This chapter is incredibly long and easily the best chapter I've ever written. And all the names I use in this chapter are from the game. Soooo, have fun. And please leave a review if you like it.
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The silence was the worst part.
It wasn't the peaceful quiet of a deep sleep. It was the suffocating, heavy, absolute stillness of an empty, forgotten tomb. It was the sound of a world holding its breath, waiting for a corpse to finally stop twitching.
Cedric lay heavily on the ground, his body a broken vessel rapidly emptying its contents into a spreading pool of his own warm blood. The cold, unforgiving grit of the pulverized concrete was a constant, scratching reminder against his bruised cheek that he was still trapped in the Hollow. The metallic tang of copper filled his nose, so thick it coated the back of his throat with every shallow, agonizing breath.
His body was no longer a functioning human chassis; it was a ruin.
His left shoulder was completely pulverized, the joint crushed into a horrific, formless mess of torn tissue and shattered bone fragments that grated against each other with every heartbeat. The collarbone was cleanly, brutally fractured in three places, leaving the entire left arm to hang dead, heavy, and useless in the dirt.
A deep, jagged gash ran down his right thigh, carving straight through the muscle. The veins throbbed wildly as the wound vehemently refused to clot, painting his torn sneaker and the cracked floor a slick, wet crimson that reflected the dim, dying light of the cavern.
But the absolute worst of his physical trauma—the epicenter of an agony so profound it threatened to shatter his mind—was his right arm.
He had sacrificed it to deliver the Jet Punch. He had shoved it willingly into the first beast's crushing maw. Now, from the elbow down, it was a terrifying, unrecognizable horror. The skin and muscle had been chewed and flayed away by razor-sharp crystal teeth.
Severed tendons hung like frayed, bloody wires. His right hand was completely mangled, crushed into a formless, pulpy mass of ruined flesh and exposed, splintered bone. It didn't even look human anymore; it was just a dead weight of agony, leaking thick, sluggish drops of dark blood onto the tiles.
And yet, worse than all the physical trauma combined was the creeping, freezing numbness of advanced ether erosion. It was crawling like venomous, necrotic ivy up his pale neck, turning his veins a sickly, glowing black. It whispered of a cold, permanent sleep.
Every breath he took was a jagged, bubbling struggle, a desperate gasp for air in a room entirely devoid of hope. His lungs felt like they were filled with crushed glass. Yet, the stubborn, irrational fire in his dull purple eyes refused to extinguish. He wasn't ready to let go.
[Cedric, listen to me! You still have a sliver of strength left. Don't give up, please!]
The System's voice echoed in his mind, its remarkably human tone now trembling with an overwhelming, genuine worry. The usual calm support had completely fractured into a frantic, vibrating encouragement. The AI sounded exactly like a terrified friend crying out from the very edge of a cliff.
[You must hide! I am detecting ambient energy spikes. You cannot stay out in the open. Just go somewhere safe and hide until Wise comes back for you. You can do this, Cedric! Keep going! Force your legs to move!]
Cedric gritted his teeth, suppressing a violent shudder as the metallic taste of his own blood filled his mouth. His thin, trembling left fingers—his only remaining functional digits—clawed weakly into the thick dust and rubble.
He let out a low, guttural, wet groan, biting his pierced inner lip to suppress the urge to scream as he began to drag his broken, heavy frame forward.
Inch by agonizing inch.
'I know...' Cedric thought, his mental voice severely strained, stretched to the absolute breaking point, but retaining a terrifying clarity. 'Just have to... reach the shadows...'
He pulled himself across the uneven, debris-strewn terrain. Five meters. Ten meters. It felt like crossing a barren desert on his stomach.
His ruined left shoulder scraped agonizingly against the rough, jagged tiles, tearing the flesh further. The pulverized remnants of his right hand dragged lifelessly behind him, leaving a morbid, smeared trail of bone dust and marrow. The gash on his right thigh painted a thick, unbroken line of dark crimson in his wake.
He crawled for what felt like an eternity. His vision was tunneling dangerously into a flickering static blackness, then returning only in washed-out flashes of grey. The protective darkness of a collapsed retaining wall was right there. Just three more meters. Just two more drags.
