Chapter 10: Chapter 10: Tenth, get out of the frying pan

The nobles leave almost immediately, taking the male guard with them. Nearly a minute passes as the female guard—Kelly, I should remember that now that it’s just her—clears the area. She approaches me once she’s sure we’re secure.

“Can you walk?” Kelly asks me.

Of course I can. I’ve been able to walk this entire time. Even without the noble’s healing, Demonic Heritage would’ve healed me back to functional by now. Maybe not perfect, but functional.

Acting has made me savvy enough to not immediately tell her that.

I wince, affecting a slight limp. “It hurts, but yes.”

Acting advanced to level 2!

You are now 75% more likely to remain undetected while impersonating another individual.

Convenient. I note that it only improves my ability by 75%. I can’t assume that I’ll suddenly be extremely effective at it, since it still relies on my own acting prowess at its core.

Also, who am I impersonating? Probably the corpse I stole this uniform off of. Thank you for your sacrifice, Auxiliary Security D-12. I’ll use it for good, by which I mean myself.

“Can you shoot?” she asks.

That’s a more loaded question. I don’t think I actually do know how to shoot. With liberal uses of Shape Self, I’ve managed to build my body up to the point where I can theoretically handle the gun. If I use the smaller R-class weapon gun—R for rifle, maybe?—I might actually be able to fire it without it bouncing out of my hands.

The thing is, I don’t want to use it and be terrible at it. There’s a non-zero chance that Kelly here figures out that I’m not as proficient with these as I’m supposed to be. Then again, I also don’t know if security personnel are supposed to be good at shooting.

I lean harder into Acting to sell the lie I come up with. “My arms are injured. Recoil hurts it too much.”

Kelly nods sympathetically. “Magic?”

“Some,” I say, not wanting to divulge too many details. “I can do a bit of defense.”

“Not much, then,” she says. “I’m sorry about what happened to your team.”

I almost forget to paint pain on my face, but I remember just before I speak. “I… I lost track of them days ago.”

“It’s never easy,” Kelly says. “You new?”

That sounds like a question that she’s expecting the answer to, so I assent. “Y-yes.”

I’m proud of the little stutter I work in.

The guard unstraps her gun from her back. “I have magic and a gun. If you can walk, I’ll cover you through the crawlers.”

I don’t question what the “crawlers” are, instead manipulating my expression to appear grateful. “Much appreciated.”

“Use your magic if you have to,” she says. “Stay down. Standard protocol, yes?”

“Got it,” I reply confidently.

Acting advanced to level 3!

You are now 100% more likely to remain undetected while impersonating another individual.

Excellent. Now all I need to do is avoid accidentally violating “standard protocol,” whatever that is.

I do stay closer to the ground at her request, exaggerating the pain of my wounds as I do. We’ve left the clearing by now, back into a thicket of half-destroyed trees.

For a solid few minutes, I contemplate murdering her. She’s a convenient source of XP, and there’s nobody around.

Ultimately, I decide against it. Not only does she have the potential to threaten me even if I surprise her, there’s also a wall to get through, one that can apparently annihilate any threats that get close to it. The way the guards and Ashley described it makes it seem like a far greater threat than even them, and Appraise doesn’t even work on them. That means I’m definitely not fighting my way through a wall.

Furthermore, I don’t know if I can act well enough to make my way through another layer of security, especially since D-12 has supposedly been missing for a while.

She’ll be my cover for now. I can’t afford to take a risk as big as killing her before I get past whatever. Later, maybe.

“If you disappeared four days ago, then you probably haven’t heard,” Kelly says, having heard exactly none of my internal deliberation. “We cleared almost all the fliers and climbers between here and the wall. Most of the crawlers, too, but there’s a burrow of them nearer to HQ. We’re going to need to make it through there.”

I nod along, quietly agreeing to her words. I assume that by “fliers” and “climbers,” she’s referring to monsters that fly or climb? I’ve seen one of the latter—the spider-thing in a tree that almost tore my face off—and I didn’t see anything in the lab, so presumably they all escaped.

Why did they all leave? Even if there was some motive for them to seek freedom, surely there must’ve been one or two hangers-on who stuck around, right?

Maybe I just missed them.

That doesn’t feel like enough of an explanation, but I’m not going to get any answers here. I’ll have to wait until I get out and can seek the researchers who made the entire place.

“Alright, we’re approaching the wall,” Kelly says. “The last five hundred feet are pretty much clear of vegetation, and the territory’s a lot harder to run through than it was a few days ago.”

