AN: Last chapter in LOTM. Tomorrow, we have an important chapter for the story's future. Bonus chapter at 500 power stones and another one at 700.
If you wish to support the story and read ahead, join my [email protected]/skeri123
The third man's hand was already wreathed in fire.
The fla ca off his palm the way water cos off a roof in heavy rain, steady and wrong, and the first arc hit the cobblestones a half-tre to Adam's right with a sound like a wet log split in two. The cobbles cracked. Adam was already moving.
He moved fast, dodging the attack by a wide margin. The arc hit the fence. The fence instantly caught on fire. The third arc went over Adam's left shoulder; he felt the heat on his coat collar.
[ Sequence Seven Pyromaniac. Long-range fire-thrower. Close-quarter capability not that high. Close the distance. ]
Working on it.
The Pyromaniac was a head taller than Adam, lean across the shoulders, the wrong-coloured eyes pale and dilated. He was good at longer range. He had never had to fight a man inside two tres because no one had ever made it inside two tres.
Adam closed the four-tre gap in three strides. The Pyromaniac threw a fourth arc at point-blank, panic-bright; Adam slid under it on the diagonal, planted his left foot, and put his right shoulder into the man's sternum.
Full body-weight against a Sequence 7 with no close-range training was a freight train against a tea trolley.
The Pyromaniac went off his feet. Adam took him to the cobblestones with the back of the man's skull cracking against stone hard enough to register through the soles of Adam's boots. He pinned the man's right wrist with his left knee, ca up off the chest with his right hand, and brought the fist down once, professionally, on the temple, just hard enough not to kill.
The Pyromaniac stopped moving.
Adam stayed kneeling for a second on top of him, listening.
The breath was still there. The pulse was still there. The Spirituality had gone slack.
[ Unconscious. Concussion. No additional Beyonders found. ]
Adam stood up.
The runner was face-down where Adam had left him a mont earlier. Reuben was on his knees with both hands up, eyes wide. The fourth one had dropped the vial when the Pyromaniac went down; it had rolled into the gutter intact.
Adam was breathing through his nose. His coat was unburnt.
Then he heard the back door slam open at the other side of the yard.
Klein and Leonard stopped through.
Klein took the scene in at once. Leonard looked stunned.
Adam stepped off the Pyromaniac. He kept his hands where they could see them.
"He ca out throwing fire. I knocked him out."
Leonard crossed the yard in four strides, knelt beside the Pyromaniac, two fingers at the throat. He looked up at Klein.
"Out cold. Pulse fine. Skull's cracked but intact." He turned a quarter to Adam. "How."
"He looked like a range fighter. I closed the distance, and brought him down. I felt that he had the strength to fight up close so I went much harder on him, than I would have usually, to finish the fight fast. This was only possible because he didn't have a lot of experience and I was physically stronger."
Leonard did not say anything for a while.
Klein had not moved from the doorway.
Klein
He was looking at four n on the ground and one man standing.
The standing one was Adam. This man was a blank for him even now.
The Pyromaniac was Hud Anver. Klein knew the na from a Tingen file Dunn had marked watch but do not approach two months ago. Sequence Seven of the Hunter pathway, fire powers. Not nominally famous, but Hunter Pyromaniacs were among the higher-output Sequence Sevens in the Loen registry because the pathway pushed early-tier fire output far past most peers. Dunn had passed on Hud Anver three separate tis because the captain himself was Sequence Seven and a stand-up fight with a Pyromaniac was the kind of thing that put a Nighthawk in the ground even at parity.
Adam had taken him down inside ten seconds.
Klein watched the man stand over the body without any injuries.
Sequence Nine doesn't do this.
Adam's spiritual signature had not changed since the apartnt.
But Marauder, Sequence Nine, did not take a Pyromaniac in seconds. Marauder gave you a pickpocket reflex and a faster grip. Marauder did not make Sequence Seven combustion not matter.
Either Adam was lying about the pathway.
Or Marauder of his unfamiliar pathway was a different animal than Marauder he learned from old Neil.
Or Adam was using so hidden Beyonder item.
Klein watched Adam straighten his coat, with no concern on his face, like he does this every day.
"Leonard," he said. "Cuff the three on their feet. Anver gets the heavy set. I'll get a coach."
