284 Purge 3

Hearing that she was now once more allowed to use magic, Lilly's mouth curled up into a superior looking smug smile as she stared down the barrel of the Titan's shoulder mounted Guardian-R04 railgun, making no attempt to evade even as the high pitch hum of its supercapacitors made it clear that it was about to fire.

"Watch out!"

Seeing what was happening, the policeman who was still standing shouted out to Lilly to get her to move, but when she turned to glance at him he froze up in fear.

"Silence child, I'm focusing."

Lilly's golden eyes that had so far only been faintly lit now brilliantly shone as she scolded the policeman right as the Titan fired its railgun. Raising a single hand as her only defence, the logical outcome for Lilly would be death, but with the rule breaking and almost unfair power of mana once more responding to her calls it was an entirely different scenario. Deflecting the railgun penetrator using layers of mana crystals, Lilly emerged entirely unscathed from the dust kicked up by the round hitting the ground near her, to the surprise of everyone except herself and Lia. 

"O' spirits of the earth."

With a simply incantation and a little bit of mana injected into the ground beneath her, Lilly created a massive pillar of compressed earth which shot out of the ground in front of her and crashed into the Titan, knocking the massive drone tank hybrid over and making it crash into the factory it had been hiding inside.

"Lia."

"Already on it!"

Having already created a pair of swords out of golden mana crystals, Lia charged forward at a speed not possible without significant cybernetic enhancements, or just strengthening magic.

"You're mine!"

Leaping several metres into the air, Lia landed on the chest of the fallen Titan and quickly dug her way into its core without her swords seeing any sort of resistance.

��Goodnight."

Slipping her blades into the Titans reactor, Lia quickly shredded the Titan from the inside out before emerging from the heap of metal with a satisfied expression on her face.

"W-what the hell was that?"

Completely shocked by what had just happened, the last standing policeman struggled to understand what was going on, but he correctly assumed Lia and Lilly were far more dangerous than he had first assumed and looked at the two of them with fear clearly visible on his face and in his voice.

"Trust me on this one child, you don't want to know. In fact, you're best off forgetting this entire operation happened."

-

[IMI ADDRESSING ALL UNITS: GAG ORDER 41 NO LONGER IN EFFECT.]

"... It seems like someone was forced to break the gag order, should we do that as well?"

Stopping preparations for breaching Terra turned to Mare about her opinion on the matter, with one team breaking the gag order they could do so as well without any repercussions.

"Mmm, why not? It was properly Lilly who did it, so it should be fine if we break that order too… Although completing the mission without doing so will give us bragging rights."

Appearing split on the subject at hand, Mare left the final decision entirely up to Terra.

"Bragging rights does sound quite good, let's just leave it as a backup then."

"Mmm, okay."

While the surrounding Division 14 members had no idea what that entire conversation had been about, they all feared the small Hellwalker who was still covered in the blood of the victims from her knife spree too much to even think about interrupting her. With that short interruption done and over with, the team descended into the underground complex, only meeting sparse pockets of resistance through the maze of underground tunnels until Mare picked up a strange smell.

"What's up?"

Having noticed the small beastkin had stopped in place to smell the air, Terra raised her guard while the policemen secured the immediate area.

"... I smell blood. Lot's of blood, both entirely dried up blood and slightly more fresh blood and the smell of infections, piss and rust."

"So it's like that huh?"

Understanding what Mare was getting at, Terra's face stiffend up significantly as she updated the policemen surrounding her.

"We're about to come across something horrid, be prepared and remember to check fire."

Moving forward while keeping a tight formation, the group eventually reached a large metal door, by then the smell of old and fresh blood had become so pronounced that even the policemen could smell it clearly.

[Set up for breach, deploy in two stacks, prepare for CQC.]

With a quick series of hand signals, Terra and Mare formed up on both sides of the large door and set up breaching charges.

"Division 14! GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!"

Finding the room on the other side of the metal door to be truly massive and entirely without cover of any kind, there was quite a bit of momentary panic when the sparse rays of light from rifle mounted flashlights revealed countless figures, that is until Douglass and his comrades realized that those figures were chained in place and severely malnourished.

"... What the hell is this?"

"Processing. They're starving them to break their spirits."

Answering Douglas' question, Mare was the only person who didn't have any problems looking at the countless people suffering in front of her, she still maintained a flat tone of voice and a blank expression.

"I can hear children crying over there, that would be where they keep the newly arrived slaves."

Pointing past the sea of people with dead looking eyes, Mare walked straight ahead without minding the smell of infection and filth coming from those she passed.

"... What the hell is up with her?"

Looking at how calmly the child in front of him handled a situation so horrible, Douglas unintentionally voiced his thoughts.

"Mare is just calm like that, but growing up in an environment like this and not breaking is also part of it."

Answering the confused policeman next to her, Terra followed after Mare as she left the others behind with a final order.

"Round up these people and get them out of here, we'll take care of the rest."

