Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 541: Playground

“Little kitten,” I greet her.

Myrra sits beside me and shoulder-checks me, “Not you too, my feral angry kitten. I’ve had enough of that nickname. Are you looking for a fight? We can fight if you want. Let our fists do the talking.”

“So uncivilized. Typical lynthari. Go fight Lily.”

”That petite black-haired girl? Fuck no. I already had a match with her and she hurts herself more with those weird moves of hers than I ever could.”

“That’s our Lily,” I nod. “You’re early.”

“That tends to happen when the person you’re following nearly detonates an entire moon. Damn, who knows how many levels she gained from doing that. She just got me Attendee Status and didn’t want to stay there, so we moved sooner.”

“Sounds like a reasonable thing to do. Tutorial attendee, 7th floor, floor quest, crazy lynthari, side quest.”

“I can hear it all now,” she says, her tail flicking from side to side.

It would seem I still feel the urge to pull it. I’m a weak man, truly.

“I’m glad you made it,” I say.

“Ohhh? Is that a hint of genuine emotion? Has the feral one grown accustomed to people? Should I start calling you ‘the tamed one’?”

Yeah, typical lynthari.

Ignoring her question, I jump to my feet, and Myrra does the same. As usual, she enjoys being an entire head taller than me. Tsk.

“Are we gonna fight?” she asks, excitement clear in her voice. “Have I made you angry?”

“Not really,” I say, and jump off the cliff. And Myrra follows close behind.

We both start walking slowly along the forest’s edge. The golden light pierces the leaves and covers us in a shifting cloak of shadows as the branches sway.

“Does Lissandra know how hard it’s going to be to escape the tutorial?” I ask.

“Is there anything that woman doesn’t know?” Myrra snorts, plucking a leaf from one of the trees and sticking it in my hair where it remains.

I ignore the leaf and ask again, “So she has a plan?”

“Obviously.” Nodding, she places another leaf in my hair. “And obviously, she’s refusing to tell me. If I ask, she’ll probably make me guess for hours on end before leaving and calling me a fool.”

“I would do the same in her place.”

“Are you really picking a fight, feral one? Fight me if you’re not a coward. I’ll show you what I’ve learned.”

“Later. If you want to beat out your frustration from your months alone with Lissandra, look somewhere else.”

“Damn it,” she mutters, deflating. “Maybe you really have become the tamed one. The old you would already be going for my throat.”

“Sure he would. So, how did your round of the 6th floor end?”

She only answers after putting another leaf and two small branches in my hair. “We went into the Mana Desert. She tested the Champion there, and he died, so she complained that he was too weak. Then we made our way to a city full of creepy mind mages. She took over the Framework there and complained about how weak they were, same as usual. After that, she did something crazy and truly fucked up to the Framework. Something about an experimental form of mana destabilization, she mentioned forcing the Framework’s spatial locks open, triggering a cascading mana backlash through its core. Something about destabilizing the mana stores and the underlying psychic network, creating a runaway spiral feedback loop that fed on itself until everything ruptured, blah blah.”

At this, she waves her hand in a vaguely confused gesture.

“Anyway, then a creepy giant eyeball appeared so she killed it. Then something exploded and it started getting really cold when a lightning spear came out of nowhere and tried to kill us, but Lissandra caught it and threw it back. Then some kind of lightning dwarf woman appeared and tried to kill Lissandra. Portals started opening and the prison guards appeared as well. Feral one, it was a real shitshow. I almost died more times than I can remember. But it was fun all around.”

As I listen, I can only nod in agreement, it really does sound fun.

“So you left after that?” I ask.

“Yes. When we got here she noticed your groupʼs mana signature lingering in the air. Hell, maybe she can smell them or something, so we tracked them here and arrived two days ago. Then we waited for you. Someone told them the lumorans would let you go soon though I wouldn’t put it past her to have made that happen.”

“I bet you would have rushed to save me if you thought it was needed,” I say.

We exit the forest and continue walking next to the river, across a field full of lush green grass swaying in the wind.

There are no more leaves to put in my hair, so Myrra starts pulling up grass to place there instead.

“Are you sure? I think she’d probably say you needed to escape on your own or just stay there.”

I think about it for a while. It does sound like something she would do.

Almost out of space in my hair, Myrra starts putting stuff on the crown floating over my head. She plucks the longest blades of grass she can find, ties them together into rings, then hangs them on the pointy parts. Her tail swishing side to side the whole time, her ears perked up. I can see how much fun she’s having.

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Figuring I’ve let her drop her guard enough, and knowing she won’t be expecting it, I prepare.

When she bends to pick through another patch of grass, I blast her with kinetic energy, sending her flying into the river.

Water splashes as she twists in the air, landing on her hands and feet before she jumps up. I half expect her to hiss, with the way her tail bristles straight out.

Returning her glare, I slowly remove the leaves, branches, and grass from my hair and crown.

Then I straighten up and calmly say, “Nya.”

“You feral fuck!” she hisses and charges at me.

Before she even reaches me, I teleport away through a [Ley Line] I extended toward the villa while we walked, knowing she wouldn’t notice. And I know that escaping will only piss her off even more.

I arrive in one of the gardens, finding the twins sitting on the ground, as they watch Maya and Lily have a friendly spar.

“Hey,” I say, taking a seat next to them, careful not to interrupt the match.

