Chapter 979 - Up-grading

Pareth appeared behind ‘Remsei’ and his sword promptly separated the creature’s head from its body.

Remsei’s skin slid off of his shoulders, falling to the ground like oversized pants without a belt, revealing a body devoured by thousands of fat black maggots that quickly abandoned the skeleton and its remaining bits of flesh to jump through the air toward Sofia.

With a spin of her plasma-covered staff, most of the maggots were vaporized. Those that fell to the ground were stomped by Pareth, and those who still gnawed at Remsei’s bones were plucked out by the headless skeleton itself who had turned into Sofia’s thrall the instant Pareth had sliced its neck.

“No kill message,” Sofia noted, spreading her mana senses as far as she could through the facility. “That might have been S105, the Impersonator… But the file said nothing about the maggots or anything like that…”

Walking up to Remsei’s skeleton, Sofia placed his skull back on top of its head, asked it to sit down, and released it from her control.

She had to take her armguard off to place the back of her hand with the Philosopher’s stone against the inert skull’s forehead.

Sofia hadn’t done many tests with the Stone’s resurrection powers. In fact she had only tried it in secret when people in her city died in their sleep, which she tended to immediately notice as it was like new available bones appearing in her aura out of nowhere. Generally however, as long as the person wasn’t dead for too long or from old age, the stone seemed to bring them back with little trouble.

She had never tried on someone who only had a skeleton and bits of flesh left, but she felt that it would probably work.

However, nothing happened at all. It was not that the resurrection failed, like with old people having spent their entire lifespan, but that the stone failed to react at all.

Wait…

Summoning a graveyard Nymph, Sofia had a look into the spiritual plane.

Ah… No soul left. Not even a trace… Taking over his body wasn’t enough; you really had to destroy his soul as well? Poor guy.

Tssk… I can’t even keep him to feed him to Bookie later since it’s all toybox skeletons.

Mildly annoyed, Sofia reshaped the dead bones into a spear shaft, using her dagger as the blade, while Pareth kicked in the door of a nearby room to check inside.

The room seemed to be a guard station with many screens all showing black and white static, and firearms line-up on wall racks. There was no one inside.

While he searched that room, Sofia turned back and forced open the closed entrance door.

I do not know what I expected.

The outside world was black, it was not the margin, there was a ground, dark grey, solid and uneven, and a pitch black sky above it, even with her dark vision, Sofia could barely see ten meters ahead.

Shaking her head, Sofia left an eye and a small effigy of herself outside before sealing the door with bones and joining Pareth in the guards’ room. He was just about done, presenting Sofia with his findings: three Truesight pills, bringing their reserves back up to eleven, and a small blue-metal cylinder which turnered out to be a battery.

[ECA lightweight Combat Battery]:

Standard issue combat battery. Can be recharged using electricity and the proper equipment. Starts turning black when it nears depletion.

Sofia fiddled with her [Anti-EFR Combat Shield] for a bit before she figured out how to change the battery. Once inserted a tiny blue light on the side turned on, and that was it.

She tried probing the device with mana a bit but there was no reaction.

So it’s not electricity. Nice. Won’t hurt to have that extra bit of protection even if it isn’t much.

During that time, Pareth continued checking the other nearby rooms, but they were all just as empty of life, mostly full of computers and other machines that they did not know how to use.

Whoever runs this site didn't write this story. It was copied from NovelPhoenix, where the author actually publishes it.

The remaining options were the darkness outside or going deeper into the facility, so Sofia opted to go deeper, but as far as she could see with her mana, most of the place seemed lifeless.

“For how big that thing talked at first, it’s quite silent now. Do you think it really believes we’re trapped here?”

Pareth shrugged, before proceeding to open up a new door.

He and Sofia were in no rush, so they just took this opportunity to rummage through the ECA trying to find useful things. There was frustratingly little to find, but they did at least secure a few more truesight pills and one extra half-drained battery.