Leonard nodded.
Klein went to fetch the coach without saying anything to Adam yet. The captain would want this in the office.
Adam
The coach ride back to Blackthorn was quiet.
The four captured mbers took the floor of the coach, hands bound, Leonard on the bench keeping a hand near the truncheon. Klein took the box with the driver. Adam took the bench opposite Leonard.
Leonard looked puzzled.
Leonard is the guy with the weird show following him right? Probably so lower sequence beyonder?
[ As you say Host. We have to be careful around that one. ]
Mhm, he also survives the doomsday when everyone else doesn't. Anything else to look out for?
[ Klein has not spoken to you since the yard. He is going to deliver this to the captain personally. Expect the captain to ask for the divination again. ]
This will not help in the trust departnt I guess.
[ Yes. Just be ready for the second pass. ]
What is the cover.
[ Special-operations veteran. Twenty years training. Body conditioning at the upper end of his world's record. Pathway is what it is. The Marauder bump is the part they can verify. The strength was already there. ]
Will the divination confirm.
[ They will confirm that what you said is what you are. Marauder bump a physically extre baseline your training. Divination does not asure your pathway against their files. It asures intent and your statent. The intent is true. The report is true within the wording. ]
Right.
The coach turned onto Zouteland Street. The brass plate at Number 36 ca into view through the side curtain.
Dunn's office
Dunn listened to Klein deliver the report standing.
Adam sat across from Dunn at the sa chair he had sat in the morning. Leonard stood at the door.
Klein gave the operational picture in twenty seconds. Front, back stair, rear. Runner down. Vial-man stopped. Reuben kneeling. Then Hud Anver out the back door.
"The Pyromaniac threw four arcs," Klein said. "Adam was inside him on the third. He took him to the stones. The strike to the temple was the last contact. Twelve seconds total. No burns. No tears. No damage to Adam."
Dunn looked at Adam.
"Twelve seconds against a Sequence Seven Pyromaniac."
"Yes, sir."
"Marauder of the pathway you claim does not do that."
"Probably not. The Marauder potion is a small part. I was a soldier before any of this. Special-operations training for years. I have a body that has been pushed hard for a long ti. The Marauder added the last fraction. Closing the distance was the strength I already had."
"You said foreigner."
"I am. Where I'm from has its own work for n in my line. I cannot speak more of it. The work was not different from what your branch does."
Dunn took that in.
"You did not say this yesterday."
"You did not ask, sir. You asked if I was in service to any Beyonder organisation. I am not, and was not. The work I did was not Beyonder work. It was the kind of work a country runs. I did not lie at the table."
The corner of Dunn's mouth did not quite smile.
Dunn turned to Klein.
"Officer Moretti. Run the divination again. On the new information. I want the Marauder claim re-tested, and the special-operations claim added. I will keep my earlier stance for now and accept the result."
Klein produced a pendulum this ti.
[ He is going to ask you to confirm the Marauder claim and the soldier claim. Marauder is true. Soldier is true under the wording I gave you. ]
Adam waited.
Klein started.
"State that you carry a Marauder potion. Adjusted. Imperfect as the claim goes."
"I carry a Marauder potion. It is half-ford."
Klein started mumbling. The pendulum started rotating clockwise. He nodded at Dunn. "Confird."
"State that the rest of what we saw in the yard is the result of training and physical conditioning, not from the potion."
"The rest of what you saw in the yard is the result of training and conditioning from my previous line of work. The potion added a small fraction."
Klein stretched out hsi hand with the pendulum again. After he finished his mumbling it started to rotate clockwise again but slower.
"Confird-veiled," Klein said. "Truth on the structure of the claim. He is holding back details of the previous work, but the bones of the story are real. He was a soldier. He had years of training. The training accounts for the gap between Marauder and what we just saw."
Dunn nodded once.
"State that you ca to Tingen to help and not to gather information on us for an outside party."
"I ca to Tingen to help. I am not gathering information on you for an outside party."
Klein repeated the process. "Confird clean."
Dunn took a breath through his nose.
