Ilyin found his passage up the elevator shaft disf, lifted as if by a disembodied hand. It didn’t help that, to grab him, Asano had suppressed Ilyin’s aura first. Reag the surface, he passed through the hole his team had jackhammered to access the elevator shaft. It was in a warehouse that had been built right over the bunker system.

  They had cleared some spa first arriving in the warehouse, and more room had been made now. Shelves stacked with struaterials meant little to gold-rank strength, and several gold-rankers were present. Normally that would have set Ilyin on edge, but he had bigger issues to deal with today.

  If the gold rankers wao make Ilyin’s life hard, all they would have to do ush out with their powerful auras. In Ilyin’s experience, gold-rankers liked to throw their weight around, with auras being a favourite way to do that. This group had theirs retracted, leaving just enough to annouheir presehese auras were also smooth in a way he wasn’t used to. Ilyin focused on one gold ranker, kneeling over Team One.

  “You a healer?” he asked the man.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “You their ander?”

  His no-nonseone and failure to look up was f to Ilyin. He’d met bat medics before, and the sense of familiarity at the attitude was a fort on a day that had goo hell eight different ways.

  “I am,” Ilyin said.

  “Neil Davohe man introduced himself. “Your people will be alright, but the vampires left them with a lot of the lesser vampirism curse. Jason ed it out before it took hold and turhem, but you’re looking at real recovery time here, whatever magic you use.”

  “Thank you.”

  ***

  The crete ste room lit up as Travis entered, a glow stone floating over his head. His escort, Humphrey, o Jason. Aside from the three men, the only things in the room were a rge crate and some ominous stains that glistened in the light. They mostly covered the floor, but also painted ses of the walls and ceiling. Travis gave them a leery gnce as he moved to the crate. The wood gave way to his silver-rank strength without resistance as he tore the crate to pieces, casually tossing them aside to look at the tents.

  “Yeah, this is a nuke,” he said. “Some minimal magical enha, but ily done, and some time ago at that. Too faded to offer any measurable performancrease at this stage.”

  “Does that matter?” Jason asked. “We’re talking about a nuclear on.”

  “It matters,” Travis said. “Setting off a ventional nuke deep underground, in a magically reinforced bunker, will do massive damage with a nasty radioactive aftermath. But a magically enhanuke, going off on the surface? It’s the differeween Melbourne beiated, and Melbourne being gone.”

  Jason nodded.

  “her is a great option, but I take your point. It’s in our hands now, though, so we won’t let either of those sarios happen.”

  “Do you wao destroy it? Or you could feed it to your cloud fsk.” Travis asked.

  “Disable it but leave it intact. Anna wants me to hand it over to the Australian gover.”

  “Aren’t they the ones who sent meraries down here in the first pce?” Humphrey asked.

  “It’s plicated,” Jason said. “Anna thinks that the Prime Minister won’t st after this, and helping the gover save face will improve retions with whoever repces him. So, leave something to hand over, but make sure it isn’t operable, and never will be again.”

  “I do that,” Travis said. “One of my abilities lets me py around with material for creating ons. I rehe fissile material i.”

  “Thanks. Humphrey, keep an eye on him while…”

  They all turned as entered in his blood e form, looking like a red-eyed Jason. There were four of him. Below diamond rank, he couldn’t permaly expand his biomass, but he could do so temporarily, if he fed on enough life energy. At gold-rank, that that temporary sted lohan before, and ing a vampire lord had loaded his reserves nicely.

  Jason had sent and his extra bodies on the hunt through the plex. Now they returned, each carrying bodies slumped over their shoulders. lowered them to the ground, setting them out in a line.

  “There are people here,” he said. “A lot of people.”

  Jason, Travis and Humphrey came over observe the corpses.

  “They look homeless,” Jason said. “There are a lot of them down here, you say? I sense something out there, but it’s unclear. I certainly didn’t pick up on a bunch of homeless people.”

  “They had something ihem,” said. “It was trolling them, making them stronger.”

  “Sounds like when the Builder shoved clockwork cores in people,” Humphrey said. “Make them stronger and turhem into unwilling sves.”

  “I feel the thing ihem, if I get close,” said. “I leech it out of them. Devour it. That’s what I did to these people. They died, but not immediately. If we had a healer, maybe they could save them.”

  Jason looked up from the corpses and put a hand on ’s shoulder.

  “You really are a good boy.”

  ’s bashful smile looked odd when he had Jason’s face.

  “I’ll feteil down here,” Humphrey said.

  “I’ll bring the others from the ship,” Jason said. “Just the team is fine if we’re hunting vampires in the dark, but if there’s a bunch of puppeteered victims otentially save, we’ll want all hands on deck. Especially the healers.”

