Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 919: Something happens.

It is somewhat unnerving to watch them fight over who should cut my hair, especially as they begin to ask Izzy if she could burn it without hurting me, and Min-Jae starts to calculate how long it would take to pull each one out one by one.

At some point, I filter that conversation out, reducing it to a distant hum while I think about Ruby's warning.

We’ve already heavily secured the room where we’ve been planning to do the thought acceleration. There are even multiple alarms Sophie and I have set to bring us out in an instant in the event that someone triggers them. Plus, both Blackie and Noodle will stay outside to defend us if it comes to that. We’ve also examined the area and are very confident no kaiju will be able to get anywhere close to it while we’re in thought acceleration. Sophie's mind-controlled humans will also be keeping an eye on things.

So, what is wrong? What did we miss? Is that warning dangerous enough for us to cancel our plans? I suspect it is not, if it were, Ruby would have chosen a different way to warn. It might be dangerous, but it seems like something we can deal with. There will always be dangers on any floor, and none of us is a coward who would freeze in fear at the thought of it and find ourselves incapable of doing anything.

As a Hell difficulty attendee, you need to have a certain sort of arrogance in you, even if that puts your life in danger sometimes. It’s just something that builds up as you go through all these trials and continue to come out on top, as you begin to learn what you’re capable of.

And maybe there’s also something missing that would usually stop people from being so reckless.

Sure, we’re more than aware of how things went wrong on previous floors, and we could just do the bare minimum to make things as safe as possible. But no one here wants that. There might be consequences, and you might end up having to rely on someone to save your ass, but at this point, it’s all part of the process.

My thoughts get interrupted as Tess wins and starts cutting my hair. The others gather around, and I notice that she doesn’t take much of it. Instead of going down to the skin, she cuts it just enough to give me a new hairstyle. With help from Sophie, Lily, and Izzy, she forms a haircut that they then proceed to style, just a bit.

Izzy takes a few photos, and then they continue by giving me a buzzcut, which is followed by a few more photos. According to Maya, it fits me surprisingly well.

It is Dennis who then uses a special razor to turn my skull completely bald.

There are so many ways they could cut my hair down to the skin almost instantly. Skills, oscillation, some sort of construct, even a goddamn array would’ve been an option. I bet I could edit some of my huge killing arrays to focus on my hair alone.

When I mention it, Min-Jae curiously asks if I would be capable of placing a mark on every single one of my hair follicles and teleporting all my hair out all at once.

That thought works surprisingly well as a distraction. While the Korean boy and I start making some rough calculations estimating the number of hairs, the difficulty of miniaturizing a mark that much, the burden on my mental capacity, the possibility of using triggers, and the possibility of building a specialized submind for it, the others use the distraction to fully rid me of my hair.

Lily is the first to place her hand on my head and rub it curiously, and a few others quickly join in too. For good luck, at least according to her.

For some reason, Maya uses some cream and a towel to polish it. And for a moment, they stare at their reflections in it, especially Noodle, who’s watching curiously the whole time.

Izzy takes another photo, but this time she forgets to turn off the flash, and it reflects back into her eyes, making her squeal in surprise.

Sophie already has plans drawn up, and I’ve made a small bottle of Empyrean Ichor mixed with a little bit of very expensive mana conductive paint. Sometimes, using my blood alone is difficult, and it doesn’t work very well with small details. I already tried mixing blood with manasol too, but so far I haven’t had any real success.

The others get bored after ten minutes and start moving around the room while Sophie patiently continues to draw. Meanwhile, Dennis, Aaron, and Lily keep me company, telling me about their adventures in Beyond.

Once Sophie is done with me, I pull out most of my mana, forming it into a thin halo that I pull down to sit on my head at the spots she left open just for this purpose.

I don’t activate it yet, waiting instead for Sophie to draw circles on the foreheads of each of the other members of Group 4. After that, she hands me the paint, and I use the specialized brush to draw a slightly different array on her forehead.

I will be serving as the core of our thought acceleration, and Sophie will be something like my second-in-command, with her role similar in importance to mine. Then there’s Maya, whom we’ve included for her [Compounding] skill, while everyone else is just riding along.

Of course, with all this done, we don’t start right away. Sophie begins doing multiple checks, which I assist her with, taking up another hour.

I spend part of that hour sitting on the floor, slowly running a thin thread of my own mana through the mark on Sophie’s forehead and doing some tests of my own. The feedback comes back clean and steady. Then I pull my mana back and glance over at the door and our defenses. Everything seems solid, locked down, and quadruple-checked.

When Aaron says something impatient and interrupts her, Sophie throws Noodle at him.

And then she does one more check. Unlike me, she doesn’t like to... freestyle all that much.

“Well, go on then,” she tells me finally.

Surprised, I stop myself from dozing off and get to it before she changes her mind and goes into another series of checks, or throws Blackie at me.

