Chapter 24 - Trick or Treat? 2

This expedition differed from the last in many ways.

From the outset, they had only one objective: the Nexus Port. And they would have to compete against countless other Pathfinder groups pursuing it.

Naturally, they spared no thought for minor artifacts or data shards, concentrating solely on picking up speed and racing through the ruins.

Reach the Nexus Port before Halloween's other idol teams. With that single thought running through their minds, Ash and the others pressed through the ruins without pause.

RAT-TAT-TAT...

Far away, gunfire echoed down the desolate passages—an audible reminder that they were not alone in these ruins.

Perhaps it had ignited her anxiety, for Ifrit all but shouted,

"A little faster!"

Everyone picked up the pace. As they did, Akina's labored breathing grew louder.

"Miss Akina, are you all right? If this is too strenuous..."

"Don't worry, Mister!"

Drenched in sweat and gasping for breath, Akina answered with a deliberately bright smile.

"I'm fine!"

The girl knew.

She was the only one in the group with a fragile human body. The team's pace depended entirely on her two legs.

That was why she ran with all her might, forcing herself to act cheerful as she struggled not to become a burden to the others.

Ash could find no reply to that youthful yet resolute spirit.

He had intended to carry her on his back if she was struggling, but her bright smile had turned down his consideration.

'This isn't the time to be coddled. Run on your own strength, Akina!'

Cling to an Assault's back simply because running was hard? What would she do if a fight suddenly broke out?

Even if she was a Technomancer with a frail body, giving up on so much as walking for herself would disqualify her as a Pathfinder.

'I'm not a burden!'

She did not want to be one.

She had chosen to plunge into this hell, so she would endure to the end on her own two legs. That was Akina's resolve.

After studying her face for a moment, Ash turned away, signaling his respect for her wishes.

Then he resolved to give his own assigned duty everything he had.

An Assault's role was to protect the Technomancer from the threats within the ruins. That responsibility carried far more weight than a small act of kindness.

Ash opened his energy sense wide and swept the dust-filled ruins once more.

The gunfire continued even now.

And so greed and bloodlust drifted like dust through the dank air of the ruins.

At any moment, a bullet might come flying out of those pitch-black passages.

Then Ash suddenly realized something.

Although these ruins resembled Gamma-7, the site of his first expedition, something about them felt strangely different.

The impression was fundamentally unlike Gamma-7, which had been filled with machinery and steel structures devoted exclusively to practicality and function.

How should he describe this place?

If he had to choose, it resembled a temple of some kind.

The stone pillars standing at regular intervals. The patterns on the walls that retained an inexplicable elegance despite their shattered, ruined state. Even the excessively broad passages and the long, unbroken ceilings.

It felt as though they belonged to an entirely different culture.

The others did not seem particularly concerned. Akina was no exception.

To them, this place apparently amounted to nothing more or less than ruins concealing potentially valuable artifacts.

But not to Ash.

Drawing on the experience of his previous life, he could readily tell that this place was more than mere ruins.

His brief reverie snapped off when they reached a three-way fork.

"Tsk."

Facing the fork, Ifrit clicked her tongue and jerked her chin toward Dullahan.

"Run a scan."

[OK]

Dullahan stepped forward.

Dozens of tiny, previously unseen panels revealed themselves in a honeycomb pattern across the smooth front of his helmet, glowing faintly.

Just then, Jack O' Lantern spoke from the very rear.

"Akina."

"Yes?"

When she looked back, he made an exaggerated show of covering his ears.

"Huh? You want me to cover my ears?"

Still unsure why, Akina raised both hands to her ears. At that moment, a bizarre resonant sound burst from Dullahan's helmet.

SCREEEEEE!

"Whoa!"

The noise was like a blade gouging into her ears.

The unidentified high-pitched tone continued for quite some time.

"Ow! What is this?!"

Akina shouted, looking around with her face screwed up in pain. Yet no one else seemed to be suffering.

Then she understood.

She was the only human here with unmodified hearing and no noise-canceling function.

A short while later, the noise vanished completely.

"Well?" Ifrit asked.

A storm of information flashed across Dullahan's visor.

A 3D wireframe rendered in real time from the echoes of sound waves.

Small obstacles scattered along the routes appeared in red, while structurally weak points flashed yellow.

ROA.

As a group created for a special purpose, they wore cyberware specialized for transport and rescue rather than straightforward combat.

This remarkable sonic resonance device was clearly another piece of cyberware specialized for searches.

Having completed his complex calculations, Dullahan displayed a message on his visor.

[Left is faster, yep]

"Okay. Shall we move, then?"

The five Pathfinders headed down the left passage. The darkness filling it swallowed their silhouettes.

* * *

Dullahan's 'faster, yep' had not meant that the route was safe. It was, quite literally, only faster.

KA-BOOM-BOOM!

Ifrit's Dragon Breath spewed fire, melting the armor of a Sentinel that had emerged from the wall.

Seizing the opening, Jack O' Lantern's small bombs detonated all at once.

The ruins shuddered under the chain of explosions and the spectacle of fire. Amid those tremors, the Sentinel that had been disguised as an ornament was reduced to a half-demolished heap of scrap.

It was an excellent coordinated attack.

Ifrit and the two ROA idols appeared to have worked together for quite some time.

"Okay! That's one down! Next..."

Jack O' Lantern turned his head sharply, only to trail off. Ash stood tall amid the cleanly severed wreckage of an automated turret.

With a casual motion, he flicked the machine lubricant from his blade.

There was no sign of an explosion.

Not a single scorch mark.

