42: Human Bomb
His nerves felt like they were being strung out to dry for hours on end, and his head ached in a way that was different than spending all of his mana. It needled him, telling him that something bad was gonna happen, something was already happening, and something bad just happened and he just barely grazed by it all at once.
That was what his Sense Vibrations was telling him on a constant basis. For each minute that passed, he felt another life far away being extinguished. He could already tell that many were suffering, hidden away in places that were away from prying eyes. Their souls cried out in a way that it was impossible to ignore, their pain and anguish painting their souls in such vivid colors to his mind.
“You’re really looking pale there. Are you okay?”
Hearing Nina’s surprised concern made him flinch. She looked at him questioningly, her soul studying him as if scanning for any issues in her property.
Somehow, that made him feel a lot better. Sure, she was looking at him as if he was nothing but a product to use, but the fact was that she was genuinely concerned.
It was like driving a car and something happened that made you stomp on the brakes. The company you had sitting beside you would be fine, already having their seatbelt on for their safety.
It was an entirely different ballpark when it was a tower of food you ordered for yourself, willingly and desperately holding back the tower like your life was on the line. He pretty much likened it to Nina doing exactly that.
“I’m fine. Just… I can feel a lot of things happening at once. It’s getting to me.”
“That Sense Vibrations skill of yours, right?” Nina nodded in understanding. “A powerful skill if you can sense anything from far away. Make sure you tamp it down a nudge. Sensing skills are valuable, but they can sometimes distract you from what’s in front of you. Trust me on this–I faced many would-be hunters who over-rely on said skills more than their actual eyes.”
That certainly brought him to a standstill. He definitely was using the Sense Vibrations more often than not, only proving her point when he kept getting distracted by every little thing. As long as he was here in the Grim Corner, it was like constant lights kept flashing at his eyes to get his attention. He did just that, controlling his Sense Vibrations to reduce in its potency, not reducing the range but keeping it only on the surface, so to speak.
It felt like a wave of relief washed over him, and his mind finally cleared. He started to pay better attention to his surroundings now, focused on his prime target for protection. Nina looked at him and nodded in approval.
“Good. We’re not that far away from the next informant. Come on.”
“Can you tell me a bit more about this guy?” Aidan asked. “I prefer not to find another pervert with a liking for young guys…”
He still shivered at Madam Welsh’s keen eyes lathering all over him before he left, the memory still fresh in his mind. Nina just giggled at that, completely ignoring his inner plight.
“Don’t worry, this next informant is more interested in younger women than spry men. Though I might consider asking for some freebies from Madam Welsh with you along…”
“Please don’t. I’ll never forgive you if you sell me to that woman.”
He said with absolute determination. He had no plans on following that order, even if it might tip off to Nina that he was no longer under her contract.
“I’m just teasing,” Nina smirked. “And most likely she would only want you to protect her people with your abilities. That’s why she was so interested in you.”
“Wait, what?” Aidan asked.
“Madam Welsh is known to have all kinds of information ready and primed for anyone with the right price, but it’s not a secret that she runs a special protective organization for displaced women here in the Grim Corner. She would probably put you to work finding more women that are out of their luck, and bringing them over to her side of things.”
“Oh…” Aidan widened his face in surprise. “That’s… awfully kind of her.”
“You’d do well to not expect her to be kind for free. For every woman she finds, she trains them up so that she can sell them to the right buyer through the Chainlords. Perfected courtesans that would drive any man crazy at prices in extortionist levels.”
“Okay, I'll take it back. She’s a devil incarnate.”
“Better than to just be thrown to the wolves at dirt-poor prices and not caring about them afterwards,” Nina stated. “She’s not a saint, but she’s not cruel either. That’s why I like working with her. Though she does often try to entice me to join her every so often.”
I’m not surprised, Aidan thought but refused to speak aloud.
Hearing about Welsh’s little side operation just kept teaching Aidan that the world is not as simple as it looked on the surface. That almost made him want to expand his Sense Vibrations again to feel a little better about what was hiding underneath the hood, but restrained himself as they kept going through alleyways and side tunnels that seemed to connect deeper under the layers of the Grim Corner.
He couldn’t even see the sky anymore, concrete hanging over their heads as they burrowed deeper into the corner. After passing several overhangs and sidepaths that would make finding anyone an impossible feat even for Aidan, they came across a house a few hundred meters away that took their notice.
