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

Itarr remained quiet and carefully debated on how to respond.

In a fit of rage that was most like her true self, Servi raised her warhammer to the sky and brought it down all the strength she mustered. The very asphalt ground split in two while a shockwave radiated out from the center. The nearby benches and small decorative trees collapsed and fell, but Servi wasn’t done. After her arms healed themselves, she raised her weapon up high and did the same thing.

Over and over and over and over. The damage Servi caused, while not especially major, had been loud enough to draw attention from a few guards who had the night duty.

“Hey, stop it! Wha—” Out of the four there, one man bravely spoke. The lantern his partner carried shined upon a bloody girl wielding a weapon with two pulsing blue lines. The moon chose that moment to take refuge behind a passing cloud, and maybe that was a good thing. If it was obscured, it wouldn’t be able to gaze upon the atrocities that were about to be committed.

“You’re part of the problem,” Servi nonchalantly murmured as she swung her arm. The guard who spoke couldn’t dodge in time, and the men behind him were covered in his fleshy substance. To Itarr’s surprise, the three living guards didn’t panic. She thought that they may be more trained since they assumed a formation and drew their weapons.

Another swing at nearly inhuman speeds put an end to their lives. Even if they knew Instant Cast, it wouldn’t have done a single thing. It took time for the brain to process sights and images and even more time to formulate a plan. Servi didn’t have that worry, because when it came to her, Soul Essence of Primal Combat could do the thinking for her. It was a strange skill, and one she fully didn’t understand, but she had a few hypotheses on it that she didn’t share with Itarr.

“Ah, that feels good. You know what? I think I want to go all out! It’s time! THE MAD DOG IS COMING OUT!” Cackling like a demonic clown, Servi dropped her heavy weapon onto the ground and formed a sharp point with her left hand. Bring it to her neck, she forced it down deep until she grasped her own cervical spine.

A torrential amount of blood flowed from the hand-sized wound on her neck, and it never ended. Her physical hand prevented it from healing, and Itarr forced True Immortality to keep producing blood to keep Servi conscious.  A seemingly endless stream of crimson noisily swam down Servi's body.

SERVI, STOP! PLEASE, STOP IT! Itarr controlled Servi’s ID and rammed it into her face. The sudden smack distracted her for only a moment, but it was enough for her to remove her hand. Her porcelain-like hand, now covered in her own blood, almost endlessly dripped as Servi suddenly ran. She picked enough speed, and when she jumped, soared through the sky for hundreds of meters. She landed on buildings, crashed into walls with her body, and eventually killed sixteen other people, who believed their only crimes were walking late at night and without a guard.

“I don’t have to kill everyone now. I can wait. Besides, it isn’t time for the Mad Dog to show itself. I’m saving that for the boss. I can’t wait! I CAN’T WAIT!!!” Servi monologued over the corpses of a wife and her husband. Four long slashes acted as windows into their bodies, but they had been obscured by thick blood. Absorbing her nadrium sword that dripped red, Servi took a seat in the nearby swing.

The location she had found and killed them at happened to be a children’s swing set surrounded by roses. With a couple of aesthetically pleasing designs, the twenty stone circles laid a gentle pathway over a small gravel path that led to the swing from the main road. A mini toy horse on a spring sat nearby, and it was popular amongst the children.

Servi kicked off the ground and allowed gravity to push her down. The creeks and squeaks of the swing didn’t match up with the overly expensive and luxurious atmosphere Servi received from New Arcton. Ignoring that, she pulled out the map she put together some time ago and settled on a destination.

“Tonight, we take out the bases belonging to the 4th and 3rd. After that, we go back to Deset and lie about what that fucking 5th did to us. We do the assassination missions. Depending on who I have to kill, I can probably get some more info.”

What are we going to do after tomorrow? I know! Let’s save Momo! Come on, Servi!!! Why can’t we go save her?!?!?! Itarr controlled the ID as Servi swung back and forth. It always stayed the proper distance away from her face.

