Ch. 249: I'm Sorry

Tacksha turned sideways and raised a hand toward Mo Fei and Locke.

"Go. Let these two get a good look."

At Mo Fei's feet, Phoebe had finally seen the three heads too. Her whole body went rigid, and a low, drawn-out whimper squeezed out of her throat.
The next instant, she arched her back and shot forward, hurling herself at Tacksha.

Almost at the same moment, the monster bent low, kicked off, and charged straight at Mo Fei and Locke.

Locke raised a hand and a bolt of lightning struck its shoulder. The stink of scorched flesh burst into the air, yet its charge didn't slow in the slightest.

Mo Fei was still standing where he was.

He could see the row of small heads along its neck with their mouths hanging open, and he could see the claw swinging toward him, but his feet felt nailed to the floor.

The wind from the claw brushed his face.

Just then, the small orange head at the very front tilted up and cried out to him.

It was a thin, hoarse mew, exactly the way it had sounded in the alley, rubbing against his shoes to be petted.

The claw that was about to land froze, hovering right in front of his nose, trembling slightly.

It... still recognizes me?

The two cat heads beside it lifted too, and opened their mouths at him.

They still respond... They can still be saved!

The hovering claw paused for only a moment before swinging down again, viciously.

Locke yanked Mo Fei aside. The claw scraped past his shoulder and plowed several deep furrows into the ground.

"Quit spacing out!"

Locke sent bolt after bolt of lightning down on the thing. It lunged left and right, grappling with him, and fought its way all the way over to Barney's side.

Barney was using his mechanical right arm to bat away a chimera with a tilted head when a shadow suddenly pressed down on his back. He spun around and blocked, the monster slamming into his arm, and the three kitten heads at the front were suddenly right before his eyes.

Barney stopped moving.

He stared at the small orange head, his lips working, but nothing came out.

Locke's lightning struck the monster's back. It turned and lunged at Locke.

The chimeras around them closed in on Barney from every direction.

One of them leapt onto his back.

Barney slowly turned his head and looked at it.

The gears inside his mechanical right arm spun faster and faster, the creaking stretching into a shrill whine, and blue-white arcs crackled between his fingers.

The next moment, the arm swung out.

The chimera flew sideways, slammed into the wall, and tumbled to the ground.

Barney's right arm whipped around again and again, arcs of electricity trailing afterimages around him. The chimeras that threw themselves at him were smashed aside, knocked flat, smashed into piles of rubble, one after another.

In the span of a blink, a whole swath of them lay around him, and not one could get back up.

The monster shook off Locke and charged at Mo Fei again.

Barney took a step forward and planted himself in front of Mo Fei. His mechanical right arm seized the front claw as it swung down and held it by sheer force. The whine in the arm climbed higher, and he sank his weight into his feet.

The mechanical arm and the claw locked against each other, the joints creaking. Cracks split the rock floor under his feet, yet he didn't give an inch.

Then he took a step forward.

Then another.

That body, several times larger than his, was forced back, its hind legs gouging long scrapes into the ground.

Barney let go of the claw and pulled back his right arm, fist raised high, the gears in the arm shrieking.

Locke raised a hand as well, the electricity at the tip of his staff growing brighter and brighter, crackling.

"Don't kill it!" Mo Fei shouted at the two of them. "Hold it down first! Please!"

Barney's fist stopped short, and his mechanical right arm clamped back onto the claw.

Locke glanced at Mo Fei, dispersed the lightning at his staff's tip, and hurled a ball of thunder instead.

The thunder ball burst against its hind legs. A second, then a third followed, and the two hind legs twitched and gave way, the whole body sinking down.

Barney took the opening and closed in on its side. His mechanical right arm locked around its torso and he threw his whole weight on top.

It thrashed a few times, but the mechanical arm creaked and cinched tighter, and finally pinned it down.

Mo Fei rushed over.

Up close, he finally saw the stitches. Thick black thread looped around the kittens' necks and stitched into the flesh of that body, the loose ends still seeping blood.

No. Don't think about it. Don't think about it yet. Chaos Transmutation... right, Chaos Transmutation must have a way!

He dashed to a shelf, snatched up the medicine bottles, and threw them into the feed slot. Three paths popped up, and none of them was the answer he wanted.
He swept a whole row of bottles and jars in, and the paths changed, but they still weren't right.

Nothing... Not that! Again...

"No."

Tacksha's voice came from the direction of the procedure table.

"That is my work. I can't let you ruin it like this."

Scratches covered her cheeks and hands, and her clasped hands were still bleeding.
By the iron cage in the corner, the black cat lay curled on the ground. It struggled a few times but couldn't get up.

Tacksha pulled back the bolt on another door.

A shriek came from behind it.

A rat-hound monster far larger than any in the cavern burst through the door, its thick, long rat tail dragging behind it.

There's one as big as the one in the sewers?!

