Rupegia

Chapter 68: Abomination – Part 2

"AHAHAHAH…! WOO!" Yunia cheers out loud. She's feeling so horny right now that she'd even like to be choked while being fucked by me.

Ciel laughs more conservatively, still a little terrified by The Lady to put a lot of energy in her cheering.

"She's not dead yet," I say through [Bind].

The laughter stops.

Ciel jumps forward and grabs the sword, then twists it. Yunia draws a dagger and leaps forward, then stabs The Lady repeatedly in the eye sockets.

"Let's go help them," I say, and we rush out of the house.

The Lady's wounds aren't actually bleeding, but it's still gruesome to see what they're doing.

Then they notice that The Lady hasn't even reacted, so they stab her shoulders to stop her arms and her claws from moving.

We burst into the mansion, and I summon an earth elemental.

"Drop onto her! Stop her from moving!" I order.

The tall and heavy elemental with black hair and bangs stomps over to The Lady. Ciel and Yunia jump away, taking their weapons with them, then the elemental throws itself on top of The Lady, squashing her entire body against the tiled floor.

We stand still for a long minute, wary of any sudden movements.

"Is she really not dead?" Hana asks.

"It seems so," Alissa answers.

Yunia nods and says, "Her Life is still going strong, but for some reason, her body doesn't move." She wants to say that we should run away, but then she feels ashamed of being so weak. "She might be a magical being. I'll try to destroy her with [Disruption Field]," she adds. She's bitter and wants to take revenge on The Lady for the terror that she inflicted upon us.

I nod towards her, and she touches the circle of blood again, restarting the mana storm. The storm is focused below the elemental, only enveloping The Lady's body, but it still chips away at the elemental's health.

Another minute passes, and nothing seems to change with The Lady, so Yunia sighs and stops. She's feeling useless.

"Is she a monster or a humanoid?" I ask Alissa.

"A monster, and a kind that I've never seen before," she answers.

"I'll destroy her body with [Firestorm]," Roxanne suggests.

"Do it," I accept.

While still squashed by the elemental, Roxanne turns The Lady into a pile of ash, but she still doesn't die.

I look into her soul and see a mana organ twice the size of Roxanne's, with only about a tenth of it actually empty. Many other of her soul organs are similar to ours, but there's also just as many that I don't recognize.

"Can we rupture her spirit?" I ask.

Yunia shakes her head and answers, "A powerful enough Spirit mage can use [Soul Blade] for that, but I can't. There's also [Soul Rip], but that's a level eighty spell, and you said that your Gift only lets you see up to level forty."

Well, damn. This bitch is immortal to us, then.

"Wrap yourself around her, and pierce her heart and brain, then turn into a metal coffin," I order, and the elemental obeys. Changing stone into metal will take a lot of mana, so I walk towards it to feed it some more.

Alissa suddenly holds my hand. "It's dangerous to get close," she says.

I don't agree with that, but I don't feel like arguing, so I make the elemental extend a part of its body to me, then I feed it from a distance.

I get an idea. "Maybe it's time-based…" I mumble, and Alissa looks at me oddly. "Maybe she'll regenerate after a set amount of time."

"Oh! That's horrible!" Yunia exclaims. She checks her bladder and feels horrified once she notices that she could wet herself.

"Let's… explore this area as fast as we can, then?" Roxanne nervously suggests.

I agree, and Yunia cries internally, but obeys me without complaint. She remembers that I can listen to her inner voice and lets out a string of garbled elven curses that she tries to suppress.

"I think that I should probably remove your [Bind] now," I say.

She agrees emphatically and feels like giving me a kiss, but then the image of her kissing the tip of my dick appears clearly in her mind. She blushes and tries to suppress her horniness by slapping her face, but that just reminds her of the time that I fucked her brains out before we met Silvane.

She falls to her knees and buries her face in her hands. Her pride is wounded from not being able to control herself. She feels humiliated, but that's her kink and something she'd never shown to anyone before, even her past fiancé.

