Chapter 969 - Behind closed doors

Sofia looked around but she couldn’t even see bugs or small critters, the forest nearby seemed fully devoid of animal life.

There are buried skeletons here and there… But none on the surface. How weird.

The ambient mana is pretty scarce but not inexistant. It should be enough to fly just not very high or at top speed.

“How is your mana regen?” Sofia asked Pareth. He could tap into hers now with [Astrally aligned] but the mana-poor environment was still not the best for him.

In response, Pareth simply took a loud, deep breath.

Since he was in the form of a demon of Sorrow, even if the skills were missing he had inherited the full physique, including the enhanced mana-breathing.

“Right, that should be good enough. Then let’s proceed carefully. I’ll leave an eye here, just in case.”

Sofia severed a tiny sliver of her soul with [Myriad eyes] and threw it above the gate they had just left through, stuffing it with the maximum 100 million mana it could handle. The soul sliver hit the concrete frame of the gate, and transformed into a veiny eyeball the size of a fist, held there by pink strands of flesh.

“Stay invisible. Connect if anything approaches or comes out from the gates.”

The eyeball turned invisible without a sound.

That’ll last for two hundred and fifty days. Should be enough.

It would take two minutes for Sofia to regenerate the mana she just used, so she and Pareth did not move from that spot for the moment.

I don’t feel any movement but I suppose a strong creature that does not use mana could still go undetected. Let’s err on the side of caution before trying anything.

While Pareth stood guard, Sofia started enthralling the dead and buried animal skeletons found throughout the forest.

Releasing the full power of her aura, the entire forest floor started to rumble. Behind a human cemetery, or a battlefield, a forest like this was in fact the perfect playground.

Tens of thousands of skeletons rose from below the dirt, crawling through the moss and leaves. In just a few seconds, the dead forest came back to ‘life’.

Perfect.

The big ones come here, everyone else spread out. Try to find living beings, don’t attack.

Most of the skeletons were birds, mice, squirrels, hares, foxes, and other critters that quickly spread out, while the bigger ones slowly gathered near the group.

Three bears, a dozen wolves, a few hundred deers and boars… And two humans?

Well, that will do.

Instead of sending these into the halls where they would be stuck unless she used [Unshackle the halls]. Sofia stored the bears, wolves and humans into her eye instead. They took a lot of space but could easily be deployed on a target from a distance that way.

The remaining ones she told to just stay around and alert for now.

Already back to full mana, Sofia toggled [Runelord], and used the free flight to take to the skies instead of her wings. With her mana regeneration now, she could always have it on if she wanted, but without sunlight it reduced her regen to only fifty thousand a second.

As Sofia and Pareth ascended in the night sky, Sofia quickly noticed a few things. First of all, the sky was strangely dark. Stars were few and far between. Secondly, there was a limit to how high she could transpose, her light seemed to stop after about a hundred kilometers of altitude, although she could not say whether it was a limitation of the trial or of the toybox itself. Lastly, the horizon did not curve much at all.

I thought the technology in that facility looked a bit like stuff from earth but the planet is more Veliadren-sized? Hmm… Maybe a bit smaller. But definitely much bigger than earth.

Skelmie did say it was a fictional world but it’s hard to place. The fauna seems pretty standard so far at least.

The forest was vast, surrounded by low mountains, with no traces of human activity at a glance. Only by looking precisely in the direction of the dirt road did Sofia notice a human city in the distance. It was relatively small, and plunged in complete darkness.

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Is it empty just like the forest?

“The skeletons aren’t finding anything. Let’s try the city.”

Pareth nodded, following Sofia down first to retrieve all the medium-sized thralls into the halls, and leaving a tiny statuette in her effigy in a nearby tree hollow before flying low toward the city, staying just above the canopy of the forest.

Before she even got there Sofia could confirm her suspicions, the city was also completely devoid of life. A handful of taller buildings stood around the city center while regular houses were scattered around it in all directions.

As far as saving humanity goes, this is not a great start for me…

Ah, something.

Noticing a red glint below the trees, Sofia flew down.

Oh it was just one of those Car things. Looks quite a bit clunkier than the ones I saw last time.

