks while the others provided support. Travis was shooting his magical weapon from the doorway.

Then, all of a sudden, there was a scream of pain, anger and surprise. Michael recognized it as Travis’s voice, and the man in question quickly confirmed it was him with a nod as Michael turned to watch his face.

“My aura isn’t like yours,” Travis explained, answering Michael’s unspoken question. “They tried to kill me, Michael, but they only managed to distract me for a couple of seconds.”

Michael had seen that Travis’ clothes were bloodied, but he had thought it was the blood of the soldiers the man had killed. The fact that Travis did not even flinch nor ask for a heal helped reinforce this.

“Assault rifles can still hurt me,” the man said with a shake of his head, “but I was wearing a vest. I’m not an idiot.”

They kept watching. One of the Operators in the video turned around, horrified. The door had closed behind them with a loud bang, and two canisters were on the ground, spewing green smoke. Poison. It didn’t knock the Operators out, thanks to their aura bolstering their natural defenses, but it didn’t need to. That’s what the mimic was there for.

Distracted and slowed down by the gas, the Operators failed to defend against the mimic’s now vigorous assaults. Three of them fell before Travis tore the door off its hinges, revealing that everyone outside was dead or maimed. As soon as the door exploded, granting the Operators an exit, Travis sprung to action. He disappeared in a shower of deep-blue lightning and appeared in the space between the two squads and the monster, distracting it to allow the others to escape.

He shot at it with the weapon conjured by his Card, his Silver-tier firepower damaging the chest enough that it had to switch its efforts into regenerating itself.

“I didn’t finish it off because I thought we might have a use for it. Trust me, I wanted to.”

Michael nodded, impressed that the man had better self-control than he did. The damage he had inflicted upon the chest had been so great that, on the way back, he had to heal it at least twice to make sure it didn't die.

“Well,” Michael said ominously, “isn’t this a wonderful day. Someone has to pay. Point me in the right direction.”

Travis grinned. “With pleasure. I suggest you hit the general first. He has to go. Keep Kavanaugh alive.”