3.5

3.5

“Wow.”

Nestra had to admit, she was impressed. The hab housed an actual meat vat farm with slabs of cloned meat bobbing peacefully in nutrient juices. Helpers moved around the vats, checking indicators and adding powders to the mix. Much of the supplies were piled haphazardly across the room in piles. There was even mold in the corner. To Nestra’s left, an open door led to some sort of biomass recycling thing if the acidic stench of rot wafting from there was any indication. What didn’t look stolen had to be counterfeited and yet Nestra knew with absolute certainty that they still made it work.

Mostly because of the skewers she’d had.

“Welcome, welcome esteemed customers,” an old lady with a turban and a dark gaze said.

Shinoda greeted the lady with respect, which she returned. The file said she was Miss Yadar, no known first name, and probably the hab block’s richest denizen. The two discussed matters in a low voice while Nestra did her best not to scrunch her nose at the aggressive scents attacking her senses. Eventually, they left, though not before exchanging numbers so Nestra hoped this meant Yadar was taking them as serious potential partners. That or the lady wanted to bang Shinoda. She couldn’t be sure. Seduction plays were hard to read for her, especially when they weren’t aimed at her.

In any case, they got to visit the hab block’s upper floors.

It was simply incredible what humanity could achieve with a complete disregard of work safety, intellectual property rights, worker rights, and taxation. Truly inspirational. There were fabricators spitting jailbroken or custom made appliances to be used all around Fifteen! Rice cookers and mixers at prices that defied common sense were piled in thin metal boxes, ready to be sent down the stained elevators. At least, this specific part was healthy.

“No drug labs,” Nestra observed.

Shinoda agreed in silence. There didn’t seem to be many addicts either. It looked like they’d drawn the jackpot for assignments. So, that was nice.

“Hey, wait. I got something.”

Nestra opened her feed. One of her drones was keeping an eye on her car. A figure was approaching it. She paid attention this time because the figure didn’t fit. To her surprise, no one had pissed on the door handle, perhaps out of concern of getting their private parts zapped. There were a few young stone throwers but that was about it. The one who appeared was super suspicious. She shared the feed with Shinoda who watched it on his old datasheet.

“Oh, Palladian-san. Our friend seems lost.”

The guy approaching the car had a cap and a face mask for anonymity, but he also wore brand new nondescript cargo pants, sneakers, and a hoodie in brown and blue shades. They looked fresh out of the fabricator. In police parlance this was called the ‘undercover cops summer collection’. For the winter collection, just add a vest. This guy fit in like a zit on a gleam’s ass. He looked left and right, then walked closer, barely pausing near the door. His hand moved with aug speed then he was off.

“Tracker?” Nestra asked.

“It seems that way. Listener as well, certainly. Our Gidung friends have made their first move. They should have used a drone.”

“Perhaps they’re afraid of Flash. He noticed my drones immediately.”

“Hmmmm. Then it is fortunate you two reached an agreement, ne?”

“You could call it that.”

The pair rode the elevator down. It was getting close to 6PM so Nestra dropped her drones in slow mode at specific points across the block to keep an eye on things, expecting nights to be more animated. The pair climbed into their cruiser after unpeeling the tracker. Nestra tossed it at a garbage collector drone on the ride back.

“Today went very well, I think?” Nestra asked.

She didn’t really have a frame of reference.

“Yes. We were only... accosted once, ne? And no violence. But there were no crimes today. None that we were called to solve. Tomorrow might change that. They will be testing our ability to solve problems without bringing in the hammer. You did well, Palladian-san.”

“Not going to comment on the EMP threat?”

“Ah, I believe it pays to show a little teeth sometimes, ne? You can be bad cop.”

Staying low to the ground, she walked out, sticking to the deeper shadows between the light stones. She was only a few steps away when the closest creature let out a grunt of surprise. She used momentum to move forward.