I know the word for this in seven earth languages but it didn’t come with any explanation as to how they work… I mean I get that it’s transportation…

Still, whoever was in there just stopped here in the middle of the forest, opened the door and walked out like that?

A single set of footprints was visible next to the open door, before the person had left the dirt road and entered the forest. As for tracking someone through a forest environment, that was wholly out of Sofia’s capabilities, but she noted that the thick shrubs and bushes did not really look like they had been stepped through.

Hmm…

“Well, our job is to save the local humans, so understanding why they’re gone would be a good start. City next.”

Nothing else stood out on the flight to the city. The city itself was the same, cars and buildings and houses with the doors open, as if everyone had just simply decided to up and leave on foot at the same time. Sofia entered a few houses, and rapidly found out that many had just left in the middle of their meal, often dropping their cutlery right on the table or the ground even with some food still on the fork.

After a quick in and out in four such homes, Sofia decided to spend a bit more time investigating the fifth one, because it was larger and she could see from outside that it had a table set for eight in the living room. More people gone meant more potential traces to follow.

Closing the front door behind her, she looked around, a whole oven-roasted poultry was still sitting on the kitchen counter, a knife stuck inside, halfway through slicing the meat.

Sofia poked and sniffed the meat, it was cold but it still smelled perfectly fine. She turned to Pareth, who was curiously inspecting the foreign kitchen appliances and the contents of the various cupboards. “It looks like the people disappeared relatively recently. Earlier today or yesterday at most, I’d say. Find anything?”

In response Pareth handed Sofia a metallic cylinder printed with the image of some kind of round red fruit, and pointed at a thin line printed near the bottom.

‘BEST BEFORE OCT 71’

“O.C.T.? Seventy-one must be the year, could be useful later, I guess? Let’s not waste more time here, maybe the bigger building will…”

Sofia stopped in the middle of her sentence, through the window behind Pareth she could see a thick wall of mist slowly closing in, engulfing the house next door. Pareth sharing Sofia’s demon form could naturally also see all around him, so he noticed as well.

The two exchanged a glance, and both re-summoned their armor, facing the incoming fog wall. It was simply too weird and unnatural, and their job here was not just to survive, but to save the humans of this world. They would face unnatural things head-on.

The mist had closed in really fast, and it quickly surrounded the house they were in, without making its way inside. Sofia glanced at the front door, her glance lingering there for a few seconds, then back at the outside through the closed window.

I don’t feel any mana from it, but it’s so unnaturally thick. I can’t even see the garden fence anymore.

What if…

Since Sofia still had some thralls stocked in her eye, she used it to summon one of the human ones, directly on the other side of the window.

Before she could give it any order, it ran away from view, disappearing into the mist. And Sofia completely lost track of it, her aura and mana senses both losing it at the same time.

“Well shit. We know where the people have gone now…”

Pareth did not react. His head turned, he was looking at the front door.

“Pareth?” Sofia asked, her own gaze strangely attracted to the closed door. Only when a bright light erupted from Pareth’s hand did they both snap out of this weird trance. He had used his [Purification] skill, and it seemed to have worked.

“Really, no wonder everyone disappeared. Nice save Pareth. I can’t believe we were almost hypnotized by this shit with all the resistances and immunities we have. And it’s not even… I still don’t feel any magic.”

Even now that she was aware something was trying to tempt her into going outside, Sofia felt the weird urge to look toward the door.

“This thing is truly malicious. Maybe stepping out now isn’t the best idea…”

However, less than a minute later, Pareth noticed that the fog was starting to enter the house through the vents and cracks. The more of it entered the house, the stronger the pressing urge to run outside became.

“Let’s retreat for now,” Sofia decided. Her light had long hit the boundaries of the sky, so there was nowhere outside she could transpose to, but she had left an effigy near the underground facility. She could not even connect to the undead eye she had left there, but the starmap still found the effigy. Pareth stepped into the halls, and Sofia transposed away from the house.

She appeared outside of the underground facility she had left half an hour prior, completely surrounded by the fog. At the same time, she suddenly remembered one of the empty rooms she had walked past in the facility.

‘ECA - D48 - Closed Doors’

“Fuck.”