Mark gulped as he stared at the circular passage embedded into the stony ceiling.
"Fall back," Madame said in a severe tone.
Both he and Nahar obeyed without asking any questions. After a few minutes of cautious but hasty retreat away from the passage, they finally left the unnerving area.
Mark's gaze sharpened as he glanced at Madame. "Could that passage be related to why you're looking for Freddy?" he asked.
"Mr. Afronte," she barked, none of her usual joviality in her tone. "Please—shut up."
He lowered his head a bit, silently apologizing.
The next few minutes passed in silence. They didn't decide on what to do next; well, they couldn't. The passage complicated things. It was clearly anomalous, and there was a non-zero chance that it might have been related to the destruction of Camp Violet.
When they read through all of the reports that summarized what happened to Camp Violet, one of the things that stood out was what had happened to Freddy Stern. The whole case surrounding him had been a bit of an anomaly.
On the same day the Camp Violet destruction incident happened, he ran off into the Wastes. Then scouts were sent out to search after him. Not some random pushovers, either; elite agents. Peak professional two-stars with many years of experience. But they hadn't returned from their mission. Even their corpses had never been identified.
The thing with this whole case was that although a search of the surrounding area had been done and survivors and equipment had been retrieved, the investigation of what precisely had happened, well... it hadn't been that thorough. It had only aimed to accomplish one thing—disprove that the camp had been destroyed by a rival faction. In the end, this was the only thing that actually mattered.
The investigation had ended the moment they made the conclusion that some form of a hostile entity from the caverns was the thing responsible. As for what exactly it was, it didn't actually matter; all it meant was that this area was too dangerous to continue excavation. A consequence was that the investigation had left behind many loose ends that nobody had any interest in tying.
Mark couldn't stop his gaze from slowly moving in Madame's direction. Her back was held straight, her expression was stony and stern, and her arms were crossed. She was silent; she was thinking something through.
Why was she looking for that man?
The mysterious circumstances behind the man's disappearance grew more bizarre with each new discovery. Mark suppressed the feeling of sickness that bubbled in his gut. What now? Where was this leading to? What kind of horrors was he guilty of inflicting upon that man? But he pushed it down.
This was no time for a mental breakdown.
Suddenly, they heard the sound of footsteps making their way towards their location. All three of them, including Madame, immediately got into a stance and turned to face the sound.
So far, they hadn't encountered a single living thing within the Wastes. As the trio observed the figure of the decaying body of a woman appear before their eyes, they realized that that still hadn't changed.
"An undead!" Nahar exclaimed. "There must be a death-affinity deviant nearby," he concluded, keeping his calm as he glanced around, passively scouting the area.
The woman's body was already severely decomposed, and the undead could barely walk. Nasty pus dripped down the side of the armor, and its steps sloshed with the mangling of rotten flesh on its feet.
"Wait," Mark suddenly breathed out as he raised an arm. "Look at the equipment. Wasn't that worn by one of the three scouts sent after Freddy?" he recalled.
"Indeed," Nahar confirmed. "That's Jenny Walker."
The undead woman was still awkwardly shambling towards them. Such an undead should have been no threat to their party—but it was at this moment that both Mark and Nahar noticed that Madame hadn't dropped her guard.
"Where... Where am I?" a low, gurgling voice sounded from the undead woman.
Mark took an involuntary step back in surprise. "That thing can speak!?"
"Thing?" the undead asked. "Speak? Who are you? What... Where am I?" It moved its bloodshot gaze to stare at its rotting arm. Its eyes shot open, revealing the faint outline of black, square pupils.
Suddenly, a twang echoed through the caves as a bolt pierced straight through the zombie's skull. Madame's arm had morphed into a crossbow of tendons and bone, and she was already regrowing another piece of bone ammo.
The undead did not drop to the ground. Madame fired again. Plucky twangs and wet thuds sounded repeatedly as bolt after bolt embedded into the undead's rotting flesh, but the attacks failed to take it down.
Surrounded by three elders on each side, with their scout following behind them, Rahal led the eight-man group on what felt like a wild goose chase through the interspace. His long, white hair trailed down his back, and the red lines on his face made concentric circles. He looked much like his brother, the only notable exception being his striking blue eyes.
