Marching through the underground like a rat, the man named Verndil heaved a sigh as he pointed out the right direction at each fork in the road. Though, he did so from the back of the group, much to Lycoris's mild annoyance.  Lycoris was grateful that Gier's nose, and their luck… and possibly the massive worm-Whisper as well… had led them straight to a veritable golden goose.  She felt nothing for the Vampire nobleman, whose appearance brought to mind a very sad, very wet woodland wolf… only with fewer horns and spines. It was perhaps somewhat ironic considering he didn't appear to be too friendly with the actual wolf-like member of their entourage, which had immediately painted him in a negative light and soured Lycoris's opinion of him.  But he knew the layout of the tunnels, which meant most importantly that he knew exactly how to reach the cloud generator. Lycoris wasn't sure he'd be useful beyond that, considering she had melted what appeared to be his only contribution to their arsenal when she desperately willed the wand to cut the massive worm to pieces, but she had little use for him besides. Maybe he could serve as a distraction, or a meat shield for the far more vulnerable Gier.

Apparently, the cloud generator was on the opposite end of the city from his private manor, so they had a lengthy journey ahead of them… and also meant that Lycoris's group had been going in the complete wrong direction before.  She wasn't sure how the others felt, particularly Gier, but it was a little discouraging. She had taken the lack of resistance before then as a good sign, but it turned out the only reason for that was because they were all gathered elsewhere, presumably.

Athena is still recovering, I'm not sure how capable Gier is or how that firearm works, and this Count is obviously useless… I have to be the protector again. After all, I'm the one whose bright idea this was, this time I'll see them out safely. Right, Mizar?

Lycoris squeezed the locket tucked beneath her shirt, feeling the warmth of the metal against her skin as she took stock of their situation.

They proceeded in silence for what felt like hours—though probably far shorter in reality—before the Count could no longer bear to hear nothing other than the sound of their footfalls, and finally opened his mouth to address Athena, who was all but hovering over Lycoris's shoulder as they marched.

"So, Miss…"  "Athena." Her reply was curt, as she was focused on Lycoris's safety—despite the lack of danger present.  "Miss Athena," he grumbled, slightly off-put, "Might I inquire as to your relationship to Her Highness?"  "I serve as her personal handmaiden."

There was a swell of pride in her tone, and she puffed her chest out triumphantly.  Lycoris meanwhile, felt rather embarrassed at hearing someone proudly declare that they were her personal carer. But she kept her silence, lest she risk losing face in front of the nobleman. While she didn't like him, Lycoris still understood that he was important enough to affect public opinion about her.  She had nearly let herself slide back into old comfortable habits after only two days of not having someone breathe down her neck over her mannerisms and expectations for an Heir-Significate. It was discouraging that she could slip so easily.  Walking around with her back stiffly raised and following proper noble posture was already difficult enough with her self-consciousness, but adding in hauling her scythe around and the distance they were covering… it suddenly felt like a divine hero's effort. But Lycoris knew her mother could have done it all effortlessly, which served as… remarkably strong motivation to maintain her regal posture.

"Truly?" he scoffed. "You are her—"  "Silence," interrupted Lycoris. "She has never once left me wanting for assistance."  "Y-Your Highness…"  "But of course, Princess, I meant no discourtesy to your servant. I simply… am surprised by the choice of attire for your servants."  "And you weren't of mine?"  "Who am I to question Your Highness's decisions? I've no doubt you have a perfectly good—"  "You do know Athena is from the Ochros, no? I hear they're a pretty important family…"

Lycoris smirked as the Count's face blanched. He was already on the paler side of things, so it wasn't a particularly pronounced effect, but he still looked like he'd sucked on a lemon.  The fact that Athena didn't look particularly noble with her darker cerulean hair was something the Maid was probably sensitive about, but Lycoris also knew that she valued her loyalty to the Aphtangloa above all else. It was no wonder she hadn't bothered emphasizing her own family background.

"Sh-She… You… My, my apologies, My Lady," sputtered the idiotic count.  Athena actually looked somewhat embarrassed. "Such a title is unnecessary for me. All I need is to be by Her Highness's side."  "So she says," shrugged Lycoris. "Still, if you care so much for appearances and platitudes, you should keep that in mind, Eltash."  "R-Right, of course, Your Highness. Thank you. And, as for the other in your company…"

He gestured toward Gier, who rolled his eyes while keeping his distance from the trio of vampires.  With Verndil there to direct them through the tunnels, and Lycoris there to judge him should he try to either mislead them or flee, there was little for Gier to do other than follow and offer supporting fire whenever a Whisper reared its head. He wasn't a trained soldier—presumably—and he wasn't particularly loyal to Lycoris either, even if he was at least polite, so she had little in the way of expectations for him.

