Brock and the woman shook hands, and she returned a smile, although it was clearly somewhat forced. He couldn’t say he blamed her. It was always a difficult affair when one was being casual with a person they were certain could kill them in less than a second. To his side, Fon took the attention of the other combatants away and Brock assumed there were more issues to talk about.

He also assumed many of them he couldn’t fix, nor could Harry or Fon.

“Margo.” The lady nodded stiffly at Brock.

“Brock,” he nodded toward the receeding form of Fon, “like she said.”

She glanced behind her, as if looking for the silent support of her companions to give her courage, though they had already moved away with the other woman. Steeling herself with a deep breath inward, she met Brock’s eyes directly, “You’ve seen the waves of those monsters?”

Brock nodded once more, and she continued, “We’re convinced they’re from a hive, or something along that vein. Some way far in the direction they come from, since they only ever come from one direction.”

“You haven’t seen it yet?” He raised a brow.

A grim expression slid across her face, “No. Not yet. Anyone we send to search never comes back. Can’t escape this place either. I’m sure you’ve seen what happened to those who tried.”

Silently, Brock considered this. He had indeed seen those people that tried to escape. In fact, it was the spotting of those very people that led him here. They had been cut down where they stood, mere kilometres from the base, Sanctuary, which now that he understood their predicament, was not at all a fitting name.

He did wonder, however, how the creatures killed those people if they fled in the opposite direction of the supposed ‘hive’. Were they trying to keep the people of Sanctuary here, trapped?

That aside, the source of the creatures being a hive was certainly a good guess, if you factored in the fact that had both swarm and spawn in their names, as well as the singular direction they came from, at least during the sieges. The latter implied they came from one location, despite other contradictions. If that was the case, it was also no wonder no one came back.

The question was though; how powerful was the creature that could make tens of thousands of these minions a day?

“We’ve seen how powerful you are. You might be able to find the problem.” Seeing as he stayed silent afterwards, Margo chose to continue, “And come back.”

Brock felt this was a very similar scenario to that which he had experienced with Alice Springs. He arrives in town, said town has big beast they can’t kill, so they get him to do it for them. On paper, it sounded easy, but it was kind of getting repetitive now. Almost like a cliché.

Either way, Brock couldn’t exactly say no, because these people definitely wouldn’t last much longer.

He’d seen all the empty houses.

“How many people have died so far?”

Margo bit her lip, “We had just shy of five thousand people four months ago.”

She left the rest unsaid, certain that Brock had already detected the remainder. About four hundred.

He sighed and ran a hand through his freshly matted hair. What choice did he have? Two. He could either forsake the lives of these people and leave, if just to accelerate his journey to his sister and save himself from the ‘subjugation quest’ as Harry seemed to call the outing with the Sky Bandit. Or he could stay here and help.

Brock sighed once more. I wanna sell my conscience on eBay.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Margo’s face lit up immediately, and even when she tried to school her expression, her joy was still peeking through the shoddily erected mask. Had Brock made the right decision? That depended on who you asked. Did he think he made the right decision? He didn’t know.

All he knew was that he made the decision he wouldn’t regret later.

The conversation continued on for a while longer, and Brock asked about the arid state of the land, or more accurately the Augment that was used upon it. He had sensed a few in the auras of the warriors, so he was certain she at least would understand what he was talking about.

In the end, she hadn’t known what had done it, nor that it had been an Augment, only that it was like this when the Tutorial had concluded and they appeared here in the expanse. She had attributed the entirety of the town’s construction to a woman by the name of Erin, who had obtained an Ascendancy related to the earth.

That aside, she knew next to nothing about it, only that it had happened, and it left Brock wholly unsatisfied. Was it just some sort of magical carpet bombing by some beast? Or did the System decide to use an Augment to fuck over this part of Russia?

He knew the machine was a colossal dickwad, but he didn’t think it would go out of its way to directly intervene in the state of the planet considering it already had other methods to terraform it. Brock still thought a beast had done this, an extremely powerful one, though there were no leads or even sightings for him to go by.

As he pondered on it, Margo led him through the town after he had exhausted his final question, letting the civilians know he was going to save them with so much enthusiasm he immediately discounted it as being a guilt tactic. It did make him feel immensely uncomfortable as people came up to him and shook his hand and expressed their gratitude despite their earlier horror at his appearance.

He hadn’t even done anything yet, but he assumed when you were devoid of hope for so long, all you could do was latch onto any chance you were given. Of course, many hadn’t forgotten how he had slain the Skin Walkers masquerading as their family members, and they had cussed him out and cursed him to die trying.

If he wasn’t uncomfortable before, those few experiences left him squirming.

Whether he had helped them or not, he had slain all they had left of their family members and tainted their final memory of them. He couldn’t bring himself to blame them, and he certainly let it get to him. He felt down for the remainder of the trip. It wasn’t a good feeling to do right by people but still be hated for it.

He knew he couldn’t please everyone, and that trying to do so was foolish. But still, it hurt.

