PoV Tsuitame
"See, I told you guys I could easily clear even the eighth stage alone!" Diego said, proud of himself.
"We never challenged you to do it!" answered Satsui.
"One must always challenge himself to reach new heights!" He responded with a smug look on his face.
"I'm getting tired of eating all this bland food. How about we buy some spices." Proposed Valis.
"We can't. At the moment, we must save as much as we possibly can till we can finally secure a better place." I answered.
'That's right, lately more and more magical creatures have started appearing. If Forren and Diego hadn't come with us today, we might have gotten gravely injured.'
Today we fought a group of giant insects. We left their corpses there, as most of us didn't think they could be edible, except, of course, for Forren. He can eat everything.
Lately, Folarin seems to always be pissed at Valis, for whatever reason.
'I think Valis is much cuter with long hair.'
Whenever I tried to start a conversation with her, I always ended up making a fool of myself and babbling nonsense in front of her.
My brother immediately smacked me in the face while Diego burst out laughing.
"I-"
"So! Will you allow us to accompany you on the next stage, Diego?" My brother cut me off as soon as I tried to say something.
'Why are you-'
"Of course you can. I wouldn't suggest you stick close to me, but you can help me in other ways," he said while putting his hand on my brother's shoulder.
Folarin was surprisingly quiet throughout the entire dinner. Once she finished eating, she simply sighed and went immediately back to sleep.
Forren and my brother were discussing something. It was probably related to the usage of aura while Diego had also gone to sleep. Instead of going inside the shelter lately, he has started to climb and sleep on the rooftop of the shelter.
Then a weird circle appeared under our feet. Many letters of an unknown alphabet then started climbing our bodies.
"Oh dear, it appears you've been slacking too much." A familiar voice whispered in our heads.
"It seems everyone has just completed the ninth stage. That means you'll be immediately transported to the ninth to complete it." I continued.
"Wait-" The letters covered my whole body and even my eyes.
In the blink of an eye, we were transported into a dark room. We were standing on top of what looked like a magic circle made of blood. Various kinds of skulls were hung on each corner of the walls, and many people immediately bowed before us as soon as they made eye contact.
"This is... interesting." muttered Diego as he started wandering around the room.
"We're glad the room is to your liking." One of the men prostrating on the ground responded. He was pressing his head against the ground so much that I thought he wanted to bury it.
Everyone in the room was wearing a long mantle that covered their entire body and wore a demonic mask to cover their faces, except for that man. He was clearly showing off his face. His skin had severe burn marks. He was most likely blind, as his eyes were completely white.
"You're allowed to raise your head." Said Diego.
I felt chills running down my spine. I wanted to say something to make the situation less awkward, but my body was frozen, trembling in fear. I felt something ominous leaking out of Diego's body.
As I looked around, I noticed that my brother and the girls were also trembling. Instead, Forren charged almost immediately at him.
"This is an order. Kneel."
Forren's body immediately followed his order. Once he got on his knees, Forren tried multiple times to get up, only to fail.
'Did he just save that creepy little shit?'
"Now, I think we should discuss this matter privately, don't you think? You can accommodate my friends in whatever location you have prepared for us, and I'll be discussing important matters with him." Diego spoke in a calm tone, as if he already knew what was going on.
Without even giving them the time to respond to him, he went towards the one without a mask and dragged him outside. Once he opened a door I couldn't even see due to the darkness, he disappeared with the man.
"What was that?" I asked as soon as he was out of my field of view.
"Don't ask us. Do you think we know what that monster is ?" Replied Valis.
"It was most likely one of his weapons." My brother answered.
"What do you mean?"
"It's likely that one of his weapons harbors hatred towards this place. It's not uncommon for a weapon to show bloodlust in these kinds of situations. I've seen it happen lots of times. Breaking the spirit is a must before using someone's soul to craft a weapon."
'Where did you get that knowledge?'
The various men then got up, formed a line, and guided us to what would then become our future rooms. I noticed their level of technology had allowed them to build doors that would open up with a sensor that detects movements.
A quick glance at our smartwatch revealed that we had no current objective at the moment.
'What is going on?'
We then entered a long corridor, where a kid was happily eating a snack sitting in front of the stairs leading towards the ground floor.
The man escorting us immediately froze in place and bowed, while the one in front approached the kid while maintaining a lowered posture.
"Your Excellency, what are you doing here?" Said the masked men unanimously.
"I wanted to see with my own eyes if the summons would turn out to be successful this time."
The kid then pulled out a lollipop and started eating it.
"Are you sure these… that they can solve our problems?" He asked while analyzing us.
"They may not appear to be such, but they are formidable warriors, my lord." The man crouched in front of him responded.
"It doesn't really matter; I don't really care. If you think they can save our nation, then I'll trust your decisions." The kid got up and left.
We waited around half an hour before they allowed us to move. They gave each of us a room and explained that everything would be explained the next day. Each room was extremely small and had a spare change of clothes, a shower, and some snacks to eat. The windows were completely sealed, so we had no idea what the outside looked like.
Yet the next day, I woke up in a weird metallic carriage. They were transporting us to a different location. Accompanying us were the unmasked man, the kid, and the rest of the team.
Apparently, someone was chasing us, and we needed to escape. While we were escaping, Diego got off with the excuse of saving an innocent girl while we were in the middle of a shooting.
Using his weird ability, he managed to get off the carriage and even get past Valis's barrier. Thanks to him, we managed to escape safely. The others wanted to go back and get him, but Forren convinced us against the idea.
