Sworded Affair

Chapter 166: Back to the Future

None of the rewards offered an immediate boost, so Emma decided to table the issue for later, instead focusing on the dungeon, as she was still on the clock.

[WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 11 hours, 51 minutes.]

Emma reached for the door, and pulled the handle right off the frame.

[You break it, you buy it.]

“Oh come on, I used as much force as I always do,” Emma complained.

[Ephemera (Toggle: ON)]

Going intangible, she walked right through the offending door, and entered another corridor, this one coming to a dead end just a few metres ahead. A portrait hung in pride of place, depicting an aristocratic man wearing a long black wig; his noble demeanour somewhat undercut by his raised middle fingers.

“Okay, not the right way then,” Emma relented, heading back through the door to the side she’d started at.

[Ephemera (Toggle: OFF)]

Pressing her shoulder to the door, Emma braced herself, before pushing with all her might. The door crumpled inward, giving way with a squeal as hinges broke free under duress, letting Emma stumble on through the doorway. She emerged in an alleyway, barely wide enough for her to stand straight without her shoulders touching the walls. Emma didn’t consider herself claustrophobic, but she felt little desire to touch the walls, not when thick moss fought for space against layer upon layer of graffiti, producing something that might have been aesthetically pleasing, many layers ago, but now was merely emblematic of urban decay.

“I preferred the Great Wall of China,” Emma decided, calling on the System to mute her sense of smell and taste.

She wasn’t sure exactly what the foul odour around her was, nor did she want to know. Thankfully, the path ahead wasn’t particularly long, judging by the light streaming in from the near distance, so Emma set off at a jog, eager to be elsewhere. The light grew brighter by the second, and she almost dared to believe she’d exit the alley without further complication.

[Scavenger - Level 15]

That is, until she bumped head first into someone as she turned the corner: Emma remained unmoved by the encounter, the other man staggered back, cursing and clutching his nose. He wasn’t much to look at: a young man, thin on the verge of gaunt and wearing a patchwork of leather and metal plates sewn together into some semblance of armour. Emma and Scavenger stared at one another for a few seconds, before each began to move.

The Scavenger reached for his waistband, looking for a weapon. Emma caught his arm at the wrist and twisted, breaking his momentum (and his wrist) with a satisfying snap. A punch to the throat immediately followed, cutting off his scream of pain and leaving him wheezing, before Emma’s free hand found his face.

[Wolf, Ram and Heart (Toggle: ON)]

Eye gouging was dangerous even with bare fingers, to the point of being prohibited in virtually all contact sports of the modern era. When performed with an armoured gauntlet, punching straight through the eyeball to send a lance of death magic into his brain? Well.

[Scavenger slain.

30 EXP gained.]

A brief search of his body found nothing of note: he clearly wasn’t much of a fighter, not when his weapon of choice was a rusty looking shiv that even Emma’s hoarder tendencies couldn’t make her want to loot.

“How was he level 15?” Emma questioned, letting the corpse drop to the floor as she harvested the only thing of value he carried. “He was barely harder than the conspiracy theorist back home.”

[Sacrificial Blood (1 gallon) stored.

A direct hit to the brain will kill even some of the strongest. Take a look at the abdomen and see what you find.]

Doing as advised, Emma called Epitaph to hand, and began to poke at the corpse. To her surprise, the blade faced significant resistance on the way in, to the point that she needed to take a two-handed grip to force the issue. There was no blood, as Eden’s Echo had already taken all of that, which only made the black liquid which erupted all the more surprising.

“Is that oil?” Emma blinked, kneeling down to run her fingers through the viscous liquid.

Taking another look at the entry wound, she also noticed wires running through the torn flesh and muscle, not many, but enough to be noticeable.

“Cybernetics?”

[You’ve already faced the distant past and emerged victorious. Next up, the far future. Good luck.]

Epitaph came up, barely quick enough to catch the dead man’s punch, severing his working hand at the wrist. Undeterred, the Scavenger’s corpse lunged at her, arms outstretched and looking for a purchase. Emma summoned Sir Bearington in the alley she came from, immediately activating Parallel Lives to switch positions with her summon the moment he spawned. This got her out of the Scavenger’s grappling, subjecting the dead man to a bear hug instead.

[Sir Bearington defeated.]

The ground shook beneath Emma’s feet as she turned the corner, exiting the alley for the second time to find only wisps of her vanishing summon, inside a pockmarked black crater.

“They explode,” Emma deadpanned. “Of course they explode. What the hell is this, Plants versus Zombies?”

[Not quite, though a decent guess, all things considered. Look up.]

Emma did so, turning her attention away from the immediate surroundings to take in the backdrop for the first time since she arrived.

[You are under hostile observation. Rorschach’s Blot protects you from view.]

Emma averted her gaze all the same, away from the massive, building sized eye that started down from an aerial platform that blotted out the sky. Hundreds of floating craft of every size flitted around it, too many for her to count. The highest of them were barely visible from the ground, whilst the lowest hovered barely above the rooftops of the skyscrapers below, close enough to touch.

[Welcome to the final bastion of humanity in the year 2521, in the land that magic forgot. Welcome to Arcadia.]