Nestra’s sprint quickly turned into a jog. She was too tired to sprint all the way there, in those shoes. It had been a long week and even her true self was tired, so the human mask was really not happy about it. The underground utility and evacuation tunnels lacked fresh coffee, unfortunately, so she grit her teeth and persevered. It was quiet down here, for now. Dust and the scent of rot tickled her nose though the tunnels were holding well for their age. Threshold’s bowels were dimly lit by sparse ceiling light that failed to dispel the shadows. Only Nestra’s feet made a pitter patter on the concrete ground. Besides that, it was silent as a tomb. Nestra slowed down to check her gun and make sure the ammo pouch was easily in reach. It gave her some time to think and decide what she would do, how far she was willing to go to defend others. Her shotgun would kill dokkaebi easily enough but that would only be the first, frantic wave. Even if portal monsters were weaker on earth, it would still take several twelve gauge to the face to stop a D-class threat. She didn’t have her gear. She didn’t even have her sword. If Shinoda’s herd of idiots got caught up, she would have to fight at a fraction of her abilities. That meant, people might die. She had to decide now if she was willing to let them die to protect her secret because although Gorge knew about her, he was actually an honorable asshole. He wouldn’t talk. She was confident about that. A group of strangers? No. They would talk. Risk her life for strangers? Probably not, but she would risk it for Shinoda. It was cruel but… it was them or her, and she wasn’t willing to die for strangers. They were not entitled to her life. Decision made, Nestra moved faster, doing her best to ignore the cold ball in her stomach. The one that said ‘what if it’s a kid?’. She hoped she wouldn’t have to find out. Soon after, she reached a branch in the tunnel. Where were they again? Shit, had she even asked? Both tunnels led to other places on Fifteen. Tragically, there were no directions she could recognize. “Ok, great. Here they come. Let’s get them here before they spread across the entire fucking district and we have to give chase.” Nestra was acting much more confident than she was feeling. Gorge knew and she was fine with it but Valerian? He was a damn gleam. But she couldn’t murder him, it would be like killing a puppy. And especially not after losing Shinoda. And just… it was Valerian. Her… sort of friend. Her demon self was immensely confused. He wasn’t kin, but he was still brother in arms. Or something like that. Her mind struggled with the concepts just as the snarls and roars of the horde grew closer. She was too tired. Even the spell was already unraveling at the seams. She just had to keep going. It was too much of a good opportunity and the tunnel was a great chokepoint. Or maybe hubris was getting to her and they ought to be fleeing towards the nearest battle, hoping to catch the attention of a B-class raider. She spared a glance towards Valerian who was now standing with his back to her and his mace firmly held. He was so confident she could do it. His blind trust chased the anxiety away. She could still get away with secrecy if nobody looked too hard and they probably wouldn’t. Here was a tide of varied and interesting foes to kill. She just had to lean into her nature and make it work. The first were rats, again, and Nestra methodically crushed them. They no longer provided her with any essence at all. Next came a group of green insects the size of children, looking like large, compact mantis. They were almost as fast as her but they followed a basic pattern and after getting a single cut on her arm, Nestra was able to bait the first strike reliably. A massive wolf thing was next and she was forced to fall back to avoid being bitten. It just closed the distance and snapped at her, so she used momentum to get behind it and let the size of the tunnel prevent it from turning too quickly. Nestra clung to its black fur and stabbed, and stabbed again with a short void blade. It smashed her against the wall but she held on, though it stole her breath. Finally, she cleaved a long gash along its flank and it fled away. A yelp of pain showed it didn’t go very far. The kaiju’s influence was unraveling, with monsters fleeing or turning on each other. She just had to hold a little longer. She tried to catch her breath but a large, rock biped was next. It was slow, so she easily used its thunderous attacks to manage the next group of mantis, staying ahead of them. They still gave her essence but it fed into her chest now because she was as fast as she could get. Once the mantises were dead, she struck the golem in the chest with precision and