Arcadia I Chapter 5: The Syndicate(2)

Read chapter 5 of Arcadia I by I_live_in_your_walls on NovelPedia.

Inside, it was just another ordinary night working at the processing post. Eric liked his job. The pay was good, and all he had to do was haul a few bodies, perform basic equipment inspections, and keep an eye out for nonexistent threats. Mercury only ever targeted nobodies in the slums; it wasn't like the city officials would waste resources investigating the disappearance of trash, especially when they got to enjoy low mana stone prices. “These new weapons are incredible,” One of the veteran guards, Oliver, boasted, proudly showing off his new weapon, the Lebel M1, a cutting-edge piece of technology imported from the Handel Union. “They call it a 'gun.' This thing can kill a man in a single shot without using a drop of mana. I could probably even take down a first-step knight with it.” “Bah,” Alex scoffed, waving his hand dismissively. “Even if you could somehow manage to hit a knight with that toy, it wouldn’t kill him. At best, you’d give him a nasty wound.” “You doubt my aim, Alex?” Suddenly, a heavy pounding rattled the front door. All three of the men froze, readying their weapons. The light-hearted atmosphere disappeared instantly. Then, a familiar voice resonated from the other side. “Hey, could someone get me another lighter? Mine isn’t working.” Dropping his tense shoulders, Alex chuckled and stood up to open the door. But before he could take a step, Oliver stopped him with a stern look. “Remember protocol. Take Eric with you; we always approach the door in pairs,” Oliver said, his face dead serious. Alex laughed, shaking his head. “Oh, come on. Like, there's some battle mage with mimicry magic waiting out there to ambush us?” Alex and I walked up to the door with him, opening it. My foot snagged on the floor. Looking down, I quickly released it, looking up to be greeted with the tip of a blade protruding directly out of the back of Alex’s neck. ‘A blade in my face? But Alex is right in front of me, so it would be going… through his neck.’ A chill ran over my body, but before I could even yell, Alex’s limp corpse was violently shoved to the side. A dark figure rushed forward, a vice-like hand clamping hard around my neck, lifting me completely off the ground. ‘Ugh,’ I thrashed in an attempt to get free, but a wave of unfathomable, agonizing pressure flooded my senses, and everything went black. The moment the guard opened the door, I thrust my machete straight through his throat and spine, spattering hot blood onto the man standing behind him. Before the second guard could make a sound, I violently discarded the corpse, lunged forward, and seized him by the throat, lifting him into the air. ‘Time to see if this works.’ Reaching out with my control, I tried to rip his soul clean out of his vessel. The connection was too strong for me. His soul was anchored firmly to his living body. I tested something else. I channeled my power to violently deform and expand the shape of the soul instead, twisting it into a grotesque, warped mass. The reaction was instant, the thug's flesh began to expand rapidly, swelling outwards from his neck like a balloon before ending in an explosion of flesh and bone, showering both me and the room with blood and viscera. “Fuck!” the last remaining guard in the room yelled, his face splattered with the gory remains of his comrade. He swiftly swung his rifle up as if he had trained for this very moment. I snatched the limp corpse of the guard I had killed with the machete to act as a meat shield. BANG! The heavy Lebel round tore into the dead guard's chest, giving me some push back, but nothing to worry about. “Fuck fuck, why is someone like this here—” The guard yelled as he desperately tried to cycle the rifle's bolt handle to chamber a second round. Before he could chamber the bullet, I was already upon him. Slamming my hand onto his face, I drove his head into the solid stone wall, crushing his skull, his hands falling limply to his sides. Although he was dead, his gunshot had done its job