“We kill, and we take revenge. I’ll find the guard hideout and wipe them all out. Oh, but we won’t touch Deset and the other Non-Numbered bases until Friday night. Hell, if I leave them alive, then I have the chance to kill every single one of them at the meet-up location Saturday morning. Then, I’ll save Momo. If I do that, then I can really go all out. But fuck it, I might kill them all earlier. It’s too early to totally decide. The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m gonna have my fun in this shit hole of a town. Hell, maybe I should wipe out the Warden office. They're also at fault for letting things go this far.” Servi answered Itarr, but she ignored the Goddess’s most pressing question.

But what about the quest?! If we aren’t back in time, then wouldn’t Claire sent someone from Canary? And Momo?! Let’s find her!!!

“Fuck the quest. And fuck Warden. Fuck all of them who allowed the Mafia to spread like this. They say that the Gods were the ones who founded Warden, so if I launch a war against them, the Gods have to come down. Besides, who knows what kind of power I’ll gain from killing them? Hahaha! I feel so free! EVERYBODY IS GOING TO FUCKING DIE!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! PASSIVE? ME FUCKING PASSIVE AND RESERVED? I’LL SHOW THE GODDAMN WORLD WHO’S FUCKING PASSIVE!!!!!” Laughing, Servi kicked forward a final time, using all of her strength, and soared across the sky with the swing set in tow.

The wind rushed through her black hair and blood-stained face when she managed to stand up on her seat. She kicked off when it started to descend and flew through the air. Using Feather Fall, Servi slowed down enough until she kicked off a tall chimney. For the next minute or so, Servi jumped and soared across the sky until she came to the wall separating Arcton from New Arcton.

Her first instinct was to destroy it, and as she started the process to create 100 Greater Fireballs, Itarr assured her that destroying the wall wouldn’t be the right way to go about her goal.

If you burn the wall down and panic ensures, wouldn’t the boss know something was wrong? He has to have eyes on this place! If you do too much, then it’s going to get back to him! LET’S GO!!!! LET'S SAVE MOMO!!! Itarr did her very best to manipulate Servi by the power of words, and it paled in comparison to when Itarr had a mental grasp on Servi.

But it worked, somewhat, and that prompted an impossible sigh of relief from the Goddess that was only wasted moments later.

“Shit, you’re right.” Servi, once again, ignored the main subject. Instead, she canceled the skills and crouched down. Kicking off, Servi soared up high over the tremendous barrier. The roof she leapt from crumbled and broke, but it wasn’t her problem. Landing ever-so-gracefully, Servi took out the map. She had a beautiful view of the horizon and crossed-reference what she saw with what was on the map.

“Got it! That tall clock tower is right beside the 4th base.” Absorbing the map, Servi took a few steps back and crouched down. Kicking off with all she had, she sent shockwaves through the two-meter-thick concrete wall and launched like a strike of lightning.

If someone were to look up, they would have seen an awe-inspiring sight that was incredible for the wrong reasons. The moon had found its courage and appeared from behind the cloud, and Servi’s silhouette was totally illuminated by the celestial body.

It had given the girl permission to kill, or so she thought, and she wasn’t going to let it down.

The hunt was on, and her prey didn’t have any idea what true terror was until they stared into a set of red eyes that would rival the hottest fire and coldest blood.

The storeroom was as bright as the sun and as colorful as a rainbow, with stacks upon stacks of wooden boxes and barrels containing hundreds and thousands of Monotonia in different colors helplessly laid in front of a girl. In her right hand, she held the disembodied head of Marcyoni, an elderly Singi who had the number ‘4’ tattooed on the inside of her lip. In Servi’s left hand, she had the only remaining 4th in the base on the verge of life and death.

Behind her, through the two steel vault doors and scattered about the one giant interconnected area that made up the 4th base, sprawled 883 corpses. Out of that, 880 were wearing orange jumpsuits. Servi’s demonic way of fighting had sundered limb from limb and flesh from flesh. The silent death cries of those who felt no pain put a damper on the mood, and that irritation only fueled her brutality even more. Her vision narrowed as her ears only picked up the immortal beating of her heart.

Truly, her fury was such that even hell itself might tremble.

“I certainly didn’t expect to find this behind that door. I guess you didn’t expect me to punch my way through, did you?” Servi tossed her hostage behind her. He flew through the air and landed with a heavy thud that sent splatters of blood up. He continued to slide until his head conked the steel door used to guard the Monotonia storage room.

