Upheaval 11 (2/2)

Her master had died, that much was an undeniable fact. That was why she and Xera were in this place to begin with - to get revenge. Yet at the same time, its Facade had made a sudden reappearance. More confusing still, her comrade was acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She honestly didn’t know whether Boxxy was back among the living, whether this was just another of Xera’s frighteningly realistic illusions, or-

“Claws.”

A deep voice that only she could hear suddenly grabbed the Stalker’s attention, nearly causing her to lose her grip on the ceiling and fall to the ground. She looked wide eyed at the catgirl in Lichter’s arms, whose eyes were staring back at her. Or rather, giving the sheer intensity of that glare, it was more like they were staring through her. It was a gaze that immediately made her nervous and twitchy, as her body recognized who it was that was so brazenly ogling her before her mind could catch up.

At least until the heard the second dose of Whisper Wind aimed at her.

“I need you to kill yourself so that I can re-establish the contract.”

The Stalker hung from the ceiling by her legs and offered a deep upside-down bow to the air in front of her. She mouthed the words ‘As you wish, Master,’ before chopping her own head off with a smile on her face. A few seconds later, Carl from Demons ‘R’ Us reached out to Boxxy in order to inform the Mimic that another of its contracts had been reestablished.

And now that it had reclaimed its third stray familiar, Boxxy focused its attention on the next step of its hastily thrown together escape plan.

“Ora!”

Kora let out her characteristic warcry as she kicked the door to the director’s office with enough force to turn it into splinters. She put a lot more strength into that pointless gesture than was necessary, as she was still riding high from all the violence she had inflicted upon the Foundation. Both elven grunts and their alchemically tamed monsters stood in her way, and all of them were pounded into a fine paste. She also noticed whoever was running things seemed to have a thing for monster girls, as there was a clear bias in the gender of tamed monsters. Kora certainly wasn’t complaining about this inequality though, as it had given her a unique opportunity to sample some rather exotic merchandise.

It was just a shame that so few of them survived long enough to actually get her rocks off.

“Knock, knock, Malon!” yelled the murderapist as she entered the director’s office. “I got a special delivery for ya!”

It was at that point that she realized someone had beaten her to the punch, as the elf in question was already lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

“Aw, man! And I was so looking forward to it, too!” she whined out loud before reporting the matter to her Master through their telepathic link.

“So someone already killed him? Was it Zilla?” asked Boxxy.

“Who?”

“The one that killed me.”

“Oh. No, I don’t think it was him. This guy was stabbed through the heart, it’s way too clean. Some poor sap outside the door had his head smashed open, though.”

This revelation led Boxxy to conclude that there had been another intruder on the base besides Snack’s welcome wagon, just as the Mimic had suspected. After all, while being able to avenge its own death with little difficulty was certainly tasty, at the same time the shapeshifter felt as if the whole encounter was almost too easy. Almost as if Zilla had already been affected by some sort of debilitating poison or curse before he had shown up to reclaim ‘his’ Honoka.

After taking the scene that both Arms and its Mirror Image reported about into account, it could only assume that Malon had been assassinated by someone outside the Foundation. The mutated House Mimic certainly wasn’t the one who had killed him, otherwise he would’ve been a lot more brutal. Just like he was with the man who was probably Malon’s assistant and/or secretary, who he probably murdered because he was an eyewitness to Zilla’s encounter with this mysterious assassin.

“Alright. Arms, forget the flat-faced goblin, just follow my clone’s lead.”

The Sandman-shaped Mirror Image walked into the room as it carried out its new set of orders. Kora watched curiously as the soulless doll went over to a section of the wall and began tapping on it with a gloved hand as if looking for something. This guide of hers hadn’t been much use in battle since Boxxy wasn’t around to direct it, but she was actually a bit thankful for that. It just meant there was more things for her to stomp on.

*Don Don Don*

A segment of the wall that should have been lifeless stone let out a hollow-sounding metal ring when the not-Boxxy knocked on it. The towering Mirror Image stood aside and gestured towards the spot while uttering a single word towards Kora.

“Smash.”

“Don’t mind if I do! ORA!”