"Gier," he quipped.  "Yes, 'Gier,'" replied the Count distastefully. "I don't suppose you are also in the service of the Aphtangloa?"  "…Dunno." The wolf-eared man stared up at the ceiling, before looking over at Lycoris, "Am I?"  "No, he isn't in Mother's employ or anything like that."

As tempting as it would be to reply with "whichever option annoys Count Eltash more," Lycoris shook her head. Even then, the mere mention of Lilianna was enough to send a shiver of terror up the man's spine. Perhaps it was his familiarity with the highest echelons of society, and the knowledge of the overwhelming power and presence of the Seven and Aphtangloa, that caused his fear.  Gier, who might as well have lived in an entirely different world—which the former Human knight could sympathize with—naturally had no frame of reference for how the higher nobility would trample over the life of anyone who dared even inconvenience them. It was, after all, the entire reason this mess had begun and involved Lycoris, as far as the girl was concerned.

"Then what is that rabble doing here?"  "Because I asked for his assistance."

Lycoris did nothing to mask the frustration and annoyance in her tone. While she didn't want people to fear her like they did her mother, and loathed the idea of receiving special treatment because of her position… she could no more halt the natural course of society than she could the rise and fall of the Goddess's shining star.  So why not at least exploit her position to entertain herself by messing with one of the stuffy noble-types she detested oh-so-much? Verndil reminded her unpleasantly of her other objective here—a certain man she wanted to painstakingly shred into tiny pieces with her bare hands.

The thought of it brought an oddly familiar, difficult-to-suppress fury to Lycoris. All of this was his fault, and if she was right, it was all because of that hateful, confusing Liar-Witch.  Her knuckles whitened as she gripped her scythe hard enough to shatter steel, and Verndil cleared his throat and backed away.

"M-My sincerest apologies, Your Highness. I had no idea. I'm… I have no doubt you had a good reason for requesting such an individual, yes. Yes, indubitably."

He probably thought her barely-contained fury was directed toward him, rather than that louse of a Vanas.  Athena knew her better however, and braved the temperamental princess by placing her hand softly upon Lycoris's head. She gave a comforting pat as her warm smile seemed to raise the temperature in the chilly and damp corridor.

"There there, Your Highness. You cannot blame every foolish bootlicker for being unable to grasp the magniferousness of your stratagems." She shot a surreptitious wink toward Lycoris. "Don't forget what our objective here is."  "Right. Thank you, Athena."

Lycoris breathed a small sigh of relief, but immediately tensed back up as a gunshot reverberated through the corridors, accompanying the metallic sound of a Whisper collapsing.  Gier grunted and blew on the barrel of his shotgun, turning from the corner he had poked around to nod toward the group. He held his hand out to signal them to stop, and crouched down to press one of his ears against the floor.

"There's a pack of 'em ahead of us. Maybe even more. Guessin' that means we're getting close to the generator, right?"  "They gather near rich sources of mana," Lycoris affirmed.  Verndil frowned. "But we're nowhere near the actual generator. The site is still at least half a mile off."  "Then you'd better get yourself ready for a fight, cause you'd be a damned fool if you think Her Highness is gonna turn around now," snarled Gier.  "Huh?" The Count jolted and winced at the assumption that he'd be doing something so brutish as fighting. "But I'm unarmed! H-Her Highness broke my only means of self-defense!"  "You got claws, right? Put 'em to use!"  "I would never do something so brutish!"

Lycoris chuckled at Gier's cajoling of the nobleman.  She turned around to stare at him, tilting her head innocently.

"What do you mean? Mother taught me to defend myself with tooth and claw when bereft of other armaments," she spoke in a soft tone, offering a remarkably horrifying truth in a childish lilt. "I fully expect you to pull your weight just as much as Gier does."  "H-Huh!?"

＊　＊　＊

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Their pace had slowed drastically once they encountered the Whispers, but eventually Lycoris's party fought their way to the underground emergency exit for the city's primary power production facility—where the cloud generator was housed.  Tragically, Count Eltash never once lifted his finger to help, even after Lycoris's heckling. Athena had even offered him a choice of her sword or dagger, but instead he simply held back and cowered as they hacked and slashed and blasted their way through the disorganized creatures.  Most of the Whispers in the tunnels looked malformed or were smaller than the ones Lycoris encountered on the surface. Some resembled octopods, with their odd numbers of limbs, and even the bipedal ones shambled about like the "undead" monstrosities from Lycoris's memories, though these were thankfully fleshless. It made it easier to maintain her composure while crushing them with her axe-blade.