She wants to be forcefully stripped and fucked on the dirty floor like the filthy elf slut th-…

I release her from [Bind].

I walk forward and crouch down in front of her. "I'm sorry. I should've released you sooner," I say and pat her helmet.

She shakes her head, but doesn't say anything. She lowers her visor and gets up, then walks towards the stairs. "Let's go," she says, trying to sound strong, but I notice a slight tremble in her voice.

The girls stare blankly, confused.

I smile wryly at them. "I heard something that she didn't want to share," I say.

Roxanne almost says something, but holds herself back. I walk over to her and restore her [Bind].

"You can re-[Bind] Lina, too," Ciel says, and I nod.

Hana and Roxanne had explored a good part of the mansion, so we move quickly to explore the rest.

Alissa opens the mayor's office with her green keycard, and we search every centimeter of it.

"He's quite the prolific erotic writer," Roxanne comments as she reads his unsent letters.

"Onora is quite lewd, too," Ciel adds as she reads the letters that he received. "And there are lots of mentions of the time that they spent in a lighthouse by the sea."

"Oh, this one's good," Roxanne says and taps the last letter. "He thinks that he lost his keycard at this 'Wigwam.' He wanted to ask her to find it for him since he thinks that he's being watched by The Lady."

"I guess that we have to find that place now," Alissa says.

We also find a key inside a locked drawer that's labeled as "keycard workshop," though it's not for the door to the workshop. Welp, that's ominous.

Unfortunately, the office doesn't have any other useful information for us. That leaves The Lady's room as the last place to search.

"I'll go first," Ciel says once she notices our hesitation.

After a few moments of nothing happening, we get over our fear and walk through the door.

We see a large and refined room, full of furniture decorated with intricate details and gold inlays. By the wall, there's a lustrous set of metal armor on a stand and a painting of a man and a woman hugging each other with a familiar lighthouse in the background. The man's face has been scratched beyond recognition, and the woman's is covered with a black blotch of paint.

Yunia shows a satisfied expression as she sits on the red velvet chair and grabs the empty glass of wine on the side table. She swirls it, as if it was filled with expensive alcohol, and downs it, then chuckles at her own silliness.

"I understand very well how she lived," She says.

"Same," Roxanne comments as she looks into the large closet filled with expensive dresses.

"Oh, this is interesting," Alissa says as I translate the contents of a letter she found. It's from Onora.

My dear Emmett,

Our time together has been wonderful. I've never been happier than when I'm by your side. My only wish is that this lasts for the rest of our lives.

I don't mind your relationship with The Lady; I know how important she is to you and your career, so I pray that your marriage stays strong. I truly believe that you two can improve things. It'll take a lot of work, but don't lose hope, I'll support you all the way!

With that said, I have something that I must tell you personally. Something wonderful has happened to me; it won't change our relationship, but it's important that you know about it.

Come meet me at the Wigwam, I'll be in our usual room.

Below the letter, there's a map with the location of the Wigwam. The handwriting is different from Onora's, so it's likely to be The Lady's.

"This doesn't look good," Hana says.

Lina finds another letter. No address or sender, very suspicious.

We've found information on your person of interest: an engineer who works at the Control Station, in the main room, specifically. More information will come soon.

"This really doesn't look good," Hana repeats.

Alissa looks around the room. "There's a weapon missing," she says and points to an empty weapon stand.

"Looks like it was used to hold a polearm," Ciel says.

"Hopefully this scenario isn't based on a real one," I say, solemnly.

"Hopefully," Ciel repeats.

There's still no movement inside the elemental coffin, and we don't find anything else that might be important in this room, so we hurry out of the mansion. We leave without a problem and let out a collective sigh of relief.

We already have our next target, the Wigwam, but we're late for lunch, so I open a [Gate] back to our ship.

I simmer not-tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, and not-pepper until a thick, jam-like mixture forms and all the liquid evaporates. I sieve it twice for extra creaminess, then I stir in a small amount of Worcestershire sauce.

