Pov: Vik
With a gentle smile, I said, "All I am is a visitor who has come through," and at the same time adjusted my white gloves. "Now, where is the manager of this place? We do need to have a very serious talk regarding the property damage."
The three young alchemists stayed frozen on their knees, looking at the powdered purple sludge covering the steel floor plates nearby. The dreadful chimeric hounds—which had previously hunted their senior masters, forced their way through the reinforced quarantine bulkheads, and broken their four-circle defensive barrier as easily as an eggshell—had been reduced to an indistinguishable organic paste within less than one heartbeat.
The young woman—her tarnished silver name badge stating that she was Senior Researcher Ellen—shook violently as she gradually raised her eyes. Her soot-streaked face was entirely pale, and her knuckles were white because she had still got the smoking, broken piece of her defensive artifact held tightly in her hands. As her wide, terrified eyes met my vertical yellow pupils, her breath caught in her throat, becoming trapped in the suffocating gap between wonder and overwhelming, paralyzing fear.
To an apprentice mage or a mortal scholar, an unblemished white-robed man strolling carelessly through a toxic, flesh-melting bio-hazard area with a strangely calm black cat hanging around his neck was not a savior but an omen.
"You've... you've destroyed an entire swarm of third-tier bio-variants without casting a single spell matrix or releasing your aura..." one of the male researchers stammered, his teeth chattering as he clutched a broken wooden focus wand to his chest. "Are you... are you a sovereign who travels through the Void from the Central Plains or an Arch-Mage from the Northern Citadel?"
I said, "I'm only a humble scholar who is merely passing through engaged in some peaceful maritime activities," as I stepped over a hissing pool of digestive acid, keeping my clean and spotless boots above the surface. "Although your little extra-curricular science project has now disturbed my timetable by bending the surrounding space into an infinite dimensional loop. Therefore, I should like to ask once more: who is in charge of this facility?"
Ellen had a hard time swallowing and found it difficult to get words past her dry and tightly constricted throat. "There isn't anyone left in charge, Senior. When the containment runes collapsed three hours ago the Specimen ate Director Vance, the Chief Bio-Artificers, and the whole of the High Council of Sector 3."
Certainly they were," I sighed, and with a gloved finger rubbed the bridge of my nose. "The researchers are always the ones who get eaten it's almost a fundamental law of the cosmos. Now, could you please tell me exactly what you were planning down here and, more importantly, how I'm to shut down the spatial boundary which is trapping my submarine?"
Pushpa made a soft, curious mew and tilted her head slightly as she looked at the researchers, who were trembling. The quiet sound appeared to pull Ellen out of her state of stupor, even though her voice stayed frantic and breathless.
"Actually, we still don't know where it came from, Senior!" Ellen admitted, the words coming out in a state of panic. "Six months ago, our team which was exploring the deep sea found a shapeless, fossilized bio-core buried under the northern glacial abyss. Although it didn't have the usual structure of a demonic core, its cellular vitality wouldn't decay. Director Vance thought that we might be able to create an infinite and self-replenishing mana engine by attaching the core to tectonic geothermal formations! But as soon as it awoke, it mutated out of control and took over the island's planetary safety system to fold the surrounding space, thus trapping all living creatures within a fifty-kilometer radius so that it could feed without interruption!"
In what location is it currently being incubated?
The second male researcher, whispering, pointed with a trembling and blistered hand towards the buckled titanium blast doors at the far end of the observation dome and said that the main magma chamber had gone straight down into the primary magma vent and was using the geothermal heat to speed up its embryonic metamorphosis; if it completes its gestation the bio-field it produces will spread out and nothing in this ocean sector will survive.
Okay, I replied, tapping my chin as I thought about it. Stay in this observation room, don't touch anything, take shallow breaths, and make an effort not to come up with any more world-ending abominations while I'm away.