Both Lily and Maya notice me but they keep going, too caught up to stop. Lily has an incredibly tough body, but with her [Compounding], Maya actually seems capable of hurting her. The more she draws blood with her mana weapons, the sharper they get, at least against Lily. It’s a sort of temporary buff, probably adjusting the frequency of her weapons to Lily’s wavelength or something.

Honestly, who knows how high-tier skills like that work? I will need to observe it a bit more, but it really seems strong.

“Hey, are you betting with us on who’ll win? And it’s nice to see you made it. Of course, we never expected anything different. After all, you’re a tough motherfucker to kill,” Denis says, smiling broadly.

Aaron nods. “Really hard to kill.”

“That’s true,” I confirm proudly. “I’m betting on Lily. Is Lissandra around?”

“Well, Maya would be sad to hear we all bet on Lily,” Denis smirks. “Some time ago, Min-Jae, Sophie, Tess, and Izzy tried to bet on Maya, but even they stopped after a while, hehe. That scary woman came here not that long ago with a sassy lynthari. She insulted everyone she could, left Myrra for us to deal with, and fucked off somewhere,” Denis says.

His brother is quick to correct him though, “She insulted everyone but Biscuit. She just stared at him for a minute and nodded once. What do you think that means, Nat?”

“Hell if I know. But damn if I’m not happy to be out of that fucking cube.”

Having finished her sparring match, Maya walks over, wiping the sweat from her brow. “Does your release mean the lumorans are going to step back and let us do our own thing?”

“I wouldn’t say so,” I shake my head. “I don’t think they’re entirely sure either; only mostly. So our prison got upgraded from a cube to this golden cage. We’ll get rewards, materials, and more thanks to my achievements as long as we just sit here.”

“That fucks up our floor performance,” Maya grumbles as she sits on the ground. “We’ll probably survive a lot of waves, but as long as we sit around doing nothing, the rewards just won’t be all that good.”

Lily waves at me happily and sits down beside her. “What happens if we try to escape?”

“Probably nothing good,” I shrug. “But I wouldn’t worry too much about the rewards. As the waves progress, things will get more dangerous. Eventually, the Lumorans will be forced to focus on their own tasks, leaving us free to act when the difficulty spikes. Plus, there’s the tournament to look forward to.”

They get into an excited conversation, and I find myself thinking about it as well. With the tournament so close, I don’t care much about this floor overall. Sure, I’m curious about the floors of Hell difficulty. I can level up, learn, and gain a lot here and there, and they do tend to be truly dangerous. But after tasting Beyond and the outside world from the Beyond Quest, I find myself wanting newer and fancier stuff.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have someone to talk to,” I say, interrupting the conversation as I move to stand.

“Is she back?” Denis asks, looking around nervously.

“It would seem so,” I confirm, leaving with a wave.

I make my way toward the waterfalls, crossing the river, the opposing bank, and a calm lake before reaching it. Boosting myself into the air, I make a few leaps and land at the top of the cliff where the water cascades down. And though the sound should be deafening, it’s unusually quiet here.

Lissandra sits on a nearby stone, just like before when I met her on the 5th floor. She looks to be my age, her body built like it was designed for peak human performance.

Her hair shines silver, and her unremarkable brown eyes watch me with interest. She no longer carries the dagger made from the flesh and bones of the Saint Absolute, but she retains the pitch black one cast from my mana.

A single orb of mana floats next to her, apparently part of her training. Something about that orb is deeply wrong, just looking at it makes my brain ache, even with my mid-grade arcane passive, and I’m not even using the full extent of my senses.

She glances at the crown above my head, at the evil pyramids I use for training, and Fracture strapped to my waist. Even though I can’t feel anything from her, and her eyes look so normal, I’m sure she can see right through me.

“You’re early,” I say, sitting down on a nearby boulder.

“Enter your mental space and speak with that guest of yours,” she replies.

No greetings, no wasted time. That’s just how she is.

I do as told and retreat into my mind.

This time I find myself in a children’s playground, and Whitey is wearing casual clothes: a bleached-out black shirt and loose blue shorts. The playground is empty and surrounded by a small park. There’s a merry-go-round in the center, a swing set, and a tunnel.

Whitey sits on that small wooden horse attached to a big spring.

“Yo,” I greet him.

“Yoo,” he says back. “What’s that bitch doing here?” he asks, nodding towards Lissandra.

The silver-haired woman ignores his words and sits on a nearby bench. As with everything she does, there’s an air of dignity about her. Even in this younger version, it suits her.

I don’t hesitate for long and sit on the other wooden horse next to Whitey. It looks way too fun not to.

After rocking back and forth for a while, Whitey finally addresses her: “You can’t do anything about me. I know it, you know it, and even that cheating mana-bitch-maniac here knows it.”

Lissandra nods. “I thought maybe I could, but you are too different from Myrra. The only way for you to join Myrra and I would be to overwrite the little pup’s memories. After that, I could make further modifications until you ended up like us.”

“I told you,” Whitey says, turning back to me while continuing to rock on the horse.

“Not even if we moved him to another attendee and let him take over?” I ask her.

“He came about as a result of your Challenge. In this specific case, he can’t be ‘moved’ or separated from you.”

“I see.”

Whitey smiles brightly. “Damn. I guess I really do have to kill you if I want to live.”