System Prompt:
Installing Patch.
Updating data and localizing all current features.
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The first thing Leon saw as his eyes fluttered open was the personalized black of his System window letting him know it was out of date. How that was possible, he wasn't exactly sure since he was fairly positive this was the first time he'd opened his eyes, but a vague sense of familiarity told him things might not be how they seemed.
Looking around as he pushed himself up in his plush bed, very little of note jumped out at him. Well…one thing caught his eye as he lifted up his blanket.
He was completely naked.
A mirror in the corner of the room called out to him and he stood and walked to it, being careful with his movements since he almost made himself throw up when he tried to move too fast initially.
Taking a moment to breathe, he looked over himself with pitch black eyes and admired his toned body, not too muscular with no signs of being atrophied. His warm brown skin practically glowed under the simulated sunlight, visually more distinct by his shock white bangs. The color went all the way to the center of his head and were surrounded by black so deep it almost seemed unnatural.
From crest to tip, his hair dropped down just below his shoulders, surprisingly tidy for someone who'd just woken up from a…however long he'd been asleep.
A desk next to the mirror held a small glass jar filled with hair bands, one of which he grabbed and used to tie his hair into a hanging bun.
Looking around the room once more, he moved to the dresser that sat on the opposite side of the room, grabbing a black shirt and cargo pants to wear. Socks followed, naturally, and found a pair of shoes at the side of the door.
Taking stock of the room once more, he found it largely lacking anything else and as he opened the door to leave, focused his black eyes on the hallway beyond the boundary of the space.
Warmth spilled out into the hallway, slightly illuminating the area outside the door, but otherwise it was a long stretch of flickering electricity faintly showing the outlines of shattered ceiling lights.
There was a skittering sound somewhere in the distance, but as Leon took his first proper steps out of his hospital room, he decided that was future Leon's problem. Apprehension filled his gut as he walked, slowly stepping over furniture and broken glass, narrowly avoiding a shard that looked to be almost a full four inches jutting up out of the floor.
The brief glimpses of light revealed pools of blood that led to each of the rooms, along with drag marks periodically.
One of the victims had clearly done everything in their power to save themselves, to no avail, judging on the fingers still digging into the door frame…disconnected from the safety of their hands.
Making a note to avoid…whatever was strong enough to rip hands from fingers, Leon pushed onward through the darkened hallway as there was an abrupt sound, or rather a sudden lack of it.
There are moments in our lives where we realize something's changed and it takes longer than it should.
You might feel cold in the heat until you realize you're sweating and suddenly the only thing you feel is the uncomfortable wetness of sweat dripping down your back.
Maybe you're walking in a room while you're checking your phone or reading a book and then you're not maneuvering around people anymore.
Perhaps you're in the forest at night, enjoying the cool breeze on an autumn evening and it grows quiet, far too quiet for the area.
As Leon came to that realization, some version of the three gradually dawned on him as he realized the electric hum of the building had disappeared. The hall, previously flickering with light, had gradually gotten darker as the overhead fluorescence had taken longer and longer to come back on until they now lay dormant. Even the skittering sound he'd been worried about had disappeared, leaving the hall in total silence and darkness.
That combination deeply unsettled him and, even though he was fairly certain that was a natural response to being in a darkened tomb, felt his heart rate spike.
Every step he took was longer than the first as he willed his eyes to adjust to the total darkness, but they simply refused.
The walls closed in, slowly at first, as he walked until he was barely able to take steps and considered moving sideways to continue on.
He was positive he could feel the slick walls touching his sides, tiny fingers that grasped at his shoulders to hold him there, or rip him in half.
A deep sound rang in his ears, something he struggled to identify.
It was a rhythmic thing, pulsing so deep he could feel it in his bones, pressuring him to try and walk faster as his lungs began working harder to keep him breathing.
Several minutes into this exercise in terror, he realized what he was hearing.
Breathing.
The deep pulsing bass of it made the hair on his neck stand up as his gradually increasing heart rate suddenly skyrocketed and he started walking faster.
Where was it coming from?
He looked behind himself, forgetting he could barely see inches ahead, and was unsurprised, if still afraid, to see that he couldn't pick out anything.
Several more steps forward took him into a puddle that became a small lake around his ankles; warm, wet stickiness that felt subtly familiar in a way that made him try to force the feeling out of his mind.