“Understood,” I reply. The trees do seem to be getting thinner.

“You’ll go ahead of me,” she tells me. “I work best at range, so I’ll pick off any crawlers that get close to you. Defend yourself to the best of your ability.”

“I can do that,” I say. “Not sure how fast I can run.”

“You’ll be fine,” Kelly says. “I’ll alert… someone that we’re getting back. The wall guards will annihilate the area ahead of time, so hopefully there’ll only be a couple minor crawlers to deal with.”

The way she said “someone” feels off. Reticience, regret, worry… something’s not quite right here. I heard the nobles talking about paying the guards off earlier—maybe that’s the issue? Is she not supposed to be here?

I’ll keep that in mind. It’s yet another reason for me to stay on my guard, and it’s something I might be able to leverage. Whatever happens, I can’t afford for these people to start asking too many questions about who the saved newbie security guard happens to be.

The treeline thins even further as we continue. A lot of the vegetation we pass by now has clearly been affected by skills and weapons. There are bullet holes in some tree trunks, while other ones have been clean cut down just above the base of their trunk. Grass is burnt away in places and decayed elsewhere.

At one point, a pair of spiders that look similar to the one I killed earlier jump at us from their hiding place in a tree. I barely notice them before Kelly shoots four times—two quick bursts of two—and two spider corpses fall to the ground. I’m sorely tempted to Devour their bodies to push myself to the next level, but Kelly insists on us hurrying, and I would imagine eating a freshly-dead spider would raise more questions than it’s worth.

We make it to the final five hundred feet without any further issues, and I see what she meant earlier.

Half a thousand feet away from me is a wall. It rises maybe a hundred feet into the air, an imposing steel structure with no breaks that I can see except for presumably locked doors here and there.

The earth between me and the wall looks like a warzone. Not a single plant remains standing, and the underlying dirt looks like it’s been churned, with small pools of brackish water forming here and there. Small hills dot the remaining distance, but that’s more of an accident than anything done by intent—they’re mostly there because they’re at the edges of craters that I can only assume are from fierce skills clashing.

Not just skills or even artillery, I realize soon enough. One of the “craters” shifts, dirt spraying from it, and a long vaguely humanoid creature with four arms clambers its way out. Too far away for me to Appraise, but it’s definitely distinct from the EVs that I was born with.

Two shots ring out, and it jerks, bleeding black from two fresh wounds. It retreats.

Kelly grimaces. “Shit. That one’s still alive.”

“I-is this the part where I run?” I’m confident I can survive. I can explain my ability to sprint away by saying that the noble healer focused primarily on healing my legs or something similar, and I’m reasonably confident in my ability to fight one or two of those things.

“Wait,” Kelly says, her face twisted with indecision. “The crawlers, they’re tougher than they look. I…”

She trails off, taut with tension. Clearly, there’s something going on that I’m not fully aware of. This whole deal with the nobles must be even shadier than I thought it was.

Finally, she seems to come to a decision. “Cover me for a bit.”

She stares off into the distance, her eyes going glassy. For a moment, I’m worried that she’s given up on survival, and then she speaks.

“F-3 here,” she says. “I’m just outside the wall with D-12. Yes. Yeah, she’s alive.”

She’s using a communication skill of some kind, I’m sure. Assuming there’s someone on the other end of that, I dearly hope they don’t have enough information on the late D-12 to figure me as someone that really shouldn’t be here.

Kelly’s expression grows even more chagrined, but it turns out it’s not something I need to worry about. “I did. One other.”

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A pause.

“We came to do a perimeter sweep. No, we didn’t clock it, we got sidetracked.”

Another, longer pause.

“Look—look, hey, listen, you know the deal, right? I’ll give you a little more this month, you cover for me? Great, fantastic. Now can you please clear this shit for us?”

Listening to only one side of their conversation is a little weird, but it gives me a surprising amount of insight. This whole deal with the nobles is looking less and less sanctioned the more I hear about it. Not that I’m terribly worried about that, so long as it doesn’t hurt me.

“Thank you,” Kelly concludes, and she returns to reality.

“Who was that?” I ask.

She looks at me funny. “That was the wall. And if you know what’s good for you, you aren’t going to talk too much about the woman who saved your life, alright?”

“T-that makes sense,” I stutter, leaning into Acting once again. I really couldn’t care less about whatever illicit deal she has going. “Then I—“

The night sky turns to day. A bright pillar of light shines from a source I can’t spot, rising half again the height of the wall.