The emergency exit had been forced open, or rather, it appeared to have been drilled through; the edges were warped by heat, though long since cooled. The hall had adopted the appearance of that same odd tangle of wires and mismatched metal plates overlapped, like a metallic burrow for some strange creature, but the original warning lights still strobed along the ceiling and floor, guiding the non-existent personnel toward the exits.

"So… So we're done, right? I've led you all here, now I can leave, yes?"

As they were about to cross into the facility grounds proper, the Count suddenly spoke up, briefly fracturing the group's momentum.  Everyone stopped and looked at each other, while Lycoris scowled.

"What do you mean? I still need you to escort me around town once our business here is completed and the engine is mended."  "But I am, ah, not nearly as much of a fighter as, er, yourself. Your Highness. I believe I would merely… get in the way."  "In that case, how exactly do you expect to survive against them on your own?"

He froze as the gears in his head momentarily ground to a halt, his nervous optimism fading as understanding etched itself onto his face.  Athena took the opportunity to rest against the wall, closing her eyes in thought.

"I am feeling a touch fatigued myself, Your Highness. I swore to never slow you down, but… Allowing you to venture into such a dangerous location on your own…"  "Kids are just an endless source of energy, huh?" Gier chuckled as he slumped down against the wall. "I'm starvin' and my dogs are barkin'. That's the problem with Whispers, nothing about them is edible, and they chew up whatever biomatter they get their hands on for fuel."  "I am not a child!!" Lycoris fumed.

Both Gier and Athena chuckled—for completely separate reasons, perhaps—while Verndil looked aghast, turning from Lycoris to the two of them and back. He didn't say anything, but the "are you two serious?" was obvious just from his body language.

"Of course not, Your Highness. You're a mature forty-six year old girl."  "Ugh." Lycoris rolled her eyes and turned from Athena to Gier, "How old are you, Gier?"  "Eighty-nine in a month and change."  "E…Eighty NINE!? But, aren't you…"  "You know, Fangchasers don't live nearly as long as Vampires. But we mature a lot faster. I think I was… twenty, maybe thirty? When I was your size."

Lycoris's eyebrow twitched at Gier's slightly smug grin. She had wanted to prove a point about maturity and lifespans, but had been shut down before she could even properly formulate a plan of attack.  Though, Fangchasers didn't seem to differ too much from humans, she thought, but the gap was large enough that it was off-putting. Plus, he didn't look a day over twenty right now. If she wasn't trying to maintain a noble image—or as much of one as she could while complaining about her refound youth—Lycoris would've started tearing her hair out.

"Is… that so. Ha ha ha, sounds almost Human. Could I ask for your enlightenment on how long it is Fangchasers live for, then?" she stiffly asked.  "Few hundred years, assuming it's just natural causes that get ya. My mom…" Gier wrinkled his brow, trying not to let anything show on his face and failing spectacularly, "she was in her late three hundreds. So she did pretty well, all things considered…"

The group fell silent after that, a morose air hanging between Lycoris and Gier, while the other two seemed more disinterested in the topic than actually sympathetic to his situation.  Unfortunately, their moment of rest was short-lived as a welcoming squad shambled forward to "greet" them. Picking up her trick-scythe, or perhaps trick-axe was more applicable with how much more useful that form had been in these tunnels, Lycoris stepped forward to return the favor by crushing them.  None of the Whispers posed any threat to her, as the relatively narrow tunnels favored Lycoris over her enemies, but if there were ever enough of them to genuinely fill the tunnels, she wouldn't have been able to make any headway. Thankfully, even though they had made their way to the facility, the underground here seemed almost oddly bereft of Whispers, compared to the practical armies she had seen up above.

While she was busy hacking through the creatures like weeds, the rest of her party decided they rested enough to rejoin her. Or perhaps she had wandered far enough away that they started worrying about her.  Grateful as she was for receiving their assistance, Lycoris almost felt more invigorated when fighting than while walking, so in that sense this was a break. At least, from keeping her back stiff and from placing one foot carefully in front of the other.  Either way, they proceeded further into the facility's underground, eventually fighting their way up a flight of stairs that led into the facility proper.

Inside, the walls and floors were immaculate and spotless, to the point that none of them could decide if they had somehow been transported into a completely different location. Sure there were still Whispers present, but the place looked almost reverently cared for. Even the potted plants placed about as decorations looked freshly watered. There were no bodies or blood, the air didn't reek of death, and the decorations were left exactly as-is.  Elsewhere, it looked like the Whispers had all stripped every piece of metal they could to repurpose or recycle, even scooping up their own dead with those massive hexapedal creatures. But this facility was spotless. And yet it was still quite obviously occupied, as they could see strange shadows everywhere they went.  The strangest part was the Whispers here all ran away at the sight of them, as though they were the actual monsters tearing through someone else's home. The creatures fled swift enough that Lycoris couldn't make out what exactly the shadows were, but judging by the sound, they were more like terrified wild animals than fleeing people.

