Chapter 153: 153 – Need-to-Know Basis

It was a relatively small hive, just a glorified blockade really, but the extermination was still a mess. Focusing mostly on covering the Inquisitor’s advance, he had to keep an eye on her and make sure nothing got into her blind spots. The wordless exclamations of his song quickly became the ever-familiar word that accompanied his right-legged kicks: “BUNKER!”

He could see the stake momentarily heating to molten-orange whenever it came out, feeling its heat spreading out through his leg. The fact that this interaction existed shouldn’t have surprised him, yet it briefly did, as Strolvath hadn’t had his prosthetic for long enough to use it whilst also performing essentia amplification. Whilst he wouldn’t need to use it more often than once every couple seconds, he still ended up killing over a dozen drones and three warriors, not to mention another Sage-damned stained-glass Locust Noble. This one went right for him, swiping with huge, stupid-looking claws - not because they were made of chitin, but because they weren’t blades. Just… Oversized, pointy fingers, only dangerous if the bug managed to get a solid grip on him.

The Locust Noble was granted deliverance via pilebunker to the skull, all the while the Inquisitor kept slashing away. Only, something seemed a little off about how she fought. Strolvath noticed the subtle hesitation, the double-takes, the moments where she stopped dead to decide. The gaps were small enough to not be an issue in a situation like this, but against a more substantial foe they could spell their death. Why didn’t she use any of the Inquisitors’ myriad other techniques, or just pull one of her guns? 

When the hive was finally purged of locust life and they had a moment to breathe, Strol shook as much viscera out of his boot as he could, still closely observing the gas-masked woman, thinking over her apparent self-restraint. With the final sparks of her sword as she sheathed it, it dawned on him, and he called her out on it without hesitation.

“Hey, I’ve got somethin’ I’ve gotta tell you,” he said, beckoning her over. She shot him an annoyed glare and approached with an equal degree of irritation and guarded caution, tilting her head in a wordless question.

Strolvath grinned at her and spilled everything, “Just so you know, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t hold off on using things that could save the mission, or our lives for that matter. I know ‘bout the Stars of Calamity, I know that you can do things like boil people alive from the inside out. I also know that, as of the end of the war, you lot are pretty much the biggest surviving group of Grekurian cultivators. You ain’t got a whole lot to hide from me besides how ugly your mug is under that gas mask.”

With each mention of things she could do, the Inquisitor grew ever so slightly less composed, until at the very end, anger visibly flashed through her eyes. She raised her hands to angrily gesture something, only to change what was obviously going to be an expletive into a more mundane, if curt question.

“Why would you let me know that you know?” she questioned without trying to hide her distrust.

“See, you’re going off the misinformed assumption that your capabilities are more sensitive information than the fact that I have a glyphic cold-iron pilebunker in my fuckin’ leg,” Strolvath explained, raising his right leg, shaking it to make the stake fall out before stomping it back into place to illustrate his point.

“And yet, I didn’t hesitate so much as a second to use it. Y’know why? ‘Cause it doesn’t matter if you know,” he continued, staring down that blank-faced gas mask. “We’re under the same employer now, n’ somethin’ tells me you’re not particularly keen on working for the cunts across the wall that want to put Ikesians in “re-education” gulags. So don’t you go trying to hide things I already know of.”

Strolvath had gone off a little more than he’d initially intended to, but the effect was indisputable. For a moment the Inquisitor stared him down, motionless. Then, she undid her coat and pulled a four-barreled masterwork pepperbox from within. Without even acknowledging the verbal reaming, she simply moved ahead towards the hive’s surviving doorman. After pulling a fuel gem out of her coat pocket and gripping it in her free hand, a wisp of Fog vented from her mask and a crimson-orange corona surrounded her right arm. 

There was very visible anger behind the way she delivered the Ignis-enhanced punch to the helpless living door’s back, to which its back split open and steam gushed from its breathing tubes as it was cooked alive. 

“Musta yanked a string, huh?” the singer thought to himself, catching up to the Inquisitor whilst she carved a path through the carcass with her flaming sword.

---

Their conversation over lunch over and done with, Makhus and Sigmund each turned to their duties in the store. Sig had naturally slipped into the role of the shopkeeper, in large part due to his ironclad calm demeanor. The rest of the reason was that Makhus simply didn’t have the time, spending most of the day down in the lab flitting between three or four different glass tangles, so as to produce basic medical elixirs. They could sell Liquid Vigor and undercut any local competition, but that wouldn’t exactly be smart business, since the aforementioned competition only sold elixirs as part of a larger repertoire.

Thus, the lone alchemist had come up with a reliable workflow for himself, a means of consistently finishing a batch of multiple completely different alchemic products. It took him three hours and seventeen minutes per batch, which meant he had already gotten through four full runs of the process before the deal with the governor.

Four batches of all-purpose skin cream, local anesthetic, sleeping pills, and most importantly, nootropic powder. The powder was a screamingly bright fluorescent yellow, as fine as the finest flour, and tartly sour in taste.

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