Chapter 231: Fighting A Shadow
Akira kept her eye pressed to the hole, surprised at what she was seeing.
It was a street. Or at least what had once been a street.
The stone paving was cracked from one side to the other, the breaks running in long uneven lines that had widened over time, some of them deep enough to swallow a boot.
The buildings on either side still stood, but their surfaces were worn and pitted.
All the details that made the rest of the Undercity look well constructed eroded here into something that just looked old and forgotten.
The streetlamps were the most telling. Several were dark entirely, their light sources long dead.
The ones that still functioned flickered in irregular intervals, the light cutting in and out without any discernable pattern.
This has the effect of throwing the cracked street into shadow and light every few seconds.
But most tellingly, there were no patrols or movement. Her eyes moved through the street she could see and she didn’t even see the hint of the glass eyes she’d come to expect on the Automatons.
The only thing here was just the street, which sat there abandoned.
One thing she also noticed was that the scratching sound she’d been hearing was louder here.
She could place it now. Somewhere above her and to the left, a gear was moving.
But this was not the rhythmic tick of the working mechanisms throughout the rest of the dungeon.
This one ground slowly, each rotation accompanied by a scraping sound, the metal catching against itself the way something does when rust has worked its way into every gap.
It was clear that this section of the Undercity had stopped being maintained a very long time ago.
Akira straightened up from the hole and stepped back.
The other side was a street, abandoned and cracked, but it was somewhere. Somewhere with visible ground and flickering light and defined space, which was significantly better than the vast darkness she was currently standing in.
She had no way of knowing what was waiting for her on the other side. The hole was too small to see the full street, so there was one thing she needed.
She pressed her palm to the golden band on her head and activated it.
The world shattered.
She watched herself pull her arm back, the gauntlet on her fist catching the faint light from the hole, and drove it into the wall with full force.
The impact rang out, the sound echoing in the vast space, and the stone cracked around the point of contact, a web of fracture lines spreading out from her knuckles.
However, the wall didn’t break. But based on the crack, she was sure that one more hit would be able to break through.
Then, in the last fragment of the future, something moved behind her.
It was very fast, dashing in from the darkness at her back.
It slammed into her with enough force to send her off her feet.
She slammed into the wall face first, the cracked stone giving way under the combined force of the impact and her body weight.
The wall crumbled around her as she crashed through it and tumbled forward onto the other side.
Then the cracks in the world sealed and time resumed.
Akira didn’t give herself time to dwell on what she’d just seen. She already knew what to do.
She pulled her arm back and drove her fist into the wall. Just like what she’d seen with the headband, the wall cracked but didn’t break.
But that didn’t matter to her. She’d followed the vision up to this point. It was time to change it.
She stepped sharply to the side, and just like she’d expected, the creature came through behind her.
It was moving at speed, its trajectory aimed at where she’d been standing, and as she’d stepped to the side, she was able to dodge the attack.
The beast stumbled forward past her, unable to correct itself in time, and slammed into the wall ahead of it.
But it stopped itself just before going through.
Its hands found the wall, absorbing the impact, the stone cracking under the force but still holding.
All she could see of the beast was a shadow in the dark. There was not enough light for her to tell what size it even was.
It was just a dark shape with no details or a clear outline, pressed against the cracked wall with its back to her.
She didn’t wait.
She slashed.
[Temptation] connected with a loud clang, the blade sinking several inches into the shadow before stopping, caught on something hard beneath the surface.
She activated the [Kairos Fillet], and the world fractured.
She watched the shadow tear itself free of her blade and dart sideways into the darkness faster than she’d expected anything to move.
She watched herself turn towards the sound of its movement, tracking it, and watched the shadow come back.
It moved fast, ducking under her swing as [Temptation] cut through the air above it, and then its shoulder drove into her legs.
The armor stood strong against the attack, but the force was too great to be neglected. Both bones in her lower legs snapped simultaneously.
She watched herself collapse, and then the beast’s claws came up towards her exposed head, the one part the armor didn’t cover.
She watched herself die, then the fractures sealed and time resumed.
Just like she’d seen, the shadow tore free of her blade, but she didn’t bother to look for it.
She turned to the sound of its movements and it dashed towards her. She swung her sword with everything she had and the shadow dropped, trying to duck underneath the attack.
But Akira had accounted for that, adjusting the trajectory of her sword downwards.
[Temptation] tore through it.
The shadow crumpled, and the faint light from the hole was enough for her to make out the outline of an Automaton.
[You have killed a D-rank Clockwork Automaton]
Akira stood over it for a moment, a frown on her face.
It had been the darkness that had made this beast so dangerous, and without the [Kairos Fillet], she would have died before she understood what had killed her.
She turned back to the cracked wall.