There, ketchup.

"Hmm… interesting taste," Alissa says after tasting a drop.

"Put it on fried Territuberem and it tastes heavenly. Or you can do this…" I say and pour ketchup on the steak.

Hana and Aoi yelp in horror, Yunia's face goes blank, flabbergasted, and the rest of the girls frown.

"Ew…" Alissa mumbles.

I start chuckling. Some things stay the same, even across worlds.

I cut the steak into slices and hand it to the girls. "Just try it once," I say, and they give it a chance.

"I've committed a Sin," Hana says after swallowing.

"No blasphemy," Ciel says, then she adds in a low tone, "but I agree…"

Next, I just need a pineapple…

"Okay, it's not bad, but it's weird," Yunia says.

"Yes. Meat shouldn't be sweet, but why doesn't this taste horrible?" Aoi asks.

"It's a mystery," I say with a shrug and hum a tune.

The girls ignore me as they watch Lina put ketchup on the fried Territuberem. They hold their breaths when she takes a bite, and patiently wait until she swallows.

She shifts her footing and looks around, uncomfortable at the attention she's receiving. "It's good," she shyly says.

Nobody else put ketchup on their steak, but fried not-potato with ketchup was a success.

"It's finished," Lina says and gives the repaired shield back to Aoi.

I let a sigh escape me as I slowly return from a trance. The infinite blue is so mesmerizing that I wish that we could vacation around here for a few days.

But all good things must come to an end.

I turn Yunia's head towards me and give her a deep, long kiss. She runs her fingers through my hair, showing that her horniness hasn't gone away yet. I pull back slightly and give her lip a teasing bite, eliciting a soft giggle, then I give her one last peck.

I lean forward and grab Lina's head, then I steal a kiss from her. Her tongue is smaller but more active than Yunia's. She craves the touch and attention, trying to get as much out of me as she can.

I lift Lina and deposit her in the other chair, then I get up and start kissing each of the girls.

Alissa is next, never wasting a chance for her to take a bite out of me. She's calm and gentle, and she always uses [Oral Technique] to maximize my pleasure. Hana gets excited and comes over to me. Her tongue is the one that dives the deepest into my mouth. Roxanne sneaks behind me and steals a kiss. She loves to slowly wrestle with me for dominance. Aoi patiently waits for her turn. She always wraps her tongue around mine as if she were giving it a blowjob. Then Ciel is last. She's gentle, but there's always a thirst behind it.

"It's time to go," I order and open a [Gate] to the grounds of the mansion.

The Wigwam is in the opposite direction of the mannequins, so I pull out Jarn since noise won't cause any problems for us anymore.

As we walk, we notice that the streets are silent and eerie, even more so than usual.

"I smell smoke," Alissa says.

"Wait… is it from the mannequins that we burned?" Roxanne asks.

"Those mannequins didn't smell like this. It's coming from up ahead."

I'm a little surprised that they didn't start a fire in the district.

All of the roads here are named, so it's easy for us to follow The Lady's map. They all have English names, too.

I'm starting to get uncomfortable at how much this reminds me of Earth. Where did the dungeon get the details to make all of this? Unless, of course, it's a coincidence, and it's just copying Maplethorne's culture instead of Earth's.

It doesn't take long for us to reach the Wigwam, but we only find disappointment there. The entire building has been burned to the ground.

"Isn't everything made of concrete around here?" Hana asks.

"Most of them are, but there are a few buildings here and there that are made of wood," I say.

"Well, now what?" Roxanne asks.

"It's a dead end…" I mutter and pout.

"Do we have another lead?" Lina asks.

"The Mayor's Office?" Alissa asks.

"The Hollys haven't found anything noteworthy. There could be a keycard or something inside a drawer…" I say and shrug.

"I can clear the ashes away from the ruins," Ciel says.

Yunia nods in agreement and says, "There could be something buried under this."

