As the exit of the truck opened, the louder the heartbeat in Hubert's chest as he felt his nervousness reach its peak. This is no longer Hubert's first rodeo, but that doesn't mean he is confident already. In fact, he is not. And the fact that all of those incidents that involve the death of people only happened yesterday makes it much worse than it could have been. It is even a miracle that he managed to stay sane after witnessing all the weird sh*t that has appeared.
And this time, they stopped at a mart. Compared to the previous location, the second site of his next job is much bigger.
"I wasn't expecting our site to be quite large. The anomalies that will start appearing here might be quite plentiful and hard to notice due to these products on the shelves," Chief rubs his beard before looking at Hubert, his eyebrows raised. "You think you are ready to deal with bigger locations like this?"
Hubert couldn't answer. If the regular house can already spawn dangerous entities, what about big areas like this mart?
However, Rob, the same guy who criticized Hubert earlier, taps on Hubert's shoulder. "I know you are a noob who recently graduated from being a virgin from this job, but I expect nothing less than your full attention to the job. I prefer not to see any deaths today."
Rob might sound menacing in his words, but his message to Hubert is out of concern. He didn't want him to die on the job.
Chief, on the other hand, started laughing. "Come on, Rob, don't be such a wet blanket. Chill out and be friendly to newbies."
"Stop being such a weirdo, Chief. You might sound like some concerned individual, but I am sick of your actions. If possible, I would have stayed far from you."
Alliah, along with the others, appeared behind and stopped them from bickering.
"Enough of that, you two. We are here to do the job; stop bickering like children," Alliah strictly reprimanded the two before passing from them. The others quietly followed Alliah behind.
Rob clicks his tongue before following Alliah. He looked at Hubert and made a gesture to also follow. Hubert nodded, and Rob went ahead. On the other hand, Chief remained smiling, a smile that would look innocent at first glance, but just based on the interaction earlier, Hubert starts to find his smile a bit creepy now.
"Well, you heard the boss, let's get going," Chief smiled at Hubert and followed suit.
Hubert can only scratch his head as he follows the rest of them inside the portal of the mart.
...
...
...
The lights inside the mart are turned off, which makes sense because it was already closed by the time they arrived. Since even turning the light on is considered tampering with the mission location, it was ill-advised to do so, as there are some anomalies that involve lights being turned on. They needed to ensure that these anomalies, which are simply just lights turning on, are gone before they actually cause severe danger.
Instead of turning on the lights, everyone has to use their flashlights and move around without necessarily disturbing the place.
"Man, I really wish they would send us to a smaller mission next time. Being sent on a big mission like this really throws me off my game," Roderick, who looked calm enough, begrudgingly sighed.
"Shouldn't you be happy that they gave us a big mission with a lot of people to work with? I, for once, am happy that I get to have a team to work with. Most of the time, I have to work alone for this," Xiah casually pops a lawbreaker into her mouth as they glance all over the place.
"True, that's a good advantage, but still, a smaller-scale location would be faster and easier."
As the group searches around and familiarizes the surroundings, its watch beeps, signifying the first anomaly.
"Intruder-Distortion, Storage Room"
"Would you look at that, and it's just the first hour! Hahaha, what luck!" Chief laughed like it was a funny incident.
"Pipe it down, big boy. There's nothing funny about this anomaly. Rookie, Tim, we deal with the anomaly, the rest, continue searching," Rob said with a calculated move.
Hubert quickly nodded. After all, an intruder means a dangerous anomaly.
The three rushed to the storage room, and instead of seeing shelves and crates of products lined up, they saw a fully stretched out surroundings with something in the very middle of the distortion slowly coming out of it. Just from the look of it, it looks like a deformed head of a child with multiple eyes around its forehead. It lacks the notable normal features of a face aside from the small line that seems to be salivating and is suspected to be the mouth.
Hubert takes out the stopwatch and pushes the button while his other hand pulls out his scanner and starts to fix the distortion by pointing it straight at the anomaly and pulling the trigger, which then starts to attempt and fix the distortion and recover the surroundings to normal..