All I had to do was give my gloved wrist a casual twist and draw a thin arc of pale-green Prana through the still air. At once the energy spread out and settled over the three researchers in a translucent, golden-green dome. The pure, soothing vitality put an end to the neurotoxins in the air within seconds, stopping their mana from being depleted and stabilising their laboured breathing.
Abandoning the stunned alchemists, I turned around and strolled through the ruined titanium doors that led into the lower depths of the facility.
The corridor lying underground had been entirely taken over by biological decay.
The reinforced astral-steel walls could no longer be seen; they had been covered over by thick, pulsating mats of dark purple muscle tissue, calcified bone spurs, and dripping organic membranes. Glowing ribbons of stolen vitality—pure life force torn directly from the dying jungles above—flowed through the flesh-like walls just as luminous rivers of liquid mercury did, all of them rushing downwards towards the underground abyss.
The air became incredibly hot, heavy with the stink of boiling lava and the unpleasantly sweet, thick smell of decaying organic matter.
System: "Host! The level of environmental bio-toxicity has gone beyond fatal limits! The ambient thermal radiation is now reaching 2,800 degrees Celsius! The unknown bio-mana resonance is rising exponentially!"
"Calme now, System," I said calmly, walking down the muddy slope as though I were taking a leisurely walk through a silent garden. "I've suffered through worse heat in my own alchemical cauldrons."
Pushpa didn't flinch at all; her smooth black fur gave off a slight and barely noticeable shimmer of void distortion, which naturally stopped the intense heat, the ash, and the unpleasant odour from reaching us.
After descending through the fleshy labyrinth by several hundred metres, the tunnel suddenly opened out into a huge underground cavern that extended for almost two kilometres.
The caldera in question was that of the volcano's main magma chamber. Beneath hundreds of feet lay a roaring lake consisting of bubbling, golden-orange molten rock, which cast a violent crimson light on the huge cavern. Over the middle of this molten lake there hung an incredibly terrible shape, hidden behind a huge and thick cocoon made up of black-purple mist, swirling ash, and violently twisting bio-matter, the cocoon being three hundred metres tall.
The millions of ghostly, grey ribbons of vital energy belonging to the whole island were spiralling through the air above the lake and being funneled without interruption into the centre of the dark shroud.
THUMP-THUMP.
THUMP-THUMP.
The heartbeat of the creature echoed around the cavern like the beating of huge war drums, distorting the local space and causing waves of severe physical pressure to crash against the volcanic walls.
System: "WARNING! The entity's energy signature cannot be read! The life-drain cocoon is hiding its physical form! Progress towards metamorphosis: 99%... 100%! Metamorphosis completed!"
BOOM!
The enormous cocoon of purple flesh suddenly burst open from within with a detonation that shook the earth.
The shockwaves, consisting of pure kinetic and spatial force, spread out over the caldera and turned the nearby lava into huge columns of white-hot steam. A loud, wild screech rushed through the cavern, breaking the stalactites and making the whole volcanic structure tremble right down to its tectonic foundations.
When the blinding smoke and boiling steam had parted, the enormous figure appeared on a broad shelf of cooling obsidian rock and was then completely visible under the red glow of the magma.
I casually took a step toward the edge of the cliff, raising my right hand to weave a thread of Prana and unseat its stolen life force—
And at that point I went completely stiff.
I stopped breathing altogether and my yellow vertical pupils expanded into wide, shaking circles of pure disbelief.
Pushpa's fur immediately stood completely on end and, in a flash, her cheerful and lazy attitude disappeared as she drove her sharp claws deep into my shoulder robe, her bright golden eyes fixing themselves on the figure in front with a hostility never before shown.
At the centre of the caldera, in the sulphurous light of the volcano, there stood a being which I could never have expected even after living through a thousand lives or across ten thousand worlds.
It was none of the typical demonic beasts, not an ancient abyssal chimera, nor a distorted alchemical mutant.
"No..." I whispered, the words almost inaudible as my whole world came to a sudden and paralyzed stop. "How... how are you here?!
"It's Fucking T-Rex!!!!!"