Thankfully, they had Larem's help; otherwise, they couldn't track these people. Whoever they were, they were highly proficient at covering the evidence of their passing. Well, at first, at least. For the first ten passages, they had left close to no tracks, but then, likely deeming themselves safe enough, they stopped bothering.
It had already been more than a month, and the most their search party had been able to achieve was keeping pace with the fleeing individuals. This deep within the interspace was dangerous. Lethal. Difficult challenges and frightening monstrosities lurked behind every corner, and as such, they had to make their way forward carefully.
The people they were following, however, seemingly weren't limited by the same obstacles. And they didn't seem foolish or rash, either. Not one nasty predator was disturbed in their wake, and they hadn't unwittingly walked into a single hellish environment so far. These people were experts at navigating the interspace, and with each passing moment, they grew more convinced that they weren't human at all.
Their search was no question of revenge for the defiling of their patriarch's body. No, they had more important reasons to go after these people. There had been two treasures in Janhalar's possession that needed to be retrieved at all costs. First was the starfire mirror rose extract. And the second was the prime vestige. Both were crucial enough that even their deaths would be a worthwhile investment to get them back.
Which was to say that they had come prepared to die.
They trodded through a jungle environment. Mud coated their uniforms, and the sounds of abominable parrot-esque monsters screeching their lungs out echoed all around them as the plants themselves moved to assault them and slow their progress.
Although they made sure to confirm that they were safe enough to travel, they couldn't afford to take things slow. It was uncertain whether their quarry knew they were being tracked, but either way, they were moving fast.
Yet again they found themselves at a loss for where to go next, and Larem had to use his talent again. The man kept his talent going until his eyes started bleeding, and ultimately, he spotted the next trail, quite a bit away from the direction they had been heading in.
But that wasn't all he witnessed. "Take care," he said in a slightly nasal voice. "I believe they are close."
Rahal prepared himself for combat.
He was a caster by specialization. Although his blood-manipulation-enhancing talent wasn't patriarch material, he was mighty proud of it. Power-wise, the only person in the entire clan who could outdo him was Nahar. That kid was a true monster.
He pulled a wand out of his Storage Ring and grasped it tightly. It was made of bone, with a red crystal on top. All the others got ready, too, and they made their way forward.
Indeed, Larem had been telling the truth. Their quarry wasn't far—the two individuals they were chasing were... resting, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were being attacked. Initially, he believed that they could potentially be powerful enough that they simply didn't care. Until he and all of the elders surrounding him finally felt the duo's power.
"Wha—!?" he couldn't stop himself from yelping in shock.
Although surprisingly well concealed, these people's presence was that of... two-stars!? He didn't know whether to smile or frown. Something was off. They could clearly hold their own even in the depths of wild passage realms—so how?
"Don't drop your guard," he told his party. "You never know what they could be hiding."
They coordinated their strategy and surrounded their enemy. Once they got close enough, Rahal could see their faces. The two people appeared to be a short man and a tall woman, crouched and conversing. Their hair was black, and their equipment was decent but nothing special. They appeared to be little more than two ordinary Caucasian archhumans.
What caught Rahal's attention, however, was their eyes.
Their pupils were in the shape of eerie squares, and a general air of wrongness surrounded the two.
Eventually, all the combatants got into position. With a flash of his will, Rahal revealed his power, and the others took the cue to jump out of the bushes and surround their quarry.
Their targets didn't panic; instead, they swiftly but cautiously raised their guard and prepared for combat.
"It appears that we have been surrounded," the man stated the obvious with a thick accent, sounding almost Middle Eastern, but not quite.
"Do not engage, Kaefalge," the woman commanded, much to the man's chagrin. She also had an unusual way of speaking, but it was less her accent and more the fact that she overpronounced her words and spoke slowly but clearly. "Diplomacy always comes first."
"Do not school me on diplomacy, Firrita," the man responded.
Rahal cautiously observed their exchange as he evaluated the situation. Everything about them was odd. Their stance was unusual, but he could sense great experience oozing from how these two held themselves. There was no fakeness to it—their power was on full display. They were truly two-stars. But their experience didn't at all match their power.
Rather than beat around the bush, he decided to cut straight to the point. "You two looted the corpse of a man with an appearance similar to ours. Hand back everything you took."