The Astral soul system

Chapter 266: Suprise?

Taking another swing, she knocked the head off one of the things, sending the body flying.

"Okay,it may not be my sword, but it works"

She acknowledged, swinging again and again, knocking them down one by one.

She looked deeper into the site and could see momentary flashes of purple. Raven, hopefully she was fine, though she had to worry about herself right now.

Looking around at the things that were still surrounding her, she grit her teeth. It was times like these she wished she had a pure combat based ability instead of the utility based one she had

What sort of beasts even were these? Shapeshifters?

She breifly entertained the horrific thought of these people being controlled by a psionic dungeon but for that to be the case they’d have to be somewhere in the dungeon’s domain ,if that was so, nothing was stopping it from controlling her too. So if it wasn’t a dungeon, then what in the world well these things.

She kept swinging, trying to force them to stay away but they seemed to not know the meaning of the word fear and just kept barrelling towards her, finally giving up on escaping she closed her eyes, repeating to herself

"They’re not people they’re not people they’re not people"

Her eyes opened back up,a determination that wasn’t there before. She dashed forward, shifting her grip closer to the middle of the beam , manoeuvring it like she would a staff. The hard metal slammed into the chest of one of them, caving it in and sending it flying a few meters. She immediately turned to the side, swinging it into the head of another from below before shifting her grip to the edge again, holding it like a baseball bat and swinging it in front of her,knocking another three down at once.

She let out a sigh of relief as she realized she was no longer surrounded.

"Okay, they’re down"

She said breathing heavily, mostly from stress than actual tiredness.

"Okay, now where’s ra-"

"Careful! It’s not over"

She looked over at Beatrix and saw her pointing urgently

"Huh?"

She looked down and noticed the things started to get up, with their broken and dislocated bones, still reaching for her. One got up with its head and one leg turned in the opposite direction, and like a zombie it’s just kept coming.

She shuddered. Things just got even creepier.

She’d seen pictures and illustrations of skeletons and other typical undead type beasts you’d see in fantasy dungeons in the academy’s books but these things didn’t resemble any of them, but the way they acted was eerily similar.

The weird voices appeared again, this time louder and although she couldn’t quite tell why, they felt hollow, empty.

"What are these things?"

She stepped back, panicking and throwing the beam which slammed into six of them,the force carrying them back and slamming them into an incomplete structure, causing it to come crumbling down on them.

"Hearing" something from behind her she turned around to see another wave headed for her .

"Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea"

She muttered,looking at where she threw her makeshift weapon as she stepped back, looking for something else she could use to avoid making contact with them.

Realizing there was nothing else, she grit her teeth and kicked as hard as she could right at the head, knocking it down. As soon as both her feet were on the ground again, she aimed another kick for one’s stomach and sent it flying back a few feet, leaning back to avoid another swipe before kicking it in the side and knocking it back.

Looks like she was stuck with using her legs for this, and also...

She looked at her feet, noticing a brick. She didn’t think and just grabbed it, flinging it at the head of one of them destroying the helmet it had on and knocking it down

And whatever the construction site had so offer.

She grabbed another brick, preparing to attack when

"Coming through!!!"

She suddenly looked back, seeing headlights headed straight for her, she jumped to her left, narrowly avoiding it.

Looking up, she saw Beatrix jump out of the moving vehicle, letting it crash into another horde of whatever these things were.

Chelsea quickly closed her ears and eyes like she was bracing for something but after a few seconds she opened them again, looking disappointedly at the truck that had just crashed into the building and stopped.

"Huh. I thought it would go boom"

"What are you doing?"

Jade asked,,her stress levels rising again.

"I’m helping"

She replied like it was obvious

"Who taught you how to drive a truck?"

"Zen and the others"

"Of course he did"

She sighed

She didn’t know who the others were but she had a feeling Raven and Crowley were on that list,as well as her sister she’d never met.

"What are these things?"

"Raven calls them suckaz"

Bea said entirely serious

"Of course she does. How do I kill them?"

She asked, looking around cautiously

"You need to deplete the source"

"The source?"

Bea nodded.

"The infection um...ste...ste.."

"Stems?"

"Yeah. That. The infection stems from the source, and the suckaz all have a tiny bit of it inside them. And to kill them you have to..."

Jade kept looking around, waiting for her to remember what she needed to say. She wasn’t impatient,If anything she was more concerned by the fact Raven had convinced this child that "suckaz" unironically belonged in her vocabulary

"Oh, yeah. Beat them up"

"What?"

"If you keep killing them,the source will run out and they’ll fall over."

"So I just need to keep fighting until they drop? It’s that simple?"

Beatrix seemed a bit conflicted

"There’s something else to it, but..."

Jade smiled and patted her on the head.

"Don’t beat yourself up over it. You did good"

She really did. Jade could confidently say Beatrix was the most hyper-capable ten year old she’d ever met. Her knowing this much about this stuff when the academy genuinely had nothing was baffling enough, but she was probably stronger than even her.

Speaking of which, she still didn’t know her ability.