That was until Sofia’s senses finally picked up mana interference that looked like a person’s, a few levels deeper into the ground.

At first she thought it was another maggot monster, but looking at the shape closely, it seemed more like someone hiding in a hollow space in a wall.

Pareth! I think I got a survivor!

Answering with a nod, Pareth let the Nymphs grab him and pull him through the floor alongside Sofia. They descended directly to the level where the person was, which seemed to be different from the office spaces from up above, and more like a clean underground laboratory.

Sofia led the way, taking a few turns to arrive directly to the room where she felt someone.

‘Explosives research Delta 3 - Authorized personnel only’

Sofia turned the handle, the door was unlocked. She immediately felt the trembling presence in the wall to the far left of the room stop moving.

Could it be a trap?

Locking the person’s bones in place just in case, Sofia walked past a few white tables with neatly ordered materials and powders and stopped just in front of a metallic desk placed right against the wall.

Rather than bother with moving the desk she sent it into her ring, revealing a rather small uneven hole in the wall and the person hiding inside of it.

“Oh, it’s you,” Sofia blurted out, recognising the female scientist who had handed Remsei the folders earlier the previous day.

The woman could not turn her head, but stared at Sofia with a terrified gaze from the corner of her eyes.

Sofia reached out to check the lanyard hanging from the woman’s neck. Grade 2 Esoteric Materials Expert; Dr. Gabriela Ivaneska. No wonder she was the one who handed over the files.

“I’ll let you move in a moment, I just need to check you’re still human.”

Taking a peek through the spiritual plane, Sofia confirmed that the woman’s soul looked completely normal, if a bit faint, but that was just what a low level’s soul looked like.

“Hmm… You were lucky you managed to hide. There’s no one else left in the building,” Sofia said, releasing her control over the woman’s bones.

“You are–” Gabriela started, her words interrupted by a coughing fit.

Sofia unceremoniously pulled the woman out of the hole in the wall and summoned a glass of water for her. “Drink this.”

“Thank you…”

“I’m the necromancer,” Sofia explained while the scientist drank, remembering that she was currently in full armor and so was Pareth.

“I guessed as much,” Gabriela said, looking up at Sofia who was much taller, “Is there really no one else left?” she asked worriedly.

“Not even a body, I was lured in here by Remsei, who turned out to be a pile of maggots wearing his skin, pretty much. There was no one else, aside from you. Though I haven’t checked the lower levels yet. This place goes deeper than it looks.”

With a difficult face, Gabriela bowed to Sofia, “I would like to extend the ECA’s apology for this mishap, we were–”

“I am on your side, for now. Forget this stuff, just tell me what exactly happened here, make it short.”

The scientist nodded, adjusted her posture and started walking around the room, “Soon after you left yesterday, one of our teams still investigating the Gamma incident located Entity S105 in a nearby city. It was recaptured and relocated here by sundown.”

“Was the information on it in the file you gave me false?” Sofia asked. The S105 Impersonator entity she got the description of could certainly not take over a militarized facility in a few hours.

“No. At around one AM alarms started going off here. Security explained that S105 had suddenly manifested new abilities and had broken out of containment. That was all they had time to say before the alarm stopped and communications were turned off.”

“Can they really evolve just like that?”

The scientist shook her head lightly, a dreadful look in her eyes, “Not to my knowledge, but if they could… The world…”

“Alright I get it. We’re going to check the entire building so be our guide. We will protect you so don’t worry. I’ll get you out of here after that.”

“As you wish– uh–”

“Sofia. And this is Pareth.”

Pareth gave a vague hand raise and turned back to the door to stay on lookout.

“As you wish, Lady Sofia. Then if I may suggest something, could we take a detour by the floor just above this one, I would like to retrieve an item.”

“Sure. I suggest you hold your breath and contract your chest.”

“Wha–”

The ghostly hands of the graveyard nymphs pulled the group up through the ceiling.