[Chapter 13. Long Way to Go]
The walk to the car passed in a heavy, loaded silence. Neither of them spoke; the only sound was the rhythmic clack of Iris’s claws on the pavement and the rustle of the supply bag in Searanox’s hand. He placed the bag carefully onto the backseat, methodically tugging the seatbelt across it to secure their provisions, and only then did he slide into the driver’s seat.
He caught his reflection in the rearview mirror—sunglasses on, skin pale, a high-tech metallic gauntlet resting on the steering wheel. He looked like a villain from a low-budget cyberpunk flick.
"If anyone asks, it's cosplay," he muttered, turning the key.
The engine rumbled to life, a low, mechanical growl that filled the cramped cabin. He shifted into gear, glancing at Iris. Her large, tufted wolf ears twitched at the vibration of the car.
"I'm sure it won't come to that… though now that I've said it, it probably will," he added with a cynical half-smile.
"Cosplay… okay," Iris repeated. She sounded like she was filing the word away in a database.
The drive stretched on—long, quiet, and uneventful. They left the city behind, the towering glass needles of the skyline replaced by the rolling, drab green of the countryside. There was no small talk, no idle chatter to break the tension. Just the steady, hypnotic hum of the tires on the asphalt and the low murmur of a lo-fi playlist drifting from the radio. Every so often, Searanox glanced at his phone to check the navigation, his eyes tracking their progress toward the coordinate he had marked.
Nearly four hours later, their destination finally crested the horizon: a massive, heavily walled industrial property dotted with long, utilitarian white buildings. It looked more like a prison than a farm.
"Iris," he said, pulling the car onto a dirt shoulder a few hundred yards from the main gate. "Today, we do things differently. We won't stay in the same location. We need to maximize the surface area of the harvest. Kill as fast as you can. If you get spotted by the staff, deal with it. The longer we avoid the authorities, the better, but don't let witnesses escape."
Iris nodded once, her expression shifting into the cold, sharp mask of a predator. "I will do my best, Searanox."
She didn't use the door. She slipped out of the window in a blur of charcoal fur, vaulted the perimeter wall in a single fluid motion, and vanished into the shadows of the facility. Searanox exhaled, the air hissing through his teeth. He focused his mind, reaching into the pool of mana—his Tech-Points—and pulled.
─ [+2 Active Drones]
─ [-10 TP]
Two metallic orbs shimmered into existence above the hood of the car. They hovered for a heartbeat, their blue lenses swiveling toward the buildings, before streaking away like silent, glass-eyed hornets. They targeted the building farthest from the entrance, where the density of life-signs was highest.
The sound of shattering glass echoed across the yard as the drones breached a high window. Moments later, the muffled thump-thump-thump of suppressed fire began. Inside, the chickens scattered in a blind, avian panic, a sea of white feathers and squawking terror, before being mowed down by the relentless, methodical targeting of the AI.
Searanox watched the feed in the corner of his HUD. The experience points began to trickle in.
"System," he commanded mentally, "don't show me each kill separately. Group them. If there's a pause between kills, show the total number and types of slain in a summary."
He watched the drones work. He tried to think of the targets as monsters—as obstacles—but the logic of his old world kept intruding.
"They're just chickens," he whispered to the empty car. "And maybe the occasional human… That's just what they are now. Materials."
The drones fire rate felt sluggish to him, a painful bottleneck in his efficiency. One hundred and twenty shots per minute per drone—two shots per second. It sounded fast, but against a population of a hundred thousand, it was a crawl. Still, every round hit its mark. Slow, precise, and horrifyingly efficient.
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`With two drones active, I lose six TP per minute and gain two.` He calculated, his internal clock ticking. `That gives me about thirty minutes of active flight before I'm dry.`
He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white as his grip strength—unintentionally enhanced by his Dhampir nature—caused the plastic to groan and crack.
`That's only 6,480 experience per summon session… then a full hour of cooldown before I can bring them back to full power.` He looked at his hands, then at the facility. `No time to sit around. Time to get physical.`
He opened the car door and stepped out onto the gravel. He didn't run like a human; he moved with a predatory lope that covered the distance to the wall in seconds. He vaulted the barrier—less gracefully than Iris, perhaps, but with a raw power that saw him clear the concrete easily—and dropped down into the 'kill zone.'