The creatures were so surprised they fumbled their weapons. Her first cut decapitated the right one, then she thrusted her blade into the chest of the second. It dropped its weapon but didn’t die immediately. A coup-de-grace silenced it.

A rush of power filled her. It spoke of increased resilience, of the ability to endure. Well, not resilient enough to stop her anyway. A quick search revealed nothing specific. The creatures were fleshy but shared more in common with worms than mammals that she could tell. They were just weird. They didn’t really wear armor but their uniforms were naturally protective. A quick shot with one of the pneumatic rifles sent a cone of steel lodging itself into the wall, not very deep but deep enough to hurt her. They did feel difficult to handle though, despite the lack of recoil.

So it really was Infinite War.

A rare world, Infinite War provided a bleak outlook of what positional battle could become if left to fester for too long. The creatures living there had dug themselves to standstill, with an unknown number of sides involved, all gathering a collection of creatures. The place wasn’t well researched since it was so rare anyway, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the buffet of power provided to her. More diversity of prey meant more power ups since she had diminishing returns on creatures she’d hunted before.

It was time to hunt.

Giddy, Nestra found a key to the gate and opened it. Inside, she found... an armory.

Not a very big one though.

Much like the rest of the complex, the armory was bare-walled and devoid of any decoration. Crates and shelves lined the space in neat, well-organized stacks. There were cone ammo dumps, rifles, side arms that looked like extinguishers with handles, sabers, bayonets, helmets of various sizes, muzzles, and one thing that looked a bit like a flamethrower.

They were all shit.

That was the issue with many of the portal worlds, at least at her rank. What the natives were using was systematically inferior to human stuff. Ah, whatever. Going out, she selected another directional keyword and kept walking. Less than two corridors later, a noise alerted her.

There was a patrol nearby. It consisted of three of the footmen she’d already killed along with a pair of hound things but white and misshapen, and a strange creature that looked like a jellyfish planted on a gorilla’s body as its head. All of them were short and strong.

Even though she was in the shadows, the jellyfish turned directly to her. Nestra realized that the entire appendage was covered in eyes.

It was absolutely disgusting.

The creature screeched and Nestra charged forward. Momentum brought her among the group. The Scornful Crescent guided her steps when she pushed aside the barrels, when she slew the first two guards. A hound jumped and she stepped back, killing it mid-air. The other stumbled on its slain brethren and Nestra struck true. The last guard missed her with a rifle shot but she still rushed back when the jellyfish lit up like a Christmas tree. An azure shockwave spread through the corridor, banishing the darkness with a fizzle of spent electricity. Nestra was back in again before the rifleman finished reloading. She killed both.

The jellyfish’s head was super mushy. It pretty much exploded when she sliced it.

“Ugh.”

Power seeped into Nestra’s essence. Resilience from the guards, awareness from the hound, but from the jellyfish came something new. She felt a font awaken in her, pulsing in rhythm with her breath. It was the last piece of the puzzle, the last element of a core: fast mana generation. It was what allowed casting users to stay in the fight even after they’d depleted their reserves.

“Oh I’m loving this place.”

Nestra checked the patrol but found nothing worth taking, only mundane materials used on inferior technology. As for the meat of the hounds and jellyfish thing, it looked and smelled so vile, it might as well have been designed on purpose to induce nausea. That was ok.

A little later, Nestra encountered another, similar patrol. This time, she didn’t make the mistake of letting the jellyfish live. Her first slice covered the helmets of two guards in enough gore to blind them, leaving her to dispose of the hounds with ease. It was a slaughter and the... sobriety of movement of that hunt sent shivers down her spine. Perhaps it was a little premature to search for perfection in execution when she knew so little about the world, but there was no shame in enjoying a bit of pride when she managed it.

Nestra’s triumph was short-lived. A grunting call rang from all around as if from loudspeakers. The language was coarse and entirely guttural to the point that even differentiating between each curt, barked syllable proved impossible. A whoomp that sounded suspiciously like an alarm alternated with short sentences.

“Ah, oops?”