Landing in the dark corridor, raising her hand, Ren's violet lightning, flickering around her arm, lit up their surroundings. The tunnel they entered was wide enough to accommodate the dwarfs' golems, traveling to the surface, so the trio could stand shoulder to shoulder, descending deeper inside.
"Are you okay?" Ren asked, looking sideways at Allfather, wearing a slight smile after walking for a long time, no longer seeing the light coming in from the outside world.
"I never went underground before. It is a bit suffocating, but I'll be fine," he answered honestly.
A few minutes later, they came across a group of power armor-wearing dwarfs who were in the midst of retreating. Seeing their enemies appear as their tunnels intersected, their flamethrowers immediately lit up the dark tunnels, aiming at the trio.
"Let me!" Kai said, touching the wall, and ice quickly expanded forward, coming from his hand, forming a barrier before them, blocking the green flames just in time.
"This fire is really troublesome!" Allfather said, watching it on the other side of the constantly melting, then reforming, transparent ice wall. Even at his level, his instincts reacted with a primal fear towards it. "Without your water, I would have lost many more children."
"You're welcome!" Ren smiled as Kai walked forward, pushing the ice wall before them, closing in the distance on the dwarfs.
"Let me through!" Ren stepped next to Kai, and the next moment she just flashed forward, flying through the flames. When she appeared before the four armored dwarfs, her body was surrounded by purple lightning, mixing with their flames, kicking one of them in the chest.
The soldier, wielding the flamethrower, turning towards her, only saw a bolt of lightning before he found its display in its helmet cracked and being turned off, cutting him off from the outside world and plunging him into complete darkness. A moment ago, his helmet could see through his own flames, clearly watching the world, yet everything turned black and silent in a flash. Yet it did not last long as the next moment, he heard a loud crack as the whole helmet split apart as he landed on his back, unable to move again, just like a turtle. As he finally regained his composure, looking upwards, struggling to breathe under the sudden weight of his armor, all of his brothers were already defeated; their suits cracked and opened up like a walnut. He saw Ren sink his electrified fingers into the chest of his team's commander, tearing his power armor apart like it was made of paper. The heavy suit of wonder that protected them from the nefarious pollens of the ents, from their potent attacks, developed to seal away its wearer from the outside world, resisting nature's elements, seemed so weak in his eyes now it was laughable. A girl, barely taller than their adults, tore it off their bodies like peeling an orange, grabbing the dwarf inside and pulling him out by his head.
"A child?" Ren tilted her head, raising up the male dwarf, holding his skull in one hand, examining him like a fisher does with her catch. "No… you are just tiny."
"Look who's talking…" the commander groaned, who was already a veteran warrior of 40 years of age but only as tall as Ren herself.
"Oh, you have humor~ I won't kill you then!" she smiled, zapping him a little, knocking him unconscious. "Allfather, can you tie them up? I want to bring some back to interrogate and study their… stuff."
"Mhm." He nodded in response, and seeing him summon roots and tie up the commander, one dwarf decided to use his suit to initiate its self-destruct instead of being captured by the enemy. Sadly, no matter how he tried, the power armor on his body was useless and unresponsive, invaded by Ren's powers. Her electricity already short-circuited all of their functions. After they were dragged out of their armor, tied up, and tossed to the side, unconscious, Ren was already checking out one of the broken armor sets.
"How weird! Is this really worn by people without any cultivation? How are they able to bear their weight? And operate it?" She asked with wonder in her voice, climbing out from one of them, holding some internal components in her hands. "I bet, to make them work, they also used demonic cores to supply the armor with enough energy to move around! That is at least one dead demon. If they have those soul matrixes installed like the big ones… that means, again, a few dead demons per suit!"
"So one suit of armor costs around five lives?" Allfather asked with a serious voice.
"Probably!" Ren sighed, "Or even more! The one golem we previously defeated was working because of dozens of cores and souls. You saw them at work, bombarding your lines in the battle before! Not to mention the small machines, they were moving by themselves, so they had to cost one or two lives at a minimum! Then the armor they wear…" she looked around, shaking her head. "The amount of sacrifices that went into setting up this army is astronomical."
"Humans are scary!" Allfather watched the unconscious dwarfs, clearly unhappy with the conclusion.
"I'd say cornered people are!" Kai replied, "When your own were cornered, you wiped out a whole civilization! How many lives were lost in that war? 5 million? 10?"