"Not bad, rookie!" Rob grinned as he also pulled out his scanner and scanned the intruder as well.
"Tim! Shoot the motherf*cker down!"
The shy guy named Tim tilts his head before he pulls out his gun and continuously unloads all the bullets on the intruder in the middle of the distortion. Despite it being fast, Hubert actually saw most of the shots were directly hitting the open eyes of the intruder, which is much more painful for the intruder itself.
"GRAAAAAHHHHH!"
An ear-piercing scream echoes through the room as the anomaly continuously receive bullets after bullets by Tim who continuously fires his gun. Rob and Hubert did not let go of the scanners as the distortion slowly fixes itself and the intruder is getting flushed in the middle. Of course, the intruder struggles to keep itself from being completely flushed away but thanks to Tim's unloading bullet strategy, every time the intruder tries to grapple and take hold onto something, a bullet would quickly hit its body, stopping it from gripping completely.
The intruder continued screaming while the three worked together on dispelling the entity. On the other hand, their watch continuously buzzed, meaning that there are more anomalies spotted. But since they are still busy, the three did not bother to check their watch. Besides, the others should be already working on the anomalies.
Soon, the final struggle of the intruder came to an end as both of its hands were quickly shot by Tim in quick succession, followed by the complete fix of the distortion of the room, forcing the intruder to disappear and be swallowed by the fixed reality.
"Did we get it?" Hubert huffed and puffed as he felt the pressure from the distortion has finally disappeared, restoring the room to normal.
"We might not have seen it die, but thanks to Tim's exceptional gunslinging abilities, that intruder won't be back anytime soon. There's even a chance we eliminated it in the process. Good job as always, Tim."
Tim nodded and although he looked proud at first, he seemed to quickly shy away in the process and left the two after the anomaly is gone.
"Still, I must say that your reaction time is quick, Rookie. Guess you didn't just survive the Dimension Crack for nothing," Rob grinned as he pat Hubert's back. Despite Hubert being older than Rob, it felt like he was the younger one due to how Rob sounds like an old man already.
"But don't get me wrong, rookie. I may have seen you deal with an anomaly for the first-time but you still haven't fully earned my respect just yet. But credit is where it is due, so I am not going to be angry at you. You do have the skills. Now, let's get going and assist the others, those beeps has been awfully a lot."
Hubert sighed in relief. Despite Rob being critical about him earlier before their mission, it seems that he isn't a bad person. More like he believes in the skills and capabilities of someone by seeing it on his own eyes instead of listening to hearsay. His voice of concern is not bad as well, meaning, he isn't really angry at him for being a rookie, just reluctant about his skills.
The two went out of the storage room and soon was greeted with the other group fighting against a monster that is crawling above the ceiling. Tim is already helping out on dealing with it by using his gun but it seems even his gunslinging abilities were not enough to keep it stuck due to how fast it moves around.
Alliah spotted Rob and Hubert and quickly barked an order. "Looks like you two are good to go, please search for the other anomalies, we will have to deal with this one first. You two deal with the minor ones!"
Rob and Hubert quickly browsed their watches to see the anomalies that popped up.
"Dead Body, Checkout Counter 3"
"Missing Object, Shelf number 7"
"Hostile Anomaly, Entrance"
"Intruder, Refrigerator"
Rob quickly ordered Hubert. "Rookie, you can deal on the dead body, I will deal with the missing object and intruder. The hostile anomaly is more likely the one currently scurrying around the ceiling.
Hubert nodded. Thankfully, it was just the dead body. He quickly head over to the Checkout Counter 3 and was expecting to see a whole body of a person either lying on the floor or currently leaning on the checkout counter itself. But Hubert was not prepared to see that the dead body that he will see is none other than the dead body of his previous teammate last time, Number 2.
However, she is not currently whole, more like she was in pieces and her body is currently floating in blood in the checkout counter, like some sort of product that is waiting to be scanned for barcode.