"I need someone to give me an update on the situation down in the Dimensional Research facility, I can't reach anyone," Terrance shouted into his unusually active monitoring room.
Although it seemed like nobody heard him, he noticed several aides sprinting from screen to screen trying to get any kind of information to pass along to him. He didn't expect much given how chaotic things had become, but had a sneaking suspicion as to what was going on.
Pulling up one of his class skills, he checked on the special cameras only he could see and frowned as he watched the worst case scenario happen live.
The Inviolable Abyss, a specialized prison facility the System had offered him in exchange for more information provided on his personal quest, had crashed.
Yes, crashed.
The Inviolable Abyss was a Gate that functioned as a prison and they had filled it with an innumerable quantity of dangers, from unkillable monsters to Walkers that were so horrific that they were practically considered disasters on their own.
A glance at his stats showed his mana, a number measured in the millions, was hemorrhaging faster than he ever thought possible as the Gate destabilized more and more. On his screen, a massive claw ripped its way out of the doorway and pulled a massive wolfman out of the space, its maw dripping with blood and panic in its eyes.
The claw, quickly joined by several others, were also soon dripping blood as it tore its way through the first security team to reach the hallway.
Barely stopping to process their deaths, the wolfman inhaled their corpses as a series of flickering lights appeared around it, prompting a terrified howl as it began racing away as fast as it could.
Terrance had made an active decision to have as little to do with the place as possible, something he was currently regretting as several more creatures drug themselves from the void laced space within his base.
As he watched his once pristine hallways grow stained with blood, the gray and white surfaces darkening to an almost black red, a feeling of dread crept along his spine.
The feeling grew to a crescendo as a man wearing a poncho and pants, both practically in tatters, stepped forward, moving at such a casual pace that you might think he was getting ready to run an errand instead of escaping from the most tightly sealed prison on the planet.
Since establishing the prison, Terrance had steadfastly ignored the prison and its intake, with a single exception.
A man Marcus called Jethro.
Jethro the Power Eater.
He looked up at an angle and made direct eye contact with Terrance, waving with a friendly smile as he turned away and started walking across the hall towards the one space that was preexisting in this facility.
The Founder's Wing, a permanently sealed department dedicated to research that only Marcus had access to, which was so highly classified that literally nobody knew what happened past that door.
The only thing Terrance knew for sure was that the one time he'd tried to interact with the space behind the door, all he'd found was the solid rock that surrounded the facility as he built the base. When he mentioned it to Marcus, the man chuckled and said, "Even now, the Founder has secrets."
Jethro touched the door, gently at first, but more aggressively pushing on it as it refused to open. He thumbed his chin for a moment before contorting his hand into a claw and seemingly gripping the air.
The light in the hallway flickered to nonexistence as it transferred, almost liquid, into a rapidly rotating sphere within the man's hand. It flared outward, trying to escape, as he condensed the light further and further until it was a kaleidoscope of color and heat, barely held in place by the man's mana.
Then, with no warning, he let the ball go and it blasted into the door without a sound, simply disappearing into the material of the door.
There was no reaction whatsoever, and as the light returned to the hall even the residual signs of the attack disappeared.
"Well the boss isn't gonna be thrilled to hear this," he muttered before turning to walk down the hall.
The next wave of security finally made their way toward the prison, now accompanied by two Walkers who were easily over level 100. Seeing Jethro, they all adopted a ready stance, holding their swords and guns, standard kit in the Bureau security forces, toward him and the lead Walker ordered, "Stand down! Return to the prison and we will not hurt you!"
Making a note to have Marcus issue particularly high compensation to this group, he jotted their names down as the group shared a conversation.
"Oh, is that so," Jethro asked, clearly amused.
The Walker, a man by the name of Ethan, responded, "My companion and I are both level 100! We've got a collective five thousand hours inside the Gates, and half that hunting other Walkers. It doesn't matter how strong you think you are, we will put you down if you don't comply!"
Jethro laughed, a low wheezing sound that made Terrance's teeth hurt, as he said, "Ohhhh noooo, please don't hurt meeee"
Ethan's face grew deep crimson as he began to step forward, which turned out to be a mistake.
His last one.
The ground itself grew teeth and opened up at a terrifying speed, biting into the man's leg and ripping it off. A bulge traveled along to the ground back to Jethro as a look of obscene satisfaction rippled across his face.
The air around him pulsed, ever so slightly.
Before Ethan could even scream, hands of blood reached from the walls and floors, grabbing the forces behind him and literally pulling them apart. Blood and viscera exploded and covered him from behind as he fell, and by the time he hit the ground, even the blood covering the walls from before had been drained, pulsing along the structure back to Jethro, whose expression only grew more disgusting by the second.
Despite the misinformation spread among the populace, identification skills weren't as one might think, but Terrance's couldn't discern someone's level. His skill, "Mana Identification" measured mana as a visible aura, with intensity and color depicting quantity and quality respectively. The average level 50 Walker had a white aura that looked like a flame similar to a match, with occasional peaks and sparks, but mostly pretty clear.
The strongest he'd seen on a Walker, by far, was a blaze like a bonfire that shone a crystalline red.
Jethro's mana, in the split second that Terrance remembered to activate the skill, had gone from an ember, barely holding color, to a hurricane of indigo that almost seemed to distort the air around him. This, while deeply frightening, was not the most terrifying thing he noticed.
As Jethro consumed, his mana grew exponentially, becoming so strong that his skill showed the man's mana as almost transparent, apparently so intense that his skill simply couldn't perceive it.
