Death entered the enclosed chamber deep within the earth, far underneath the Colosseum. Vaguely, he heard the sounds of screaming and crazed mutterings. He was close to the heart of evil down below the Colosseum.
Upon entering the chamber, he saw a hunched figure in a dark hooded cloak. Death knew that this was Famine. There were shining, arcanic emblems on his voluminous sleeves as the figure mumbled incessantly about some theory. He was staring at a holographic screen depicting various scenes of torture.
"You are late like always, Death." intoned a dry raspy voice.
Death knew that he would soon get an earful when he delivered the bad news, but he just wanted to get this over with.
"Famine, your disciple Felgin is missing." said Death.
The lights flickered in the room as a pitch-black mist rolled out from the openings in Felgin's cloaked figure. The mist corroded the ground and anything it came into contact with.
"You will find and bring him back alive, wherever he is." said Famine as he turned towards Death.
Death knew that the calmer Famine appeared, the angrier and more upset he truly was. Could Felgin have been his bastard child or something? What made him so mad?
Famine took off his hood and revealed gaunt, skeletal features. He may as well have been a bag of bones. His parched, yellowing flesh emphasized his feverish dark eyes in their sunken eye sockets. The eyes blazed with a dark mysterious light.
"Felgin is integral to a monumental task between pestilence and I. We have already invested countless resources in the endeavor. It doesn't matter what it takes, find him!"
Famine pointed a skeletal finger towards the table between them and a pendant appeared.
"Take this tracker and bring back Felgin at any cost. It is linked to his life essence and as long as he is alive, it will lead you to him. This concerns whether or not we can have a hybrid that can think for himself, rather than the mindless ones that only know how to feed."
Death realized the importance of this matter after hearing that. He had gone toe to toe with one of those hybrids, and the only reason why it lost was because it only used brute strength. It could not think of any battle strategies. However, if you were to take away that handicap…and the hybrid could think for itself…
Wait a minute, if the situation develops in this manner, wouldn't that eventually make him obsolete? Unless…he observed what Famine and Pestilence did with Felgin to change him into a hybrid. If they succeeded, maybe he will commit to the same procedure.
Death smiled as he thought about the unlimited power within his grasp if he could devour those zombified babies. At the same time, if he could retain his gravity power…he would become unstoppable!
He quickly picked up the pendant and didn't waste any words. Leaving the room, he headed to the nearest elevator to return topside as quickly as possible. Finding Felgin would be integral to not just Famine and Pestilence's plans, but to his as well.
Watching Death leave, Famine went over to a console and waved his hand. A hologram appeared which revealed a figure with four arms working on a corpse situated on a table. The figure was suturing a tentacle where the left arm should have been using a high-tech laser suture.
"Pestilence, it may be necessary to move up our plans for operation War Machine. We should prepare one of the unconscious hybrids. When Felgin arrives, we will transpose the hybrid body parts to Felgin's body. If Felgin can survive this dangerous procedure, our true goal is within our grasps!" said Famine.
Pestilence turned to look at the hologram and revealed a horrendous apparition. His face was actually one of a spider! A hissing laughter escaped from Pestilence's furry mandibles as he merely gestured at Famine and continued his important work on the corpse.
"Oh and by the way, Felgin had been adamant about one thing. He wanted a phallus that wasn't as big as a squealer's, but one that would still give quite the discomfort to whoever is on the receiving end." said Famine.
Pestilence gestured that he understood.
---
When Death returned to the Colosseum, he immediately rallied a few of his forces and moved out in the direction the pendant was pointing him towards.
"Sire, what about the fights? Should we continue or wait your return?" asked a manager.
"The fights continue! The day is just beginning and I want blood in the air. Let the registrations resume!" said Death as he marched out of the Colosseum with his forces.
---
Ariel woke up for the second time in Kain's bed. This time, her throat and jaw really felt worked over. She ignored her aches and hurriedly checked her status. Seeing her power reach 450x strength, she couldn't help but think about her family. Soon, she would be able to throw off the yoke placed on her shoulders due to Alders.
She waved her arms and activated her explosion power and a myriad of miniature explosions appeared in the air around her. Each of the explosions were in their compressed forms and if she so decided, this entire lounge would have exploded to oblivion.
She twirled her fingers and the floating orbs flew in a vortex centered around her fingers. Ariel couldn't help but smile in jubilation at the beautiful sight. It was like she held a miniature galaxy in the palm of her hand.
