Memory Reaper's Ascension - Chapter 234: Underground Chase

Chapter 234: Underground Chase

They both moved through the drainage system under Ward 9, and it was showing them full well that it was not designed to be navigated.

It was designed to move water from one place to another, and in sixty years it had been added to, repaired, partially collapsed, rerouted around new foundations, and then added to again without anyone producing a complete updated map.

What existed below the street surface was less a system than a record of every decision the Ward had ever made about water and then changed its mind about.

Ishiki moved through it with Ghost Blade active and Aether Blade in hand, and let the skill do the navigating.

Shiro moved behind him with the torch low and steady — not pointing ahead but angled down, lighting the walkway without blinding anything that might be looking toward them from the dark.

Ishiki noted this without comment. It was the right instinct and he had not told him to do it. Shiro hadn’t even asked how Ishiki was navigating here, he understood without saying that he had a skill useful in such conditions.

“What was that thing exactly?” Shiro asked, half knowing the answer.

Ishiki was silent for a second pondering over his words and then simply replied with a question, in hopes of testing the intellect of Shiro in real life conditions.

“What do you think it was?”

“It was not a typical Xenon that is sure.” A pause “But there is something that is bugging me. The Xenons that were spawned last night were all acting weirdly. Normally a Xenon unit moves towards the nearest visible biological source. That is its entirety of the decision making.”

“Correct,” Ishiki nodded.

“But these didn’t and instead moved east, that is the direction of the nearest wall from the spawn point.”

Shiro was quiet for a few strides, working through it. “Something overrode the food stimulus. There was something they were responding to more strongly than people standing ten meters away.”

“What kind of something could do that,” Ishiki asked.

Shiro considered it genuinely. “A higher Reactor signal. If a sufficiently powerful entity was projecting intent in the area, the Xenons might orient to it the same way they orient to food. Xenons were humans too once, and players at that. They have a synth reactor core and what they see as prey is synth Energy. So, something that can give of strong enough synth energy source that they were all attracted to that. That is theoretical explanation.”

“Theoretically,” Ishiki said. “Tell me have you never seen high ranking demons in your trials or Scenario’s?”

“Uh, I have once seen a Tainted demon in my Trial. And I have seen three of them in my scenario’s but what has that with what happened last night. Players who are corrupted and turn into demons do not spawn in a Dusk event.”

“Exactly… that thing was not a Xenon. And it had not spawned yesterday either. It was a Tainted Demon living here and he was trying to manipulate the Xenons to follow his orders.” Ishiki explained.

Shiro was dumbfound at first but then his brows furrowed. “But there is no record of a Tainted demon that can change its body from an object to another!”

Ishiki’s eyes narrowed as well. That was true, there was not a single thing related to a Tainted Demon in these areas that could take over inanimate objects. Also there was another fact that made him uneasy.

The demon was running full well under the sun, by normal means if a Xenon or any demon comes in contact with UV rays, they turn to dust. But then again, he had seen such things before in his scenario.

The demon that took over the body of Arthur and Kaori was also fighting under the Crimson Moon, which was once the sun of NEXUS.

“That is what we are here to find.” He simply said.

“Noted,” Shiro said, without defensiveness.

They had been walking for twelve minutes when Ishiki’s perception caught the leaf.

It was ahead and to the right, at a junction where the eastern channel met a narrower maintenance branch running roughly north.

It was not moving and was instead pressed flat against the base of the wall, dry and still. The four green limbs had retracted and it was now identical in appearance to a piece of organic debris that had washed in through a drainage slot and settled.

It had been abandoned.

He stopped suddenly.

“What is it,” Shiro said, keeping his voice down.

Ishiki looked at it and directed Ghost Blade at it specifically.

The leaf was dead. Not dormant or suppressed. The thing that had inhabited it was gone, and what remained was just a leaf, its cellular structure drying further now that whatever had been animating it had moved on.

He crouched and picked it up. The demon had once again changed its body!

Through Ghost Blade, past the concrete walls and the pipes… he read the city above him in his head.

Streets, buildings, foundations and every single object was shown to him like a multi screen picture in his mind.

Nina’s school was approximately forty meters above and northeast.

The school structure was three storeys, wood-frame upper floors over a concrete ground level, a rear courtyard that opened to the service lane and the drainage access behind it.

The drainage access behind it.

The next manhole along this branch opened directly behind the school’s rear wall!

He stood in the dark channel with a dead leaf in his hand and let himself think through it. What he knew. What he could verify. What he was assuming.

He gritted his teeth and looked up northeast with a slightly grim expression. He had no idea who that demon was. But that was also an assumption he had made based on what he knew… and there were a lot of things he didn’t knew.

But, there was this thing that he knew with certainty and that was, that this demon was not moving without a purpose. Maybe it had a plan, maybe it was working for an Eclipsed demon… or maybe, it was itself an Eclipsed Demon.

None of the option was good and he once again felt that he was lacking knowledge.