Suddenly, the ambient rhythm of the Hollow shifted. The floor didn't just vibrate—it exploded.
A massive, invisible force slammed directly into Cedric's ribs with the unstoppable momentum of a runaway freight train.
He was launched violently through the air. The impact was so severe it temporarily knocked his consciousness completely loose. He tumbled across the rough concrete like a stone skipped violently across a stormy, jagged pond. His frail, broken body flew ten meters through the air, completely limp, before slamming brutally into a tangled, rusted pile of heavy construction rebar and ceiling debris.
KRA-CRACK.
The sickening, wet sound of his right ribs snapping completely inwards echoed loudly, bouncing off the cavern walls. The brutal impact forced the very last ounce of stale air from his bruised, bleeding lungs in a fine mist of red.
Cedric lay there, completely and utterly helpless. A warped, heavy steel support beam had collapsed directly over his lower legs, pinning him to the ground like a specimen on a mounting board.
[CE…IC!]
The System was in a full-blown, catastrophic panic. But its sound was beginning to fray and tear at the edges.
Its voice was rapidly degrading into a distorted, staticky, high-pitched hum. It was getting lost behind the deafening, ocean-like roar of blood rushing in Cedric's own ears and the encroaching static of ether erosion.
[... LET…O…F…ME!]
Cedric couldn't move. He couldn't even twitch. He could only stare upward, his vision now a hazy, swimming, distorted blur of deep crimson, static white, and absolute black.
Strangely, he no longer felt the agonizing, piercing pain of his crushed ribs, the throbbing of his gashed thigh, or the phantom screams of his mangled right hand. He was completely numb to fear.
To him, the world was rapidly slowing down, turning into a series of jagged, disconnected, lagging frames. He was just a broken toy thrown into a corner, passively watching shadowy figures move through a thick, suffocating fog of his own fading life force.
The thick dust from his impact slowly cleared, parting like a theater curtain to reveal a supreme, tailored nightmare.
It was another Hati.
But this wasn't the mangled corpse he had just sacrificed his right arm to take down. This one was terrifyingly, immaculately perfect, as if the Hollow itself had spitefully remolded the beast from scratch just to mock his ultimate sacrifice.
Its massive, quadrupedal form was encased in heavy, dark-grey geometric stone armor—complex, interlocking plates making it a flawless, walking fortress. Huge, jagged, opaque crystalline formations bristled aggressively from its thick neck, broad chest, and sweeping tail like tightly packed glacial ice.
Its heavy jawline was tightly interlocked within a pristine blocky stone helmet to seal the highly volatile energy within. Thick, dark claws raked harsh gouges into the concrete as it stalked forward, its glowing red optical sensors locking onto the helpless boy.
Cedric remained entirely paralyzed, pinned beneath the crushing weight of the steel beam, his stamina completely, totally hollowed out.
The System's desperate, digital cries were fading rapidly now, slipping into a distant, underwater murmur that he could no longer piece together into coherent, meaningful words.
[... C...LM…D…N…]
[F…CK…Y…U]
The disjointed voices continued to echo.
Through his half-closed eyes, he saw the massive armored hound stop directly in front of him. The sheer, radioactive weight of its presence pressed the remaining, pitiful breaths from his chest.
Slowly, with agonizing, sadistic precision, the beast raised a massive, darkened front claw. The core deep inside Hati's stone helmet blazed with a blinding, toxic yellow-green light, coiling an immense volume of volatile energy for the final, erasing execution.
Cedric slowly closed his heavy, blood-crusted eyelids, finally leaning into the freezing, permanent embrace of the concrete. He stopped fighting the Hollow. He waited for the end.
THWACK.
A sound like a cannonball striking a reinforced vault door ruptured the silence.
Hati's entire armored head was snapped violently, unnaturally sideways.
The three-ton beast was launched entirely backward like a lightweight, discarded toy. It smashed into the heavy steel scaffolding twenty meters away with enough catastrophic kinetic force to bend the solid steel girders into U-shapes, bringing a rain of debris down upon itself.
