Book Three – Chapter Seven – Part Two – Prelude to the Banquet

In many ways, the base she was at was similar to the one in Deset. That caused Itarr and Servi to internally surmise that maybe all bases held the same core layout.

“Core structure or not, the damn layout of this place won't change my fucking mind. Everyone is dying tonight, and I’m the one who’ll guide them to hell,” she said with her hand gripped on the only other doorknob. She didn’t know what was going to be behind it, but that didn't matter at all. Servi lifted her war hammer on her shoulder and absorbed the door.

She rushed in, not at all surprised by what she saw. It was a group of enemies in those jumpsuits, but they weren’t doing anything. More accurately, they were standing against the wall with a weapon held in their hands. Swords, axes, spears, knives, and more were waiting to be used by their wielders.

Like the room she had come from, the stairwell, and the room where she first encountered the red jumpsuits, the walls, ceiling, and floors were stone with only weak candles to provide the dim lighting. And within the large common room-like area standing before her, Servi saw no chairs or couches. The walls lacked any decoration, and the room couldn’t be more pathetic and devoid of any aesthetic value if it tried. It was as if the one who designed this underground area carved it out of stone and left it that way.

All at once, the seventeen enemies began to move to take down the intruder. Arrows and skills launched one after another, setting fire and destroying the concrete when Servi dodged out of the way. Servi recovered from her sidestep with seventeen stacks of fully charged Shadow Shots and unleashed their destructive potential upon her enemies. They all were thrown back towards the ground and slid away. Their weight, the speed and force of the Shadow Shots, and the gritty surface of the stone floors tore the backs of their matching red jumpsuits. Servi couldn’t believe how weak they were and how easily they died.

Or so she thought.

She didn’t know if the jumpsuits were enchanted or if the foes Servi faced were different than those outside because the Shadow Shots weren’t all that effective. Some died, but the majority stood up and continued their trek towards the intruder even as blood spilled from their crimson-stained backs. Servi wasn’t alarmed by this. It was the complete opposite. She had longed for a chance to get serious with her power so much that she found herself smiling and chuckling as she dodged under a quick thrust.

She fell back to avoid an arrow threatening to pierce her helmet and rolled back onto her feet. The metal armor scraped and battled against the stone floor, scuffing and roughing its clean appearance in some spots. Her foes were there and waiting, and she didn’t expect to recover into the extended tip of a sharp sword. It pierced her armor with as much effort as stabbing water, and Servi felt her hot blood drop down the inside until it started to pool around her boot-covered feet.

Servi coughed, painting the inside of her helmet with crimson, and she frowned in disgust. She couldn’t believe she was enjoying the fight when she had more important things to do. Momo came first above all else, and that meant Servi should’ve plucked her enemies' heads off their shoulders via Telekinesis rather than waste time.

“I can’t be fuckin around!” she screamed as bodies rhythmically fell to the floor around her while their heads remained airborne. In a rage, Servi ran to the only door she saw and absorbed it while Itarr handled corpse cleanup.

After running through it, Servi came to a long hallway filled with doors on each side. She smacked her hostage and forced him to explain. In broken words fueled by pain, he muttered that the 5th had a private room built deep in the heart of the base. After more physical coercion, he further specified that the door at the very end of the hallway was her goal.

“The rooms at the side. What are they?” Servi demanded.

“Holding…areas…for…the…”

“Got it. That’s where those jumpsuit-wearing bastards are staying. Itarr, use Telekinesis to kill anyone you see wearing those red clothes. Don’t even give them a microsecond of freedom, got it? Fucking rip their heads off and get it done.”

I got it. Itarr wrote on the ID. Servi didn’t bother checking it since she knew what Itarr’s response would be.

With haste, Servi ran into the first door she saw that littered the long hallway like bugs on a diseased animal and absorbed it. Stepping inside, she saw fifteen men, all a collective of different races, but most were Human, leaning against the walls with their eyes closed. What must’ve been their weapons sat in front of them. Servi’s armor accidentally bonked against the door frame, and all fifteen pairs of eyes opened at once. They turned to the intruder and immediately charged towards her with their picked-up weapons. Their target immediately hopped out and heard the sickening noise of heads being forcibly removed from their bodies. But there wasn’t a loud thud. Once her enemies' life had perished, with their souls joining Servi's ring, Itarr absorbed the corpses, their heads, and their weapons. If, for some reason, she couldn’t reach them with Absorption, she brought the unobtainable objects closer with Telekinesis.