The acidic scent of copper radiated upward from the ground, and as he walked it began to suffuse the air. He stopped breathing through his nose and tried to breathe orally, only to find that now he could taste the metal directly.
Several minutes passed this way as he walked, trying not to gag while forcing himself to breathe.
His senses screamed as he felt the air in front of him split, the sound following in a fatally slow warning scream.
Moving before he could even register what he was doing, he hurled himself to the ceiling, only to find it covered in the same sticky substance. Momentarily stuck, he barely saw the copper blade strike where he was standing and retract within a matter of seconds. He kicked off the ceiling at an angle so he could move forward, landing several feet ahead just as the lights came on.
All along the room, covering every surface was something he could only describe as a copper color slime. As he watched, it retracted, rapidly forming into a singular blob with multiple sharpened tendrils hovering around it, all aimed directly at his head.
A System box hovered over its glistening figure.
Copper Slime Lv. 120
It began launching its blades at him as he started moving his feet along the now clean floor, stepping out of the way so they missed him by inches. He felt something inside him begin to flare up, a throbbing bubble of energy that threatened to incinerate him from within as he lifted his hand up and shouted "FIREBALL!"
The slime flinched as pain wracked Leon's body, barely keeping himself from falling. Confusion flashed on his face as he realized the magic he'd called on had hit some kind of blockage inside of him, hence the pain and spell failure.
As it receded, he looked at the slime with a sheepish look on his face and asked, "Any chance we could start over?"
The slime shivered for a moment and began launching its bladed tendrils at him faster than before, keeping him moving to avoid the increasingly fast attacks.
Faster than he thought he could, he ran and began relying on the floor less and less, soon jumping from wall to ceiling in rapid succession just to stay ahead of the blades. In an attempt to keep an element of randomness to his evasion, he planted his hand after a step to forcibly alter his trajectory, pushing off in a different direction.
This kept him alive for several minutes longer but no matter how creative he was, Leon knew this was not a fight he was going to survive if he couldn't figure out a solution fast.
His surprisingly deep endurance kept him moving at these speeds, even managing to eke out a little more, for ten straight minutes before he felt himself slowing down. The slime noticed as well and redoubled, sending multiple tendrils at the same spot directly in front of him.
Almost willing to risk trying another spell, Leon reached deep inside himself and suddenly came to a dead stop as he slammed into an iron wall.
This of course meant he lost his momentum and immediately began falling as the man raised a massive knife that Leon somehow identified as a Bowie Knife and made a slight cut, barely two inches long.
The slime splitting in half filled the air with a simultaneous explosion of goo and a terrifyingly shrill screech as it died. Partially dissolved corpses and gear slammed against the walls as the man who'd saved his life waved his hand, filling the space in front of him with some kind of air wall to keep himself clean.
Leon, having fallen almost to the floor by now, was covered in slime and viscera and not happy about it.
Where the man had come from was unclear since most of the hallways in the circular antechamber had been blocked with rubble or hardened slime, but he had saved him in the nick of time. It was almost suspiciously close, but Leon didn't want to doubt someone without even learning their name first.
Casting a scathing look down at Leon, the man uttered his first words.
"Civilian found and rescued. Looks like a blood slime evolved after the escape and managed to completely engulf the 4th wing here in the long term care wing.
No, I will not escort him to the checkpoint, I'm here to kill and level up."
The burly man seemed to be receiving new instructions, based on his increasingly annoyed expression and how his muscles tensed. He had close cut black hair and a deep tan that spoke to hours in the field, a term that came to mind after Leon noted that he was in army fatigues.
"That's a gross misrepresentation of our contract, and you know it!"
Glancing back at Leon, the man rolled his eyes and said, "He couldn't even hit the damn thing, how am I supposed to get him anywhere safe?"
Recognizing that he was clearly part of the problem, Leon looked around the room and saw a door creak open.
After this ordeal, Leon was ready to just settle down and wait for the ornery man to make a decision until he saw multiple System prompts pop up around the door in the shape of arrows.
Hey!
This way!
The man cosplaying some kind of military type was now fully shouting at whoever he was talking to, so Leon inched toward the door.
The System wouldn't lead him directly into danger…would it?
Come onnnnn!
Move faster, I know you can!
Leon shook his head slightly and silently continued shuffling over toward the door, slightly hesitating as he reached the darkened entrance.