Cedric's blurry eyes fluttered open, shocked out of his stupor by the deafening, concussive wave.
Then, he felt it. A new presence. It was a sharp, fiercely orderly, and deeply, anciently murderous vibration that cleanly cut through the chaotic, corrupted rhythm of the Hollow like a surgical scalpel.
Through the grey, swirling gloom and the settling dust, a figure materialized. She was walking across the pulverized concrete with a heavy, deliberate, and terrifyingly calm stride.
She was a girl with shark tail, dressed impeccably in a black and white maid outfit that stood in stark, surreal contrast to the apocalyptic ruin around her.
The black maid dress fit her slender yet deceptively strong frame perfectly. It was highlighted by a large, immaculate white bow at the chest and neck, detailed with intricate, undamaged frilled lace. Her short black hair flickered with faint red highlights at the tips, moving softly beneath a perfectly pinned white lace headdress.
A small, pristine white apron sat neatly over the flared skirt, decorated with three small black bows on the upper left and trimmed with elegant white lace. Below the skirt, she wore black thigh-high stockings with a signature black diamond argyle pattern at the top, paired with black high-heeled shoes featuring stark, blood-red soles.
But the most striking feature was the massive, muscular black shark tail swaying behind her.
It didn't wag; it thrashed. With every slow step she took, the heavy tail slammed against the floor with a rhythmic, crushing thud, physically cracking the solid concrete tiles and leaving a trail of shattered stone in her wake.
She looked at the recovering beast struggling to extract itself from the scaffolding. Her eyes were a piercing, radiant crimson. There was no trace of her usual sleepy, bored lethargy in them—only a cold, suffocating, oceanic pressure that promised absolute violence.
Then, she turned her head. She saw Cedric.
She saw the steel beam pinning his shattered legs. She saw the unnatural, horrifying bend of his completely pulverized left shoulder. She saw the sheer, terrifying volume of blood soaking through his torn clothes and pooling heavily on the floor.
And her crimson eyes locked onto his right arm. She saw the mangled, chewed-up horror of his hand, reduced to exposed bone and shredded meat.
Then she simply bit down hard on the lollipop in her mouth. The hard candy shattered into fine dust between her teeth. She slowly, deliberately spit the chewed plastic stick onto the blood-stained floor.
In her hands, massive black and white loppers trembled slightly. They trembled from the sheer, overwhelming, bone-crushing force of her gloved grip tightening on the complex, skeletal handle assembly.
She was Ellen.
"I was supposed to rest," she said.
Her voice was incredibly low, quiet, and vibrating with a suppressed, icy, abyssal rage that felt infinitely more dangerous than the loudest of any monster's roar.
"I was going to go home, sit down on my couch, and have my lunch."
She glided forward smoothly, her high heels clicking sharply against the stone. She came to a halt directly between Cedric's broken body and the snarling, recovering Hati. Her shadow fell over the boy—cold, overwhelmingly protective, and absolutely, fundamentally immovable.
"But look at this," she said, her piercing crimson eyes narrowing into lethal slits as they locked onto the armored monster.
Her tone was so frigid it felt like it could instantly freeze the very ether suspended in the air.
"You ruined my day. And you did this… to my kouhai."
She just moved. Her shark-finned heels crushed the heavy debris beneath her feet. Her massive tail lashed out, slamming into a nearby concrete block, shattering it into jagged pieces in a single, devastating strike.
"I'm going to make sure your cleaning process is very, very painful."
Ellen reached into a hidden, reinforced fold of her skirt and pulled out a small, heavy, hyper-dense metallic object.
It was a heavily customized W-Engine, meticulously shaped into a mechanical shark head with a highly aggressive design. Slotted securely into the circular drives on the side of the W-Engine's chassis were six vinyl-like, glowing Drive Discs.
Four of them radiated a crackling, high-voltage neon aura; their pitch-black surfaces were aggressively bisected by a thick, white-and-black checkered racing stripe, bearing the word 'DEMO' and a jagged white logo near the bottom curve.
