Chapter 166: Weakness identified

Nero swung his spear, accumulating force as it smashed towards the dark berserker, but the opponent was not as simpleminded as a regular berserker. It paused for the briefest of moments, just in time to let the spear that would have otherwise hit him pass right ahead of him, before continuing his sprint.

The momentum of his swing was too great, and Nero could stop it and swing the spear back in time to block the dark berserker, so instead he leaned into it. Quickly, he shifted his weight onto a single foot and allowed the momentum of the spear to spin his entire body, right up until he almost did an entire spin.

Then he planted both his feet back and increased the force in the spear swing, once again attacking the dark berserker.

But just as Nero was extremely agile, so too was the dark berserker. Now, too close to avoid the spear, it bent its body at an awkward angle and managed to dodge in the nick of time, and lunged at Nero.

The dark berserker was quick - extremely quick - and Nero had to constantly manipulate his internal aether to keep up.

Close to one another, the duo seemed to enter a deadly dance where each tried to kill the other, but both were too quick to be hit. Yet the close distance served to benefit Nero, even though it made using the spear harder.

Blue flames began to rise from his body, and quickly began to roil downwards and outwards.

Sensing the danger from the flames, the dark berserker quickly changed its tactics. It accepted one of Nero's strikes on its bone armour and grabbed onto the spear, then furiously struck forward at Nero's face!

At such close proximity, Nero did not even have a split second to dodge, but he never planned to start with. This was not a one-on-one duel, it was a battle, and in battles, just as there were many enemies, there were many allies.

A green string tied to Nero's back suddenly became taut as it pulled him backwards, while a stream of yellow flames shot towards the dark berserker.

Pipo's knees trembled as he pulled Nero away in the nick of time, the consequences of being even a moment too slow, too dire for him to imagine. Nero, himself, however, was not scared in the least, because it was not just Pipo he was relying on.

Red sand started to flow out of his armour, where it had been hiding, and shot towards the dark berserker as tiny bullets.

The blue cryoflames licked the dark berserker, but only sizzled and did not end up sticking to its body, while the dark berserker managed to dodge the yellow flames. Yet the moment it dodged the bullets and yellow flame, Nero appeared from behind the thin curtain of flames, his spear shooting forward.

Already in the middle of a dodge, the creature was unable to move out of the way as the spear cut into its face. Yet in the last moment, it managed to save its life. Since it could not avoid the injury, it made sure to reduce the extent of the injury itself by looking downwards, bringing its forehead to the front.

"Not really, but I was there the day AAB got attacked."

Surprise and delight suddenly appeared on the soldier's face.

"Oh, I remember you. Gregor said good things about you. Must have been right since you saved our asses today."

Gregor, from what Nero recalled, was the name of the Herald with the Darkness card. Nero still just preferred to call him Darkness.

"It was not me, it was everybody," Nero said humbly. No matter how strong he was, he could not have turned the tide alone, nor would he have made it in time without support. The Herald nodded and turned to look at the machines in the centre of the room.

"The security node can be turned off from here, we can tell that much, but none of us can use the machines," he said with a troubled expression. "This is going to be a problem since the Initiates can't come down here."

"Not that big a problem," Nero said. "Remi, you're up."

The frail girl was startled when Nero suddenly called her, and then became embarrassed about being startled in front of everyone, but quickly and meekly ran over to the machines without saying anything.

She placed her hand on them and began to do something, though no one could know what it was. After a few, very long minutes, a loud siren blared through the building twice, as if indicating something, and from the expressions of the Herald, that was exactly what he wanted to hear.

"She did it!" he said, a flood of relief crashing in. Unless the nodes were turned off all of them would remain stationed here, which would become a death sentence sooner or later. But with this node turned off, only one more remained.

But while he was feeling relief, Nero instead became more concerned.

"What is it?" Nero asked, looking at the worried Remi.

"According to the internal database, the last security node is down on the fifth basement level," she said slowly. Since all of them had already been to a basement that went down four levels, they knew how dangerous that would be because of how thick the fog became. They couldn't even imagine what would happen on the fifth. But, after delivering that bad news, Remi kept on speaking.

"It's inside a high security zone of the lab. To get access to it, one will have to receive access rights from the facility itself. Moreover, even with the rights, a team cannot follow. Each person entering that zone will need individual access rights."

The somewhat celebratory atmosphere that had barely developed in the room suddenly vanished. Everyone looked at each other with concern. This was going to be even harder than they had thought.