Seconds.
It had been seconds since the first move had been made, from Ethan losing his leg to Jethro standing in a hallway that had been scoured of all signs of life, alive or otherwise.
Even the prison stood totally still, as though whatever entities remained within were waiting for safety before they escaped to continue the horror that had gotten them imprisoned in the first place.
Taking a deep breath and stretching, Jethro looked back up at Terrance and shrugged before he said, "Hey boss."
Obviously taking a call, the man began his leisurely trek toward the elevator as he said, "No, I told you this probably wasn't going to work. Whoever the Founder is, he was a monster, and stronger than me by a huge mark."
A few moments passed before Jethro responded, "Nah, I don't think anyone here is gonna be worth questioning. If I couldn't open it, its pretty unlikely anyone else could."
The door to the elevator opened as he said, "I'm gonna head home. Its been a few years and I need to feed the Shade Pirahana."
A ding rang out and the doors to the elevator shut again, leaving the hallway in total silence once more.
Several creatures poked their heads out of the prison and tentatively stepped out, walking and crawling slowly down the opposite end of the hall, clearly wanting to avoid whatever the hell had just happened.
As the minutes turned to hours, Terrance watched in ever growing horror and stronger and stronger creatures escaped a prison Marcus had sworn would never be broken into. The irony didn't elude him that the man had technically been correct in that the prison remained impregnable, but apparently fairly easy to break open from within.
It was hard to be too mad at him, considering the prisoners had been trapped in the void. From what little Terrance, or anyone for that matter, knew of the void, amassing any meaningful amount of mana should have been impossible.
There were very few rules within the Bureau, but the single rule that stood alone, beyond exception, or even beyond appeal, was that deliberate research of the void was banned.
That rule extended from developing new magics to purely academic study, and the only punishment was the death of the offending party.
When Terrance had the chance to ask what was so taboo about the topic, Marcus simply replied, "We can't withstand it."
With a strong background in forced military discipline, Terrance recognized a hard order when he saw it and decided to avoid the topic altogether. There was no value that he could discern in breaking the rule, the man had chosen to follow the less well known brother of valor.
Life.
Terrance chose a long and healthy life.
Considering he'd seen Marcus snap his fingers and turn a man into a liquified slurry, he believed he was making the correct choice, particularly since the two men had been friends before his abrupt, and seemingly painful, exploration into a different state of matter.
Turning away from the horrors on his screens, Terrance set them to record any movement in the hallway in case something important happened.
Up on the physical monitors, his staff was still desperately trying to figure out what had caused all of this in the first place. He tapped at his desk for a moment watching the skitter about before shouting, "Status report! Give me something to work with."
Terrance ran a tight ship since by the time problems reached his desk, things had gone far enough sideways to start seeing rightside up again. With that said, he actually hated all the formality most of the Directors in the Bureau insisted on and kept a single rule to keep his side of things running smoothly.
Do what needs to be done.
Unlike his peer's endless chains of command, countless strategies, or waves of Walkers with progressively more specialized powers, Terrance had a moderately sized team of highly motivated and loyal generalists.
As soon as he finished speaking, almost his entire team took their seats and, having already spent an appropriate amount of time organizing amongst themselves, the three people with the most important information remained standing.
The first, a young woman who had joined his team less than a month prior, tapped at her keyboard and pulled up a camera feed from one of the few places in the facility that he hadn't constructed, and with a slight flicker, it appeared on a much larger monitor along the far wall.
The feed might as well have had "Highly Classified, Look and Die" written all over it.
Up on the screen a pair of eyes watched the camera, following it as it rotated through an otherwise totally empty room. The crystal blue irises flashed at irregular intervals, creating a feeling that Terrance could only describe as dread as a whisper began growing louder, cresting at barely audible.
The eyes drew him in as the voice droned on, forcing him to lean ever so slightly closer to try and hear what it was saying.
As it spoke, a low static began to fill his mind, white noise that subtly drowned out the sounds of everything around him.
"Are you afraid Terrance?"
The eyes grew closer as he watched, so close they could touch him.
Her breath was hot on his cheeks as her lips were suddenly so close he could feel their softness upon his own.
How they had trapped her, he doubted he would ever know, but as he reached his hand out to touch the door release he knew she would never be held again.
The monitor turned black and a soul shaking roar rang out throughout the facility, knocking the man backwards so hard he fell back into his chair and even that almost toppled over, saved only by firm hands holding the chair steady.
"I wouldn't check that again if I were you, her abilities are cumulative."
Terrance turned his head and saw Marcus with a bored expression on his face, and felt his cheeks flush.
"What was that…I saw…wings," he managed to eke out before his friend shook his head ever so slightly.
Gesturing toward the team, Marcus got them to continue.
Turning back to the monitors, but staying in his chair just in case, Terrance watched as a video feed of two young women cowering in a facility bedroom together flickered into view.
Marcus sighed and muttered something about why he even bothered putting them in there before slightly cocking his head to push Terrance along.
Following his lead, Terrance nodded and the last monitor showed a hospital room with the young man he'd watched form from the strange stone Lilac had found in the Gate.
The room stretched and contorted around him as the voidbound figure he'd met gently placed a barely perceptible hand upon his forehead and with a final pulse, the room released a final blast of energy that rocked the facility before he disappeared as abruptly as he'd appeared.
Now stable, the room's lights flickered back on to a warm sunlight, reducing the effect the sterile white of the room's walls would normally have.
The young man, Leon, started taking in shallow breaths as his eyes slowly fluttered open.
He was awake.