Margo had quickly caught on and steered him clear of the places where he had executed the Skin Walkers, if only to save his fraying conscience. Due to that, he hadn’t been able to visit the town hall, but he didn’t really care. The cafeteria was interesting in the fact that they did indeed reuse the insect corpses as meals, and even ground down the chitin into a seasoning which tasted oddly of chicken.

When he had tried monster corpses with Harry, it had literally tasted like charred faeces. But maybe he had just been cooking them wrong? The chitin seasoning was certainly inventive, and when they had come back to the wall to overlook the clean-up efforts as downtrodden men and women dragged the corpses within the walls, insect and human alike, he had snagged a few of the former into his ring.

You never knew when the next time you’d find real food would be.

Harry and Fon were also helping with the glum efforts, the former putting his considerable strength to bear as he dug grave after grave for the fallen warriors and the latter just doing her best to drag Spawn corpses through the gate. She was lacking in strength, and Brock had to admit that seeing her try so hard at it was hilarious.

A few groups of people were also somberly dismantling the carcasses of the larger variants, mostly removing the blades and the thick plates to be used as equipment in the future, as they were far too heavy to drag into the town. Harry might have been able to do it, but it’d sure take him a while. Brock guessed they’d weigh around a few hundred kilos.

He and Margo soon moved to join in, and he was dragging corpses at record speeds with a mix of his high Agility and Augment of Skies. The acting leader of the Sanctuary, who now appeared to be Margo, if just by the courtesy that she had had the bravery to speak to him, had eventually directed his efforts to be used helping the dismantlers.

Seeing as there was one corpse far off where Harry had slain it, and it was manned by only a single boy, one Brock recognised as the kid he was standing on the wall with when he initially appeared, he moved to help. Leisurely, Brock strolled over and crouched down beside the kid, chuckling as he struggled to saw through the thick plates of armour.

He noticed Brock’s appearance almost instantly and began sawing with renewed vigour, clearly trying to impress him. The man was about to chuckle once more, but a faint trace of aura stopped him dead. It was similar, yet the flavours of it were entirely foreign. Licking his lips, Brock shut his eyes and spread out his aura senses.

The boy glanced at him from the side, but Brock ignored him and centred his attention on the corpse lying straight ahead of him. Off of it wafted the dying remnant of its own aura, feeble and weak as its power steadily faded, its core long dead. But hidden within, almost imperceptible, was a second aura.

The creator.

Brock was certain it belonged to the queen insect that was theorised to be birthing the hordes. That alone was enough of a lead, although it only proved something he would have found sooner or later anyway when he ventured to the hive. No, what was startling about the aura was the familiarity it possessed to him.

While it was different in many ways, the core tenant of power still remained identical. He licked his dry lips once more. A Tyrant.

Brock gulped audibly as he retracted his aura senses back into the bounds of his Inner Self. The boy frowned, “What’s wrong?”

The office worker scratched the back of his head at the kid’s question, hearing the worry present within, “I… uh… left the stove on…”

**

Space was a myriad tapestry of shades and hues and energies as it warped around him. The heat of spatial friction was pleasant against his skin, although the deadliness wasn’t to be underestimated. It alone would be enough to vaporise anyone below E-Grade unless they were protected by an outside influence.

I should throw one of my servants in here, if just to improve the productivity of the others.

Zin Keene chuckled lowly. His eyes adopted a harsh glint while he floated, and he discarded his easy smirk, instead replacing it with a sneer. He had been sent to eliminate a certain target, one he speculated would benefit him greatly if he was granted the chance to study it. Fortunately, that fool Erykah refused to so much as even hear the rumours he had accidentally let loose and had sent him right toward it.

His unit was travelling in a separate wormhole, mostly due to the fact he despised being near the plebians. He didn’t even care if they knew, as they were wholly incompetent, and just wanted them to stay out of his way. Unluckily for them, they wouldn’t, and he’d have to kill them all just to silence what he was about to do. If word got out, well… the High Inquisitor herself would execute him.

Let alone he attract the attention of the Nomads. The last time they had descended upon the residents of the Multiverse was due to a happening not much unlike what he was planning. Of course, trying to intentionally create Errors and raise an army of them was far different from simply studying one.

Of course, it was common knowledge that the other factions of the Multiverse had done things similar, if not identical to what he himself was going to do, but unlike he, they had the support of the entire faction and were easily capable of keeping the news under wraps. He was but one man, after all.

Zin knew he was playing with fire here, but to rise the Ascent was to accept danger and death. To defy Erykah, and perhaps the core rule of this Multiversal plane, was a bad life choice, but he didn’t really recall caring. If anything, Erykah was so easy to manipulate with that pride of hers that he could blame it all on one of his rivals in an opposing faction or empire.

Either way, he leaned back and relaxed. The planet was a backwater shit hole that had been recently integrated and thus was light years upon light years away from the Divine Court. The trip would only take a little longer. He’d been here for months already.

He couldn’t wait to unleash himself on the Error that inhabited this ‘Earth’. It was only a matter of time now.