"Eltash," Lycoris whispered back at the man as they crept through the halls, "I don't suppose you happen to know where exactly the engine is?"  "No," he shook his head in an equally subdued tone, "the only times I visited the facility were for its official renovation and re-opening. There should be a terminal somewhere to access the map. However…"

He trailed off, the obvious unspoken implication was that the terminal was a piece of machinery, made with electronics, and who knew what the Whispers had done to it.

With tense nerves, the group continued until they found one such panel set against the wall and approached. Its motion-sensors still worked at least, and it flickered to life as they approached, however… the image displayed was garbled nonsense, and the voice that came out was crackly and filled with background fuzz.

`unidentified individuals approaching, acquiring appropriate response routine……………………………………………complete`  `initializing customer service kiosk……………………complete`  `selecting mode: overly saccharine support representative`  `Greetings! My name is Tommy, how can I be of assistance today?`

The four of them shared a bemused glance, before Lycoris stepped forward as the highest authority and de-facto leader of the party.

"Um, hello Tommy. My name is Lycoris Aster Aphtangloa, Crown Princess of the Tenebreimen Empire. My friends and I are looking for the cloud generator, can you show us a map of the facility?"  `Terrific question, Lycoris! Let me pull up a user registry real quick and find out if you have authorization to see that information…………`  `Aww, I am very sad to say that it seems you are not on our database anywhere, and are not privy to the location of <THE HEART>, so sorry!`

Lycoris grimaced at the response, doing her level best to avoid rolling her eyes at the borderline sarcastic reply. It was a miracle of science that such a monotone voice could sound so humanly insincere. It was almost enough to make her forget she was talking to a… service machine?

"What the hell kind of support representative are you?!"  `Why, my name is Tommy. You may treat me as your helpful customer service ai. If you're confused, I can offer further clarification.`  "My apologies for speaking out of turn, Princess Lycoris, but there's no sense in trying to speak to it. There's no such thing as a 'customer service ai.' That sort of thing has been outlawed since the Whisper singularity first occurred," explained Count Eltash. "This is likely just an ancient program that has taken over the facility terminal."  "Your Highness, there is no reason to humor the nonsensical ramblings of a Whisper," added Athena. "They can only imitate what they've been taught, and are incapable of original thoughts."  `Oh dear, it seems as though <THE CUSTOMER> is unsatisfied with that answer! Is there any other way that I might be of assistance, Your Highness?`  Lycoris frowned at the group. "Just because they were built off of that, doesn't mean they couldn't evolve, right? It's pretty obvious that they're some sort of sapient, just look at everything we encountered up until now!"

She turned to look at Gier, who shrugged, sighed, and shook his head.

"Princess, I appreciate your optimism, but all that was just imitating knowledge banks and history lessons about extinct species and cultures. They were probably just copying information from and playing out some history PDF for children."

Both Athena and Verndil looked at Gier in surprise, as though him knowing that off the top of his head was strange.  Sure, Lycoris had never heard of a PDF, but she was also very… sheltered, as Athena would have put it. It couldn't have been that strange that he'd have some form of education, right?

"What's a— Well whatever, either way, there's no sense in not trying." She turned back to the terminal and spoke resolutely, "If there's any way we can resolve this peacefully, without having to wipe you all out of existence, I would far prefer that."  `I would also prefer to avoid <TOTAL ANNIHILATION>! That would be terrible for facility productiveness and company morale. To say nothing of how it would affect stock prices. Regrettably, Your Highness lacks the proper credentials for facility access. The best course of action would be to contact facility representative <ERROR>.`  "Can you tell us where that representative is?" Lycoris was rapidly beginning to lose her patience.  `Because Your Highness lacks proper credentials, I cannot. Shall I contact my manager?`  "…That's exactly what I just asked for. Either point us toward the generator, or bring out someone who can. And stop being so… cloying. I'm sick of people trying to suck up to me. I don't need a… whatever you are, to do it too."  `Request received, removing personality.`  After waiting several seconds, Lycoris sighed, "Well? Can you assist us or not?!"  `User Lycoris lacks authorization.`  "I suppose we'll just have to clear out this facility the hard way then."  `User Lycoris lacks authorization.`  "I tried to warn you, Your Highness…" muttered Athena.  Lycoris shot her a displeased frown, before turning back to the terminal. "If you really do have any sort of sapience, and value your people—assuming you're some sort of ruling figure—then you'll issue a command to retreat before I, and my mother, clear you out of our territory."  `User Lycoris lacks authorization.`

With a heavy sigh, Lycoris lifted up her axe—

"Nobody can say I didn't try, at least."

—and slammed it straight into the monitor.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.