The fiend took a large wind up and introduced her topmost right fist into the situation, which left a sizable dent in the camouflaged door. And then a second, and a third and so on, until the secret entrance crumbled under her repeated pounding and fell over. The six-angled chamber that lied beyond was unnaturally cold, to the point where every surface was covered in a thick layer of ice.

“In.”

Kora followed the Mirror Image’s commands and entered the room, though it was a bit of a tight fit for someone of her stature. The place was just under 3 meters tall and about 6 meters wide, so she really didn’t have a lot of space to work with. At the same time, however, she spotted what was likely her reason for unearthing this freezing chamber.

Floating in the middle of the room was a floating spherical object, which bobbed up and down and slightly twisted around in the icy breeze, but generally hovering at around the same spot over a crystal pedestal. The orb itself also appeared to be made out of crystals, which gave off a serene white glow. One wouldn’t be blamed for thinking this thing a dungeon core.

However, as someone who had punched two of the things in the past, Kora knew this wasn’t quite right. For starters, it didn’t really look the part, as it seemed to be composed out of hundreds of small pieces that fit together like a puzzle, rather than being a solid and perfectly smooth ball. Each segment seemed to have been carved individually by hand, as while no two of them were exactly alike, each shape had the sort of straight edges and angles that would never occur naturally.

“Hey, Boss? I think I found the thing you were looking for,” reported the Archfiend after a brief moment.

“I know,” came the instant reply. “Clone’s there, remember?”

“Right. So, what is this thing anyway? It sorta looks like a dungeon core, but somehow I doubt that’s the case.”

It wasn’t just the construction that was off, either. There was also the matter of how this pseudo-core was leaking cold air from in between the seams where its components fit together. Not to mention the various pipes and tubes that seemed to be hooked up to it somehow. No matter how she looked at it, Kora couldn’t help but feel that, while similar, this was by no means an actual dungeon core.

“Well, it’s sort of like an artificial dungeon core, so you’re technically right on both counts.”

More precisely, it was a magic tool created to gather, store, and redistribute ambient magical energy. Nothing more, nothing less. Its design was based on the magical power source necessary to operate the Republic’s Forest Gates. Except that the Foundation had adapted and expanded upon the design in order to power their underground research facility. Magical lights, Stasis Fields, large equipment, various security measures and even the alarm incessantly blaring in the background were all hooked up to this thing. Even if it lacked most of the functionality that a real core would have access to, it was still the literal heart of this facility.

“Damn, the nerds around here come up with the craziest shit, don’t they?” commented Kora. “So what’s the game plan? Want me to grab it and run?”

“No. Not exactly.”

“You sure? It’s pretty shiny.”

“Gnn! No! I can’t. As much as I want to keep it, I have a better use for it.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“Even if it’s an artificial core, it can still make a very real big boom.”

There was a moment of silence as the Mimic’s intentions sank into Kora.

“… I dunno Boss. Won’t you get caught up in the blast, too?” she asked in an exceedingly rare show of concern.

“Nope. I’m already out of range, actually.”

The details surrounding this device were something Boxxy had stolen from Professor Honoka’s corpse via the Broken Reflection Skill. Her oxygen-deprived mind had wandered to this place while Boxxy was slowly choking the life out of her. Her final thoughts were not of a loved one, but of a failsafe measure called Protocol 66, which was designed to wipe out the entire facility and everything within by detonating the power source in front of Kora.

It was the ultimate failsafe, in case the Foundation’s illegal, unethical, unofficial, and largely unsupervised monster factory ever became a threat or a liability. In Honoka’s desperate situation, she felt that it was the only way to truly stop the creature that had its hands around her throat. Of course, doing so would mean sacrificing decades’ worth of research, millions worth of GP and hundreds of people just to kill one monster, but she felt it would be worth it if it meant ridding the world of this natural-born terrorist.

And now that very same walking calamity would use the universal ‘undo’ button to wipe out any remaining traces of its capture.

Unfortunately for the Mimic, while Honoka’s thoughts did reveal the existence, location, and function of Protocol 66, they did not disclose the way to actually trigger it. This naturally posed a problem, but not one that Boxxy was perturbed by. After all, the creature knew of a catch-all solution to any of life’s problems.

“So… does that mean what I think it means?!” asked Kora expectantly.

“If you’re thinking about hitting it really hard, then yes.”

Namely, a copious application of violence.