Chapter 978 - S105

Sofia had seen plenty of space rocks while she trained her quantic transposition skill, so creating a convincing one out of bone was relatively simple.

“Don’t those usually burn when they come down? I can’t fly that fast, though. And it looks like I can’t go to space to pick up speed either…”

She made a rather thin hollow shell, so the quantity of bone wasn’t too high even if the thing was quite large. The size she chose was just that of her close aura so she could carry it around while flying in the middle.

It was night by the time Sofia was done creating her prop.

Flying up to the limit of the sky, Sofia flew quite far north, over the ocean before taking aim and starting her ‘crash’. She started channeling a single piercing bolt from inside. With sufficient mana, the glow would still be very intense, enough to pierce through the thin bone shell, and make the fake asteroid stand out in the night sky. Then she flew, very slowly losing altitude. After just a few minutes of flight, she was starting to think this ridiculous bait would never work. Yet she kept going, and it was not long before she felt something approaching from below with her mana senses.

She barely had time to brace for impact. The fake asteroid, which had Sofia’s blessing of permanent frame, was shattered in one hit by a rusty, vaguely-human machine that looked like it was pulled straight out of the dark epoch.

Instead of saving the day by destroying an asteroid, it found itself face to face with a monster in bone-armor holding a lightning bolt.

Jumping out of Sofia’s eye, Pareth appeared in the air behind the machine to restrain it, while Sofia struck with the bolt.

Shockingly, the rusty machine’s creaking metallic arms managed to force open Pareth’s and slip out of the trajectory of Sofia’s strike.

A cold robotic voice escaped the machine’s expressionless face as a hand rose toward Sofia while it dodged. “NEW TARGET IDENTIFIED.”

A blast of energy comparable to Sofia’s own piercing bolt carved a fuming hole though her chest.

Ignoring that, Sofia kept going with the momentum of her missed strike, forcing the machine to dodge again. Before it could retaliate, Sofia blasted it with a discharge of pure mana, making it hover in place for just an instant; a blade of light pierced it from behind.

You can’t ignore Pareth!

With a spin, Sofia’s piercing bolt slashed through the air, separating the machine’s head from its body.

Sofia grabbed the head while Pareth held the body in place with his chains. Although it had been decapitated, the machine still struggled. The head unleashed sonic attacks strong enough to crack Sofia’s armor, but they were quickly shut down when she impaled said head on her piercing bolt. The body, on the other hand, managed to break the chains, but when it tried to slide out from the impalement of Pareth’s blade, the tip of the sword took an anchor shape further damaging the machine as it rushed into it.

That was when Sofia realised there was something wrong. The machine itself had started to glow.

She instinctively sent Pareth back into her eye with a glance. The machine blew up.

The explosion was stronger than Sofia’s previous bolt, and she was at the center.

Her lower body was almost entirely blown away by the explosion. But the helmet had protected her head and mana heart, meanwhile, she was safe from the secondary heat damage due to [Singularity edict]. Her lower body quickly regrew, layering bone, blood, flesh and skin. A few seconds later she fell into the ocean, back to a perfect state.

Her helmet was still so hot that the cold sea water boiled around her. Swimming up to the surface, she let Pareth come out. He flew just above the water while Sofia was still in it. Together they watched the gigantic fireball in the sky,

“I don’t know about you, but never get tired of those.”

Pareth lightly shook his skull in disapproval but enjoyed the fireworks with her anyway.

[You have successfully dispatched the Dangerous-level threat ‘Interceptor’, humanity's extinction has been slowed by a few hours.]

“Woah… A few hours?! So that wasn’t even worth the effort… Well I suppose it makes sense, the report did say this thing only rarely went on a big rampage. It was quite powerful, if not very sturdy. It is nice I survived such a direct blow though. I think without the helmet it would have used one of my runes.”

Sofia spent some time looking for an ‘esoteric marble’, but this time either there was no such loot, or it had been blown up, or sunk into the sea, either way she could not find it.

When she returned to land and took out the ECA communicator, it started ringing before she could even touch the button.

A crackling voice came out the instant Sofia pushed the button on her side. “Hello?! E17? Can you hear me?”

Sofia chuckled hearing the slight hint of stress in the voice on the other side.

“Still up at this late hour, Remsei? You can just call me Sofia.”

“Was it you?” he asked, completely ignoring Sofia’s banter.

“Are you asking about the new big explosion?”

“Affirmative.”

“That was D73. ‘The interceptor’ has been intercepted.”

Remsei was silent for an instant, so Sofia continued. “I will get the Dream Eater tomorrow. You can start preparing payment for both. I want to hunt something bigger. Did you get that?”

“Understood. Thank you for your contribution.”

Just like that the call ended.

Sofia made a small bonfire near the coast and cooked herself a light meal, it was pointless but she did not have much else to do anyway, so it gave her some time to stop and think. The trial so far felt a bit strange. Perhaps it was because it was only the start, but she had been expecting extreme difficulty from the get go, only to find it pretty tame. For a moment she wondered if the trial had just been made too easy by accident, but looking back at how Nolla thought she had no chance before training her, it was clear things were going to ramp up at some point.

The thought made Sofia both excited and restless.

What would that difficulty look like? Where would it come from?

In the meantime she started refining her plan for the Dream Eater. First they would try to lure it in the same place again, but if it was smart enough to avoid trying to eat her dreams a second time, Sofia was already considering kidnapping someone and forcing them into a surprise camping trip in the mountains. She was relatively confident she could dispose of the thing fast and move on to another place with hopefully stronger entities so she could slow down humanity’s fall faster. The more she dealt with as early as possible, the more time she would have later.

Her musings were interrupted by her communicator ringing again at around two in the morning.

Does this man never sleep?

“Sofia, can you hear me?”

“I can hear you just fine, what is it?”

“We have prepared your payment for dealing with D73. Please come retrieve it right away.”

“I said tomorrow after the dream eater, could it not wait?”

“It is crucial information we have retrieved with higher clearance.”

Alright… “Same place as before?”

“Affirmative; Northern Delta,” Remsei answered before abruptly ending the call again.

Seriously…

A bit annoyed by the sudden change of plans, Sofia flew south to the Northern Delta ECA base she had left just half a day before.

This information better be worth the detour.

From above, the base seemed a lot calmer now, almost deserted, if not for a few lights still on inside.

Guess most of them still do sleep.

Still, no guards outside is certainly a choice.

Doors opened below, near the same spot the helicopter had landed at before. A tired-looking Remsei stood just inside at the doorstep, waving for Sofia to come down.

As Sofia landed, he turned around, “Follow me.”

Although it was a bit cold, Sofia at least appreciated the man’s efficiency, so she followed him into the facility without a word.

But just as she stepped through the open doors, she felt something wrong and stopped.

Taking two more steps before he realized Sofia had stopped, Remsei stopped too.

“Hah. You noticed right away,” he said, his voice low and calm.

Sofia tried to step back only to feel a solid wall behind her.

“Too late!” Remsei said, his voice distorting. He turned around, a crazied smile twice too wide on his face, something unseen wriggling everywhere under his skin. “YOU CAN’T ESCAPE!” he taunted in a mocking voice.

Sofia’s staff appeared in her hand, covered in plasma.

“That was my line.”