Passing the slaves in 'processing', Terra's blank expression turned into a frown as she caught up to Mare.

"Can you hear them?"

"Yeah, sounds like they're attempting to flee with their profits."

Having picked up the sounds of a few people scrambling around what Mare believed to be gold, her already cold eyes turned even icier.

"Let's make them suffer."

"Mmm, agreed."

With both of their minds made up, Mare and Terra both discarded their firearms on the spot as mana started flowing out freely around them, the rage and other negative emotions from the two mana users affecting the mana itself and turning it sinister, not that the majority of the people of this world could sense that of course, if they could, they would run for their lives.

(Why is this happening to me of all people!? And I was so close to buying my own moon and retiring from this shitty business too!)

Filled with nothing but his own frustration, William continued to pack his suitcase with so called 'tokens', seed data encryption to virtual currency imprinted precious metal bars. In addition to their literal weight in platinum rhodium alloy, each 2 kilo bar held access codes to trillions in funds locked in their crystalline structure, representing the profits Williams had painstakingly collected over the past 154 years in the highly illegal slave trade, a business he very much hated, although not for the obvious reasons. Dealing in slaves inside the Galactic Empire was possibly the most restrictive trade there is, not only was it far more illegal than most drugs, but there was a very limited market of potential buyers which were risky to get into contact with while the cost of transporting 'live' cargo in secrecy was frankly absurd.

(To make matters worse, this business is filled with these gross perverts, even as profitable as it is to produce snuff films and live stream red rooms you can't pay me enough to come in contact with any more of these perverts!)

William was the kind of businessman that could sell everything, or so he at least believed, therefore he was going to abandon the slave trade and move into something easier like drugs or Emergence technology, but to do that he needed to escape the capital with all the funds he had stored there, and this was the last cache he had to empty.

"Sir, we need to move."

"I know! Give me a minute!"

Surrounded by the best private security money could buy, William felt perfectly safe deep underground the capital in the web of long abandoned service and metro tunnels he had made his base of operation, at least until 34 hours ago when he got word about an upcoming raid.

(Thank god I paid those sources so well for so long… Still, what the fuck is the navy doing conducting raids? I need to figure that out when I'm out of this fucking mess.)

"Here, don't drop this and I'll triple the pay to your company from next month on."

"Always a pleasure doing business with you, boss. We're moving out."

Bringing their boss in the middle of a 12 man formation, the security chief carried William's duffle bag with him as he contacted his subordinates deployed in a wide net around them.

"2-4, bring it in, we're moving…. 2-4 respond."

Not getting a response from his outer security, the security chief pulled out his gold plated pistol as the guards around him switched off the safeties on their rifles.

"Sir, we need to-"

[These guys are already long dead, you guys are next~]

"- Shit, Move!"

Interrupted mid sentence by a voice he didn't know coming from the radio, the security chief's six senses screamed out to him that they needed to move now. Increasing the phase to a full out run down an abandoned metro tunnel, the group finally reached their parked escape vehicles, but it was far too late when they realized something was wrong.

"... What the hell is that sound?"

Pulling out a flashlight to look ahead, the security chief unknowingly uttered his last words as he failed to spot the bearly visible disturbances in the air coming towards him, next thing that happened, his vision went dark as a blade made out of wind sliced right through his head, killing him instantly. 

"What the fuck!?"

"Contact front!"

The panic coming from the other guards was short lived as they soon suffered the same fate as their boss, one by one they were cut apart by blades made of wind, leaving only William standing.

"What the fuck is going on!?"

Panicking, William forgot all about his money as he ran for his life to a nearby car, but as he touched the car door the entire car fell apart, having been cut in half a long time ago by another type of spell.

[So this is the one?]

[Seems like it.]

Looking at the strangely distorted voices coming from behind him, William spotted two strange figures wearing blank face masks which seemed to absorb the surrounding light. Standing atop his dead security, the two figures were literal angels of death, or at least the closest thing to that.

"H-Hellwalkers!?"

[That would be us, yeah. What's wrong, why are you running away without your cash?]

While one of the Hellwalkers spoke, the other one brought a knife to the duffel bag William had left behind, spilling out the priceless contents within.

"You can have all that as long as you let me go, please spare my life!"

Still backing away in fear from the two figures, William pathetically begged for his life while profusely sweating from every pore in his body.

[Ah, these are those token things, right? I heard you can finance a state of the art cruiser for just one of these. Are you sure you want to give us all this?]

"Yes! Take it all, just please spare my life!"

Losing all strength in his legs, William fell to his knees as he gave up his fortune in exchange for his life, or so he believed, being unable to see the sadistic smile forming beneath both the Hellwalker's masks.

"What are you?!- No! Please stop! I-"

When the police eventually made it all the way to that abandoned metro tunnel all they found was some destroyed cars and a collection of corpses, one of which had extensive burns all over its body and was pierced with shards of concrete while also missing its head.