Chapter 1686 Rock and Stone!

--- Kat ---

After three hours of madness and backtracking Kat really wasn’t a fan of their current plan. The first issue was the tag-alongs. Now normally Kat wouldn’t say that about random people weaker then her… but they were SO much weaker then her that it made things into real issues. They’d left the rest of the traitors tied up back in the trap room.

This meant they were carrying Sheriff Not ’Clyde’ and had Strdl and her three compatriots with them. Not and Clyde were… not necessarily fine but they were being carried by Meg and Hunter due to the fact they couldn’t walk properly let alone run in their current state. So their low speed wasn’t an issue. Strdl could keep up somewhat as well…

But the other three just couldn’t. Kat was annoyed that nobody, herself included, had left them back at with the traitors and claimed they were doing a good job watching over them or something. Ok that wasn’t entirely true. Meg had suggested leaving them behind but Strdl had argued they come along and everyone, Meg included had agreed.

Kat was regretting that now. It was quite clear that Meg agreed only to spend more time with Hunter. Kamiko probably agreed for the same reason Kat did, not wanting to leave them behind and risk them getting hurt or captured… but why did Hunter agree? The same reason as Kat herself? Was she simply not bothered? Perhaps Meg had offered some silent deal Kat had missed.

Whatever the case it meant they weren’t making great time. Kat did consider offering to carry some of them… but she wasn’t sure if she could. They were all mortals and Kat was afraid of breaking them if she carried them too fast or a bit too tightly. It was one thing when she was just walking around, but running at top speed? The wind force might be enough to cause damage.

So that was the first issue. The second issue was how annoying it was following the two traitors. Firstly, they went down completely separate routes, either by intent or luck. So they’d had to pick one scent and follow just that one.

Annoyingly though, that person had doubled back more than once. Several crossroads they’d come to had scent markers of the person in question doubling back more than once, and crossing over with the second person every now and again as well. Now in theory this meant they could simply pick the final pathway and go ahead… but Hunter, as good as she was, had a hard time working out which trail direction the trail was going on the final pass. While she could identify how old a sent is, the difference of a bare few seconds as they ran through was practically nothing.

With no wind to shift the path around either, they had no choice but to continue on in a ’linear’ fashion lest they accidentally find themselves going the wrong way at some point. This was just the start of the annoyances though, and not what really slowed them down. In fact, these crossroads were actually a boon in a way. The police could wait there at the intersection while the rest of the group sped forward.

It was the ’elevator’s that were really annoying. The now solid stone walls that Kat assumed would be easy to break through. A good bit of smashing later though… and Hunter revealed the scent did not carry on further forward but further upward. THAT had been what really slowed them down and took up around one and a half of their three hours. Digging straight upwards obviously wasn’t possible unless you were Kat and could fly, and even then it was hard to get proper leverage in mid-air.

So they had to sort of curve up and around, working with shovels from their storage rings with Lily going around and collecting the rock into her storage ring. At the start Lily had just moved it to the side… but they quickly realised that quite a large amount of dirt and rock needed to be moved and it would’ve clogged the tunnel. Though Kat did ask, "Is there a reason we didn’t just trigger the enchantment or whatever to send the thing back down?"

"It doesn’t work that way," said Meg. "I managed to spot the trigger point on the wall but that’s the biggest ’weakness’ of the enchantment. It was made in such a way as to be intentionally broken. The only way to bring it down would be to trigger the other end of the enchantment at the top of the shaft, or completely rewrite the enchantment to fix it. As painful as this has been, I can assure you that it would take longer to enchant,"

"Can you enchant?" asked Kat.

"Eh… a little bit?" said Meg as she broken away a large chunk of stone with the side of her shovel. "I know more than the basics but not enough to do anything too fancy. Most of what I researched was how to exploit weaknesses in enchantments or how to create them myself but this one isn’t set up in a way I’d know how to fix. Plus, demonic energy is fundamentally incompatible with mana so one of stooges would need to do the carving and I don’t trust any of them with that,"

"Ah… how do you normally get around stuff like that?" asked Kat.

"Mana crystals," explained Meg. "If you hook one up to a set of enchanting tools you can use them to bypass stuff, or well, to mess with enchantments made of mana. The problem is I wasn’t given any for this mission just in case the drake could siphon the energy from them if we got in close proximity. Because it was time and space related the demons back in the Hub probably assumed it could reach into the storage rings,"

"And can it?" asked Kat.

"No idea. Not something I’d want to test either…" muttered Meg.

"Wait… why didn’t it suck any energy out of that beautiful geode cave? It was in the town right?" asked Kat.

"The range would be practically nothing while in crystal form. I’d need to be holding it in all likelihood… but as my weakness spotting abilities are needed to break them completely well…" Meg trailed off but the answer was obvious.

That wasn’t the last conversation that was had while digging through all that rock and stone, but it was the most meaningful one. Most other sentences spoken were little more than complaints about the situation. Though Kat did send a few praises towards Lily for dealing with the rubble for everyone. It would’ve slowed them all down massively had she not been there with her shadow hand to grasp it all.

When they finally made it to the top the group decided to break for a quick snack. Sure the police crew were quite rested… but they weren’t going to complain about more time to take a break… or complain at all really. They’d seen first hand just how powerful the demons were at this point and had decided it was best not to say anything. Not still couldn’t speak… and well ’Clyde’ was even more scared of them.

After a short break they got back to moving through the tunnels to more of the same. A bit too much of the same actually, as after another hour of running they ran into another wall. Kat punched through it to let out some anger at what she suspected was coming. It wasn’t the first wall they’d run into… but there was just something different about the ’door’ walls. This one was… more solid perhaps? Blended in better? Whatever the case as Kat smashed her way through to the ’other side’ it was revealed that they needed to go not forward but up. Again.

"GAH! No wonder Pebbles is so confident nobody can find his fucking base! It’s because even if we want know where the assholes went it’s still going to take us forever! Are we even heading in the correct direction?" growled Kat.

"Eh, somewhat?" said Meg with a shrug. "I’ve been checking the compass and while we do backtrack and occasionally head off to the side… we do seem to be making progress towards the hideout. Though I understand your anger. This is kinda bullshit. It makes me wonder if going overland and digging downwards wouldn’t have been faster. I mean, we’re pretty committed now… but still, makes you think doesn’t it?" Experience more tales on empire

Kat groaned as she pulled out her shovel. It had held up well under the abuse. Even with them using it as what basically amounted to a pickaxe half of the time. "I guess it does… but I try not to think about it. I’d probably just get more annoyed. I find that happening more lately,"

Meg shrugged, "Eh could just be that you’ve been stressed, maybe it’s that with you not always having been a demon your emotions are a bit out of whack. Honestly though I’d guess it’s just stress. For someone that’s not been doing missions long… this sort of thing mission is definitely a lot,"

Kat nodded. Yeah it really was.