“There it is,” Nina said, her footsteps hurrying up in front of Aidan. “His place is always a chore to get to, but he should provide some more intel about the Merunians.”
Getting closer to the house, Aidan decided to expand his Sense this time, focusing only on the house in front of them. That’s when he noticed something.
There weren't any live souls hiding within. Instead, there was a sense of dread and maliciousness that seemed to cover up the entire place, like a fog that obscured everything to his Sense Vibrations.
Before Nina could go up to the door and do her usual knocking patterns, Aidan swept forward and pulled her hand away. She looked back with a glare, but quickly retracted the sharp hostility her soul showed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t come in,” Aidan said. “My senses are telling me that something’s going on inside.”
“What?”
Aidan tried to explain his feelings on the matter, telling her that according to it, he felt nobody was inside, and instead it blinded him. Nina furrowed her brows, looking back at the door and instead just went straight for the door knob and turned it. It remained stuck in place.
“It’s locked,” Nina clicked her tongue. “And this guy only ever uses the front door. There’s no other path we can get into. He should be here at this time, like always…”
“Do you want to break in?” Aidan asked. Nina shook her head.
“That would just be calling out for unwanted attention. No, we need to open the lock without making too much noise. The thing is, I don’t have anything that could open the sort of locks this guy puts up. He’s paranoid like that, just like Madam Welsh.”
Aidan looked back towards the door, his senses telling him that the building inside was still foggy and hard to breach through. He never sensed anything like this before no matter how many times he used Soul Meditation and wandered around the city at night.
He thought about doing exactly that to peer inside, but his own soul was screaming that it could be dangerous. It was fine to enter physically, but his senses were telling him that entering as a spirit could be dangerous. That’s when he realized that inside was probably filled with magic that could be harmful to his spiritual self.
Damn it, it would be pretty nice if I can just… wait a minute. Can’t I?
He was constantly in tune with his soul, and his soul easily connected to everything else as long as he put his willpower behind it. So couldn’t he do exactly that?
He pressed his hand onto the door, closing his eyes. He tried to see if he could somehow connect his Soul Meditation without actually entering into meditation. He decided to cast Magic Focus, sharpening the structure of the spell he was creating, seeing if perhaps that might make anything come into reality. Then he casted Infusion, using Soul Meditation as the base onto his hand.
Through his will, he pulled apart the function of Soul Meditation that forced him to go into an unconscious state, only pulling the necessary portions of creating the projection. Then, he Infused that portion of the skill directly onto his hand.
A certain twinge entered his mind, reminding him again of trying to do something that wasn’t naturally done. He felt like he was breaking his skill apart by pulling it and twisting it way outside of its intended use.
Then, in a pop, his hand phased right through the door, nearly taking his entire arm.
Aidan gasped in surprise, then a gleeful smile spread across his lips as he turned to the wide-eyed Nina before winking at her.
“I’ll be back,” He said in a gruff, overly familiar tone of the famous terminator as he pushed himself through the door, making his entire body phase through with ease.
At the same time, a notification dropped onto his vision.
You have gained a new spell!
Phase (Copper)
Allows you to become intangible by bringing your spirit into the real world for a short amount of time, turning your body into a spiritual half-state that can bypass any physical obstruction in front of you. Requires constant focus during activation, and any interruption forces you out of the obstruction from the direction you came from.
Mana Cost: 30
…..
Ability Upgraded! Magic Focus (Copper) became Magic Focus (Bronze)!
…..
Spell Upgraded! Infuse (Copper) became Infuse (Bronze)!
Aidan smiled after seeing that not only did he gain a new useful spell, but also upgraded his two skills from Copper. Magic Focus was surprising, considering he had only gotten it recently, while Infuse definitely took its time. Then again, he tried to mix in his Soul Meditation, but it hadn’t improved either way. He supposed he should be glad that he hadn’t ripped the skill apart in his little experimentation.
Still, despite entering the house, he could barely see anything despite his high Perception. Everything was still dark as the murky depths, which was already starting to feel very strange to him.
He poured more effort into his skill, sensing the vibrations of every little thing within. He definitely caught wind of something, and it was the one pouring off that strange hazy smoke that covered his senses. Thankfully, he found the switch that would turn the lights on a few paces ahead of himself.