“Next time, kill them faster. Don’t give those fuckers even a single microsecond to react,” Servi growled. She felt her ID vibrate but didn't look at it.

Servi walked to the door across and opened it. Even quicker than she could take a breath, the fifteen enemies inside all perished, and they disappeared faster than she could blink. Before she walked out, Servi realized the holding room was the same thing as the first room she had entered moments before. The walls were plain, like the prior rooms, and the floors were made out of the same stone. It was, perhaps, just big enough for fifteen people, and it resembled a cramped prison cell without the iron bars. Like before, it was as if the designer had removed a chunk of stone and called it a day.

Then again, if they’re so corrupted by the Monotonia that they don’t need any luxuries, then it makes sense they wouldn’t care for anything that looks good. They probably take whatever they’re given with no questions asked. Servi thought.

“Good. No mercy for these fucks.” Servi sadistically smiled and rapidly rushed to a third door. It only took a quarter of a second for those inside to feel the immediate cloak of death. And it took less than that to eliminate any evidence they had once walked upon the planet.

In the span of three doors, she had gained forty-five souls. If her estimate proved correct, there were around seventy to eighty doors, not including the three she had taken care of and her goal at the end. That meant, if fifteen enemies stood in each of the holding rooms, she stood to gain over 1,000 souls to further increase her already god-like power.

But as she reached the fifty-second door in her massacre, she opened to reveal not a standard array of fifteen jumpsuit-wearing enemies against the wall, but a large prison cell. Its black iron bars spanned from the ceiling to the floor. With how narrow it was, even a small dog couldn’t fit through the gaps.

Servi walked a bit further in. Like everything else, stone surrounded her. The single gate to the cells had a large lock fastened through the handle. She looked up past the bars and saw what she assumed to be slaves. They were naked and afraid, quivering in the corner while their hands covered their heads. Sitting in groups of three or four, they all huddled close together in order to do what they could to protect themselves.

The biggest one, a fair-skinned man with no hair, hunkered down in a group with two men and a single woman, but when he saw Servi was someone new, he took a chance.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Help! You gotta help us!” His hands gripped the bars, and he pounded them with his knuckles.

Servi turned to the naked man and shook her head. “Why? I’m trying to find a girl, and I doubt you could help. There’s nothing for it.” She turned to walk away but stopped when her ID rumbled.

Will you not help them? Itarr asked.

“No, I won’t. It’s not my problem if these prisoners live or die. They won’t help me find Momo, anyways. I—”

“I know where she is! I heard that name before I came here.” Servi launched herself at the iron bars and ripped them out of the ceiling and ground with her strength. Itarr absorbed them, but she didn't do anything to the sizable bits of ceiling that fell. Servi wrapped her hands around the man’s arm who said those life-changing sentences.

“Tell me! Where the fuck is she?!” Servi barked at the man, and with her hold like a vice-grip, her grasp only increased in strength.

“I don’t know...  KIMMIE, DO IT!” he shouted. Servi felt a large object smash her helmeted head. She ripped off the man’s arms and turned around. The culprit was the sole woman who had huddled with the large man whose arms Servi currently held.

“I’m sorry!” the frightened girl whined. She walked back as Servi approached her and fell to the ground when her back touched it. A warm yellow liquid escaped down her legs when Servi bent down to pick up the rock. She looked up at the ceiling and realized it came from where she tore off the iron bars.

She held her weapon tightly and turned around to the armless man. With the stone in hand, she rushed forward and slammed it into his head. Pink bits of brain and white pieces of skull exploded out of his head, and it showered the other slaves in a rain of crimson.

“DON’T FUCKING LIE TO ME ABOUT HER!!!!!!” Servi roared with anger.

Kimmie begged for forgiveness from the enemy she had wronged, but Servi wasn’t in the mood. It was one thing to attack her if she did it voluntarily, but it wasn’t as simple as that.

Servi couldn’t let the short-lived betrayal go, and she killed everybody in the room with a sword she retrieved from her ring. It was like a ballet of death. Her nadrium sword, with the two blue pulsing lines, illuminated the bloody cell when the deed was done. With her brutality involved, the corpses weren’t even recognizable, and most of their heads had been sliced in five or six different sections. She had spared no one. That was the cost of angering her. Their lives had been forfeit the moment they believed they could use someone near and dear to her as a bargaining chip.

