Artificial 3: The Valla Chronicles

Chapter 28: Valla's Lair

(Seth's POV)

The Onis have disappeared save for Reina,
who's back to back with me,
covering my back and I hers.
I experiment with the shadow rune more by molding my hands into various other things such as a halberd,
sword, pickaxe,
chainsaw, gun,
crab pinchers, buzzsaw,
hell,
I even used the shadows to make my fist larger,
and they packed more of a punch.
You'd think that the shadows I use make matter out of nothing,
and it does,
but the thing is,
even though I'm adding matter on my hands and arms,
it should increase the weight and be unwieldy,
but the surpise is shaping my hands with the shadows,
which still feels like my normal hand weight.

A buff zombie runs past me to Reina,
but I stopped it easily by shaping my hand into a giant shadow flail and stretching my arm like rubber,
splattering the zombie against a tree and knocking it over in the process.
Reina is swinging her Tetsubo,
but let's be honest,
it's a glorified club with built-in spikes. The buff zombies hold their own and tank several swings,
which is saying something because Reina is physically stronger than me despite being a B rank demon,
which also goes to show you that the Demon Council's power system or Rank Up system is complete and total BULLSHIT!

A buff zombie throws the ball and chain at me from its arm like it's a flail,
I cast a shadow rune on my body, picture my body as rubber or gum like, and the next thing I know,
my body starts stretching like a cartoon man on Town Force.
The buff zombie makes a confused noise as it retracts the ball and chain,
and my body fires itself forward like a rubber band,
and I headbutt it square in the helmet, making it shatter like glass.
"Oh now this is pretty fucking cool! I'm like that one stretchy pirate from that really long anime and manga series."

I fire my stretchy hand and repeatedly jab the buff zombie until its head just falls off from the excessive force,
no genius,
but I guess it was only natural that its decaying body could only withstand so much.
I look over to see Reina thoroughly enjoying the beat down she's giving the buff zombies while her body is ignited on fire,
glad to see she's having fun,
but one thing plagues my mind.

Where did the twin Oni's go?
It's like their scent has disappeared, even though I can barely smell them. "Reina, let's ditch the small fries and follow the twins's scent!"
Reina looks at me like she's saying,
'But Seth, cannon fodder.'
I take off after the twins's scent.
"Oh for fuck's sake!"

Reina demonic leaps after me and keeps up rather easily,
oh hey my siblings happen to be in this direction,
I stop at the base of the European style fortress and focuses my aura into the ground to get a good reading on where everyone is,
to paint you an example,
it's like a bat's echo location or more accurately it's like I can see everything picture perfectly without having to see anything.

I close my eyes and picture perfectly see multiple auras underground along with the the twins's scent,
I also faintly detected other souls barely attached to the bodies,
likely zombies.
"Reina, make an explosion, and make it big. We're diving down there."
Reina hands me my Tetsubo and starts making hand signs Naruto style.
She inhales,
and I get as far away from her as possible.

She exhales massive fireballs and kicks up a big enough explosion,
followed by four more.
I run over to her only to see what looks like an underground structure system, fuck,
no dice,
I look around and that's when I noticed the twins's scent actually goes into the fortress.
For fuck's sake,
that was wasted effort.
"Sorry Reina, into the fortress!"
Reina chases after me,
yelling,
stop telling her what to do.

(Sora's POV)

My brother, sister, and me toy around with this witch lady who pulls out all the stops on us, wind,
lightning, fire, ice,
rock walls shooting out of the ground only for us to lay the smack down on her.
She did a piss poor job at keeping us away from her,
then again,
we are toying with her.

If we were actually taking her seriously, she'd be dead in seconds,
but let me make one thing crystal clear. We are capable of getting serious before anything gets life threatening.
If she posed even the tiniest possibility of being a threat,
we'd end her before the fight even began.
I come down with an explosive axe kick that freezes the ground and makes ice spikes shoot up.

The witch is quick on her feet and dodges in between the spikes,
Chase pursues her from her blind spot and punches at her only to dodge the last second,
little did she know that just because my brother 'misses' with air quotes,
he can still shoot fire from any part of his body,
which is what he does.
Terra accepts the setup Chase gave her by kicking the which into the air, deploying four lightning runes the hold her four limbs,
via electricity,
makes a finger gun thenblast a charged bolt of electricity at the witch,
making her faceplant into the ground.

The witch tries to crawl away,
a typical generic overconfident villain trope that happens all the time in movies when their ego,
pride,
and confidence get shattered.
We all stop in front of her as she slowly looks up at us,
terrified,
releasing fear and making us more powerful.
The fear was a delicious feeling,
the kind you get when you're turned on. It just makes your body feel all tingly and sensitive.
Overall, it's like a drug to us demons. The witch cast some sort of spell as this yellow looking energy forms a yellow looking circle around her body.

It looks like it's healing her like in a video game or some fantasy,
shoenen manga.
We let the woman get up just to prove a point that we are superior to this fragile middle-aged witch.
The witch punches Chase in the nose, and then in the stomach only to realize that we can't feel amy of this at all.
Hell,
she even swings her witch staff wond at his head only for Chase to grab it and her wrist,
moments later we could all loudly hear her bones breaking and it felt very satisfying to hear it.

Chase lets her go,
and Terra foot sweeps her only to stomp her face into the ground,
making it nice and bloody.
I take my turn, and I make it as brutal as possible,
starting with dislocating her arm with the broken wrist, then dislocating a leg via sitting on her,
and finally breaking the other good leg and the only good arm.

Chase finishes the job with a snap of his fingers,
igniting the witch's legs and slowly burning her to death from the legs up and increasing the intensity of the flames every five seconds until she was a charred body,
aftwards the black energy that's always on our forehead as a tiny dot that could be mistaken as mole.
After several seconds of being high off victory,
we all embraced each other,
happy to be reunited,
and it was only then that when it clicked,
we've been separated/reunited.

After our happy moment,
we just realized that the whole fight/skirmish was over and that no one is in our line of sight,
me and Chase take a big sniff of the air and immediately follow Seth and Reina's scent to a basment like area where we noticed a window that showed us an elevator like sci-fi contraption/hallway that was connected into a large black marble pyramid.

"Chase, Sora in here."
Terra says,
getting our attention.
We walked over to her, and surely enough,
it was an elevator,
complete with a key and a single button labeled 77F with a star icon.
Terra turns the key and pushes the button,
followed by a second delay before we start moving.

The elevator tilts over a little, making us support ourselves by propping our hands against the door.
Roughly a minute passes since our descent,
the elevator stops,
refixes itself,
and the doors slowly open into the black marble pyramid where we were flooded by everyone's scent all at once.

It was complete darkness,
save for a torch here and there,
followed by shadowy human figures wobbling back and forth as they walked in our direction.
Joy,
more fucking zombies.
"Well, this screams horror movie vibes." Keiko chimes in,
and we just look at her as if saying not the time the place for a bad joke.