  ***

  The bodies had been moved from the ste chamber with the nuclear on to the rge tral chamber of the plex. Three of the corpses had been pced iual circles and plex patterns of light were now floating over them. The patter nothing to Jason, but there was a group of magical healers peering at them, mutteriween themselves. Along with Carlos and Neil were Arabelle Remore, Cire Adeah, from Rick Geller’s team, and Sigrid Voire, who was both Prince Valdis’ team healer and wife.

  Their teams were present as well, but not yet moving out. Until they knew if the enemies reported were victims that could potentially be saved, they didn’t want to move into the deeper reaches of the plex. The entrances were being watched by Humphrey’s summons, who looked like human-sized golems made of bone, garbed in ornate blue and gold armour.

  At gold rank, Humphrey’s Spartoi power could call up a hundred of the dragon tooth warriors. They weren’t up to the task of defeating ae adventurer of their rank, but were perfect for battling enemy minions or when a rge security force was required. Right now, they were seg the room against potential intrusion and patrolling nearby tunnels and chambers. It allowed the adveo gather and discuss without needing to watch the entrances, while waiting for the healers to be done. Ohey were, Carlos gathered everyoogether.

  “It would appear that ’s postution is accurate,” he expined. “It seems we’re dealing with some kind of monster or other entity that impnt victims with anic material that trols them and floods them with power. Think of it like being affected by a spirit for aended period, giving them a temporary false rank.”

  “As you’d imagine,” Neil said, pig up the expnation, “that is very bad for you. The good news is, it looks like these are normal-rank people. As with using spirit s, the less magic you have of your own, the less severe the flict between it and the introduced magic. Our best estimate is that there are a few more hours before whatever has happeo these people will kill them ht.”

  “Our reendation is to split into froups,” Carlos said. “We have four teams here, and has four bodies right now. Having extract whatever this is from the victims will be critical to keeping them alive. , how long you maintain those extra bodies?”

  “So long as I feed on more of the things impnted in these people, then indefinitely.”

  “The’s get going,” Carlos said. “I’ll set up a triage station here, using the dragon tooth warriors to secure our foothold in the plex.”

  “I’ll send a small ti of them with each team, as well,” Humphrey announced. “If you mao free and stabilise any victims, the warriors ferry them back here. Danielle, Farrah; you don’t have teams here, so you hold this area with the warriors in case something they ’t handle slips past us. Whatever we’re up against, it hide from our senses as victims do the same.”

  Danielle looked amused at her son, in expedition leader mode, referring to her by name. She said nothing, happy that he was even capable of issuing her orders. She’d been worried, when he was youhat timidity would prevent his natural charisma from transferring into the potential she saw for him as a leader. That had tinued right up until he stalled out iempt to reach gold rank, but he had ultimately found his inner dragon.

  Jason, Rick Geller and Valdis all had their teams present. On Arabelle’s team was her husband, along with Emir and his wife stance, who had frequently taken the pce inal team member Callum Morse. stance had trained with Callum on her own path to gold rank, before the full extent of his instability had shown. Now, Cal returo the team, rest the full inal lineup while keeping stance as well.

  Callum was far more stable than when Jason had known him years earlier, during his obsessive searg for Sophie’s mother. The ability to visit her in Jason’s soul realm, plus years of therapy with Arabelle, had spurred his recovery. As he was the best hunter on any of the teams, he would be a useful presen the group.

  The four teams moved out, linked by Jason’s interface. His abilities enhahe System to which they now all had access, not only allowing them to unicate, but also create a shared map of the plex as they explored it.

  ***

  “How many homeless people did they bring down here?” Jason muttered. ’s leeches fell away from the test group of victims, who dropped like puppets with cut strings as the force trolled them was removed. Jason caught them with his aura before they slumped to the ground, floating them over to where Neil was already drawing out a healing ritual.

  “It does seem strahat this many people could be brought down here unnoticed,” Humphrey said.

  “Homeless people might as well be invisible,” Jason said. “We spend so much time deliberately overlooking them that we don’t notice when they go missing.”

  “We try to avoid that in Pallimustus,” Zara said. “A rge, exploitable popution invites vampires, neancers or something worse to do just that. Your world will o address this problem as the magic here rises.”

  Rick’s voice came through the group chat.

  “We just ran into some vampires. They fought like those other homeless people, which makes sense given that said that they were being puppeteered. No skill, just trying to rush us down.”

  The normal people were boosted all the way to silver rank, which was nothing to the gold rankers. The challenge was not in winning the fights but in disabling their oppos so that could excise the power trolling them. Some had to be fended off with enough violehat they didn’t survive, while others were toohe magic boosting their rank had dooo much damage already.

  “Did you mao take the vampires alive?” Neil asked. “Or asses for alive for vampires?”

  “No,” Riswered. “Cire says the vamps have too much magic. Whatever is being doo these people kills the vampires ht, the moment takes it out of them.”