"Right." He looked at Adam. "I will not pretend I am comfortable. Your position does not place you cleanly anywhere. The captain who is comfortable with everything sleeps better than the city does, and I do not get to be him this week. You will be sworn in as Nighthawk auxiliary today. The terms are: you report to , you operate under Leonard's tactical command, you do not act independently in the field without standing order, you do not speak of internal matters outside this building. Acceptable."
"Yes, sir."
"Welco to the branch."
"Thank you, captain."
Dunn nodded at Klein and Leonard.
"Get him a pendant. Get him a billet on the third floor and a coat that fits."
Klein nodded.
Leonard opened the door.
Adam stood up and paused.
"Captain."
"Yes."
"Old Neil."
Dunn's face did not move.
"His apartnt is sealed and being processed. Officer Reideen handled the recovery. There will be a service at Raphael Cetery on the eleventh. I do not know if you will be in Tingen for it."
"I am sorry."
"He was a good officer. He went out the way n in our work sotis go out. The captain who does this job thinking it will not happen to his people is a captain who does not last."
Dunn looked at the surface of his desk.
"Go. Find a coat that fits."
Adam left.
Settling in
The five days from Sept 4 to Sept 8 were short and full.
Adam took a third-floor billet at the back of the building, a clean cot in a room that had been a senior officer's at one point and was now his. He took the silver pendant Klein handed him at the duty desk and put it on. He took a brown waistcoat off the rack at Leonard's direction; it fitted closely enough.
He spent the first day inside the office reading the Antigonus file Klein had carried into work that morning under Dunn's instruction. The file was not what he wanted to read; it was what Dunn wanted him to know. Aurora Order. Worshippers of the True Creator, symbolised by the Hanged Giant. Two cells confird in Tingen, two more suspected.
Adam did not reveal any of his future knowledge.
[ If you na her now, they will move on her tonight. The ritual interlock requires her to be in a specific physical state on a specific date. If they extract her early they trigger a partial spawn under less favourable conditions for both us and them. Stay with the captain's pacing. ]
I know, I know. It's just hard not to warn them.
He sparred with Leonard on the second day in the basent training room. Adam held himself down to a low-tier Beyonder register; Leonard held a respectable workout.
He took the third day with Klein, walking a periter of the Aurora Order's confird cells. Klein did most of the talking, which was not Klein's habit.
Royale Reideen returned to active duty on the fourth day. She was a small lean Sequence Nine of the Sleepless pathway, the cold-precise kind with raven-black hair. She quickly accepted Adam as the new part of the team.
By the morning of Sept 9 the branch had gotten used to Adam. Not friend. Not stranger. Useful.
The Aurora Order alerts had been ticking upward across all five days. Three confird sightings. A street preacher with the wrong scripture. A pawnbroker found dead with the inside of his neck the wrong colour. A wet-nurse who would not stop laughing.
The morning of the ninth
Adam did not sleep.
He lay on the third-floor cot at half past one and counted the clock turns through the wall: two, three, four. The room was cold. Dark.
[ Host. Your pulse is up. We have nine hours until the canonical timing window. Try to rest. ]
I know.
[ Knowing does not help. The body still needs the recovery. Close your eyes. I will keep watch. ]
Knowing is the part keeping up.
He imagined various ways the day could end. He knew how the morning would unfold. He could not tell anyone how it would unfold. He had to wait for Klein and Leonard to walk in carrying the letter that would set the day in motion, and then he had to act surprised, and then he had to make the decisions that put him in the right room at the right ti.
The clock turned to four. He gave up on sleep, sat up, put on the brown waistcoat Leonard had picked off the rack five days earlier, fastened the silver pendant at his throat, and went downstairs.
The front office had a lamp on. Klein and Leonard were already at the duty desk, wet to the knees from the East Borough rain, an oilcloth-wrapped folio between them. The folio was open. A single sheet of paper sat on top of the oilcloth.
Klein looked up.
"Adam."
"You're back early."
"We were not asleep either," Leonard said. He did not look up from the paper. "Klein's divination yesterday placed sothing in Lanevus's old apartnt we had not finished searching. We went back."
Adam crossed to the desk. He kept his face neutral.
"Lanevus," he said.
"He left this," Klein said. "On the table at one of his rented houses, set out for us to find."
Adam looked at the paper.
