Chapter 107 - What's Yours Is Mine

The iron chains tightened at those words, the clanging of the links running over each other filled the clandestine room. Gnashing its teeth, the monster thrashed about, not understanding why it couldn't break free of the weak looking restraints. This was its soul plane, its own universe where it reigned supreme, there was absolutely no reason for it not being able to escape.

"What have you done?" It roared at him, putrid spittle flying from its mouth.

In a flash of indigo flames, Professor Kal's naked bones were promptly covered by a flowing, pitch-black robe. The design of the dress was as plain as plain could be, no embellishments could be seen on the robes, just inky black silk that greedily swallowed the surrounding light. Raising his skeletal hand, Professor Kal snapped his fingers, and the scenery began to transform in response.

Instead of a damp, dreary cellar, they were now surrounded by fertile, rolling hills that spread out in every direction as far as the eye could see. Wildflowers bloomed underneath the mid-day sun, bees and other insects buzzed cheerily from flower to flower, spreading pollen and taking nectar in return. White puffy clouds slowly marched across the deep blue sky, changing shapes into various animals as they did so.

He could feel the familiar energy coursing through his body, but it was different than what it was before, it felt… denser. Before, the energy flowed into him at a constant speed, not much greater than his own natural mana recovery rate. This still allowed him to have a near inexhaustible supply of mana available to him, something that made him one of the most powerful beings in this plane. Now though, something had changed.

For reasons unknown, the energy was now flooding into his soul, almost to the point where it was painful. The quality of the energy was much higher as well. It was like he had been drinking pond water before, just skimming the scum off the top before downing it. Now, it was like he had found the purest mountain spring, the water cool and invigorating as it quenched his insatiable thirst. He was very curious as to how such a change had occurred.

"It seems that I'm in control of this place now." Professor Kal said as he watched a knight shaped cloud valiantly fighting a white, puffy dragon. "I'm assuming that we're inside your body, do you allow all the souls you eat to run roughshod in here?"

A grimace appeared on the monster's humanoid visage; the sound of teeth cracking came from its clenched jaw as it stared daggers into Professor Kal's back. "You impudent whelp, release me this instant!"

The chains began to constrict around the beast, its skin tearing, blood seeped from the jagged wounds. "I would suggest that you be more agreeable. I'm not quite sure what's going on, but I have an idea. I just want you to confirm what I suspect to be true."

"You think you can question me?" It said with a grunt. "I've eaten entire worlds, why should I humor your curiosity?"

"I suppose you're right." Professor Kal said with a sigh. "That only means I have no use for you then."

At the end of his sentence, the iron chains began to burn with shimmering red and black flames. The flames didn't seem to heat up the seemingly simple chain but did start to slowly eat into the monster's verrucose flesh. Not wanting to give Professor Kal the pleasure of hearing it scream in agony, the monster remained silent even as its skin bubbled and popped.

Conjuring up a plush leather chair for himself, Professor Kal took a seat directly across from the roasting monster suspended by the burning chains. He wasn't the kind of being that derived any pleasure from watching such a sight but held no great aversion to it either. He surmised that being such an indominable lifeform, that the beast had never been on the receiving end of such treatment, and thus would only take a short amount of time to succumb to the torture, then give him the information that he desired.

Leaning back in the chair, resting his bleached white skull on his bony knuckles, Professor Kal watched on as the monster began to scream.

…..

Deep within the noble district, most of the buildings had been either heavily damaged or destroyed outright. Only a few of the well-built stone buildings, some distance away from the plaza, were able to withstand the cataclysmic impact of the meteor and the shockwave that immediately followed. One such building had only half survived, its roof had been ripped off the structure completely, the glass windows, along with the frames, were blown out, and the stone wall facing the plaza had been pushed in with such force that a few of the outer stones had been turned into gravel.

In the center of the building, the heavy stones and splintered timber, along with broken furniture and other elegant household items, began to heave up and down like something was breathing underneath the pile of rubble. After a moment, the pile rose up before falling off to the side, revealing a transparent sphere of mana that surrounded two unharmed women.

"What in the world was that?" Marissa asked, not expecting to get the answer she was after.

"I don't know, but I can still feel the mana that surged along with it. Whatever it was, was a spell… Although I've never heard of one being able to do anything like this." Sarah said as she looked around at the destruction.

Being careful not to fall on the shifting wreckage, Marissa and Sarah helped each other make it onto the cobbled road in front of the destroyed house. The once empty road now had piles of debris spread over it, some sections were completely blocked off by collapsed buildings.

"If we're going to make it back to the inn, we're going to have to navigate through all this crap." Sarah said with a huff.

"Why do you want to go back to the inn? We should probably just leave the city like my brother and sister did." Marissa said as she pointed up into the sky at the thick, black smoke blotting out the mid-winter sun.

"Well…" Sarah started while kicking at some small rocks near her feet. "I sorta left the kids back at the inn… by themselves. Hey, if I hadn't come when I did, you would have been flattened underneath all that!" She finished, defending herself fervently against Marissa's judgmental look being shot in her direction.

"I do appreciate the thought." Marissa said with a small smile. "But I'd been fine, you really shouldn't worry that much about me."

"You don't know that! What if you were trapped underneath all that rubble, I'd never find you?" Sarah explained, her tone filled with worry.

Shaking her head with the smile still on her rosy lips, Marissa gingerly took Sarah's hand, causing the latter to blush deeply, before pulling her along. "It doesn't matter, you're here now. C'mon, we should get going."

…..

A wet squelching noise sounded out as Marissa pulled her steel short sword from the monster's skull, its partially coagulated blood stuck to the sharp blade like tar. Grimacing, she flicked her blade in an attempt to rid it of the blood but was forced to use a piece of cloth she pulled from some nearby rubble. Sarah was standing back some ten feet, watching on in wonder at the woman's pure fighting talent.

