Chapter 106: Cleanup Crew (1/2)

The team watched on as Ilea threw around corpses of animals and humans before she got something out of the pile. A shivering human, its eyes locking with Ilea’s under her black helmet. The woman removed it to not scare the child any further. No status showed when she identified the kid and she moved her hand get the hair out of its face.

“They must’ve not smelled it under there.” Eve commented.

“She, it’s a she.” Ilea said as Trian walked up to them with a flask of water and cloth he used to wordlessly clean the child’s face from the blood and grime. Ilea thought her to be around six or seven years old, black hair and black eyes.

“Can you make her sleep?” Ilea asked to nobody in particular. Eve walked up to them and started humming a slow and quiet tune, making the girl sleep in less than fifteen seconds.

“We should’ve at least tried to ask some questions.” Trian said.

“You insensitive asshole.” Eve said and punched the man. He let the punch hit and looked at the woman afterwards.

“I’m quite aware of her mental state. But our survival is more important than this random child we found. Perhaps some of what she could’ve shared would...” Ilea interrupted the two.

“Shut the hell up, she’s sleeping.” she said with an icy tone before walking upstairs and out of the building, bringing the girl to one of the nearby houses and putting her in one of the beds before tucking her in. “We’ll be back.” she said and blinked back to the others. The whole thing had taken her less than three minutes and the others were still waiting for her, now in silence.

“Let’s go.” Ilea simply said and continued further down into the underground complex. The room where Eve’s first clone had vanished was now empty, with a staircase leading further down. Ilea walked a couple meters in front of the others in case of traps. Sure enough she saw spikes and hidden crossbows in the walls of the staircase. She simply punched into the stone with her bare hands to rip out the weapons, tossing them to the ground, not stopping in the process.

At last they came into a round hall with runes pained in blood on the ground. There were corpses here as well, one of them being worked on in that moment. A pale man in his thirties turned around to look at Ilea, his eyes blood red and his body cut in dozens of places.

“Aaaaaah, more have arrived. Come in come in, you are ready for the feast. All my children, come and join your father!” he said, in a completely normal tone which to Ilea was somehow even more unnerving.

[Mage – lvl 202]

‘See, that’s why I didn’t chose the weird cult class...’ she thought and looked at the man.

“You will die.” she said and prepared to blink towards him. Blood swirled around him but fell down to the ground a moment later. Ilea looked on confused when Eve’s head poked out from behind the man. A dagger was stabbed deep into his neck. He convulsed and closed and opened his mouth as blood came out of it. Eve got another dagger and held the man’s head. Black veins formed around the first dagger’s wound as he tried to reach her with his arms. The blood on the ground slowly levitated again when Eve stabbed him with the second dagger, one, two and three times. His blood joined the pool on the ground as with a last stab and cut his head came loose. His body hit the ground when Eve tossed the head to the side, bending down to collect her second dagger. Her eyes quickly locked with Ilea’s when she looked up.

‘ding’ ‘Your group has defeated [John Gilligan – Follower of Blood lvl 202 / Beast Summoner lvl 192]

Nobody said a word as they spread out in the room to investigate. Claire started painting runes on the ground and walls as Eve walked up to Ilea. “Where’s the girl?” she asked and Ilea looked at her again before telling her which house she had put the girl in. Perhaps Eve was even angrier than her. Ilea hadn’t seen her vanish in the room. She had leveled some of her skills to the second stage just as most of their group had in the past months. One of them allowed her to blend into her surroundings. Not quite invisible but combined with the rest of her skills she was Very hard to make out. That hadn’t exactly worked against the Death Spirits but against the blood mage in this cellar it had worked wonders.

“There’s a hidden shelf here. Claire, wanna check for runes?” Ilea said, looking at the wall before her. The woman stopped her drawing and walked up to her.

“Are you using blood for your runes now?” Ilea asked and Claire checked the wall before checking her pack.

“I’m sure they would’ve liked to be used for that one last time.” she said and activated her magic, the compartment in the wall springing open. Ilea saw the needles flying out and shoved herself between them an Claire, all of it harmlessly blocked by her veil. She picked them up and looked closely.

“Coated in something.” she said and Claire grabbed the needle out of her hand.

“Thank you, but don’t even think about it.” she tossed the needles back to the ground before inspecting the shelf. There was gold in it, three books and some letters. Claire took all of it and handed them out to the group who was now waiting in the middle of the room. “Read through it and then we discuss the contents.” she said and continued to draw runes on the walls and the ground.

Ten minutes later Claire told them to move a floor up and continued to draw there. Now using one of Kyrian’s created spikes to scratch the runes.

“The letters are from two different noble families, both of them from Lys. Apparently they were asking for some experiments to be performed here. Quite a normal practice if I might add, though these were rather gruesome.” he finished and made the letters vanish.

“This book is about rituals for summoning, blood magic generally using corpses and life energy to create some sort of abominations.” Ilea commented on her book while flipping through it. She threw it to Trian who looked through as well and then made it vanish.

“What did you get Kyrian?” Ilea asked, the man still concentrated on reading.

“I think it’s a diary.” he said after a couple seconds.

“You think? Is it a different language or can’t you read?” Trian asked.

“I’m n… not very good at it yet.” he answered which made Trian chuckle a little. Ilea was next to him the next instant as her fully powered fist hit his side, making the noble fly and crash into the wall of the room.

“Don’t worry about it, you’ll get there soon enough. Can I see?” Ilea said to Kyrian, smiling under his helmet as the man looked at the noble now inhabiting the wall before handing her the book.

Trian coughed from the side before peeling himself out of the stone. “Guess I deserved that one. You really have gotten stronger. Want to bout?” he asked, a big grin on his face.

“Later sparky, later.” Ilea said as she started to read out loud.

“Day forty seven. The village elders have finally agreed to the deal. It seems the gold was too tempting to reject. Dorothy even asked if we could do more experiments for more gold. I’m glad that woman is part of the elders. Truly a visionary like myself...”

“Day one hundred and three. I have gained another twelve levels and my skills are skyrocketing. Two of the experiments have been complete successes, I have to push on. Get more people. Maybe the villagers in this small part of the world won’t be missed. Who would care about such a small place anyway… soon enough I’ll be too strong to stop...”

“Too strong to stop, the guy wasn’t even at two hundred.” Ilea commented as she closed the book and handed it to Claire who stopped scratching. “Please read through so we can find out who is responsible. I’m sure you’re the most… thorough of us.” Claire nodded and put the book on the ground, continuing to carve runes.

“Well we don’t know at what level he started. Blood mages, necromancers, witches and similar classes can advance quite quickly when they have enough resources to sacrifice and work on.” Trian explained as he dusted himself off. “What are you even doing Claire?” he asked and looked around the room “Ah, I understand. Well I’ll go out, the stench in here is disgusting. Get me when you’re done.” he said and walked out.

Ilea went to grab the diary again and opened it before walking to Kyrian and grabbing the man on his spiked armor before sitting down on the half destroyed staircase. “Alright, read to me. I’ll explain the words you don’t know.”