After Servi killed everyone and left the sole survivor, Redoi, she walked through the growing pool of blood and ripped the door off its metal hinges.

“Please, why are you doing this?!” her captive said at the time. Servi told him that it was for revenge. Under the guise of anxiousness, Redoi, the survivor, used his own Telekinesis skill to send a sharp bone through Servi’s helmet.  It had enough force to blast a small hole in her head, but she didn’t die. With a simple grin, she turned to her attacker and tossed the 3,000-kilogram door at him. He tried to dodge, but Servi locked him in place with Telekinesis, and the heavy object crushed approximately half of his body. Servi had no idea how he didn’t die in the short 30 seconds it took for her to push the door off and heal him, but she was thankful he was alive.

In the time it took for Servi to rip off the second door and tear Marcyoni’s head from her elderly body, Redoi felt what it was like to have his arms utterly yanked from their sockets and smashed into his legs. White bone was shoved down his throat and forced him to choke on his own spit and vomit. He thought he would have some relief when he felt himself slide across the ground until Servi gripped his arms, but that hope turned into despair.

After she tossed him against the wall when she discovered the Monotonia stash, he did his best to speak a word of protest.

Servi interrupted him by summoning a wall of pure lava. It started off tiny, no bigger than a brick, but by the time it grew to engulf half the room in a hellish heat, his consciousness left him. But that wasn’t the only thing that abandoned him. Under the guise of a deep orange that almost matched her eyes, Servi scoffed at the pathetic piece of shit and walked out. The stone ceiling probably couldn’t handle the lava, but its creator took that into account when she used the skill. But on the off chance that the heat would weaken the walls and ceilings and caused the roof to collapse, it still wouldn’t have any harmful effects on Servi’s ultimate goal. The lava would’ve burnt everything, like the blood, bone, and the entire stash of Monotonia, into something that couldn’t be traceable.

Servi, was that the right call?

“Taking some of the Monotonia? I’m gonna shove that shit down the boss’s throat. I’ll see how he likes overdosing on it.”

No, the fire. Itarr wrote.  After thinking for a second, she asked about Momo for the umpteenth time and was promptly ignored.

“Yeah, it was. Servi said as she walked up the only ramp located past the only opening she found. The 4th base was unlike any she had encountered before. It only consisted of a ramp that descended down into a large empty room filled with hundreds of Suits. And at the end of that room were the two steel doors Servi had ripped off. She continued speaking to Itarr. “They had the numbers on their bodies, and they had to die. Everyone had to die. I didn’t think I’d find the source of Monotonia—no, that’s wrong. I didn’t find the production area. I only found the storage facility. But this had to be the base. I know it’s the base.”

As Servi reached about the halfway point up the ramp, she stopped and turned around. The lava, which was just a few short centimeters away from burning the roof, disappeared out of sight. And although Servi couldn’t see it happen, she knew it was gone because the orange glow had vanished.

“Everything’s fine. That’s the last of Monotonia, for a while at least. I don’t know how much effort goes into making it, but I’m sure that that set them back a few weeks, maybe even a month. But it’s not like I’m gonna let them stay alive to see the fallout of losing their entire stash. Itarr.”

Yes?

“I already know where the 3rd base is. We actually passed by it when I was jumping from roof to roof. But I need you to fill in the path behind me with Metal Wall. When you do it, smooth it out until it looks like a ramp that leads to nowhere.”

I’ll get it done. Itarr wrote. Though the power of words was awe-inspiring in a way, it had a vital weakness.

Emotion.

For someone like Itarr, it was impossible to get her tone across when she was limited to written words. In a way, that was a weird blessing because she didn’t how or what kind of tone her voice would take. And if it somehow came across wrong, then she didn’t know how Servi would react.

And as she summoned a stray shield to use as the base for the Metal Wall she had been commanded to construct, she spoke to herself. The conversation she had was one she desperately needed to have with Servi, but it had the power to fracture everything.

Words were powerful in the right hands, and they were downright destructive in nature when used by the wrong person.

A lone girl dressed in armor stood at the entrance to an underground cellar. According to the map floating in front of her, it belonged to the 3rd base, and as Servi soared from roof to roof a few short minutes ago, she commanded Itarr to organize whatever new skills she had gained since her attack began.