Though I’m serving as the core of all this, I am getting a huge amount of help from her mindblending and further assistance from Maya. But I like my role, as it’ll let me kick out people according to how they’re handling the thought acceleration.

I also made a function that should theoretically allow me to put their minds to sleep and handle most of the pressure being placed on them myself in the event that something goes wrong. Then there are the marks I’ve placed on everyone, two Scalar Beacons I placed outside so I can teleport us all out, and plenty of vials of manasol I’ve been keeping on my person.

Yet, something still feels off, and triggering the thought acceleration instantly confirms it.

Something hijacks all of our preparations, something that makes slight changes here and there, and that something hitchhikes its way into the mental space with us.

Our connection becomes unstable, and Dennis and Aaron, as per our failsafe, rush in to help. One of my subminds separates from me and does something I don’t have time to check, as I’m busy making adaptations and keeping an eye on the others, just like Sophie.

A white flash blinds my mind, and I think I lose consciousness for a few seconds. When I regain it, I know that I’m within the accelerated mental space we’ve prepared, though it’s very different from what was intended.

Everyone is here with me as we find ourselves in what seems like a high school gym in the early morning. I can see particles of dust floating in the gentle orange light. The air smells of dry hardwood, floor wax, and old iron. Long, sharp shadows bleed across the polished floor, stretching out from the tall windows that line the far wall.

I instinctively try to ping my subminds to run a diagnostic on what just happened, but there’s nothing there to ping. The mental links I usually rely on are gone. Well, not gone completely, as the connection is still there, but I cannot reach them. My brain feels heavy, like it’s been crammed back into a physical skull without any of the extra processing power I’ve spent the last few years building up.

A volleyball drops out of nowhere. It hits the center of the court with a loud thud, bouncing once, twice, thrice before rolling silently toward us. I look up from it to find Sophie, only to pause as I see her and the others.

Sophie looks to be six or so years old, and Izzy, who’s still in her normal form, looks down at her with a bewildered expression.

Nearby, Dennis looks to be a few years older. His golden hair is longer, and he has wider shoulders and noticeably more muscle. And for some reason, he’s wearing luxury, Italian-style casual clothes.

Aaron is there too, though he seems to be younger, at fourteen or fifteen years old, and he looks very happy to have a body of his own as he hugs his brother. He’s wearing a school uniform, like Izzy and Min-Jae. Min-Jae is also wearing glasses and is shorter and scrawnier than he is outside, making me realize he also seems to be a similar age to Izzy.

Tess, meanwhile, is the same age as usual, just a head or so shorter, and for some reason, she’s dressed in a Japanese kimono, black with red and blue flowers. And her hair has been styled into a long pixie cut.

Maya next to her is wearing a tank top, with her muscles even more toned than they’ve been as of late, but she’s slimmer now and showing clear tan lines. She is also, for some reason, a bit taller than usual and wearing something that wouldn’t look out of place in ancient Greece.

Lastly, I find Lily, who’s looking at me with wide eyes. And Lily is... exactly as she was outside.

“Okay, something went very wrong. It’s time to fuck off. So, as we trained, we are ditching this training and exiting thought acceleration. Get ready-” I start, but I get interrupted.

“Don’t!” Sophie shouts at me, then sputters in surprise and shakes her head. “The fuck is going on with my voice? Whatever. We can’t just cancel it!”

“If you haven’t noticed, something went very wrong, Sophie,” I remind her.

“Of course something went wrong! And why the fuck are you a skeleton?” she answers and takes a deep breath. “I think I know what happened. Just give me a minute. One damn minute.” She waves me off, her shoes squeaking on the gym floor as she turns around and sits on the ground with her back to us.

After her words, I look down, truly noticing that I am indeed a skeleton wearing casual Earth clothes, with just two hearts inside my rib cage, my brain, and my eyes. Though none of that seems to limit my movement. I can even smell when I try, and I hear normally.

“Sophie?” I send toward her.

“I’m looking, don’t interrupt me!” she shouts back.

Shrugging it off, I reach toward my mana and release it at the side of the gym to destroy the wall and look outside.

Nothing happens.

I reach toward my mana again, gathering enough of it to flatten a skyscraper, and release it toward the feeble, wooden, cardboard-like, surely weak wall.

Nothing happens.

I gather much more of my mana, letting it roar through my skeleton. The clothes I am wearing begin to move as if caught in a powerful wind, and some of my pressure pushes outside of my bones. I concentrate more on it this time, molding my output, narrowing it, and launching it at the floor near my skeletal feet.

Something happens.

All that mana drills a hole into the floor no deeper than the length of my fingernails.

That nail-length scratch cost me enough mana to vaporize a mountain back on the lower floors.

“SOPHIE?” I repeat.

“I got it, I got it! I think I found what’s wrong.” The now-shorter Martinez sister stands up and bumps into Izzy, who looks down at her with a smug smile.

“You-” Sophie starts, but cuts it off and says to us all, “I think Tariel the Undying did it. And I think he’s in here somewhere with us.”