"..."
"It is futile to argue about it! Let's go further down instead! We capture anything and anybody we meet along the way, but when we arrive in their city, try not to kill everybody, especially innocents, okay?" she turned towards them, wiping her hands as she continued their travel into the labyrinth-like tunnel system.
…
….
…..
"We have intruders in the B5-SA sector!" Marian rushed into the room where Otto was in the middle of replacing half of his skull with a metallic shell. At the same time, his multiple arms moved independently, continuing the operation on other parts of his body as he looked at her.
"Luca is working on repairing the Dreadnoughts as fast as possible." He answered with a sore voice. "Send order to the still retreating soldiers to do anything they can to slow them down and raise the-"
"Already did." Marian cut in, "The city is going into lockdown; the automated defenses are already active, but if they reach the city…."
"It can be rebuilt." Otto answered with a stern voice, "We just need to protect the most useful layers of the people; the rest is just collateral. We rebuilt once; we can do it again!"
"Mhm. The talented ones have been sent to the reinforced shelters." Marian nodded, in complete agreement with him.
"How many infiltrated us?" he asked as he refitted his skull, got off the big chair, and hurried out to help Luca in the repairs.
"We don't know yet. Our warning system sent the signal that foreign lifeforms appeared in the tunnels. Then it went silent."
"Hopefully, they are going to be lost!" he said through gritted teeth as the previous loss was greatly bothering him.
…
….
…..
Descending deeper, Ren's trio came across group after group of dwarves and golems. They were constantly fighting, destroying the machines, and capturing the dwarfs.
"If I were still at the Harmony Realm, I would be exhausted already!" Ren groaned after she had just crushed another golem, her body rapidly flashing with lightning.
"Good thing you are not, then!" Kai smiled.
"Do we even know where we are?" Allfather sighed, looking around in the spacious, dark tunnel, surrounded by immobilized dwarf soldiers, who still had violet electricity dancing around them.
"Nope!" Ren laughed, shaking her head. "I already don't know where the exit is where we came in! There were too many twists and turns!"
"..." Allfather flinched, realizing that Ren was not joking and she was not even bothered by the fact.
"I do." Kai calmed him down, "I have a good memory."
"See? Things solve themselves! If you don't worry about it, your life will be much more fun!" Ren patted the back of Allfather. "Even if we are lost, we just need to go up, no? Blast through the mountain, and we will be out in no time!"
"You really are mad…." Allfather whispered, taking a deep breath.
"Hm? What was it?" Ren tilted her head with question marks in her eyes as she did not hear him.
"Lucky us that you can control lightning!" He spoke up with a louder voice, "With one snap, they just fell backward!" He changed the topic, watching the power-armored bodies as Ren was already opening them up like oysters, capturing dwarf after dwarf.
"Lucky indeed~" She winked at him in response. "Their suits are resistant, but they never thought about someone who can guide lightning and find the thin cracks at the joints! Invading them is easy, and their weak bodies cannot wield such robust armor when they go limp!" She tossed the last unconscious dwarf to the side, stretching like someone who just had a good workout. "But damn, I am getting tired! Wandering in this maze is getting annoying! Maybe we should go straight?" Allfather quickly followed her gaze towards the hard wall, and instead of wandering around for another hour, constantly fighting, he ultimately agreed with the notion.
"I can break up the rocks." He said after thinking a little, "They are hard, but if I can dig my roots into it, I can open it up!"
"I can soften them." Kai chimed in as ice formed wherever he touched the walls or floor, seeping into the tiny cracks, already pushing away the insides of the mountain range they were in.
"Dig in an angle!" Ren said, watching the two work together.
Allfather did not hesitate; his arms turned into small roots, drilling into the cracks, following the spreading of the ice. Soon everything shook, cracking loudly as his roots enlarged, tearing open the hard rocks before them.
"Haha, great!" Ren laughed, seeing a man-sized crack appear, leading straight into complete darkness. Along the way, the trio hit multiple other tunnels, but their intrusion into the belly of the Wall of the World was now more straightforward.
"There is a huge empty space below us, only a few hundred meters away," Kai said, as his ice was already spreading towards it.
"Let's aim for that!" Ren urged them. "Maybe it is a treasure room!"
…
….
…..