the most concentrated void blade she could muster. Its outer skin exploded. Nestra used immovable at the last instant but the shrapnel still bit into her in many places. She was bleeding now. Her regeneration wasn’t following anymore, and Valerian’s spell only helped a little. Golem was dead though and her resilience increased yet again. Fire hit her leg, and she dodged another as pain seared her mind. Fireball-tossing monkeys of all things. She used momentum to run into the troupe and crushed them, using their bodies as shields, then she raced back with more mana in her pool to avoid the charge of a sort of… metal unicorn? Nestra jumped behind the golem corpse. Magical energy pierced through it like butter. She used momentum to roll under the beam, then punched up and with a blade using precision. The strike caught the unicorn under the jaw, killing it instantly. She got a lot of power from that one. There were fighting sounds from Valerian’s side but here, at the edge of the tunnel, silence was returning. That… that was it? Maybe? Strange though, she could swear… The only warning she had was a pool of darkness on her left, in the wall. She recognized it from the infinite war world. It was a standard maneuver for shadow users: teleport through darkness and strike from a blind spot. She twisted on herself to avoid snapping teeth but something caught her in the shoulder and sent her careening. Momentum saved her life. The creature was fast, much faster than her. It was all she could do to stay ahead. It merged with the darkness, a snarling mass of chitin-covered muscles and a head made only of teeth. Long claws on its digits. A horrifying shape halfway towards human but too elongated and far too muscular. She didn’t know what the fuck it was but she decided, right there, to call it the Shadow Beast. Nestra fell back towards the barricade but the creature was fast, too fast and she couldn’t shake it off. Dodging was all she could manage, even then it was a close call. The Stalk of the Scornful Crescent helped her stay just one step ahead but it couldn’t last. In desperation, she turned and raised her left arm. She activated immovable. As the thing slapped her. Claws bit into her arm and shoulder but she was still standing. Potential bloomed on the creature and it… veered away. A cataclysmic boom shook the entire tunnel. Parts of the wall in front of her exploded in a shower of dust. The beast screeched. It lashed out. Pain flared in her side when she was smacked into the barricade. Hurting all over, really all over. Valerian’s spell was working overtime to keep her functional. She had maybe a few seconds more. Valerian jumped on the Shadow Beast, bloody mace raised high. The creature casually batted him away into a nearby wall. Nestra aimed her last bolt. Her ears picked up the sound of dying monsters. Cavalry was almost here. Just had to hold for a little longer. Using the time Valerian had granted her, she pushed potential in the Shadow Beast’s face. The maddened creature opened its maw wide to bite on her. Gray energy tore through her target, then a geyser of blood splattered her. Decapitated. A fantastic spike of energy flooded her, pushing her awareness and resilience to their limit. A diffuse warmth lingered in her chest but even the rush of power could not protect her anymore. She barely managed enough strength to reactivate her mask before Valerian’s Read the latest chapters on NovelHub - completely free! She was the most tired she’d ever been in her life. The last thing she saw was a pair of worried jade iris but the concrete was simply too comfortable. She closed her eyes and fell asleep. When Nestra came to, she was warm and lying on something soft. And that was weird. She was also starving and hurting all over which was much more within her expectations. Below her was a cot in some well-lit place but still underground, a sort of recess more than a room separated from the rest by a drawn curtain. The susurrus of conversations drifted from behind the symbolic line, as did the scent of tomato soup. It nicely covered the smell of blood, rust, and her own sweat. She was wearing her filthy cocktail dress, still. Her throat itched. Thirsty. “Here, here,” Valerian said as he shoved a straw in her mouth. She gulped tepid water with relish, though moving her arm hurt terribly. Her true self must be really messed up if even her human body felt the aches. Moving around through, she realized the light didn’t come from a lamp as she’d originally thought. It came from a man. A gleam in golden plate armor. Their aura was so controlled she hadn’t realized they were here. Her gaze drifted up from a pilum and a strange leaf-like shield to dark skin under a thick helmet and two soft golden eyes