Sound follows a moment later, a crack that my mind registers as thunder tearing the air itself apart. I drop down instinctively at the sound, uncaring of my injuries, but it only lasts for a single second.

When the sound fades, so too does the light, and it leaves a three hundred foot wide dent in the ground. Where there was uneven earth pockmarked with the aftereffects of a dozen skills before, there’s a single massive crater, the dirt burnt and blackened. There’s a few misshapen husks half-buried in it that I think might be bodies.

“That’s our signal,” Kelly mutters. Louder, she urges me, “Go!”

I go.

In one instant, I’m running on soft grass. In the next, my bare feet touch scorched earth.

The dirt crunches beneath me with each step, still-warm soil baked by the force of that light-pillar crumbling away under me.

As I sprint, I stay committed to my act, half-limping like there’s a phantom pain bothering me.

Acting advanced to level 4!

You are now 125% more likely to remain undetected while impersonating another individual.

Useful in the long term. Useless right now.

I’m not blind, of course. I see the six-armed creature crawl out of the dirt, half its limbs bent at odd angles from where it was buried.

I Appraise it, and—

Appraise failed!

Oh no.

Kelly told me to trust her, but that doesn’t leave me defenseless. I activate Knifefighting, drawing a knife from my pack, and I toss it as well as I can. The skill doesn’t quite cover that, but it’s close enough.

My knife sails straight into its head, and I sense the spray of blood as it connects. Less than I would’ve liked, but enough that I can use Shape Blood on it. I form some of it into a spear, aiming its blood at its own eyes, but I send a stream of the viscuous black blood flying towards me.

I hear the telltale crack-crack of her gun firing, two shots that draw more blood. Then another two. From the location of the blood, the creature’s closing in on me.

I whip another knife from my pack at it, once again hitting it in the head, and only then does it slow.

Another two shots from Kelly take it down for good.

And then another two crawl out of the dirt, apparently drawn by my movement.

I’m getting closer to the wall. Two hundred feet, maybe.

But those two are going faster than me. I can’t see them, but I can hear the footsteps, the way there’s far too many of them for two living beings. I hear Kelly’s shouted warning, then an additional pair of steps as she joins in.

The blood I’m controlling catches up to me, propelled by an addition of one stat point to Magic (Power).

My knives aren’t enough to hurt it significantly. It barely fazes it. My blood magic isn’t doing anything to it.

And I still think I can survive this.

I don’t know if this will work, but I’m running awfully short onoptions here.

As I pump my legs as fast as they’ll go, dropping the half-limp, I cup one hand and bring it to the mouth, drinking bitter black blood.

Devour granted +4 XP!

You have advanced to level 4!

You have gained 3 stat points.

I brush aside the rest of the notifications before they can overwhelm me and dump all four of my stat points into Body (Speed).

It doesn’t feel like I accelerate that much, even though I hear the monsters’ steps slowly getting further behind me. Instead, it’s like I’ve found my second and third winds at once, pushing me to continue going.

Kelly isn’t panicking for her life, so I assume that these monsters aren’t unstoppable.

All I need to do is survive.

And I do survive, second after second, and the doors grow closer in my view.

I keep going even as I feel the skin on my soles scrape away, the harsh earth biting at me until every footprint is bloody.

By the time I’m at the bottom of the wall, I’m a solid fifty feet in front of the six-limbed beasts.

A small door barely large enough to fit a full-sized human through slides open slowly. There’s a man waiting in its frame, fire in his hands.

“Duck!” he commands, and I’m not prideful enough to ignore that call. I roll as he sends a gout of flame soaring over my head. Behind me, something screams.

Couldn’t have done that two minutes earlier, huh?

I keep going, not stopping until I feel the ground under me change from sharp, hard dirt to unforgiving steel.

I barely have time to process the room I’m in when my vision is overwhelmed by white flame, the man’s magic too bright for me to process after so long in the night.

More shots. More fire. I can’t see all of it, but I can hear the results. Feral screeching grows louder and louder and—abruptly cuts off.

Kelly tumbles in, and the door slams shut.

“This has got to be the last time you do this,” the man says.

“It will be, I promise,” the female guard responds. She doesn’t sound very confident.

The man looks at me, my eyes slowly recovering. He has hair as dark as his skin, but his inquisitive eyes are flaming red.

“D-12,” he says, a little intrigued. “Now what have we here? A blood mage”

I begin to realize that I might’ve just made an entirely problem for myself.

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