Inside the main testing facility of Luca, now in complete lockdown, only some key personnel were remaining, collecting the research data, prototypes, and essential tools to bring them to a safe vault hidden much deeper in the mountains. Their guards were elite troops, wearing the 2nd generation of their power armors which were built only in minimal quantities, still in the prototype phase. They looked more solid and had way fewer exposed joints where Ren's power could get into them. As the researchers were pushing out cart after cart, one had Tylvana strapped onto it, in her original jaguar form, with a blank look in her eyes. Sometimes she let out a low, animalistic growl but could not move her body. Her paws were chained down so firmly she couldn't even flex them as the metallic straps were bolted onto the cart, immobilizing her.
"Move faster!" the multi-legged researcher urged them, the same one who was reporting to Luca and tasked with the maintenance of Tylvana, making sure she did not 'expire.' "We need to move the rest to the vault before we head to the shelter! If anything is lost here, Sage Luca will have our heads!" Just as he finished saying that, above them, the ceiling started to shake and crumble. "What's happening…?" He asked, dropping his little inventory-checking table, already knowing the answer to his question. When the cracks above them became larger than an arm, brown roots appeared through it, grabbing onto the ceiling like fingers, opening it up completely. From the new opening, a sudden, blinding, violet light passed through, landing in the middle of Luca's workshop.
"Lucky!" Ren laughed, looking around, seeing the vast, white room, the researchers, the soldiers, and the multiple weird instruments they were in the middle of transporting. As she was scanning their stuff calmly, waiting for Allfather and Kai to also descend down, she noticed the jaguar strapped to one of the rolling carts. "Hm?" She furrowed her brows as the aura she was exuding was very familiar. Teleporting next to her, she reached out to the growling big cat; she quickly patted its head, calming her down, seeing the confused light in her eyes. "HEY!" her voice echoed as rumbling thunder, turning to the others with eyes spewing lightning. "Which one of you motherfuckers is responsible for this?" She asked as her words rolled down her lips like a storm, forming dark clouds above them. Her aura alone created a hurricane deep underground. As Kai and Allfather arrived, seeing her anger, they quickly guessed something had happened, but Ren just raised her hand. "Stay out of this! I am now pretty angry… I need to vent a little!" She said quietly, yet her words were followed by the crackling of thunder.
Landing in the dark corridor, raising her hand, Ren's violet lightning, flickering around her arm, lit up their surroundings. The tunnel they entered was wide enough to accommodate the dwarfs' golems, traveling to the surface, so the trio could stand shoulder to shoulder, descending deeper inside.
"Are you okay?" Ren asked, looking sideways at Allfather, wearing a slight smile after walking for a long time, no longer seeing the light coming in from the outside world.
"I never went underground before. It is a bit suffocating, but I'll be fine," he answered honestly.
A few minutes later, they came across a group of power armor-wearing dwarfs who were in the midst of retreating. Seeing their enemies appear as their tunnels intersected, their flamethrowers immediately lit up the dark tunnels, aiming at the trio.
"Let me!" Kai said, touching the wall, and ice quickly expanded forward, coming from his hand, forming a barrier before them, blocking the green flames just in time.
"This fire is really troublesome!" Allfather said, watching it on the other side of the constantly melting, then reforming, transparent ice wall. Even at his level, his instincts reacted with a primal fear towards it. "Without your water, I would have lost many more children."
"You're welcome!" Ren smiled as Kai walked forward, pushing the ice wall before them, closing in the distance on the dwarfs.
"Let me through!" Ren stepped next to Kai, and the next moment she just flashed forward, flying through the flames. When she appeared before the four armored dwarfs, her body was surrounded by purple lightning, mixing with their flames, kicking one of them in the chest.
The soldier, wielding the flamethrower, turning towards her, only saw a bolt of lightning before he found its display in its helmet cracked and being turned off, cutting him off from the outside world and plunging him into complete darkness. A moment ago, his helmet could see through his own flames, clearly watching the world, yet everything turned black and silent in a flash. Yet it did not last long as the next moment, he heard a loud crack as the whole helmet split apart as he landed on his back, unable to move again, just like a turtle. As he finally regained his composure, looking upwards, struggling to breathe under the sudden weight of his armor, all of his brothers were already defeated; their suits cracked and opened up like a walnut. He saw Ren sink his electrified fingers into the chest of his team's commander, tearing his power armor apart like it was made of paper. The heavy suit of wonder that protected them from the nefarious pollens of the ents, from their potent attacks, developed to seal away its wearer from the outside world, resisting nature's elements, seemed so weak in his eyes now it was laughable. A girl, barely taller than their adults, tore it off their bodies like peeling an orange, grabbing the dwarf inside and pulling him out by his head.