shining like the sun itself. The calm doctor’s face tilted to the side. It was a strange and terrifying expression in someone usually so warm. The gesture chilled her. “Sorry, Doctor Mazingwe.” “I see your memory is intact, at least. Valerian, if you would give us a moment?” “What? Oh, sure. Sir.” He left with a last worried glance and Nestra saw something there she didn’t like at all. Pity. Mazingwe made a small black orb appear seemingly out of thin air. The sounds from outside grew immediately muted. “Do not blame him,” the doctor said in a guarded voice. “He was concerned after you could not be woken up and agreed to share more about your conditions under a seal of secrecy. My oath as a doctor means that your medical details are safe with me. Unfortunately, my oath as a defender of mankind supersedes it, so now I must ascertain, are you my Clytemnestra Palladian or are you a monster wearing her skin?” Nestra felt pressure. This was bad. “I told you I hate that name,” she said. “So you did, many times.” “Your words speak in favor of this hypothesis. Were you always able to assume… another form?” he asked. It felt like a very, very, very bad idea to lie to him. “Really no. I only figured it out right after the purge.” “Right after the purge?” “I am under the impression you are hiding things from me.” “Well yeah I was and I am, but the question here is: am I a monster and the answer is no.” Another silence. His voice was low and soft but there was something in the intensity in his gaze that meant he would kill her in an instant. “How would I know that you’re you, and not some skinchangers or some other creature?” “Riel, doctor, how the fuck do you expect me to prove that? I don’t even know for sure. Maybe I woke up with the exact same souvenirs but since there were no corpses and it still feels like me, I’m going to apply Occam’s razor and say it’s me, alright? It’s me. Still mostly the same as far as I can tell.” “You are not human,” he stated with absolute confidence. “How the fuck would you know that?” “You think you’re still human?” She froze. He got her there. Nestra clenched her teeth. This was all going wrong. He’d found a crack and dug in and there was no amount of bullshit that could save her now. Still had to try. “I am what I am. And who I am. Maybe I’m a weird human. How would you know?” Mazingwe considered long and hard. Nestra was tempted to ask him if he was lagging or something. When he finally spoke, he was even more guarded than before. “A long time ago, Vanquisher’s alpha team came across a… strange being in a portal world.” Nestra blinked. Vanquisher was North America’s top guild by a large margin. Their Alpha Team had to include stars like Cyrrhus and The Mangler. “They were tested and they were beaten. Portal Worlds of their levels have entire groups of seemingly sentient entities, though they only have a semblance of civilization, so meeting one wasn’t particularly a surprise. Being beaten was. Being spared after that confirmed they were not dealing with a maddened portal creature.” “The stranger didn’t kill any of them. Eventually, Shiloh managed to shoot him at point-blank range and then something surprising happened.” Nestra was almost hanging from her bed. This was… classified information. “The stranger changed. He grew in size and revealed black horns, black eyes, sharper teeth. Gray skin. He congratulated the team for breaking his… mask. In English.” Nestra was so excited. Someone like her. Finally, knowledge! “He told them they were not ripe yet before leaving them. The Vanquishers collected a sample of the little blood they’d managed to shed. I compared it to the one found on your dress. It seems your own… mask… was breached a little, whatever that means. I could obviously not check the highly classified Pandora database from here but many of its attributes were similar. Gray then oxidized to red. You are not human Nestra. You are a Cacodaimon Anthropomimesis. A gray demon, as your kind was dubbed.” “Caco whatever,” she stubbornly replied. “It’s me. You know it’s me. Now, I know where this can go.” “Yes,” Mazingwe said. “They’ll kill me if you tell them. Or worse.” “I will reveal your presence to Shinran and his team only. He’s not the kind of person to execute others for who they are, believe me. There is no need to spread it to the public, however he, as Threshold’s guardian, must know. I am sorry, Nestra. You will be coming with me.” Mazingwe’s magical tool splintered on the spot. Outside of the room, all conversations had instantly died. All that was left was a group of people breathing heavily. Even Mazingwe’s light felt dimmer. The high gleam himself was now standing in front of Nestra, to his credit defending her, facing the curtain opening.