Trusting his Sense Vibrations, he made his way through and avoided any obstacles, giving his new Phase spell a break as he flipped the switch. The lights turned on, finally brightening up the area and–
“Holy mother of shit!”
Aidan screamed aloud, unable to process what he just saw. Blood was everywhere, covering every corner of the room in splotches of viscous red and crimson. He could see several parts that were possibly human strewn about, as though an explosion took place right here.
A human explosion from the looks of it, and that made him almost retch out his insides.
“Aidan? What’s going on?! Let me in!”
Nina’s voice carried out from the outside, shocking Aidan back to his senses. He looked at the door, riddled from the top and bottom with many different kinds of locks. He didn’t have the time to unlock each one, so he just used Craft to break apart each of the locks and have them tumble to the ground. He didn’t particularly care whether the owner would be mad, considering that the owner might not even be alive at this point.
He opened the door and let Nina in, only to see her flinch hard at what she saw just like Aidan. However, she kept herself in check, her amber eyes widening like saucers at the entire ordeal.
“W-What is this…?” Nina eventually let out, stepping a few paces forward and observing the ridiculousness of the entire situation. “Who did this? I know Pummel has some enemies, but…”
“Did he piss someone off so badly that they just eviscerated him?” Aidan asked. “And I’m guessing Pummel is…”
“The informant,” Nina nodded. “He sometimes leverages information against the other gangs, but that made him somewhat untouchable. But even I would never have guess it would go down like this…”
Recovering a lot better than Aidan could, Nina stepped through the bloody muck and investigated the scene with careful eyes. She went over to a table that was to the side, possibly where the source of all the gory mess was at, and once again flinched.
“Pummel, what exactly did you do…?” She whispered, her words drenched in pity at the sight.
Aidan didn’t even want to see what was on that other side, but his curiosity got the better of him as he walked through the muck. His boots left barely faint, barely visible prints with a squelch that would probably torment his mind to no end. When he got over to it, he saw why Nina flinched again.
There was definitely a man once sitting here, but the entire top half of his body was completely gone, leaving behind a pair of legs that seemed to have just forgotten that they had a top body. But Aidan quickly noticed something.
There was something radiating off of the corpse sitting on the chair. It came off in soft faint waves, but only to his senses. It was the very same murky darkness that completely overwhelmed his senses from earlier.
“What the hell is this…?” Aidan muttered.
“What is it?”
“I-I think I know how he died,” Aidan answered, not entirely confident in his words. “Whatever it is I’m feeling, it’s making my senses go wild. He didn’t die naturally, that’s for sure.”
“Even I can guess that much,” Nina scoffed. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean… it’s like a… uhh… a curse or something,” Aidan said, wondering if he got the right word. “Something dark and awful is just pouring off of the dude. It’s totally different from everything else I sensed so far. That’s the only word that seems to catch most of what I felt.”
“A curse…?” Nina pondered, her fingers touching her lip. “I don’t know anyone that deals in hexes or curses in this city. There are some weirdoes with dark magic, but never anything that complex…”
Before Nina could explain further, Aidan picked up on a few figures heading their way. They were approaching at a steady pace, following up the path that they used to get here.
“Uhh… was Pummel expecting company tonight other than us?”
“What are you… is anyone else coming?” Nina quickly picked up.
“Several people, yeah.”
“Shit…” Nina cursed, quickly looking around. “Let’s hide. Whoever they are might be the ones behind all of this.”
Aidan nodded, turning over to one of the doors that lead to a different room. But when he tried to open it, it was locked and left him shaking the knob hard.
“God, what’s with this guy? Does he lock every fucking door here?!”
“Aidan, do something!” Nina called out, the panic rising as footsteps could be heard from outside.
Aidan kept looking around, thinking of using his Vanish spell to hide them. But the thought of the approaching figures potentially using Dispel to make his Vanish disappear crossed his mind. It was too risky.
Then he had the plan in mind, turning to Nina.
“I’m still not experienced in this, so sorry in advance.”
Nina looked like she was about to question him again, but before she could, Aidan quickly embraced her whole, shocking her before pushing her and himself over to the door, forcing Phase to activate on them both.
He pushed on through with Nina in tow, getting them directly inside the locked room before the door to the house was forcefully opened from the other side.