"A child?" Ren tilted her head, raising up the male dwarf, holding his skull in one hand, examining him like a fisher does with her catch. "No… you are just tiny."
"Look who's talking…" the commander groaned, who was already a veteran warrior of 40 years of age but only as tall as Ren herself.
"Oh, you have humor~ I won't kill you then!" she smiled, zapping him a little, knocking him unconscious. "Allfather, can you tie them up? I want to bring some back to interrogate and study their… stuff."
"Mhm." He nodded in response, and seeing him summon roots and tie up the commander, one dwarf decided to use his suit to initiate its self-destruct instead of being captured by the enemy. Sadly, no matter how he tried, the power armor on his body was useless and unresponsive, invaded by Ren's powers. Her electricity already short-circuited all of their functions. After they were dragged out of their armor, tied up, and tossed to the side, unconscious, Ren was already checking out one of the broken armor sets.
"How weird! Is this really worn by people without any cultivation? How are they able to bear their weight? And operate it?" She asked with wonder in her voice, climbing out from one of them, holding some internal components in her hands. "I bet, to make them work, they also used demonic cores to supply the armor with enough energy to move around! That is at least one dead demon. If they have those soul matrixes installed like the big ones… that means, again, a few dead demons per suit!"
"So one suit of armor costs around five lives?" Allfather asked with a serious voice.
"Probably!" Ren sighed, "Or even more! The one golem we previously defeated was working because of dozens of cores and souls. You saw them at work, bombarding your lines in the battle before! Not to mention the small machines, they were moving by themselves, so they had to cost one or two lives at a minimum! Then the armor they wear…" she looked around, shaking her head. "The amount of sacrifices that went into setting up this army is astronomical."
"Humans are scary!" Allfather watched the unconscious dwarfs, clearly unhappy with the conclusion.
"I'd say cornered people are!" Kai replied, "When your own were cornered, you wiped out a whole civilization! How many lives were lost in that war? 5 million? 10?"
"..."
"It is futile to argue about it! Let's go further down instead! We capture anything and anybody we meet along the way, but when we arrive in their city, try not to kill everybody, especially innocents, okay?" she turned towards them, wiping her hands as she continued their travel into the labyrinth-like tunnel system.
…
….
…..
"We have intruders in the B5-SA sector!" Marian rushed into the room where Otto was in the middle of replacing half of his skull with a metallic shell. At the same time, his multiple arms moved independently, continuing the operation on other parts of his body as he looked at her.
"Luca is working on repairing the Dreadnoughts as fast as possible." He answered with a sore voice. "Send order to the still retreating soldiers to do anything they can to slow them down and raise the-"
"Already did." Marian cut in, "The city is going into lockdown; the automated defenses are already active, but if they reach the city…."
"It can be rebuilt." Otto answered with a stern voice, "We just need to protect the most useful layers of the people; the rest is just collateral. We rebuilt once; we can do it again!"
"Mhm. The talented ones have been sent to the reinforced shelters." Marian nodded, in complete agreement with him.
"How many infiltrated us?" he asked as he refitted his skull, got off the big chair, and hurried out to help Luca in the repairs.
"We don't know yet. Our warning system sent the signal that foreign lifeforms appeared in the tunnels. Then it went silent."
"Hopefully, they are going to be lost!" he said through gritted teeth as the previous loss was greatly bothering him.
…
….
…..
Descending deeper, Ren's trio came across group after group of dwarves and golems. They were constantly fighting, destroying the machines, and capturing the dwarfs.
"If I were still at the Harmony Realm, I would be exhausted already!" Ren groaned after she had just crushed another golem, her body rapidly flashing with lightning.
"Good thing you are not, then!" Kai smiled.
"Do we even know where we are?" Allfather sighed, looking around in the spacious, dark tunnel, surrounded by immobilized dwarf soldiers, who still had violet electricity dancing around them.
"Nope!" Ren laughed, shaking her head. "I already don't know where the exit is where we came in! There were too many twists and turns!"
"..." Allfather flinched, realizing that Ren was not joking and she was not even bothered by the fact.
"I do." Kai calmed him down, "I have a good memory."