Out of the ones she listed, Servi reacted most to a particular skill called Niadiabola. From Niadiabola's description, it created a volatile red cloud that discharged lightning infused with the power of fire. She figured that the perfect place to test such an area-of-effect skill would be on her mortal enemies.

And that was what she did.

After she ripped off the two wooden doors that did a terrible job of hiding the base, four white jumpsuits-wearing Suits with blank and devoid faces rushed out with weapons. Servi did a small hop backwards and felt something large penetrate her back. The tall buildings camouflaged the little hidden alley with the cellar, and she should've known there would be lookouts.

“Bad luck for you, eh?” Servi laughed as she used Niadiabola for the first time. Red clouds, thicker than cotton, suffocated her as they appeared from nowhere. The knife in her chest violently shook from the charged particles in the air. The Suits couldn’t feel fear, nor could they even think for themselves. They could do nothing but feel the fire-infused lightning scorch the very flesh and bone from their bodies, but they weren’t the only ones.

Niadiabola was a skill that, metaphorically, only had an on and off switch. Once it was used, it grew at a rapid rate by siphoning the user’s Skill Energy. If it had the resources needed to sustain itself then it would grow without limits. It also wasn’t one meant to be used near ground level. The red clouds it created sucked all of the oxygen out of the air surrounding it and used it as fuel to further increase the power of its fiery lightning strikes.

Servi had died the instant the skill activated. And during the time it took for her body to regrow itself from literal ash, Niadiabola had ravished the small alley in a baptismal wave of fire and lightning. The cracks of thunder so close to the ground broke countless amounts of windows in a 200-meter radius, and no doubt many people went deaf. It was a skill that, on a surface level, only had one use, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Some argued that it was more destructive than the Rank 1 skill Fulgur Spike, and that was true in a way. It took less Skill Energy to use in the first place, and there was no need to charge it up with lightning skill. The downside was that it took a tremendous amount of Skill Energy to sustain it. And only those who truly devoted themselves to Niadiabola could optimize and harness its true power.

Within literal seconds, it posed a real threat to the entire population of Arcton. Servi regenerated Skill Energy faster than Niadiabola drained it, and it was a real possibility, if she wanted it to, to literally ravage the planet with a single skill. The only reason it never grew that far was Itarr. She made an executive decision to cut the technique off when Servi regenerated. The orange fire illuminated the alley and her naked body. Giant sections of the building surrounding her had been struck and exploded, and the fire traveled up and around.

Every building within a 10-block radius of her had caught fire. In a panic, Itarr asked to take care of it, but Servi replied that a fire to cleanse the sinful Arcton was what she wanted.

“If they want to survive, then let them take care of it. Besides, it doesn’t have a connection to me. It’ll die down soon. But man, this skill is something else!” Servi exclaimed. She threw her hands out as if to reinforce her point. “It’s death incarnate! Hahahaha!!”

Servi’s joyous laughter was something inappropriate for the current situation. Hundreds of pained screams echoed around her as Niadiabola’s remnants had the energy to spare. They would die out in a few minutes, but until then, they were mindless beasts who had no ability to anything but destroy.

“Imagine how painful it’d be to die by it! If only I could weaken the power, but I don’t think I can. But fuck it, let’s put it to the ultimate test!” Servi clothed herself in another set of armor that hid her face and descended the stairs, but she immediately stopped when fifteen Suits rushed up the stairs. She knew what she had done couldn’t have gone unnoticed, but there wasn’t anything wrong with it. No, it was good they did that because it gave her an excellent idea.

Servi literally threw herself down the stairs. The weight of the armor and the speed she gained from gravity’s delightful assistance transformed her into a Human-shaped wrecking ball.

She couldn’t make it to the ground and had to settle for rolling down the stairs. The Suits fell with her, and the majority of them died from the backs of their heads smashing into the grungy concrete steps. The stairwell wasn’t that wide, either, maybe large enough for two men and a child to walk side-by-side, but that was it. The chances of them coming out unscathed were zero.

But when Servi finally made it to the bottom after tumbling down, she realized there were no lights. The dark, stony corridor was pitch black, but she knew people were waiting at the ready because her ears picked up the sound of footsteps. They were approaching her, and Servi looked up the stairs. Niadiabola was still burning, but the orange glowed was dying down.