[Chapter 6: The Nightly Excursion]
Searanox sat back down in front of the computer. The blue light of the monitor felt different now—sharper, more intrusive against his Dhampir eyes. He opened the browser and began typing with a newfound, rhythmic speed. He navigated through local maps, satellite imagery, and agricultural records, his mind processing the data with a cold efficiency.
After several minutes of intense reading, he turned back to Iris. She was standing by the door, her amber eyes reflecting the glow of the screen like a pair of twin suns.
"Iris, I hope you’re not tired," he said. His voice had taken on a smooth, melodic tone, a far cry from the gravelly exhaustion of his old life. He traced a finger over a specific point on the map displayed on his screen. "This place is about thirty minutes from here. Isolated. High density. Low security."
He stood up, walked over to a pile of laundry, and handed her a pair of old, sturdy jeans. "Let’s go for a walk, my dear."
A grin spread across his face—a slow, sharp expression that spoke of something far more sinister than a simple moonlit stroll. He proceeded to get himself ready, pulling on a pair of dark jeans and a heavy black hoodie. The practicality of the dark attire wasn't lost on him; he was dressed to disappear. He glanced at Iris, who had managed to pull on the jeans with some difficulty. The denim stretched dangerously tight over her powerful, fur-clad thighs, highlighting the deadly musculature of a heavy brawler. She looked... good, in a way that was both alluring and slightly ridiculous, a apex predator stuffed into the clothes of a college student.
The car ride was suffocatingly silent. The only sounds were the low, mechanical hum of the engine and the occasional rustle of denim as Iris shifted in the passenger seat, clearly uncomfortable in the restrictive human garments. The city lights blurred past the windows, a familiar landscape that now felt strangely distant and artificial to Searanox. He drove with a focused, white-knuckled intensity, his enhanced reflexes making the act of driving feel like it was happening in slow motion.
Deep in the back of his mind, a notification flared. His drone, kilometers away in the city, had finally found its mark. A human life had been extinguished by a silent beam of light.
─ [+10 Exp]
He felt a cold shiver of energy, but the drone didn't proceed to move afterward. Through the mental tether, he could feel it simply hovering in place over the cooling body of a stranger, awaiting further instructions.
`Was it because I didn't tell it what to do after the kill?` he wondered. There was no remorse in the thought, only curiosity. The Dhampir template was already doing its work, numbing the moral center of his brain in favor of cold logic.
With a focused thought, he pulled on the tether. `Come back.`
In an instant, he felt the drone bank and begin its return journey toward his location, moving silently through the night sky.
"Interesting..." he whispered. He then mentally triggered the desummon command to conserve his resources. The drone dissolved into particles of mana and tech-points.
─ [+1 Active Drone]
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"Everything alright, Iris?" he asked, his eyes never leaving the road.
She looked at him, her silver eyes glowing faintly in the pitch-black interior of the car. "Yes, Searanox," she said, her voice a low, vibrating rumble that seemed to rattle the dashboard. "I am just... processing. This reality. These sensations. It is all very new to me."
Twenty minutes later, the car turned off the paved highway and onto a desolate-looking dirt road. The tires crunched over gravel and dry earth, surrounded on all sides by overgrown weeds and rusted barbed-wire fences. Searanox killed the engine and the lights. The sudden silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the ticking of the cooling metal under the hood.
He turned toward her. Even in the total absence of light, her features were as clear to his eyes as if it were noon.
"We don’t want to be seen, and sadly for you, you have to get up close and personal with the targets," Searanox said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Tell me, Iris—can you walk on all fours?"
Iris looked at him for a second, her expression unreadable. Then, she gave a slow, measured nod. "Yes. I can move on all fours. It will be more efficient for traversing this uneven terrain and maintaining a lower profile against the horizon."
With a grace that was terrifying to behold, she lowered herself onto her hands and feet. The transition was seamless. Her form shifted from a bipedal woman into a sleek, quadrupedal beast. The baggy shirt and tight jeans strained against the shift in her skeletal structure, the fabric audibly groaning.
"I will wait for your command," she stated, her face now level with the center console.
"First, you have to strip out of the clothes," Searanox ordered. "We can’t have you ruining them, and you need to look like a beast—a wolf of some sort—just in case any cameras are watching. Once you’re inside the barn, I want you to slaughter everything you see."
He pointed toward the massive, dark silhouette of a factory-scale barn in the distance. "There should be around five hundred cows on this land, and even more chickens and pigs in the adjacent structures. If you finish inside, continue outside. Time is of the essence here, Iris. Be fast. Be efficient. Be a monster."
He watched in silence as she stepped out of the car and wordlessly removed the human garments, placing them in a neat pile on the seat. Naked and covered in dark, sleek fur, she looked like a nightmare manifested.
Searanox took a deep breath and summoned his drone once more.
The machine shimmered into existence in the cramped air of the car before flying out the open door. Its single blue lens locked onto Searanox for a microsecond before swiveling toward the distant barn, its sensors already painting targets.
─ [-5 TP]
─ [+1 Active Drone]
"Go, Iris. Follow the drone."
Iris nodded once, then loped into the darkness. She moved with an incredible, terrifying speed, her form a silent shadow against the pale, sickly moonlight. Searanox watched her through the car’s windshield, a sense of dark pride and anticipation warring within his chest. This was it. The real beginning of his rise.
He settled back in his seat, his eyes fixed on the distant structure, waiting for the harvest to begin.
─ [-2 TP]
The drone shot forward like a silver streak in the night, with Iris bounding effortlessly behind it, her claws digging into the dry earth with every stride. She flowed across the open fields like a dark specter of death. She reached the large, weathered barn—a massive, industrial building of wood and corrugated metal that smelled of manure and fear.
With a powerful, athletic leap, she cleared the high perimeter fence, landing silently on the other side. The drone hovered near a large, sliding loading door, its blue lens scanning for locks. Iris approached the door, her long, dark claws extending from her fingertips, ready to rend wood and metal alike.
The drone’s lens flickered from blue to a sharp, angry red. A thin, precise beam of energy shot out, slicing through the heavy industrial lock mechanism with a violent, sizzling hiss. The door slid open with a low, heavy groan, revealing the dark, cavernous interior.
Inside, the air was thick with the sound of lowing cattle and the frantic clucking of thousands of chickens—animals that had no idea that the end of their world had arrived a week early. Iris stepped into the shadows, her silver eyes flashing with a predatory hunger that matched her master’s.
The slaughter was about to begin.