"See? Things solve themselves! If you don't worry about it, your life will be much more fun!" Ren patted the back of Allfather. "Even if we are lost, we just need to go up, no? Blast through the mountain, and we will be out in no time!"
"You really are mad…." Allfather whispered, taking a deep breath.
"Hm? What was it?" Ren tilted her head with question marks in her eyes as she did not hear him.
"Lucky us that you can control lightning!" He spoke up with a louder voice, "With one snap, they just fell backward!" He changed the topic, watching the power-armored bodies as Ren was already opening them up like oysters, capturing dwarf after dwarf.
"Lucky indeed~" She winked at him in response. "Their suits are resistant, but they never thought about someone who can guide lightning and find the thin cracks at the joints! Invading them is easy, and their weak bodies cannot wield such robust armor when they go limp!" She tossed the last unconscious dwarf to the side, stretching like someone who just had a good workout. "But damn, I am getting tired! Wandering in this maze is getting annoying! Maybe we should go straight?" Allfather quickly followed her gaze towards the hard wall, and instead of wandering around for another hour, constantly fighting, he ultimately agreed with the notion.
"I can break up the rocks." He said after thinking a little, "They are hard, but if I can dig my roots into it, I can open it up!"
"I can soften them." Kai chimed in as ice formed wherever he touched the walls or floor, seeping into the tiny cracks, already pushing away the insides of the mountain range they were in.
"Dig in an angle!" Ren said, watching the two work together.
Allfather did not hesitate; his arms turned into small roots, drilling into the cracks, following the spreading of the ice. Soon everything shook, cracking loudly as his roots enlarged, tearing open the hard rocks before them.
"Haha, great!" Ren laughed, seeing a man-sized crack appear, leading straight into complete darkness. Along the way, the trio hit multiple other tunnels, but their intrusion into the belly of the Wall of the World was now more straightforward.
"There is a huge empty space below us, only a few hundred meters away," Kai said, as his ice was already spreading towards it.
"Let's aim for that!" Ren urged them. "Maybe it is a treasure room!"
…
….
…..
Inside the main testing facility of Luca, now in complete lockdown, only some key personnel were remaining, collecting the research data, prototypes, and essential tools to bring them to a safe vault hidden much deeper in the mountains. Their guards were elite troops, wearing the 2nd generation of their power armors which were built only in minimal quantities, still in the prototype phase. They looked more solid and had way fewer exposed joints where Ren's power could get into them. As the researchers were pushing out cart after cart, one had Tylvana strapped onto it, in her original jaguar form, with a blank look in her eyes. Sometimes she let out a low, animalistic growl but could not move her body. Her paws were chained down so firmly she couldn't even flex them as the metallic straps were bolted onto the cart, immobilizing her.
"Move faster!" the multi-legged researcher urged them, the same one who was reporting to Luca and tasked with the maintenance of Tylvana, making sure she did not 'expire.' "We need to move the rest to the vault before we head to the shelter! If anything is lost here, Sage Luca will have our heads!" Just as he finished saying that, above them, the ceiling started to shake and crumble. "What's happening…?" He asked, dropping his little inventory-checking table, already knowing the answer to his question. When the cracks above them became larger than an arm, brown roots appeared through it, grabbing onto the ceiling like fingers, opening it up completely. From the new opening, a sudden, blinding, violet light passed through, landing in the middle of Luca's workshop.
"Lucky!" Ren laughed, looking around, seeing the vast, white room, the researchers, the soldiers, and the multiple weird instruments they were in the middle of transporting. As she was scanning their stuff calmly, waiting for Allfather and Kai to also descend down, she noticed the jaguar strapped to one of the rolling carts. "Hm?" She furrowed her brows as the aura she was exuding was very familiar. Teleporting next to her, she reached out to the growling big cat; she quickly patted its head, calming her down, seeing the confused light in her eyes. "HEY!" her voice echoed as rumbling thunder, turning to the others with eyes spewing lightning. "Which one of you motherfuckers is responsible for this?" She asked as her words rolled down her lips like a storm, forming dark clouds above them. Her aura alone created a hurricane deep underground. As Kai and Allfather arrived, seeing her anger, they quickly guessed something had happened, but Ren just raised her hand. "Stay out of this! I am now pretty angry… I need to vent a little!" She said quietly, yet her words were followed by the crackling of thunder.
