"See these words, there darker than the other," Daniela placed her fingers on top of such words showing it to Finn.
"Oh, now that you mention it, it's visible, what does it say?" Finn looked through. "Can you decipher it?"
"I'll try," she opens her palm, the source of light disappears, replacing it with a source code, she holds it closer to the file as she flipped through all the pages. The code lights up and a few words appear around it.
"How did you do that?" Finn watched her in surprise.
"It's a simple trick, I just gathered all the darkened words and projected them using the source code."
Finn leans in and looks at the words shimmering around the source code, "Fourth book, fourth shelf, fourth row."
"That's pretty straightforward, I was expecting to go for a deeper treasure hunt," the words and source flickered off.
"Let's see," Finn holds up the lamp up and walks towards where the selves where, and starts counting from the left, "one, two three..."
Daniela walks towards the shelf and notices the shelf had seven columns, she counts from the left and places her hand on the fourth book and pulls it out.
"No secret passageways?" Finn looked around.
"It's not a passageway, I think it's the book itself," she opens the book and sees an empty first page. Her fingers slightly slide on the page, flipping it.
"What the fuck is this place? I'm stuck here, but I have to work here if I don't want to die," Daniela read it out loud.
"Well, that's scary," Finn peeped in. "Is that all?"
"That's all on the first page," she flips on to the next page, "I still have no idea what this place is."
"I don't think he knows what kind of a place this is," Finn mocks as he walks off to check for any similar files.
Daniela flips through the first few pages, "The first few pages are just him talking about adapting to whatever this place was."
"Adapting?" Finn looks into the hole from which Daniela had taken the book.
"Oh... this place used to be a slave trade... outpost, what?" Daniela looked at it closer.
"Slave trade, are you sure?" he continued looking around it.
"Day sixty seven, the first batch is being sent off for harvest," she read it out loud, horrified at the words. "I had originally thought this place was an orphanage, but they were actually growing orphan children as slaves and sending them off somewhere, I can't tell this to anyone because of the curse, but I'm free to write as long as no one reads this."
"What the hell? Is that real?" Finn turned back in surprise his hand accidentally pressing into the gap between the gap.
The shelf creaks as another book pops up in the gap. "Whoa!" Finn watched in surprise, but Daniela couldn't take her eyes off of the book on her hand.
"I should have just killed myself, no matter what I do, I won't be able to atone for this, they were using the children as fo... it ends here, with some scribblings of something," Daniela closes the book and puts into her space bracelet as she taps on the bracelet, the book turns into dust and vanishes off.
"This book seems to have been written by someone else, but what's up with this," Finn noticed the lock at the side of the journal.
"The book is locked? Something worse than what we read must be in there," she inspected the golden lock holding the book covers together.
BEEP
Finn's Vördr beeped as they were looking through the book. He slightly taps on it and an audio plays, "Finn, we got it, let's get out of here."
"How did you guys get it already?" Finn asked in surprise.
"We broke the vault, and we have a hundred metal soldiers coming after us," Nichole yelled from the other side.
"Metal?" Finn looked puzzled.
"She's talking about Androids," Thomas yelled.
"Woah, don't be so angry General Grumpy," Nichole teased him.
"Why are you two flirting, what's the current status?" Finn said embarrassed as the princess was listening to it with him. "Where are you guys?" Finn spoke into his Vördr.
"We're almost at the surface, has any of the alarms gone off?"
"No, that's strange, did you guys do something?"
"Nichole did."
"Wait I'll meet up with you guys," Finn tapped on his Vördr, turning it off. He glances back at Daniela, as he tapped the red book on his ring, the book turning into dust, "wanna join, princess?"
"No, I have somewhere else to be, what are you going to do, and why are you barefoot?"
"It's because I'm incognito," Finn pulled on his mask, "If we make a mess of this place, won't there be an investigation?"
"An investment won't do anything, how do you think they kept all of this under wraps so far?"
"It doesn't matter, let's just burn this down anyway, The body is but a vessel, if it loses essence, it is nothing but a corpse," Finn chanted, a thin layer of smoke rose around him, before a silver knight armor walked out of it.
"Another one of your puppets?" Daniela asked Finn.
"Yep, see ya later," Finn looked at the puppet beside him, a knight like armor missing its right hand, instead a cannon took its place.
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"What are you idiots doing?" a man in a black suit walked towards the two guards who were playing with a wolf.
"Boss, we have no idea what this is?" one of the guards petted the wolf, tousling its head.
"Ah, you idiots, whatever, just keep watch, I don't care as long it's— what's that?"
"What's what, boss?"
"You idiots someone got past you two?"
The guards face paled as they heard a loud thrumming sound. The door smashed open as a man and a girl burst out with multiple metal armor following behind them.
"Who are you?" the man in the suit yelled at them.
"Hey Grumpy, there are way too many androids here, what do we do?" Nichole tugged at Thomas's suit as the almost ten metal men surrounded the two.
"Can you take care of these tin heads?" Thomas pulled out a sword from his sheath, a white sword glimmering under the streetlight.
"What are you going to do?" Nichole took out a black wand and changed its form to a long staff, the aura around her changing.