Ladies and gentlen, the hint is that I've placed a bomb in Tingen, a bomb that will grow stronger over ti. Seek it and finish it before it explodes. If you lose the ga, there will be a boom, and the entire city of Tingen will be reduced to a ruin.
Adam read it twice. He set it back down.
"He's gone," Klein said. "We checked the apartnt. Three days of dust on the wash basin. He left this morning's bread on the table, fresh, which ans he or soone he paid put it there as a flag for us to find. He wants us to know the work has finished its first stage. And he wants us to know we do not have ti."
"The bomb," Leonard said. "He ans a thing or a person."
"A thing or a person," Klein agreed. "I will use divination once we are back upstairs. If it narrows the search, we move on whatever it shows. If it doesn't, we hold here and wait for the city to tell us. Aurora work always announces itself when it is close to firing."
Adam said nothing. He looked at the letter once more and then stepped back from the desk.
"Captain needs to see this within the hour," Leonard said. He rolled the oilcloth around the page.
Klein nodded. "Get so breakfast, Adam. Long day."
Adam did not want breakfast. He went and ate a half slice of bread and drank a tin cup of weak tea standing in the kitchen because the body that did not sleep needed the calorie load. He swallowed twice and then twice again to make sure the bread stayed down.
[ Pulse 88. Cortisol elevated. Tactical readout: marginal but operational. I am running the ntal shield at half draw to conserve until the mont. ]
Understood.
[ Host. You have done this before, in another world. You handled worse. Today is small by the standard of your record. Hold on. ]
The standard, Sage, isn't the sa here. We are talking about a being considered a god here.
[ Then hold the fear and fight anyway. ]
He set the cup down.
Dunn ca down from his office at half past five.
Klein, Leonard, Reideen, and Adam stood at the four chairs across from Dunn.
"Klein and Leonard returned from East Borough at four this morning," Dunn said. "They retrieved a letter from Lanevus's last known address. You have all looked at it by now. The working is active. The bomb is set sowhere in this city and we do not know what form it takes. A person, an object, a working laid into the air. We know only that it grows over ti and that Aurora work of this register usually completes within days of the writer departing. We are in the window."
He set both palms flat on the desk.
"This branch does not chase a bomb it cannot define. We hold here. The block around Blackthorn is ours. Reideen takes the alley and the passage exit at six. Three cathedral lay-officers are at your disposal; the standing municipal-works gas-leak script goes out the mont I call the cordon. Klein runs the divinations. The rest of you stay sharp and stay near. If anything cos at us, we will know inside the minute."
He looked at them one by one.
"Eat. Be where I can find you. That is all."
The wait
Adam did not eat much. He carried what Sage suggested. He did not speak.
[ I am holding ntal shield at half draw on standby. The mont sothing dangerous is in the building I will go to full draw. You will not feel the shift. ]
Right.
Adam took position at the front office on the second floor, near the iron-barred window. Leonard took the duty desk by the inner door.
Reideen had taken her station at the alley mouth two hours earlier with three of the cathedral's lay-officers as a periter. The block had been cleared under the standing municipal-works arrangent at half past eleven.
The clock on the front-office wall went past one. Past two. The sky over Zouteland Street was a normal sky.
At two-forty-eight, the front-door bell rang.
Leonard looked through the iron grille first. He turned his head a fraction toward Klein. The fraction was the signal they had agreed on.
Klein stood up.
The vessel
The woman who stepped into the front office wore a worn brown dress and a faded shawl. Her hands were on her belly. Her belly sat too high and too round for a six-month pregnancy, the curve riding her ribcage instead of her hips. She walked unevenly, as if the weight at the front had started moving on its own.
"Please," she said in Loen. "I need help. Sothing is wrong with the child."
Her eyes were wet, human and afraid.
Klein walked across the office to her at the pace of an officer offering routine reassurance.
He stopped two tres from her.
His Spirit Vision opened. Adam felt the air in the room go still around Klein. Klein looked at gose for the length of a heartbeat. His own spirituality moved in his chest, a warning Adam could feel at the edge of Sage's shield.
Klein's eyes closed for a half-second. When they opened he was already taking a step back.
He did not say captain from where he stood. He turned and went through the inner door at a flat run.
