Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Ninth, infiltrate the humans

Two of the six are wearing the same uniform I have stashed away in my bag, though theirs are pristine and undamaged. I can’t make them out from here, but I’m sure that they say Site-17 Auxiliary Security with some designation on them if I look close enough.

The other four, however, aren’t. I have no reference point for any of them, but some part of my mind screams to me that they’re noble. They wear fine clothes with rich colors, made from material that looks expensive, and each of them carries a weapon. One of them has a rifle that resemble the ones I saw in the complex slung to his back, another wields an ornate golden bow almost as tall as she is, and the last two both have swords.

The same part of me that clocks them as nobles is confused as to why they’re out here in the wilderness. I hang onto that idea, but I refuse to let it disorient me.

After all, each of them is a potential source of XP. I’m almost tempted to unleash myself at one of them and try to eat them, but I need to be smart about this. They’re far better equipped than any of the beings I’ve killed so far.

I can’t attack without knowing the powerlevel of my potential victims, so I use Appraise.

The guards are easy enough to identify.

 

Name: Carl Ellis

Age: 22

Race: Human

Class: Guardsman

Level: 10

Last Used Skill: [APPRAISE FAILED]

 

Name: Kelly Astin

Age: 23

Race: Human

Class: Gunner

Level: 10

Last Used Skill: [APPRAISE FAILED]

 

Level 10 is high, but I’ve seen that levels don’t necessarily carry the same amount of weight depending on who wields them. EV11 was properly horrifying at level 6, but the spider-monster barely threatened me even though it was a few levels above it.

That’s not worries me. What worries me is the fact that Appraise isn’t working to display their last used skill. That means that the skill can fail.

My fears are redoubled when I Appraise the bow-wielding woman.

Name: Ashley Kane

Age: [APPRAISE FAILED]

Race: Human

Class: Noble Archer

Level: [APPRAISE FAILED]

Last Used Skill: [APPRAISE FAILED]

That is genuinely concerning. My concerns are slightly assuaged when it turns out that the others are Appraiseable, but they also have parts of the skill missing. The others are named Arthur, Eliezer, and Alexis, and all three of them are either level 8 or 9.

That probably makes Ashley their leader.

“Ashleeeeeeeey,” Eliezer complains, his grating voice at complete odds with his supposed noble status. Actual noble status, if his class says anything.

“Shut it,” Ashley says, an arrow already nocked into her bow. “Keep it down. There’s bound to be enemies soon.”

“We haven’t seen any of them,” Eliezer whines. “We’re fifteen minutes out from the wall! We haven’t even seen a single one.”

The wall?

“That’s because the site team annihilates anything that gets close,” the male guard says. He sounds annoyed, like the word moron is on the tip of his tongue.

“Shush,” Ashley tells him. “Did we pay you to ask for your opinions?”

The male guard doesn’t speak again.

“Look,” Ashley says, addressing her group of nobles, “there’s good hunting here. It’s just deeper in.”

“You said that last time,” Arthur replies, crossing his arms. He’s the one with the gun strapped to his back. Level 9. “Look where that got us.”

“I’m trying,” Ashley says, emphasizing the try, “to keep you idiots alive. If I didn’t like you so much, I would’ve told the Duke to go fuck himself and left you to level up alone.”

“You always say that,” Alexis sighs. “What’s the difference between this one and the last?”

“We shouldn’t be out in the open,” the female guard says. “The site break wasn’t that long ago, and—“

Ashley turns to the guard, exposing her back to me. There’s a slit in her hunting coat that reveals bare skin there, which seems wildly impractical, but then none of these nobles are wearing practical clothes.

I consider ambushing them right now, adding red to that porcelain-white skin with my twin blades and devouring the noble, but it’s plainly obvious that I wouldn’t make it very far. I’m not going to try my luck.

“—and it’s not even a high-level breach, so if you give me one more thrice-damned suggestion that isn’t something along the lines of ‘behind you’, I will leave you alone with these brats,” Ashley is saying. Once she’s done admonishing the guards, she turns back to her apparent charges. “Look. I know this isn’t a super active breach, but it’s fresh. If the actual threats that this site worked on had escaped, we wouldn’t be here. You should be thankful that—“

From the high grass they walk in, something screeches, and a shadowed figure with too many limbs pops out, knocking the male guard down. He screams as it pounces, and I sense the spray of blood as it tears into him. I barely manage to Appraise it, noting that its level is 8.