"I can help," Aoi volunteers.

Ciel walks into the ruins and hums, deep in through, "Hm… I should be able to use [Windstorm] to push all the ashes away, and you could flap your wings to increase its power."

"We're counting on you two," I say and nod.

We hide in a nearby house as the two girls gather their mana. Just to be safe, I keep a Holly high above us in case this storm of mana that they're whipping up catches the attention of something.

Ciel spends a long minute chanting, then she releases the spell without the damage component, creating a mini-tornado. The spell pulls the air into a whirlpool above the burnt ruins, sucking up all the ashes, then scattering them away from both us and the remaining debris. Aoi's flap of her wings adds some speed to the tornado, and it even starts to lift up small lumps of burnt wood.

They use around a quarter of their mana, but they clear a lot of the rubble that was covering the ruins.

Then I summon four goblins. "Search the ruins for anything interesting," I order.

We take a small break and coach Aoi on how to use [Redirect Mana]. Since she doesn't have a system yet, she has to learn how to do that the hard way.

It ends up being unsuccessful since she doesn't have a fully developed "soul muscle," which is a requirement to use the skill.

While we wait, I let the Hollys explore the buildings around us. They all seem far emptier than the mansion, the Mayor's Office, or even this pile of rubble in front of us. It's like the Dungeon Master is saying that there's nothing over there, so we shouldn't waste our time searching them.

The goblins find a lot of female underwear, so I have a little chat with them to reorder their priorities. If they weren't mana solidifications, then I'd have stored this amazing haul of goodies with glee.

After a good half hour, a goblin suddenly raises his thin little arm in the air in triumph. He's found a yellow keycard.

"Should we really turn on the lights?" Yunia asks.

"What do you think would happen if we did?" I ask.

"Possibly make the monsters more active, or it might make the zombies spread out everywhere."

"It would make it harder to sneak into the Mayor's Office," Alissa adds.

"If it does, then we'll just turn off the lights again," I say, and Yunia shrugs.

We spend another half hour waiting and don't find anything else of interest, so I open a [Gate] to the closet in engineering. I store the golems in my "Items" for a moment so that I don't have to pay their mana cost to use the portal. I also leave a Holly here in the residential district, just to watch over the area.

"Do you know how to operate this?" Roxanne asks.

"No. Let's search the nearby rooms for information," I say, and we spread out.

We spend a half hour slogging through reports, memos, and other documents, we find a manual and start to decipher it. It's almost a literal deciphering session since this station's engineers seem to love technical jargon and didn't leave a dictionary for all this bullshit.

In the end, only Lina and I survive this challenge; the other girls all tap out and take a break.

We understand that a start-up sequence is required to connect all of the wiring properly. Otherwise, certain areas won't connect, and if we then try to turn things on, a mana overload would happen, basically frying everything.

There's no digital UI with all the information that you need on a single screen, so it takes us a combined effort to test the connections and check all the analog meters. The wiring that transfers mana to the lights is made of an alloy of silver and copper, so it's not super efficient mana-wise. The tools are also rather sensitive, and require some very controlled testing so that they don't produce false positives.

The magic tools send a small amount of mana down the channel, then measure how long it takes for it to come back, and how much mana returns. It's basically a mana "ping." Because of how imprecise it is, it requires a specific order of measurements so that the results don't get garbled up.

Lina sighs and lowers her mana sensing tool to the floor. She stretches and says, "How odd. These mana channels are so small and sturdy that I'm not even sure that they use something this well-made in the capital. But why did they make them like this if their tools were so much less precise? It would take so much more effort to build them this way."

"Isn't this dungeon supposed to be set in the past?" I ask, and Lina scratches her head in thought, then I continue, "With the development of better tools, it became possible to reduce the quality of the mana channels."

"Oh…" -She blinks blankly- "that's right. That makes so much sense."