[ ntal shield going to full draw. This is it host. ]
Adam stepped between gose and Leonard without looking at her hands. He kept his own hands where she could see them. Leonard had drawn the truncheon and held it down at his side; the lobby was still.
gose's eyes had not yet stopped being human. She tried to take a step toward Adam and her foot did not quite land where she had aid it.
"Madam. Please. Sit."
She did not sit. She did not move further either.
The inner door opened. Dunn ca through with Klein behind him.
Dunn took the lobby in inside a second. His face did not change. His voice did not raise.
"Adam. Leonard. Hold her here. Talk her down. Do not let her hands touch you. Do not let her speak. Klein, with . Three minutes."
He paused half a step at the threshold and the look he gave Adam carried the question he did not have the seconds to ask aloud.
"Knuckles or a hamr, sir," Adam said. "Anything for close combat."
"Right."
Dunn and Klein started running. The passage door shut behind them.
Adam stood between gose and Leonard with his hands empty.
"Madam. Please. Sit down. We are here to help."
gose did not sit. The curve at her stomach was extending further as Adam watched it, ribs visible through the worn cotton where the dress had pulled tight. The boards under her feet were starting to discolour.
"Leonard. Step back."
Leonard stepped back, truncheon down.
gose's mouth opened. The sound she was trying to make was not a human sound. She tried again. The attempt got worse. Her eyes were drifting.
The shawl on her shoulders moved.
The substance underneath shoot out a tendril. Adam caught it on his forearm. The tendril sheared off into grey smoke against his coat sleeve.
A second tendril ca from the floor where her hem touched the boards. He kicked it apart at the root.
A third ca from her belly. He took it on the left forearm. Bruise seeded in the at under the skin.
The fourth tendril was already a tre long before he could turn his shoulder. The shawl was peeling off her in pieces now. The being under it was no longer staying inside the shape of a woman.
[ Host. You will not hold this with bare hands once she finishes. Retreat. Lead her inside. We et Dunn and Klein at the far hall. ]
Confird.
"Leonard. Inside. Move."
Leonard did not argue. He turned for the inner door.
Adam covered the retreat. He took one more tendril on his forearm as he backed across the lobby. He went through the inner door last. He pulled it shut behind him as the door cracked along the grain a half-second later when a tendril hit it from the other side.
The corridor on the second floor of Blackthorn ran past Dunn's office, past two filing rooms, to the inner stair. Leonard was already at the head of it. Adam followed at a sprint.
The inner door behind them exploded outward.
gose ca through the wreckage on her feet. She was no longer walking the way humans walked. The lower half of her body was still recognisably her own; the upper half was a sheet of grey substance the spawn was using as a shell.
Down the inner stair, two at a ti. Leonard a half-step ahead. Ground floor. Past the kitchen door. Toward the back of the building where the corridor opened into the assembly hall.
The assembly hall was the old gathering space the security company had inherited from the building's previous tenant — high vaulted ceiling, oak beams, a stone floor, two doors at the far end. The right-hand door led down to the underground passage to the cathedral.
The right-hand door was opening as Adam and Leonard reached the hall.
Dunn ca through with the urn in his left hand. Klein behind him with what looked like a blood vessel in his right hand and a small black-iron box in his left.
"Leonard."
Klein threw a blood vessel underhand across the hall. Leonard caught it and equipped it without breaking stride. The pendant started drawing on his lifespan in the sa second. His face beca white.
"Adam."
Klein threw the box. Adam caught it, flipped it open, dropped the lid. He slid the Knuckles on. The bronze was cold and dense in a way that did not match its size; they moved with his fist as if they were part of the bone.
Klein yelled: "Twinblow. Hit body and spirit on the sa blow. Extra thirty percent of the force cos back through your arm."
[ Host. Watch the cumulative load. ]
Got it.
"Captain."
"Yes."
"Suppress it."
"Understood. Do not waste the chance."
gose ca through the corridor doorway into the hall.
She ca apart.
The shell of her upper body peeled away into a sheet of grey substance three tres across. The substance pulled itself together at chest height. The avatar manifested fully into the hall.
It was the shape and size of a man with two extra arms and a face that did not hold a single state. The mouth was where the chest should have been. The eyes were where the mouth should have been. It moved with the small efficient violence.
