The Eldrim Cards Legacy

Chapter 154: Lower level

The new soldier, the one Nero hadn't seen, was quite tall, at the same height as himself, and had long, blonde hair that had been tied up into a bun. Like Leonard, she was wielding a sword and a shield, and wearing typical synthetic armour. All in all, she fit the image of a regular, female soldier.

Yet, as Nero scanned her from head to toe, he could not help but smirk. He had seen all he needed to see. Finally, someone interesting had arrived. But he did not let his thoughts dwell on her.

Nero stood up and stretched his limbs, feeling strength return to his limbs bit by bit. His team also recovered considerably, and since they had taken this time to munch on a high calorie, energy dense snack as well as an electrolyte solution, they were as recovered as they could be without getting proper sleep and rest.

Arter took a moment to study the corpses piled in the corner of the room. Whether he recognised them or not was unknown, but he was clearly disturbed when he finally looked away.

He studied the stairs heading downwards, then the other teams.

"I take it you have not been downstairs yet," Arter said.

"Not yet," Leonard answered. "We needed to recover after our last fight. Who knows what we'll face downstairs."

Arter looked from them towards the berserkers on the ground. It was clear that they had encountered another fight, and yet they had yet to suffer a single casualty or serious injury. Compared to them, his teams seemed pathetic.

"There's three of us. How do you want to proceed?" he asked. He was clearly wary of them, since they had proven themselves to be superior fighters. Clashing against them would not be a fun experience, and yet at the same time, the mission had to be completed.

"If you want to go first, be my guest," said Nero with a warm smile. He did not mind someone else facing all the dangers first for once.

"How about we all go down together? Before the situation becomes clear, we should support each other as much as we can."

Nero's brow creased. That subtle commanding tone Arter had in his voice was gone, and Nero could guess exactly what it was that subdued him. With only one new face among his team, it was likely that all other soldiers were either dead or severely wounded. Regardless of the difficulties they faced, this reflected poorly on him as a team leader.

Perhaps, if he had a conscience, the death or maiming of his team members also weighed down on him.

"That works. In that case, until all dangers are neutralised we agree not to go for any artefacts. Agreed?" asked Nero. Subdued though he may be, that hint of caution made him less likely to betray this agreement, which suited Nero just fine.

Arter and Leonard agreed, which made life much easier.

"By the way, have you dealt with the remaining berserkers? It might not be the best idea to leave them around to attack us from the back as we go down."

It reminded him of what the berserkers were like before they transformed. The density of aether within their bodies was extreme, but even that paled in comparison to the aether here.

"There's something here," called Harold's voice from the left. Nero followed it, stepping slowly and carefully through the fog, till he approached a railing where Harold stood. Right beyond the railing was a rectangular glass box, containing a strange, red liquid as far as he could tell.

Nero stepped closer, but he still could not see if the glass box contained anything else. After making sure nothing was amiss, he slid past the railing and approached the glass box to get a better view. But, as it turned out, besides the red liquid, the glass box was empty.

"It's just some strange liquid in a glass box," he called out as he stepped back.

"There's another box here," someone called out from the opposite side of the room.

"There's more up ahead," someone else said.

Nero walked around the box to make sure there was nothing behind, but ran into a wall so he returned and decided it was probably best to stay behind the railing.

Even though the room proved to be absent of any cursed energy, so far, it did not reduce Nero's wariness. If nothing else, just the fact that he could be allowed in here to begin with was based on the fact that his ability eradicated 'corruption'.

"Wait a minute, there's something in this box!" someone called out, and everyone approached the source of the voice.

It turned out that the blonde girl had been the one to call out, and the shocked expression on her face was easily noticed by everyone. When Nero looked in the box he also froze.

There, floating within the box, was a skinny human, wearing a gas mask, suspended in the red liquid. The gentle rising and falling of his chest suggested that he was still breathing, though everyone else in the room had stopped.

"Those are the things that turned into berserkers," Nero said out loud, making sure Arter and his team knew about it. "We fought them before. At the time they looked like this, and were full of aether. But after we killed them, and came back after a while, they had turned into berserkers.

Since we didn't see the transformation, I can't say for certain that it was them, but the numbers seem to match up."

"How long has this been down here?" Arter murmured, in shock. "How are they still alive?"

"I think the better question to ask would be, how many of these things there are down here, and how can we keep them from waking up," Nero said with a grim expression.

He could not help but recall how it had been called a 'research specimen'. Had the Eldrim been... making berserkers?