Chapter 977 - Becoming ‘it’

Landing on the peak of a nearby mountain, Sofia sat on a snow-covered rock to look through the files, starting with her own.

It was simply labelled: ‘The Necromancer’

There was a picture inside, and three pages of documentation.

Putting the picture aside, Sofia read through the documents.

‘The Necromancer

Grade 3 ‘Existential Threat’ Entity -E17- (Formerly S109)

Report by Dr. G. Ivaneska

Containment: Entity E17 was previously in deep slumber and safely contained. They have since escaped containment. Previous procedures no longer apply. Containment may no longer be an option.

Appearance: Entity with two separate manifestations.

History: Entity E17 was discovered during the expansion period after the civil war of 1940. Its two manifestations were found in a buried tomb, originally excavated by an unknown tomb robber; it was later handed to the ECA by the authorities.

The tomb contained the two open stone caskets of E17A and E17B. After it was established that the manifestations were not waking up, they were transferred to Central Alpha for research, and later to Northern Gamma for containment.

Dr. A. Farland conducted the following examinations. Examination of E17A revealed that its skin had a hardness vastly superior to diamond, carbon-tipped diamond carvers failed to leave any visible scratches. Other body parts revealed similar properties. A single hair was successfully harvested with great effort using Entity S8 ‘Excalibur’. Despite an in-depth analysis, its composition could not be determined. E17A was determined to be alive due to its constant heartbeat, but failed to react to any stimuli. More invasive testing was suggested but not conducted in an effort to avoid waking up E17A and inviting hostility.

E17B’s bones revealed similar properties. While its beard was determined to be regular human hair. Extensive study of the force keeping the skeleton’s structural integrity have been conducted without success. No Esoteric Fabric Ripples were detected coming from either E17B or E17A, and there was no reaction to jammers. Instead, the strange force seemed to cause a slight malfunction of nearby electronics.

The same force prevents the two manifestations from being separated, making it impossible to pull the two more than ten meters apart.

After four months in the lab, entity E17 was deemed safe for containment, and transferred to facility Northern Gamma in 1941.

In 1967, an incident at Northern Gamma caused by an unexpected power outage led to the entities inside breaking containment. E17 is assumed to be one of them. A nuclear-like explosion in the region the following day led to the entity’s grade reevaluation.

Annex 1: Missing object

Annex 2: Interrogating the Wishing Well’

Woah, that’s it?

They really like to keep their reports short… Not even including the location they found us at. But supposedly they found us twenty-seven years ago. Interesting.

And the two annex…

The first one came together with the picture depicting Sofia and Pareth in a dark place lying in stone caskets. Sofia in particular had a strange posture, as if holding something against her chest.

‘Annex 1:

As shown in the attached picture, E17A’s hands are permanently crossed over her chest, in a way that suggests she might have been loosely holding onto a flat object.

Despite the agency’s efforts, the person who originally excavated the tomb could not be located. They are assumed to have stolen the object, said object perhaps being the cause of their strange disappearance.’

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Bookie…

Even knowing that I still cannot get the quest to trigger? Do I need to track down an unknown tomb robber that’s been out and about for thirty years?

Really not making things easy.

Annex two on the other hand was a conversation transcript.

‘Annex 2:

*Dr. Ivaneska throws a gold coin in the Wishing Well, the waters of the Wishing Well grow turbid*

Wishing Well: My favorite little lady, what do you offer today? Your soul can still fetch a good price. A very good price.

Dr. Ivaneska: I will pay in silver and gold.

Wishing Well: What a shame… Make a wish and you will know the price.

Dr. Ivaneska: I wish to know the safest way to recontain E17, the necromancer.

*The waters of the wishing well roil for a long time. Eventually, the gold coin is spat back out, landing at Dr. Ivaneska’s feet.*

Wishing Well (Sounding greatly disturbed): No! You cannot! There is no way! None! Absolutely none!

*Despite further attempts at throwing gold coins into the well, it remained unresponsive.*’

Oh? This Wishing Well could spy on me through VPPV’s divination protection that even Dragons can’t get through? I really cannot underestimate the powers of the local entities. I wonder what exactly it saw to react like that.

A visit to the well might be in order at some point. It might be able to locate Bookie.

I doubt they would just let me access it, but since they let me know about it through this, there might be a chance.

And that’s all they had on me… Or all they wanted to share.

Well, now for our next hunt…

‘The Dream Eater

Grade 3 ‘Existential Threat’ Entity -E12-’

Sofia quickly read through the multiple pages of the report, which was a lot more detailed than hers.

The Dream Eater was an entity that the ECA had been trying and failing to contain for a long while.

So the shadows are actually generally harmless and only eat the dreams of people sleeping in isolated places. Memories of dreams disappear completely… Repeated exposure can lead to severe memory loss and a state of permanent apathy? So we still have to be careful even if they don’t directly kill.

Staying in a large group or a well-lit room is usually enough to keep them at bay… Whatever you do, do not shine light directly at, or all around the shadows, nor try to destroy the surfaces they are projected upon…

Ah, so the hands were really just a retaliatory strike.

The scouring hands are also just a manifestation of the real thing… They severed one with ‘Excalibur’ and used a communicator to follow the signal back to the main body? That little black thing they gave me, really?

There was more than one goal in giving it to me, I see.

And then everyone who went died, they had to use the wishing well to retrieve Excalibur. Since then it has changed location and is a lot more wary of its limbs getting cut… Dealing with an actually intelligent being, then? I wonder how it will react to me now after our first little scuffle.

We’ll see if we can bait it out when we sleep tomorrow.

Before then, I might be able to catch something else…

Reading through the other reports of the entities which were prisoners with her, Sofia got a new perspective on the entities. While some were inexplicable things like the Dream Eater, some were just once regular being corrupted by some thing or another, like the Skinless bear which was originally a lab experiment on flesh regeneration or the ‘little girls’ which were the collective ghosts left behind by a series of gruesome murders, reenacting their deaths on the living under certain conditions.

The most interesting of the pile, however, was the only other Dangerous-tier entity, ‘The Interceptor’, which Sofia was now convinced was what had shattered the door of the facility to escape.

It was apparently a robotic entity of unknown origin, which usually never acknowledged the presence of anyone around it, and only stumbled around, mumbling about its duty of ‘intercepting it’.

It was classified as Dangerous due to its tendency to randomly become enraged and lash out, killing and destroying indiscriminately, which had cost the lives of many ECA agents. Due to this the specifics of its containment were quite complex.

It can fly and everything. Surely it cannot be stronger than Lilith?

What do you think, Pareth?

We hunt this one now and the dream eater tomorrow?

Pareth who was standing near her seemed to agree.

There was plenty of information on the interceptor in the file so finding it would not be too hard if it was still around. Admittedly it likely was not the greatest danger to humanity at large, but without more information, hunting it would still be better than doing nothing.

“Alright. Let’s get to work.”

The scientists of the ECA had determined that the ‘it’ Interceptor mumbled about was supposed to be some kind of astronomical object, most likely an asteroid.

Therefore, Sofia had a very simple plan to lure the robot out. Humming happily on the mountaintop, she started her preparations to make a small army of Skelems. It was high time to harvest a few thousand tons of bones.