There had not even been a sound.

Only scraps of metal, severed by keen sword strikes, lay abandoned there.

"... Uh, you already took care of them all?"

At Jack O' Lantern's faltering question, Ash merely nodded and turned toward Akina.

Jack looked back and forth between the wreckage of his own explosions and the silent cuts Ash had left behind. Then he let out a hollow laugh.

"Boss, where the hell did you find a monster like that?"

Reloading Dragon Breath, Ifrit answered offhandedly.

"He was hiding behind a rock."

"... What?"

"Eating a strawberry-flavored energy stick."

"What kind of bullshit is that?"

Ignoring Jack O' Lantern's bewilderment, Ifrit brought them back to business.

"Save the chitchat for when we're back in Sanctum. Let's move. The Nexus Port is right up ahead!"

At her shout, everyone set aside their thoughts and started moving once more.

But the mood was a little different now.

Jack O' Lantern kept stealing glances at Ash as he walked ahead. Dullahan, too, occasionally looked back, displaying [ROA could use more combat personnel...]

Each time, Akina clutched one of Ash's arms and glared. Faced with her ferocity, Dullahan turned forward again.

There was a curious excitement in the air.

The one who doused that mood with stagnant water was none other than Ash.

"Stop a moment."

His low electronic voice drew a puzzled look from Ifrit.

"Hm? What's wrong?"

For a while, Ash silently watched the far end of the broad passage.

After a little time had passed, he spoke.

"Up ahead... I believe someone is there."

At his words, everyone listened toward the depths of the ruins.

Even Akina, who had no cyberware to amplify her senses, held her breath and strained to hear beyond the darkness.

But nothing reached them.

Nothing but the occasional drip from the ceiling and the wind carrying a stale smell to and fro.

Soon Dullahan, who handled the party's searches, displayed a message on his visor.

[Want me to run a scan?]

"No. Don't."

Just as his sonic resonance system was about to activate, Ifrit hastily raised a hand to stop him.

[??]

"If someone really is there, they might hear it. We'd only give away our position."

In truth, Ash's claim was absurd.

It meant he had detected something that even Dullahan, a search specialist, had failed to pick up. Normally, it would have been dismissed as nonsense.

But this was Ash.

Since he was the one saying it, there was a real possibility that someone lay ahead.

Hadn't Ash also been the first to detect the REST-men's ambush?

"Are you sure?"

At Ifrit's question, Ash focused again and extended his energy sense. This time, however, he did not stop there.

He simultaneously circulated his Neuro Internal Art, refining his energy sense so that it spread farther and more densely.

Microwaves carrying Ash's intent radiated in every direction.

Electromagnetic energy sense.

It was a unique sense that only Ash could use.

The technique he had learned in his previous life—composing his mind to detect the keen energies of all things—had adapted to his mechanical body and reconstituted itself in an entirely new form.

His intent to perceive the world was amplified by the Neuro Internal Art, transforming into a minute electromagnetic field that extended in all directions.

The faint echoes of microwaves returned after striking every nook and cranny of the ruins.

This was no longer some vague 'feeling.'

It was effectively a high-resolution radar, perhaps far more precise and discreet than Dullahan's sonic detection.

And that electromagnetic energy sense was unmistakably picking something up.

In the brief silence, Ash withdrew his electromagnetic energy sense.

"Someone is there. Without question."

Those words froze the air around them.

Ifrit swallowed and whispered,

"Can you tell us more?"

"Three, of whom I am certain. I sense faint currents surrounding them, but I cannot tell what those are."

He continued calmly.

"They are not Sentinels. Their movements are far more chaotic and dynamic. My guess would be..."

"Idols. Right?"

Ash nodded at Ifrit's words.

"Indeed."

"All right. Gather round for a second."

At Ifrit's instruction, they broke their stretched-out formation and gathered in a circle.

"Ash. You're sure there are three?"

"I am."

"Dullahan. If we abandon this route, how long is the detour?"

Dozens of system messages flashed across his visor as he calculated.

A moment later, a message appeared: [Over an hour]

"Fuck."

After swearing, Ifrit fell silent for a moment.

Anguish briefly crossed her face. Then resolve wiped it clean away.

"We don't have a choice. We go straight through. If our routes overlap, we'll just have to break through them, won't we?"

No one objected.

"Let's see who we're up against."

The group moved forward, watching their surroundings with incomparably greater caution than before.

At last, they reached their destination.

A vision of hell awaited them.

"..."

It was a cavernous chamber.

What filled that broad, otherwise empty space was blood and corpses.

There were too many dismembered bodies to count.

With all of them cut apart, determining an exact number was difficult, but there seemed to be more than ten.

Judging by the crude equipment and cyberware most of them wore, obscure idol teams seemed to have banded together in hopes of making a fortune.

They had all been butchered without managing to make so much as a proper sound.

In one sense, it might have passed for a 'common' scene of slaughter in the ruins. But there was one distinct difference.

Three women had elegantly settled themselves amid that field of corpses.

Beneath the lights of camera drones drifting all around, each rested in her own way, behaving as though she had nothing to do with this horrific massacre.

One sat on a corpse, tending her nails. Another brushed blood from her clothes.

But the most chilling was the woman standing at the center of the pile of bodies, drenched in more blood than either of the others.

Cradling a bloodstained sword against her chest like a lover, she hummed a song with an enraptured expression.

Her voice was clear, pure, and exquisitely beautiful.

That very beauty made the carnage all the more grotesque and chilling.

Her name.

No scene could have better suited the epithet Siren, said to lead all who heard her to their doom.