PoV Hannis
The room was mostly silent. The only sound that was echoing was that of the tape showing some kind of blood ritual. The video showed a bunch of drug-addicted people and many other famous members of criminal organizations being offered as sacrifices. The priest was chanting some weird things while blood started flowing out of the noses and eyes of the victims. The blood then completely encapsulated them and crushed them. Then it created many symbols on the ground, and from their flesh and bones, a group, or rather, unique individuals, was created.
"So magic does exist." Said Councilor Esteban.
"That seems to be the case. We monitored them for quite a while, trying to gather enough information about them to think one of our spies could collect so much data..." said another man I couldn't recognize.
The meeting was held in a dark room, and every single one of the members present was using a voice changer. I could faintly recognize the few that were sitting in front of me.
"It is indeed a shame that it ended up being killed." added someone else.
"What about the summons?"Asked a familiar voice.
"We confirmed that each and every single one of them possesses supernatural abilities. The wolf-like creature and the short-haired girl can bend natural elements to their will, while we're unsure about the full potential of the two humanoid summons." Said the man who was currently reporting the events that happened that day, Voss.
"While we do know that the tall one has highly regenerative capabilities, the second one seems to be trickier than every single one of them combined. He's likely the greatest threat among the group. Not only can he summon some very weird weapons, he seems immune to physical attacks." he added while showing us video proof of his claims.
"In short, bullets don't work against him?" Someone Asked.
"Not only that, but even in close-quarter combat, every kind of attack seems to pass through him as if he wasn't there in the first place. Allow me to demonstrate."
The general then, with the press of a button, switched the tape and showed the human attacking a police station. Bullets flew past his body, tasers didn't work on him, and he summoned weird weapons out of nowhere to cut down his enemies. In one instance, an officer managed to tackle him and tried to handcuff him, but as before, everything slipped past his body as if he wasn't even there, to the point that even his clothes struggled to remain on his body.
He was exceptionally trained in close-quarter combat and was equally good at shooting with the stolen weapons of the dead officer. Furthermore, he seemed to enjoy the act of killing, as the last victims were not killed instantly but rather tormented before being ultimately killed.
"The audio has proven that he needs a vocal command to summon his weapons. We're still trying to figure out how his other ability works." I continued the general before turning off the screen.
"Is the kid still alive?" Asked one of the councilors.
The general froze up at hearing that question. He looked uncomfortable, and his hands were sweating.
"T-The p-problem was that humanoid. He managed to completely annihilate the squadrons we sent their way. They managed to enter the territory of Gwak-su." Voss seems hesitant this time.
'Man, that must suck; I'm sure he spent many sleepless nights trying to compile the most detailed report on those abilities in order to hide the fact that the operation was for the most part, a failure.'
"We couldn't gather footage of how he did it, but somehow he managed to cut through their vehicles. Most of them were decapitated, while all the potential witnesses died of unknown causes." He continued while showing various images of deceased people.
Some of the councilors got agitated, while others started speaking among themselves.
"It appears we underestimated the magical capabilities of that old fox." Sighed councilor Fain.
"We could always recreate the summoning process to summon an equal force to go against them." Said someone in the distance.
"Is that all?" asked Councilor Fain.
"Yes, we don't have anything new to report at the moment."
The general then proceeded to leave the room in a hurry. The next one in line was a cute girl in skimpy clothes. Soon after, the screen switched visuals and started showing some creepy creatures climbing around. Using their long tails, they were capable of solving complex puzzles and had enhanced senses, so much so that they never managed to get lost while walking through a maze.
"So what do you think?" She asked while striking a cute pose.
'Who the hell-'
"This is the third batch of them. These ones are showing much better results than the previous generation. They seem to have fully adapted to our atmosphere and are intelligent enough to be able to carry out risky missions. More tests are needed to quantify their full capabilities," she calmly revealed while switching tapes constantly.
She was showing those creatures climbing using their extremely long tails; their ability to play tic-tac-toe to win snacks; them playing some memory games; and lastly, a reflex game.
All the councilors and other members present at the meeting were impressed and applauded the scientist.
"Not only that, but it seems they are able to defend themselves from projectiles by using their sturdy tails as a shield. Their tails are strong enough to break through a cement wall 20 cm thick and tough enough to resist most of the weapons listed in our report. With more funds, we might be able to mass produce these ones or try to create an improved version of them." She said.
"Just to be sure, how much does each one of them cost?" Asked someone
"I would say around 40 to 50 thousand Marin, and maintenance would be around... 20 thousand a year just for food and other utilities used, such as the maintenance of the training ground. When they are young, they tend to break things quite often as they aren't able to control their strength properly. They're rather cheap to make. That's why we're so proud of them."
"Are they ready to be deployed in combat?" asked someone really far back in the room.
"Most likely no, not only because they haven't got any combat experience, they aren't fully grown, and we haven't fully discovered their limits yet. In a long-drawn-out operation, they might collapse out of exhaustion rather quickly since they're not trained to deal with those kinds of situations." explained one of the scientists that was accompanying the girl. Unfortunately, almost nobody paid attention to him. Those "investors" were talking to each other and discussing the pros and cons of mass producing them.
'I really want to go back home. It feels somehow wrong to stay here and listen to them discussing how to raise monsters.'
Then we heard a small bell ring twice.
'Finally, it's over.' With a sigh of relief, I finally managed to get out.
The bell was a signal. They were probably going to discuss something even more important, and only a few very trusted soldiers could stay there in order to protect them.
"Maybe I should've listened to my father and taken over his small shop. Here, the pay is good, but nowhere near worth the headache that comes with it."