"Infection huh?"

She looked down at the claw mark on her side. Bea looked at it as well, looking a bit distressed

"Oh, don’t worry about it, i didn’t even get a scratch"

It was more than that...or would it be less than that?... The point is there other than the rip in her hoodie and the shirt under that showed some skin through,there was no indication she’d been hit. She wanted to look closer, but she didn’t want to put Bea in any more distress and acted like everything was okay, showing off the spot as if trying to convince her she hadn’t been hit, though Bea still had a weird look on her face.

"We need to find Raven. Where did you last see he-"

Right on cue a giant pillar of purple flame suddenly came from one of the higher floors , lighting up the night.

"Oh, well I guess that answers that."

She looked at the most direct path up there and obviously there were more of these things (she refused to use the word suckaz)in the way.

She took a deep breath, trying to clear her head

’infection?’

’Does that mean these are people? Or used to be?’

’why didn’t Z tell me about this?’

’what else hasn’t he told me?’

She shook her head, finally calming the river of thoughts. None of that was important.

"You ready?"

She asked, looking down at Bea

There was no point in trying too hard to keep her away. She would try her best to keep her safe though.

"Yep!"

She said, handing Jade a pipe.

Sighing, she accepted it. At least it wasn’t a beam

"Let’s do this "

********

Meanwhile up in the building.

Raven pulled the dagger out of another after splitting open its abdomen and shooting her purple flames in its insides.

Kicking it away, she grabbed one of their claws with her fire coated hands before slamming it into the floor a few times and throwing it into another.

"You fuckers just keep coming"

She seethed, running higher up the building.

Finding one near the top of the stairs, she threw her dagger right between its eyes, picking up speed and jumping towards it,her feet finding it first and forcing the dagger deeper into its skull.

She landed on her hands, pushing off into a flip and landing on her feet before throwing another ball of purple fire .

She was about to keep going when she suddenly heard a voice

"Raven"

Looking at where it came from, she saw Jade and Beatrix heading up towards her.

"She’s alive?"

She muttered.

Her eyes quickly caught the claw mark on her hoodie and her brows furrowed immediately.

She stood still for a few seconds before heading up again even faster this time

"Wait!"

Jade yelled, about to go ahead when she suddenly heard another voice.

"Feed"

She looked at where it came from and saw one had creeped up behind Bea. Moving in front of her, she grabbed the claw, letting it cut her hand and throwing it away.

She almost cursed and decided to just bite the bullet, punching the next one closest to her with her bloody hand.

Unlike the others when it crashed it started convulsing strangely and like a dog it started trying lick the blood.

She stepped back, confused but it only got worse when it started shaking and rolling like its mouth was on fire, and it’s face contorting like it was about to melt.

Unable to take anymore she grabbed it, throwing it through the wall and down the building before taking Bea’s hand and running up as fast as she could .

As soon as they reached the first floor, they as saw Raven standing there with her back to them and something glowing in front of her.

"Done"

A huge wave of energy suddenly came from where she was standing, spreading outwards.

"What was that?"

Raven turned around, hearing her voice and almost immediately dashed right in front of her, dagger aimed for her head.

Jade froze, looking at the blade aimed for her forehead.

"What... what are you doing?"

"Raven, she’s fine. I promise"

Hearing that, Raven pulled back, looking at her,curiously tilting her head.

She looked at where her hoodie was ripped and noticed there was no wound.

"Guess I got lucky, they missed me"

Raven didn’t say anything about that, instead just kept examining her.

"You are something else. Guess i should have known Azzy wouldn’t have normal friends"

"Haha, well I’m actually pretty average, but thanks."

Letting out a breath, the tension melted from her shoulders and her smile returned.

"Why did you stop me?"

"I... I didn’t know -"

"You thought I was going to do a stereotypical evil player thing and murder regular people "

"..."

Raven sighed.

"Even if this was some evil scheme,why would I kill civic workers. The city would replace them before morning. There’d be no point, and destroying a half done building? Really?"

Jade laughed awkwardly, blushing. She really hadn’t thought it through.

"Anyway. Thanks for looking out for her"

"No problem. But what about the monsters?"

"Take a look"

Hearing that she went towards the stairs, looking down to see all of them laid down motionless, like puppets with their strings cut off.

"Woah, that’s amazing. How did you -"

She looked baby, suddenly realizing she was the only one here.

"Raven? Bea?"

She said, looking around. She’d only taken a few steps away from the steps when she suddenly heard footsteps coming from below. A lot of them.

Panicking, she stepped back again, waiting for whatever it was and after a few seconds she saw.

It was people. Actual people

One by one they came up the steps, each of them looking imposing in their own way.

She would’ve been relieved if they hadn’t been sporting deadly looking weapons and unfriendly expressions.

"Uh...hi?"

She said, stepping back again.

She was contemplating running away when she heard a familiar voice

"Wait!"

From behind the crowd, someone familiar stepped forward

"Max?"

"Jade. What are you doing here?"

"Uh... suprise?"