Leonard imdiately use the power of the artifact to steal one of the avatars abilities. After he stole an ability he got slamd though the wall.
Adam closed the distance.
The first strike from the avatar was a swung arm at neck height. Adam braced for it — the impact registered in his bones the way a heavy bat would, hard but absorbable — and stepped inside the arm. The second strike ca from the second arm at his ribs. He took that one; the strike pushed him a half-step backward, did not penetrate.
He hit the avatar in the chest-mouth with the right knuckles.
The twin-binding went through the chest-mouth like a hot blade through butter, body and spirit at the sa instant. The avatar's torso opened up across the strike line. Grey smoke ca out. The avatar made so sort of silent shriek; it was the absence of a sound where a sound should have been. The recoil hit Adam's shoulder hard enough that sothing in the rotator cuff complained.
After that it hit Adam with both lower arms simultaneously. Adam felt his ribcage compress and decompress. He stayed on his feet but shaking. He hit the avatar again. The avatar dissolved a half-tre of its left side.
Behind him, the Ashes pulsed once. The room got colder. The avatar's regeneration slowed.
"Captain. That's enough, no need to risk yourself further."
"Its alright focus on the battle."
Klein was already at the far wall, a Flaring Sun Charm out of his coat in his right hand, gold-yellow, the seal already half-burning.
"Throwing now," Klein said.
"The source is inside gose," Adam said. "Burn the source. The abomination will collapse."
Klein gave him half a second of look. Then he nodded.
gose was no longer a woman. She was a doorway. The mouth that had been trying to speak the curse was open and not closing.
Klein lit the charm.
The charm was a small pendant. It burned hot enough to put a column of yellow-white light up through the hall's vaulted ceiling and the roof above it, straight up into the Tingen sky.
gose's belly stopped being a belly.
The avatar in the room turned its incomplete face toward Klein.
Adam had seen this before. Klein or Dunn would die if he doesn't stop it. He moved.
The avatar lunged.
It went past Adam. The third arm ca up to bat him aside; he took it on the shoulder and rotated through; the avatar was already two strides closer to Dunn across the hall.
Dunn brought the Ashes up.
The avatar's lower-right arm extended into a point and aid for Dunn's chest.
Adam was a stride and a half behind.
Klein was closer, ard with with the burning charm in his left hand and the Tarot deck in his right.
Klein closed the gap between himself and Dunn before Adam did.
The avatar's point-arm went through Klein's chest from front to back. The deck fell from his right hand. The Flaring Sun Charm in his left did not fall. He held the charm against the avatar's wrist with the last grip his fingers had.
The charm burned the avatar's arm off at the elbow.
gose's belly collapsed inward.
The avatar's incomplete face turned toward Adam.
It mada a foul sound. Adam felt his hearth throb and pulse. He started spitting out blood, but he persevered.
Adam was already there.
He hit the avatar in the centre mass with the right knuckles at full body weight. The strike went through the centre — body and spirit, the sa strike. The avatar opened from sternum to spine. Grey smoke rolled out. The avatar made the shriek again, longer. The recoil hit Adam hard. His knuckles cracked, sothing broke in the back of his hand; he felt the small bones move.
He hit it a second ti at the sa point. The torso split through the spine line.
He hit it a third ti at the throat. The face ca off.
The avatar's body collapsed onto the floor in three pieces. The grey smoke kept coming out of each piece. The smoke did not rise. It pooled.
Klein was on his knees with the avatar's severed point-arm still through him and the charm guttering out against the stump. He threw the sun charm with his last strength at the remains where it blood into a brilliant light. When the flash was over only a burned spot remained.
Dunn was alive and shaking. He had not had to take the Ashes higher for now.
Adam crossed to Klein and caught him before he went down. The grotesque arm was still through the chest. The wound was not bleeding the way a human wound bled; the avatar-substance was sealing the edges around itself, and Klein's blood was coming through it slow.
"Klein."
Klein looked up.
His mouth moved. Two words, very quiet.
"Tell... family."
His eyes did not close, but the focus that had been behind them stepped out of the room.
Sage's voice, sharp and steady in Adam's ear:
[ Host. He is dead. ]
Damn it. I didn't know him for long, but it still hits hard. I could have held the avatar off Dunn if I had not lost nen.