A pair of hands reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt, pulling him in hard and fast while a third hand grasped his mouth and stifled an admittedly girlish scream.
Leon felt reality distort around him as he passed the threshold, barely fighting the nausea that was punching up from his gut into his chest.
Unbeknownst to him, the door he'd been yanked into had quietly slid down into the floor and disappeared as its extremely powerful teleportation sigils activated to bring him elsewhere.
Minutes of this sensation passed before he finally curled up into a ball to try and fight off the feeling before eventually light seeped in through his interlocked fingers.
Moving his hands away, he looked up to see several people looking down at him before a mildly accented and feminine voice said, "Hey look he survived the instant teleportation. That was unexpected."
As his eyes adjusted to the new light, one of the heads turned to the source with an incredulous look and responded, "You tested one of the new ones on him?"
The woman shrugged, bouncing the oddly blonde bottom of her purple hair as she replied in a much bubblier, less accented voice, "It seemed like the safer option. You know how the Mercenary Division people get when we ask for a little wiggle room on those contracts."
Another voice shot back, "You know the only way they do even the bare minimum is because we overpay them. If we just subcontracted a big enough Guild, we'd never have these kinds of problems; hell, I'm positive they're killing people who are too weak to survive under the pretense of 'mission critical personnel.'"
Unsure what to do under the passive gaze of the bickering people above, Leon adopted the tried and true method of shuffling away as slowly and quietly as possible.
One of them stepped on the fabric of his shirt and stopped that plan dead in its tracks as they all turned to him and the man in a fairly cheap suit said, "Right. Let's get you up."
Leon sensed something in the tone of the man's voice, but struggled to place it.
It wasn't hostility or malice…regret?
Longing?
The word came to mind as his own feelings rushed to the fore.
Nostalgia.
The man made him feel nostalgic for a reason he couldn't quite place.
He swallowed hard as he wrapped his hand around Leon's forearm and lifted him up, just barely stopping short of pulling him into a hug. Somewhere in his heart, Leon knew he probably would have accepted it.
Clearing his throat, the man said, "Leon…my name is Marcus. Its good to see you up and about."
The group began sharing names and, for some reason, roles with him as they shuffled him off to a chair, certain he must be tired.
On the large monitor behind them, the large man from before was burning slimes alongside a team wearing the same fatigues with what appeared to be a magically enhanced flamethrower.
Following his gaze, Gala rolled her eyes and in a bubbly voice said, "Yeah…that's Trent. He's the leader of one of the mercenary teams we've got contracted to help retake this facility."
Marcus flicked her forehead and the blonde puffs at the bottom of her hair receded, leaving only the dark purple of the rest of her long straight locks. Without explanation, and now with her accent back, Gala said, "With some luck, you'll never see him again. He's terribly crass and has done irrevocable damage to many of my experiments."
Now sitting in a chair next to him, Terrance said, "Terribly crass is probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said about him. I imagine if he wasn't level 150, he'd have probably been killed a dozen times over by now."
The group nodded in agreement for several moments before noticing Leon holding his hand up to get their attention.
"Where am I?"
Marcus began explaining as Terrance went back to flipping through the various camera feeds his team had pulled up. With his most pressing concern addressed, he wanted to see the extent of the damage he'd need to start repairing and landed on the feed they'd needed to move past.
The two young women were still clutching each other and now crying in the room as the emergency lighting flashed.
Catching a glance at the room, Leon noted that it was flipping from total darkness to a bright and unnatural red, illuminating them in five second rotations.
Their eyes flickered silver and gold as he watched and felt a distant heat in his chest.
As Marcus shared more information with him, Leon turned away from the monitor and refocused on the conversation.
It didn't go unnoticed to the powerful man that he was distracted for that split second.
It also didn't go unnoticed that for the briefest fraction of a second, so fast that it would be imperceptible to almost any other living person that the deep black oceans of Leon's irises had changed.
They flashed red, so bright that Marcus swore the room had lit up in that handful of microseconds.
Despite the immense losses and breathtaking setbacks the Bureau had suffered from this, the massive expense of hiring so many high level mercenaries, and especially the shocking loss of life in the face of some of the most powerful threats humanity had faced thus far…Marcus continued his explanation of the Bureau and its mission with a slight smile and a curious gleam in his eyes.