We finally finish up, and Alissa gives us the sitrep, "The station is in 'minimum life-support mode.' All the spare mana from the generator is being redirected to Looping Winds Control."

"That's suspicious," I say.

"Something bad is going on over there," Yunia agrees.

"And if we return the station to the standard distribution of mana, something bad might come to us," I say.

"Nah, we'll be fine," Hana says with a fearsome smile.

"Yeah, we will, but it'll also force us to work harder," I respond.

"Well, we don't really need to turn on the lights right now," Yunia says.

"True, but then what should we do now?" I ask.

"Let me explore the Mayor's Office building again," Alissa says.

"Alright, I'll go with you and drop a new coordinate over there," I say.

"If we don't find any other clues, then we might have to break into the keycard workshop, and it could be powered by the station's mana, so we might be forced to turn on the lights anyway," Lina says.

"Now that could be really bad. We have no idea what will happen if we trigger the alarm," Yunia says.

"It might be a required step, we also have a key that's clearly for something inside the workshop. One last challenge before we enter the Control room," I say.

"Sounds fun," Roxanne says sarcastically.

I ride Alissa to the Mayor's Office and drop a coordinate in front of the entrance. She casts [Ignorance] on herself and sneaks in.

The Baby Brutes have returned to their respective floors, so she dances around their patrol patterns to avoid detection. Since a Holly has already checked anything not inside a drawer, Alissa wastes little time searching each room.

"There's nothing here," comes the inevitable conclusion.

Engineering is full of zombies, residential is full of mannequins and nothing else of interest, and administration is mostly empty. There's no other notable point of interest that we haven't fully searched yet. It's time to turn on the lights.

I unsummon the earth elementals holding the doors to this room open and close them. Now that we have a yellow keycard, we can open them at any time.

Then we discuss what we'll do next.

"All systems ready. Turning on the lights," I order, and the girls obey.

We pull the levers and average the mana distribution among all of the station systems. Everywhere, crystal lights turn on, clearing away most of the eerie atmosphere of the station. Then the zombies immediately start to spread out, each trying to grab the crystals in the ceiling.

"It doesn't seem like they're healing," I say.

"These crystals just produce light, they are different from a [Spirit Light]," Ciel says.

"That's good to hear."

Then it comes. We hear a low, long, high-pitched cry. It stops for a long moment, then it starts going again and repeats in the same pattern. It slowly becomes louder and louder. It turns into a horrifying wailing, then suddenly stops. After a few tense seconds, the Holly outside engineering sees it.

A thin veil of red, pulsating flesh grows along the corridors and slowly makes its way towards our room. Once it touches a zombie, it spreads over their skin, covering them with a patchwork of flesh. These new zombies all turn towards our room, and I notice that their dull movements have become much faster and more dexterous.

I explain what's happening to the girls and say, "I have a bad feeling about touching that thing."

"We have to hurry, then," Yunia says.

I nod in agreement and say, "It's time to break into the keycard workshop."

The girls ready their weapons, and I open a [Gate] to the Mayor's Office.

This area is open like the residential district, giving us an unobstructed view of the walls of the keycard workshop on the third floor. There's no reason to climb the stairs, so Lina uses [Earth Wall] to create a platform on the third floor for me to jump to. With [Telekinesis], it's a piece of cake to get up there.

I summon an earth elemental and tell it to open a hole in the wall.

A second after the elemental starts its work, a low siren starts to buzz, slowly gaining volume until it becomes so loud that it hurts our ears. Then it starts to lose volume, and a heavy tension falls on our shoulders.

All the lights dim, nearly plunging us into darkness again; the walls become darkened with dirt and grime; cracks appear all over the station and threaten to break the buildings apart; blood stains and scribbles that almost seem like actual writing randomly appear everywhere; random noises of metal hitting metal resound all around us.

"The guards, they are changing," Alissa says through [Bind].

I enter the workshop and open a [Gate] to the girls, then they immediately cross through it.

"No time to waste, get in position," I order, and we prepare for the worst.