`Let's hunt.`
He kicked the nearest warehouse door clean off its hinges. The screech of tearing metal was drowned out by the immediate, deafening cacophony of thousands of terrified birds. He lunged.
His new Dhampir agility granted him a terrifying, twitchy swiftness. One by one, he drove his magitech-clad fist through their small bodies. Bones snapped like dry twigs; blood sprayed in hot, misty arcs. The visceral brutality of it was dizzying, a sensory overload of feathers and copper-smelling heat. The experience trickled in at a lower rate than the drones, but it was steady.
"one hundred thousand," he panted, pausing to wipe a streak of red from his sunglasses. "We can take our time. But the humans…"
He steeled himself, feeling the coldness of his new nature settle over his heart. `Let's hope there aren't many on the clock today.`
The smell of the blood was becoming an intoxicating fog. His pupils constricted the moment the iron-scent hit his olfactory receptors. Before he even realized what he was doing, his tongue flicked out, tasting the fresh, steaming liquid on his glove.
The hunger roared.
He grabbed a bird, tore it in two with a sickening wrench of his hands, and let the blood run. He jerked his head back, gasping, grabbing a nearby wooden fence for support as the 'essence' hit his system. It was messy. It was primitive. And it was taking too long to kill them one by one.
"This is too slow," he growled.
He looked around, his eyes landing on a loose fence board. He ripped it free, using the heavy, flat wood like a grotesque paddle. The sound of it hitting—the wet splashing and the rhythmic crack of skulls—was nauseatingly mechanical. Each swing sent a spray of blood and bone fragments across the white-painted walls.
`Much better.`
He lost track of time. He became a machine of meat and wood, consumed by the relentless cycle of the grind. He was deep in the third building when a loud crash echoed from the neighboring structure. He turned just as a terrified security guard stumbled out of a side door, clutching a bleeding arm.
The guard’s eyes went wide. He saw a man in sunglasses and a black hoodie, covered from head to toe in gore, standing amidst mountains of avian corpses. The guard opened his mouth to scream, Searanox's gaze flickered behind the man, and the sound died in his throat.
Iris appeared from the shadows behind the man. She was a vision of primal nightmare—her claws were dripping, and her silver mane was streaked with dark, thickening red.
"She works fast," Searanox noted, his voice sounding hollow to his own ears.
The guard fumbled for a holster at his hip, but before his fingers could even touch the leather, Iris lunged. There was a sickening crunch as her jaws closed around his throat. He gurgled once, his boots drumming a frantic, dying rhythm on the gravel, and then he went limp. Iris dropped the body with the same indifference one might show a piece of trash.
Her silver eyes were calm—dispassionate.
"There were three humans inside this building," she reported, her voice a low rumble. "I eliminated them. There may be more in the central office."
Searanox didn't say a word. He simply raised a blood-soaked fist and gave her a silent thumbs-up.
A moment later, the mental connection to his drones vanished. They had hit their TP limit and winked out of existence. He turned back to the mounds of feathers and continued to kill by hand. The next hour was a grueling, slow-motion crawl of manual labor, waiting for his mana to replenish.
The routine was broken by a sudden, shrill scream. A worker—a woman in her late sixties, wearing a stained apron—burst into the room, catching Searanox mid-swing. She froze, her face contorting in a mask of pure horror.
Searanox didn't even turn his head fully. A few meters in front of him, a drone shimmered into reality. It fired once. The woman dropped. The drone disappeared in a cloud of blue sparks, dismissed once again.
It was quick. Painless. Without hesitation or remorse, he did what he had to do to protect the timeline.
The moment his TP bar finally flashed full, he summoned the pair properly
─ [+2 Active Drones]
─ [-10 TP]
"Finish it," he commanded.
He walked out of the building, his boots squelching in the red mud of the yard. He stepped into the next warehouse, only to find it already silent. Iris had been there first. The scene was a masterpiece of carnage: a handful of dead staff and a literal mountain of flesh and feathers.
He checked his HUD. The numbers were climbing. They were getting closer. But as he looked at his blood-stained hands, he wondered if the "Multi-verse Friends Club" would even recognize him as human by the time they arrived.