Three of the nobles panic. Ashley does not. The Noble Hunter nocks and arrow and fires it almost faster than my eyes can track. Her arrow lights up the night, a golden beam of radiance that smashes into the centipede-creature. It explodes away from the guard, its body reduced to nothing but bone dust and a thin red mist.

Ashley sighs. “Alexis.”

“O-on it,” the other noblewoman says, her dark blue coat now sporting a fresh new stain. She kneels down next to the guard, who’s still screaming, and green light pours forth from her hands.

The amount of blood spilling from the guard’s many wounds is decreasing, but the amount coming from the centipede-thing is increasing. It’s dead as dead can be, a solid third of it utterly annihilated. A chunk of the grass has been scorched away with it, torn asunder with traces of gold  still burning away at it.

“See?” Ashley says. “If that was something stronger, someone’s dead. I can’t protect all of you that well.”

“Let your guard down again like that, you’re joining the ten percent, Carl,” the female guard says, crossing her arms.”

“Yeah, fuck you too,” the male guard says, bringing himself to his feet with a groan. His uniform is just as ripped as the one I have stored away is now. An inkling of an idea forms then.

That skill is clearly beyond the current level I’m at. If I try to face even Ashley alone, I’m sure to die unless I decapitate her with my first strike.

Given the information I’ve gathered so far, it’s likely that the emptiness of the complex did in fact indicate that there was an evacuation of some kind. The mention of a wall along with the presence of other monsters like me in this area leads me to believe that there’s a border preventing us from leaving. “Us” being the native residents of the lab, of course.

If they’re anything like the power level of this group, I’m not going to be able to make it to the next town over. I’ll have to content myself with hunting what Ashley called “low-level” monsters. I won’t be able to search for answers.

“Ten percent?” Eliezer asks.

Ashley sighs. “See, I’m tellling you. You know nothing. Guard, can you explain?”

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The female guard shrugs, apparently unfazed by the situation and by being talked down to earlier. “Ten percent of the guards that get sent to a breached Underground Site end up dead or close enough to it. The number’s higher for visitors, but we’re not supposed to take those.”

Eliezer doesn’t look very happy to hear that.

“Let’s get moving,” Ashley says, and they start moving towards my direction.

I freeze where I am, momentarily paralyzed. I have the beginnings of a plan forming in my head, but I don’t know whether I want to do it now or later.

Time slows down for me subjectively, my Mind (Speed) stat giving me just a bit more time to think.

They’re a hundred feet away, but there’s six of them and they’re all high-level. I could try to Stealth away, but they could have any sort of sensory skill that would allow them to track me even if my steps are silent. I am, after all, still only level 3.

My options are to run or to try to convince them to let me join them. Both are risky and rely on factors I can’t control.

This is, once more, a dangerous situation. But I know that danger equals opportunity, and I highly doubt I’m going to be able to get an opportunity that lines up this well again in the near future.

As quietly as I can, I reach into my backpack.

“Something in the grass,” Arthur says, unstrapping his gun. I can’t see him anymore—I’ve dipped back down.

I move quickly. They’re not moving very fast, but they’ll arrive at my location within the minute.

The uniform doesn’t fit me perfectly, but the corpse I stole it from had a similar body shape to me. It’s close enough now that I’ve reached average human height, and I can hide my demonic parts with it. The ripped pieces of it help make the maladjusted size seem more natural. I button it up best I can, muscle memory assisting me despite the fact that I’ve never done this before.

Alright. I have the dead man’s uniform on me. All I can do is hope they didn’t recognize the corpse in life. If they do, then things will get infinitely more awkward.

“Who’s there?” Eliezer shouts. Ashley shushes him a second later.

Now, the hard part.

Nobody is expecting a healthy person out here, right? Actually, I doubt they expect anyone. Given the fact that the body was allowed to almost fully decompose, it’s likely that not many patrols are sent out here. If they find anyone—me, for example—they wouldn’t be expecting someone in perfect health.

I take my twin knives out, engaging Knifefighting, and I stab myself. Twice in the legs, once in my left arm, and once in the human part of my torso. I wince, but pain is just pain.

Next, I use Shape Blood to spread the damage out, making each wound look worse than it is. I should be fine, especially with Demonic Heritage, but I want to look really injured.