Dunn dropped to his knees beside them. The Ashes were folded back into the cloth, the cloth back in the case.
"Klein."
"He's gone, captain."
Dunn sat there cradling Klein. Adam could see the sorrow, the pain.
The bronze knuckles on his right hand cooled against the floorboards.
[ Host. Sealed Artefact recovered. S-rank intervention complete. Captain alive. Vessel collapsed. Spawn aborted. Officer Moretti died but it does not affect our mission. ]
It effects , he was a good man, Sage.
[ Host. You-. ]
Don't talk. I know.
He let the breath out through his nose. The bronze knuckles on his hand were too cold to hold any longer.
Lets just extract.
Adam stayed kneeling.
Footsteps in the corridor.
The captain stood up.
"The reinforcents are here."
As he was turning around, an arm punched through him from behind. The hand at the end of it was holding his heart. Adam watched, stunned.
Ince Zangwill. How could I have forgotten him. I knew this and not even once did I think of him.
[ Host. Very high probability of manipulation. We know he has the grade 0 sealed artifact. ]
I am probably dead if we don't extract.
Ince took the ashes and turned to Adam.
"One bug left."
Before Adam composed himself and triggered the extraction he was kicked so hard that he went through the wall of the hall.
"Good, all according to the plan. I can finally ascend."
While Adam struggled to get up, Ince Zangwill left with the ashes.
[ Host. I suggest you stay down. We failed the S rank but you will survive. Extraction possible. ]
Pull .
Sage queued the request.
The notification rose against the cracked plaster above him in the bay-blue script he had been reading off ceilings for nine years.
▓ EXPEDITION COMPLETE
World code: L4-1349
Tier: L4
Days deployed: 9 / 180 (Earth-side equivalent: 1.8 / 36)
Extraction window: OPEN — extraction possible, at least one objective completed
▓ MISSION ASSESSNT
D-rank objective (survive thirty in-world days): FAILED. Window 9 / 30.
C-rank objective (establish a Beyonder-underworld working presence): COMPLETE (Day 7). Sworn-in Nighthawk auxiliary, Tingen branch, Church of the Evernight Goddess.
B-rank objective (recover or neutralise at least one Sealed Artefact): COMPLETE (Day 9). Twin-Blow Knuckles (Grade 2 Sealed Artefact, Tingen Nighthawks armoury) retained on host at extraction. Saint Selena's Ashes (Grade 1) lost to hostile third party — separate loss, does not bear on this objective.
A-rank objective (disrupt one Antigonus-aligned operation in progress): COMPLETE (Day 9). True Creator spawn-vessel collapsed mid-ritual. Tingen-cell ritualists neutralised or killed.
S-rank objective (prevent the death of the highest-ranking active Nighthawk officer in Tingen): FAILED (Day 9). Subject killed by hostile third-party intercept after spawn-abort, before periter could reach the hall.
▓ HIDDEN OBJECTIVES BANKED
Hud Anver (Sequence 7 Hunter pathway, Pyromaniac) neutralised in pre-Doomsday raid — Day 7: 500 NP.Manifested avatar of the True Creator spawn destroyed in direct engagent — Day 9: 800 NP.Survived a eting with a higher tier being on Day 1: 1,200 NP.
▓ RATING
A
▓ NET POSITIONS PAYNT
Base A-rank completion: 3,500 NP
B-rank clean-clear bonus (Grade 2 Sealed Artefact recovered to host): 800 NP
Hidden objective sum: 2,500 NP
Divergence multiplier: 1.00× (canonical Doomsday outco preserved within tolerance; intervention attempted but did not alter the post-events).
Total: 6,800 NP
Pre-deploynt balance: 15,490 NP. Closing balance: 22,290 NP.
▓ ADVISORY
Four spiritual systems (Nen, Hamon, Telekinesis, Haki) confird structurally lost. Replacent payload (Marauder partial-integration, Sequence 9) confird permanent. A foreign sub-conscious tag remains.
▓ EXTRACTION READY
Acknowledge to extract.
Acknowledged. Extract.
The Tingen alley plaster, the cracked hall wall, the sll of cordite and grey smoke — all of it went out, the way a stage goes out when the lamps are killed one rank at a ti.
L4-1349 vanished.
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