“IT’S YOUR FAULT YOU FUCKING DIED!” she screamed at the bloody mess of severed limbs and heads before she stomped her way out of the room. The instant her head passed through the threshold, sixteen arrows battled towards her head. Itarr stopped them the moment their metal tips started to penetrate through her helmet.

She turned to her left and saw a hallway filled with bodies. Red jumpsuits lined her sight like she was staring at a pack of red marbles in a bowl.

“I guess I screamed a bit too loudly, but this is good. This is very good. I won’t have to search room by room anymore. But seriously, you think you can kill me with fucking NUMBERS?!?!!” Itarr retrieved five nadrium swords and held them horizontally in front of Servi even while absorbing the incoming attacks.

The five swords began to spin in place before racing off down the hallway filled with meat sacks disguised as animate beings. Like a lawnmower, Servi's weapons raced back and forth and up and down. Flesh diced into chunks no bigger than a dupla, and the blood had nearly covered the entirety of the stone floor in a crimson filter. Microscopic white bone floated through the hastily man-made river of blood, but they were crushed underneath Servi’s heavy footsteps as she walked down the visceral red carpet.

A torrential amount of souls flooded her ring as she proceeded down. After looking in each of the open rooms, she saw no more cages. Her hostage chose that time to stir awake, and, for a brief moment, he had forgotten where he was.

“HELP!!” he screamed. Servi turned back and ripped his ear off.

“Shut the fuck up,” she said as she gripped the handle of the door at the very end of the hallway. With her enhanced strength, she tore the plain wooden door off its hinges and tossed it behind her.

She was immediately met with a spear through her stomach that pierced right through her armor, and a nadrium arrow to the head destroyed her brain. No—its sharp point wasn’t threatened by the protective power of an iron helmet, and it bore a hole straight through her head, piercing her brain to the wall behind her. The pink mass of brain with its crinkled lines involuntary wiggled.

“Damnit, I told you not to use that!” A voice berated someone, but Servi couldn’t see. Her standing body had been engulfed with the skill called Lava Wall, the vastly upgraded form of Fire Wall. The armor melted off instantly, painting her body in boiling metal. Her skin soon followed suit, and she was nothing more than a puddle of skin and organs, which evaporated into nothingness.

It all happened in less than a quick second, but the girl Servi had died again.

“Kinda weird how the bitch didn’t scream—Marky?!” The man with the spear, who had attacked Servi, rushed forward past the disappearing wall of lava. He nearly slipped in the blood but regained his footing as he gently clasped his hands around the intruder's hostage’s throat.

“So that’s where he was at. Wait, DID—no, surely not…” The man with the bow lowered his weapon and gasped at the bloody remains of an event that couldn’t even be called a massacre. It was something far worse, but he couldn’t come up with something to describe it. But it was the smell of blood and guts combined with the lingering smell of Servi’s crispy remains that was revolting and putrid. It was a scent that only could’ve come from a monster’s disgusting, filthy cavern. The bow-wielder did all he could to swallow a growing urge to vomit.

“You’re telling me she killed all of our Suits? Fucking all of them?!” That was the voice of the woman who used Lava Wall. She lowered the hood of her cloak to reveal a set of whitened eyes.

“That’s right. I heard the blood spill from the Suits' bodies, and their silent cries echoed out from the horrible way they died. Though they were only Suits, they were—” The man with the bow tried to speak, but a chilling voice froze his mouth.

“You know, that kinda fucking hurt. Feeling that pain makes me want to do the same to you.” A shrill voice echoed around the room, prompting the four 5ths to prepare for battle.

From particles smaller than the tip of a pin, a girl with pale white skin, red eyes, and black hair materialized from what seemed to be nothing. Her head no longer had a hole from where an arrow pierced through it, her stomach had no imperfections or scars from the result of a spear impalement, and nary a black mark even resembling the faintest spec of ash soiled her skin. With a flick of her fingers, her naked body became coated in a dazzling set of steel armor, sans a helmet that was only a little bit too big. "Did you really think killing me was enough to make me die?" Servi taunted her motionless enemies.

The glass she used to disguise her eye color had melted away, and the one eye patch she wore had caught fire and burned to ash. For the first time since her revenge started, Servi’s appearance was true to her former self.