Her new level of control was unbelievable. With this, she was confident in not worrying about others taking advantage of her. She snapped her fingers and the orbs melted away into nothingness.
Ariel sat on the bed and thought deeply about Kain. She really felt like his semen was a drug and it would only be a matter of time before she lost her chastity at this rate. Seeing that her power was good enough to deal with her current troubles, she decided to return to Taria Academy. She was lacking in sleep despite her brief 'power' naps.
Walking out to the living room, she glanced at the 4 purple pills remaining on the table. She decided to leave those as a parting gift. A goodbye wasn't necessary as what they had together was merely a transaction. Surely, Kain would understand. She would bury this entire experience and never speak of it again, both to protect his secret and her shame.
If they met again in the future, would it be as complete strangers? She shook her head. No matter how things turned out, she could sense even more clearly where Kain was after that 2nd infusion of his seed. Let fate take care of their future encounters.
As she left the lounge, she didn't notice that one of the hidden figures followed her at a distance.
---
Kain finally reached Death's room and phased through the door. He noticed that his phasing was vastly improved and may be good enough to get through that pesky door blocking his way down beneath the Colosseum.
He used his detection and headed to the area in the room where he could detect some form of barrier. His gut was telling him that Death's stash was behind whatever it was. As Kain approached closer, he felt an acute sense of warning. He stopped moving forward and realized that whatever was making him wary was some kind of booby trap.
Using all his senses, he could detect that whatever the trap was, it was linked to the ground in front of him. He utilized his wind control and floated over the ground towards the statue of a naked woman. Floating closer, he couldn't help but do a double take over how real the statue looked. The look of horror on her face as she tried to shield herself with her arms in front of her could have been a real woman of flesh and blood. Using his detection and senses, Kain realized that it actually was a person!
She had the exact same radiation signatures of a living person! He floated over to the statue and poked her face, but found that her skin was indeed petrified. Someone must have used their power to put her in this petrified form.
Taking another look at the woman, he saw that she was quite pretty, with wavy long hair. Of course, he couldn't distinguish much due to the gray petrified color of the skin.
Why would Death have this naked woman in his room? Was she some kind of trophy for him?
Kain shook his head because he couldn't help this woman right now. Maybe when the War Consortium fell, the mystery behind her would be revealed.
He phased through the wall next to the statue and entered an enclosed area. Once inside, he no longer had that sixth sense warning of danger, so he floated back down to the ground. Just ahead of him, he saw a transparent ward that shimmered.
Kain couldn't help but gasp as he looked beyond the barrier to the treasure within. Did they keep the entire Colosseum's treasure here? It was a veritable king's ransom in that room, with heaps of credits, gold, silver, gems, weapons, accessories, and armors.
This was enough to get Argenti faction off the ground and running. Kain didn't know the conversion rates for the various treasures, but he was sure one of his girls can manage to figure it all out. Sylvia would surely be really happy if he brought all this loot back.
All of this would more than make up for his tardiness.
In the middle of the large room, he noticed two chests arrayed on a large pedestal. From here, he could sense enhance pills through the ward. It was surely not a small amount as the amount of radiation he felt was off the charts.
Approaching the ward, he used his senses to detect for traps and nothing came up. He attempted to phase through the ward, but it was as solid as if he didn't even have a phasing ability. What material was this?
Placing his hand on the ward, he acutely felt power flooding into him, as if he were absorbing the ward! That makes things easy, thought Kain.
He ramped up his absorbing speed and felt his power improving rapidly. After a few minutes, Kain felt the absorption rate decreasing as the ward visibly grew dimmer. Eventually, the ward simply crumbled apart.
Kain checked his strength and saw that it increased by 75x, making him an even 500x strength. Not bad for just a ward. If he could run into more, it would really be convenient.
Entering the room, he made a beeline for the chests on the pedestal. No traps sensed around here. He opened the first chest and found the entire chest full of purple pills. On top of them were 4 rainbow pills. Finally, he got his hands on more of these. He stashed away the entire chest in his void dimension.
Opening the second box, he found 3 irradiated cores! He also stored away this chest. Having stashed away the most valuable treasure, he quickly began the work of looting everything else. Tentacles zoomed out of his body and spread out across the room. Suctions appeared on all of them as they dragged in everything towards him, right into his void domain.
This may take a bit of time. He took out handfuls of purple pills and started to absorb them. It was high time he smashed the War Consortium and stop dickering around with the Arena.