Somehow, being in a uniform soaked with my own blood is a lot more comfortable than the idea of being drenched in the blood of the decaying corpse.

I wipe the blades off with the same skill and store them best I can and lie down. I don’t need to feign the pained whimper I make, though I manage to separate the sensation as best as I can.

Ashley finds me first, bow already nocked and drawn with her golden arrow. This is the critical moment, the one where my choice to stay leads to my death or my freedom. From the behavior that she’s been demonstrating, I think it’s far more likely she’ll grant me the latter.

She does. For now, at least.

“Who are you?” she asks. Louder, she says, “Injured human here. Has your uniform.”

“What?” the male guard asks. I can’t see him, but I recognize his voice.

“Help… me…” I rasp out, pitching my voice differently and suppressing Pain Resistance so I can allow the sensation to bleed into my words. It’s not the best I’ve heard, but I hope it can sell the act.

New skill unlocked: Acting

Lie more effectively.

The skill comes as a welcome addition, and with it active, I notice errors in my performance. I lower the volume of the pained sounds I make—if I’d been well enough to make them earlier, they would’ve heard me much sooner. In addition, I worsen a few of the wounds with Enhance Bleed, wincing visibly as I do so. At the same time, I use Shape Blood to forcibly clot a couple of the wounds on my legs, reducing the apparent injuries on the parts of me I used to move.

There. That should be enough to sell the idea of me being horribly injured rather recently, but it won’t sell it hard enough that they’ll be questioning how I’m still alive.

“She’s hurt,” Ashley says. “Alexis.”

The same noble from before walks over and kneels next to me, her blonde hair dangling over her impassive face. Her hands glow bright green, and the faint traces of pain within me start to fade. I can feel my wounds closing in a different way from Demonic Heritage. It’s kind of weird, actually.

“Holy shit,” the male guard says. “You see that designation, right?”

“D-team,” the female one replies. “It’s been… three days?”

“Four,” he corrects.

“You recognize her,” Ashley states. It’s not a question.

“Not her,” the male guard says dismissively. “There’s too many of us to know everyone. I know the team. Half of security team D went dark a few days back.”

“Are there other survivors?” the other guard asks me.

“I…” I cough, and I think about adding a few flecks of blood to that cough. Acting helps me decide not to. It’s too dramatic, especially since I’ve just been healed. “I don’t… know.”

“Is this going to get in the way?” Eliezer whines again.

Yeah, asshole. I’m going to get in your way.

I’m half-tempted get up and bite his face off, but I don’t know if even that will stop his voice from grating upon my ears.

“It won’t,” Ashley sighs. “Guards.”

“We can’t,” the male guard says. “We need to be out here to—“

“Guarantee my safety? Please.” Ashley shakes her head. “Kelly, you seem to be more likely to survive than this fool. Take her to the wall for some proper recovery.”

Huh. This noble seems to have a fair bit more caring for my well-being than any of the others do. Even the guards.

“Can do,” the female guard says. “Don’t join the ten, Carl.”

“Fuck off.”

“Keep talking like that and you really will end up six feet inside something’s maw,” Ashley says, not even bothering to look at the guard. She nudges me with her foot. “Hey. You’re going to be okay. What’s your name?”

This is going better than I expected. I don’t need to deal with the powerful nobles, and I’m going to be alone with one of the weaker individuals?

Not that I’ll kill her, of course. I need her alive to get me past this… wall. I need more information and I need to level up more, which isn’t going to happen if I’m just stuck. Something deep within me cries out in rage when I even think about the idea of being fully contained.

“Hey,” Ashley repeats, tapping me on the shoulder. “Can you hear me? Are you lucid?”

I sit up slowly. “I can hear you.”

“Your name. What is it?”

A name. I do need one of those, come to think of it. If everything goes right, I’ll need to speak to humans without eating them alive.

Even the most ruthless demon needs connections.

I think. Announcing myself as EV3 would be a dead giveaway that I’m not who I’m pretending to be. Neither of the guards recognize individuals from the team, so I’m free to pick whatever I want.

EV3. Eve, maybe. That name… doesn’t quite feel right inside my mind. Too short, and I recall that one of the researchers that worked on my project has that name. I don’t want that. My name is for me.

“Evelyn,” I decide. Acting tells me to try again, reinforce my lie into deceitful truth.

“My name is Evelyn.”

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