Jaws dropped to the floor. The girl the Numbered saw in front of them couldn’t exist. They had watched her die in excruciating pain only moments before.

Marky was the first to emerge from the curtain of fear that paralyzed him, but it was worthless. Servi summoned four chairs from her ring. He looked alarmed at the sudden appearance of a wooden piece of furniture, but he soon found himself stuck to it. Crying out, he withstood the invisible force as it tore his hands and arms apart. Nails, skin, and flesh ripped away from his left hand like a child lacerating at a present's wrapping paper. Then Servi moved to one of his ears and tore it off like tearing a piece of writing paper.

But he wasn’t alone in his torture. The other three attackers found themselves attached to their respective chairs, and their torment wasn’t any less monstrous or painless.

“You know something funny?” She walked across the tiled floor, a much different thing she had expected considering the rest of this base’s furnishing, and formed a fist. “I’m really only here for a couple of reasons. Oh, I have to check first. Please, don’t bear the pain I’m about to inflict on you.”

Servi retrieved a rock from her ring and scraped it across Marky’s teeth until crimson splattered about. His screams of pain were a welcome addition to ease Servi’s growing desire for chaos and murder.

“I have to make sure you don’t have a suicide pill. Can’t have you dying on me before it gets to your turn, can I?” One by one, Servi went to the other three and scrapped their teeth out. It was incredibly excruciating and demoralizing for those who had the pain tolerance high enough to concentrate on something other than the pain of their missing teeth, but it was intentional. Servi needed that fear to fester and infect those around them. Fear led to the truth, and that was something she counted on.

“All done. Now, I’ll heal your mouth back so you can talk. I suppose I’ll do the same and heal your limbs.” She did as she said and followed it up with a dire warning. “Should you answer me with something I don’t like, or you try to attack me by using a skill, I will boil you alive and heal you at the same time. You won’t be able to die, and the pain will be felt for as long as I want it to.”

All six present, including Servi's first hostage, nodded, but their faces were anything but willing. A growing snarl appeared on their faces, and one or two of them internally debated on whether not they should strike. However, that sprouting confidence shattered when they took in the truth of the situation. They were faced with a monster in Human clothing. Not only had she killed the army they had under their control, but Servi had come back to life after dying.

“Tell me your names, so I have something to call you,” Servi demanded. "If you don't, I guess I'm gonna have to rough you the fuck up. Hey, maybe I'll call you eyeless. You know why? Because I'll rip your fucking eyes out and stick needles in your empty fucking sockets."

“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD! WE KILLED YOU!!!” the one on the far left shouted. His ignorance of her question angered her.

Servi replied by smacking his head with the back of her hand. “Shut the fuck up and tell me your names! How I’m here or not is none of your fucking concern!”

“Ed,” the one with the spear whispered. The green scales proved he was a Koena, but they nearly crackled and jittered with anger and rage.

“Ae,” muttered the blind Elf with the cloak.

“Swif,” said the one who fired that nadrium arrow. His bow and all of their weapons had already been confiscated by Servi. Oddly enough, he was the sole Human amongst the group of 5ths.

“And you’re Marky, so shut the fuck up and don’t say a damn thing.” Servi smacked Marky and regenerated his pointy ear.

“Berth,” confidently spoke the last one. He was a Dwarf, but he had been too occupied with drinking to do anything about the intruder. His now-empty bottle sat nestled in the corner of the room.

“You’re that confident, huh.” Servi walked over to the wooden wall and ripped off a painting of a Kobold. Tearing the frame, she ripped it apart until she had a fist full of sharp wooden fragments. Next, Servi held her other hand in front of her and began stabbing those wooden fragments through her hand like pins in a pincushion. She walked up to Berth and gave a simple command. “Open your mouth.”

He barked with laughter and spat on Servi’s face, who chuckled and ripped Berth's lower jaw off and stuck her fragment-filled hand down his throat. Spinning and rotating her fist, she made mincemeat out of his throat. Blood went down, vomit came up, and the lack of air made it hard to breathe. His body convulsed until the chair broke under his stocky body.

With her spare hand, Servi gripped Berth’s hair and held him up. “You still gonna be a smart ass? The shit I can do you isn’t something you want to experience.” She removed her hand and retrieved another chair as Berth’s blood began to conquer the tiled floor. Its brown luster had been soiled by the crimson lifeblood of one who used to live there.