"We have a six-star mage here," Thomas looked at the man in the suit standing behind the android, "I'll take care of him."
"Alright General Grumpy," Nichole pulled on a transparent string on her staff, and an arrow manifested. She aims at one of the androids and shoots.
The white metal is pushed off but the strike only leaves a small scratch on its chest.
Thomas looks back, "You're going to have to try harder," before lunging off towards the man.
"No you don't," Thomas's blade crashes with a blue hexagonal wall, "who the hell are you?"
"We are just passersby's, your auction house looked good, thought we might visit," Thomas takes a step back.
"Bastard," multiple mana circles appear around the man, "I'll burn you down."
...
"Shit, why aren't my strikes doing any damage," Nichole watched as the androids closed in on her. "Power jump," she gathered mana around her feet before pushing herself off the ground.
One of the android jumps and gets close to her, but Nichole calmly pulls on the string once more, another arrow appears. She lets go of the string, the arrow crashing into its head as it strikes, sending the droid crashing.
Another one appears beside her, but it's brought down by an unknown force. She looks to the side and realises it was Finn's wolf who smashed it to the ground.
Another three droids surround her...
BOOM
One of them falls to the ground from a sudden sound of metal striking against it hard. She looks up and sees Finn holding a rifle.
"This is good, although it's draining my mana," Finn pulled on the safety as he took aim once more.
Nichole gathers mana around her feet and lands a kick on one of the advancing androids, but it grabs her by her leg and smashes her into the ground.
"Gotcha," Nichole who was laying in dirt pulled another arrow on her staff, and let's go. The moment the arrow leaves she focuses on it, and the arrow spins at the android crashing into it and bursting through it completely.
"Ha, just as I thought, if I use telekinesis to spin an arrow, it'll increase its power," Nichole got up wiping the dust off her clothes as the rest of them got closer to her.
She notices a powerful battle going on around her, Thomas and the man fighting.
"Freeze and break: Glacial spike," multiple spikes of ice rose around Thomas, but swings his sword, cutting through all of the ice spikes.
"Nature of this world, apprehend my foe: Tera bind," this time roots broke out from beneath Thomas's feet, holding him in place.
"Sword force," the energy around his sword grew deep bright covering the entire sword in an intense glow, "under normal circumstances, I would have enjoyed this battle, but not today," he pierced his sword into the ground, "Iron Mountain Arts: Four Corner Prison."
Four large prison cells surround the two, growing for a few meters before stopping, the top of the cells getting closed off by a deep energy.
"You think enclosing the space is going to work," the man walked towards him as multiple circles formed around him, "Spears of frost, from the deepest and coldest of winters, coldest of all: Glacial Cannon."
The circles around him shimmered bright as the energy concentrated around it.
"Sword Force: Moonlit Cannon," Thomas held his sword straight in a thrusting position.
"Max output," the circles shone bright as they shot forward blue energy spears.
"Full Moon," Thomas thrust forward.
BOOM
The prison cell on one of the sides broke as the man in the suit was seen on the floor as the cells around him disappeared and Thomas was seen sheathing his sword.
"Uh, this bastard," the man groaned as he struggled to get back on his feet, "what the fuck do you want?"
"I already took what I wanted," Thomas smirked as he looked to the side and saw Nichole had taken out the androids.
BOOM
A large explosion was seen on the upper floor of the auction house, the roof seemingly blown off as Finn got down.
"What was that?" Thomas looked at Finn.
"Let's just say I got some valuable information," Finn looked at the man on the floor. Suddenly a metal knight falls beside Finn landing on its face.
"What's that?" Thomas looked at Finn flatly.
Finn kicks the Armor on its head, "I was trying to look cool, why'd you ruin that?" Finn replies as a shadow wraps around it devouring it into his shadow and the wolf also jumping into it, "It's just my corpse."
The two guards watched the events unfold without being able to move a finger at the sudden turn of events.
"How's the rifle I got you?" Nichole came after finishing off the last one.
"It's draining me dry, but it's effective."
"Let's get out of here shall we?"
"Who are you guys?" the man on the floor asked panicking at the burning sight besides him while looking at the three asked individuals standing in front of him.
"Oh, who are we?" Nichole laughed manically as she took an awkward pose.
Followed by Finn, "We are the..." his voice shifting to a subtle whisper, "hey, General say something cool."
Thomas looked down at the man, his eyes searching for the right choice of words, "Genderless Transcendents."
"What?" Nichole and Finn turned to Thomas, "what the fuck is that?"
The man on the floor grumbled, "Genderless—what?"
_________________________
"Boss, got the stuff," Daniela pulled out a book and handed it over to Martin as the people around them panicked at the explosion.
"What did you do?" Martin looked through the book, his voice calm.
"Nothing, whatever is happening around here is not me."
"Not you? I never said it was you, does that mean it's you?" Martin grinned at her.
"That's not something you want to poke at," her eyes meeting with his for a moment, "I might end up burning this place down to prove you wrong."
"How old are you?" his own eyes meeting with hers.
"I believe I've told you before," Daniela taps on his chest, "memory problem?"
"Maybe..."
_________________________