  “Why are they even trolling vampires?” Gabriel wondered. “Did the vampires not put whatever is down here in pce?”

  “A question for when we’ve figured out what we’re up against,” Humphrey said. “For now, we keep to the task at hand.”

  Neil directed Humphrey’s Spartoi to take the test batch of victims back to Carlos and his triage tre. At the same time, he sent a voice chat.

  “Carlos, take a look at the bodies that didn’t make it. Some of them are dying and I’m not sure why. It tends to be the ones with improved physiques, so I’m thinking maybe they’re blood servants. I don’t have time for a more thh examination.”

  “I’ll take a look,” Carlos answered back.

  ***

  The blood oak had a squirming and moaning body on the end of each limb. It used them as ons, caustic blood bursting from them in clouds of mist that left gaping wounds. It used them as shields, soaking up attacks from Emir and his team. It evehem as potions, draining the life from them to heal itself.

  Gabriel’s sword bzed with fire as it sshed at the tree-like creature. The blood oak intercepted with a dangling body, but it exploded, showing the room in ks of flesh and viscera. The limb holding it was severed, the stump left burning. Another body shrivelled like a juice box being drained by an aggressively thirsty child. The limb grew back, and the fmes were quenched as sticky red liquid coated the bark-like skin.

  The blood oak tossed all the bodies it had left. They exploded into red, caustic mist that forced the adventurers back, if only for moment. The creature seized that moment to escape, sliding into a broken pipe like a snake and disappearing into the wall.

  Callum dashed forward while juring a rat into his hand, the loose into the pipe to give chase.

  “We just had an enter,” Emir reported over the group chat. “It slipped away into a pipe.”

  “We need a way to pin it down,” Rick said. “It just keeps throwing victims at us. I don’t want to have to kill them all before we er it.”

  “At least it seems to be tained in this plex,” Jason said. “I think the bunker system is fully tained. With the elevator shaft guarded, the only other way out is the access point the vampires used. If it’s still running around, that means it either hasn’t found that exit, or couldn’t get past the barrier Clive put on it.”

  “Callum is trag the creature,” Emir said, even as Callum jured more rats ahem into the pipe. “Hopefully we hunt the thing down, whatever it is.”

  “We may have a line on figuring what it is,” Rick said. “We’ve found some kind of magical boratory. We’re cheg to see if there’s anything we use to stop it.”

  “Only take a quick look,” Humphrey said. “If there’s nothing obvious, get back to the hunt. The what, how and why we get to ter.”

  ***

  The blood oak was no match for fold-rank adventuring teams in a fight, but proved devilishly elusive. Uo escape, it resorted to hit-and-run tactics that led to almost a dozen enters before it was finally sin. It might have mao whittle down a few members of the teams if they each hadn’t had a powerful healer on hand.

  In the end, it was the bination of Callum and Jason that killed it. Callum’s jured rats mapped out the pipe work and allowed him to start predig the blood oak’s patterns. He finally had Jason move to anticipate one of its ambushes, allowing him to get enough afflis on it that it crawled off to die. In the end, in leech swarm mode crawled to where it had died and devoured it, bringing back a small sample.

  The teams verged in the boratory that Rick had found. It was a rge spad, unlike anywhere else in the plex, fully outfitted. The walls had been sealed and sterilised, with funal lighting and power installed. A tained plumbing system and multiple rge geors were set up in an adjat utility room.

  The b itself had multiple rooms, looking halfway between an alchemist b and a medical research tre. One room had heavily reinforced gss with a heavy security door, now open. The inside tained what looked like old viangled around skeletons stripped down to nothing but stained bohere were a couple of fresh bodies in the main b area, looking like every drop of moisture had been drained out of them.

  “You think the vampires made that thing?” Neil asked.

  “Maybe,” Jason said. “Clive, you and Travis figure out what they were doing here?”

  “We try,” Clive said.

  “Try hard,” Jason said. “That one creature took fold-rank adventuring teams over an hour to hunt down. If this wasn’t a sealed space, it would have escaped, and easily. We o know if this was the only one, or if the vampires have more of them. If they do, that will make dealing with them a lot harder than anticipated.”

  “That’s a nasty thought,” Neil said. “Imagine a whole of these things, hidden under a city. Almost impossible to detect, even harder to trap when you do ma.”

  “Emir,” Humphrey said. “Callum is the best tracker here. Have your team sweep the plex for leftover victims, or indications that there was more than one of these things. Rick, go escort Travis to this b. Jason, this is going to be a huge mess. You should start coordinating with local authorities.”

  “On it,” Jason said.

  “Jason,” Travis said through voice chat. “See if you find someone whose puter skills aren’t twenty years out of date to gh the systems in that b. At this point, I don’t know if we could boot up a ptop between us. Assuming they still have ptops.”

  “Good thinking,” Jason said. “I’ll see if I rustle up someorustworthy.”