"How many does that make now?" Sarah asked as she approached her friend.

"At least a dozen. You really don't know what these things are?"

"No, I never heard or read about anything like this while at the Academy. Then again, I'm not an expert on the undead, so it's possible they're just a different variation?" Sarah explained, not really believing her own theory on the matter.

"Well, whatever they are, they're disgusting." Marissa nearly gagged as she threw the soiled cloth on the ground.

They had been making their way to the inn, weaving in and out of destroyed buildings and small fires that were steadily growing larger. They hadn't seen any people during the first part of their journey, but as they approached the commoner district, they had run into these… things. At first, thinking they were run of the mill zombies, Sarah attacked them with an area of effect spell called Conflagration. It simply raised the temperature inside a certain area up to intense temperatures, depending on the amount of mana the caster poured into it.

Although her spell did catch the creatures on fire, the moment she cut off her mana to the flames, they quickly extinguished and then the monsters rushed them. That was when Marissa acted; unsheathing her sword faster than Sarah could follow with her eyes, she was in front of her in an instant, slashing at their attackers with surgical precision. In no time at all, every single monster lay on the cold ground, unmoving.

After an initial inspection, neither one of them had any idea what they truly were, only that they didn't seem to be an undead in any conventional sense. An undead, according to the simplest definition, was a corpse reanimated due to the effects of mana. There were several different species of undead, and they all used mana in different ways, but they all used it nonetheless, with no known exceptions. These creatures on the other hand had no mana coursing through their shriveled bodies, at least not any that either one of them could sense.

They were also very difficult to kill, especially for Sarah since she mainly focused on using magic to attack. They did take damage from magical attacks, but only from the physical aspects of the attacks, not from the magic itself. If she skewered a normal enemy with a spear of ice, not only would they be run through by the projectile, but they would also suffer from frost damage as well as the mana within the spear would spread from the initial wound, freezing the surrounding tissue. These creatures on the other hand would still be run through by the spear but it would end there, the mana didn't seem to want to spread out, becoming nullified by some unknown force. Thus, since their first encounter with the unknown monsters, Marissa had been taking point in dispatching them, with Sarah holding a supporting role.

Returning her sword back to its sheath, Marissa continued walking in the direction of the inn. "We still have a way to go, and we're starting to see more and more of these things."

"So…?"

"So, it might be time to rethink the idea of going back."

"I can't do that." Sarah said. "I can't just leave those kids by themselves. I know I already have once, but I had to at the moment…"

The vibrations of a multitude of footsteps cut her explanation short, forcing them both to turn around and see where the disturbance was coming from. Many of the buildings around them had remained largely undamaged, so it was difficult for them to see what was coming toward them, but due to the fact that they didn't hear any voices or yelling accompanying the footfalls meant that whatever they were, they weren't human.

"Shit!" Marissa cursed before scooping Sarah up in her arms and taking off at incredible speeds.

Sarah was taken completely by surprise, she knew that Marissa was unusually strong, especially so since she had a chance to see her in combat but being whisked off her feet and carried like a small child was something she hadn't expected. It was a comical sight if one ignored the circumstances, Sarah was just slightly taller than Marissa was, so she actually had to pull her feet up in order to keep them from dragging on the ground. Sarah almost began laughing as she bounced up and down in Marissa's arms, until she saw what was behind them.

Spilling out into the road was a stampede of more than two hundred of those black-eyed monstrosities. Each one was sprinting at full speed, their arms and legs pumping in discorded harmony, their mouths hanging open in silent screams. Although there were hundreds of them crammed between the buildings on the small road, sprinting at full speed, not one of them ran into any of the others, they were moving together almost as if they were one single being.

"Run… faster…" Sarah urged in patchy words as she watched in horror as the creatures seemed to be gaining on them.

"I know!" Marissa replied, knowing full well how much trouble they were in.

Coming to a sudden stop, Marissa planted her feet into the ground before pushing off with a supernatural burst of strength. Sarah screamed and tightened her grip around Marissa as they sailed through the air before gently touching down on a nearby rooftop.

"It's ok. I think we're safe for a bit." Marissa reassured her friend as she began to pry Sarah off of her.

Catching her breath, like she had been the one running while carrying another person, Sarah straightened out the dress and cloak she was wearing as they had become quite disheveled during their speedy escape. While she collected herself, Marissa looked over the edge of the slightly sloped slate rooftop and down onto the road. The surge of black-eyed monsters stampeded past the spot they had just leapt from, continuing on down the road seemingly oblivious to their location.

Hearing a sigh of relief coming from right next to her, Marissa turned her head to see Sarah looking over the edge just like she had been. "That was too close. Thanks, you saved my life."

Returning Sarah's grateful smile, Marissa nodded her head. "Don't mention it…"

The sound of a small explosion interrupted Marissa mid-sentence, drawing both of their attention to a collapsing building down the street from them. Staggering out of the still crumbling debris was a towering monstrosity; with warty, sickly grey skin, six long arms ending in clawed hands big enough to hold a fully grown adult, and a stretched, humanoid face with clouded white eyes. It stumbled across the street before falling into another building, causing it to collapse as well. Something was clearly wrong with the monster, it was acting as if it were drunk, shaking its head back and forth as it tried to stay upright.

"What… what is that?" Sarah whispered, afraid that the new arrival would somehow hear her.

Marissa didn't say anything in return, only shaking her head as she watched the monster brace itself against a sturdy, stone house before starting to pant heavily, wisps of red and black flame escaping its gaping mouth.