It pounced on Barney's back and sank its incisors into his shoulder, dragging him away by force.
Its thick tail whipped around and swept Locke back several steps.

Mo Fei stood frozen in front of the shelf, watching the head-covered monster shake itself and get back up.

Damn it, damn it!!

"Get over here and help!" Locke shouted.

The man with the mechanical weapon and the one throwing vials heard the call and charged at the giant rat-hound monster together.

Vials burst at its feet, the mechanism fired several times in a row, and several bloody gashes opened across its body.

The giant rat-hound monster tilted its head back and let out another shriek.

From beyond the hole in the iron gate came a dense scrabbling of claws on stone.

The swarm of rats from the cavern surged in like a tide, layer upon layer closing around the giant rat-hound monster.

As fast as the swarm was cut down, more flooded in. The two men couldn't even get near it, and the ones at the back were slipping past the outer ring and spreading across the entire facility.
Barney clutched his bleeding shoulder and swung his arm to smash one wave back, only for the next to leap at him; Locke's lightning grew thinner with every bolt. The monster stitched all over with heads rampaged through the swarm, the kittens' cries drowned out by shrieks and the scrape of claws.

A rat-hound monster pounced at Mo Fei, and Prototype No. 1 jumped in from the side and knocked it away.
In the corner, Phoebe pushed herself up on trembling legs, the fur on her back standing on end.

Mo Fei took a step back and trod on something.

He looked down. It was the pair of scissors that had spilled out of the tray.

I have to deal with these rats first... The small ones from before all split off from the tail. These should be the same, right?

He picked up the scissors, dug out all the rat poison he had left, and dumped everything into the feed slot.

[Materials detected: "Assorted Potions," "Scissors," "Reproductive Suppressant."]
[Analysis complete. Three transmutation paths observed:]

1. [Safe Mode] "Medicine Shears" (Cost: 6 EP): Wherever it cuts, the medicine goes.
2. [Flux Mode] "Shearing Tonic" (Cost: 36 EP): Wherever it touches, the medicine cuts it open.
3. [Chaos Mode] "Root-and-Branch Shears" (Cost: 82 EP): The medicine cuts into the target and spreads along bloodlines to others of its kind nearby.

Chaos Mode!

[Host selected Option 3.]
[82 EP paid. Transmutation commencing!]

A weight settled into Mo Fei's palm, and a pair of scissors landed in his hand.

[Transmutation complete!]
[Congratulations: "Root-and-Branch Shears" acquired (Anomalous Grade).]
[Item effect: Upon cutting a target, the medicine's effect is cut into its body and spreads to nearby individuals related to the target by blood.]
[Note: One snip, and everything is neatly taken care of.]

"Prototype No. 1, clear a path for me!"

Prototype No. 1 charged out, tentacles swinging left and right, punching a gap through the swarm. Mo Fei followed behind it, bent low, and pushed all the way to the giant rat-hound monster's flank.

That thick, long tail was whipping back and forth right in front of him.

He lunged, gripped the scissors tight, and drove them hard into the base of the tail.

Snip.

The giant rat-hound monster let out a piercing scream and thrashed wildly on the spot.

The rat-hound monsters around it lost their footing, collapsing one after another and twitching on the ground.

The giant rat-hound monsters struggled for a long while before finally going still.

Beyond the hole, the rat-hound monsters turned tail and fled, shrieking, scattering in every direction, and the scrabbling of their claws soon faded into the distance.

The commotion of the swarm had barely died down when a sharp mewl rang out behind Mo Fei.

He turned around. That huge body was lunging at him, the three small cat heads at the front writhing desperately, jerking backward again and again as if trying to drag the whole body back. The stitches pulled taut, and blood ran down their necks.

Locke's lightning, thinned to a mere thread, struck it but couldn't even make it stagger. Barney grabbed its hind leg from the side and was dragged along the ground for a long stretch.

The little orange cat mewed once, then again, until its voice was hoarse.

Mo Fei looked at it.

No good. I'm out of EP. If this keeps up, they'll only keep suffering...

He pulled a small cube from his pocket and snapped it hard.

A pale golden glow burst outward, and a tiny figure landed in his palm. Then its armor plates clanked and flipped, and in an instant it became a silver-white longsword.

Mo Fei gripped the hilt, and the array on the blade lit up halfway.

That body bore down on him. All the sounds around him faded away, and he could hear only the thin, hoarse mewing above his head.

"I'm sorry..."

The sword light swept out, passing across the monster's body, and the struggling of the three small heads stopped.

The arc of light was more restrained than last time, but it still cut into the rock wall behind.

Boom—

A fathomless rift opened in the rock wall.
The crack crawled upward, and the rock layers above began to fall away, piece by piece.

Mo Fei was knocked backward by the tremor and crashed down onto the rubble.

A dull, cracking rumble rolled down from overhead. Rubble rained down, followed by even larger chunks of rock.

The last bit of light before his eyes was buried in the dark.