The remaining two pulsed intensely with the rapid waveform of Woodpecker Electro. These discs featured a thick, vibrant green outer rim framing a dark center, dominated by massive, bold white letters spelling 'OXO' right below a small white paw print.
Her movements were agonizingly slow and precise, radiating an overwhelming, suffocating aura of inevitable threat.
She firmly pressed the fin of the metallic shark's body.
A sharp, synthetic digital voice immediately barked from the W-Engine:
>>> DEEP SEA VISITOR <<<
She flipped a heavy latch on the side of the massive loppers, revealing a specialized mounting point just above the main central pivot screw. With a fluid motion, she snapped the shark-head W-Engine into place.
It locked with a definitive, heavy, echoing click.
Vvvv-vooom-krrrk.
A sound that was part-machine, part-apex-predator erupted from the weapon. The W-Engine inside the engine flared to violent life. At the exact same moment, the six Drive Discs began to spin rapidly.
A heavy, localized soundtrack exploded outward from the W-Engine's internal speakers. The eerie, dead silence of the Hollow was violently overwritten by Ellen's personal combat rhythm.
A high-tempo, aggressive electronic beat from the Woodpecker Electro discs hammered the air, flawlessly layered over a heavy, buzzing, overdriven synth bassline generated by the Puffer Electro set. It was a vicious, head-banging tempo.
Instantly, the ambient temperature in the cavern plummeted. The moisture in the air seized completely. A thick, biting, visible layer of absolute-zero frost exploded outward from the W-Engine, rapidly crawling down the length of the giant, heavy blades until they were encased in jagged, smoking, terrifyingly sharp ice.
>>> WARNING! WARNING! THE APEX PREDATOR IS INCOMING <<<
Ellen gripped the handle, her crimson eyes flashing. She simply vanished into a terrifying blur of black and white motion, moving perfectly on the beat.
Before Hati could even draw a breath to roar its defiance, the giant, frozen loppers were already at its throat.
"Shut up," Ellen whispered, her voice a razor-thin edge of pure, condensed fury.
…
…
…
Thirty minutes ago.
The air in the elderly woman's high-rise apartment smelled deeply of soothing chamomile herbal tea, fresh linen, and rich beeswax wood polish.
Ellen had just wrung out her last microfiber cloth over the sink. She had spent the last three grueling hours meticulously cleaning every single corner of the sprawling penthouse, polishing the intricate, antique silverware until it gleamed like mirrors, and organizing a dusty, deeply cluttered attic that hadn't been touched in a decade.
Victoria Housekeeping demanded absolute, uncompromising perfection, and she had, as always, delivered exactly that.
"Come here, dear. Have some tea and sweet biscuits before you go," the old lady smiled warmly from her armchair, the gentle, soft wrinkles around her eyes deepening with genuine kindness.
"No, thank you, ma'am. I don't want to bother you anymore. So I'll be taking my leave now," Ellen bowed politely, maintaining her flawless, emotionally detached professional demeanor perfectly.
But internally, she was screaming.
'Finally. Go home, kick off these stupid tight heels, crawl into my dark bed, and do absolutely nothing for the next fourteen hours.'
She walked down the twilight-lit street, the orange glow of the setting sun reflecting off the city's glass. She had her noise-canceling headphones securely in, deeply enjoying the quiet, muffled hum of the evening traffic. Her shift was officially supposed to transition into a guaranteed, uninterrupted lunch break in exactly five minutes.
Suddenly, her secure comms earpiece buzzed sharply against her ear, overriding her music. The caller ID flashed on her retinal display—a familiar, elegant, highly annoying silver wolf icon.
"Ellen, I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but the plans have changed."
It was Lycaon. His voice was as refined, polite, and flawlessly calm as ever, but there was an underlying, sharp urgency that cleanly cut through the digital speaker.
"A Fissure just opened up in the middle of the vacant lot near your current coordinates. Reports say a civilian was pulled in during the spatial collapse. You are the closest active combat asset from Victoria Housekeeping."
Ellen stopped walking. She clicked her tongue, producing a sharp, loud clicking sound of pure, unadulterated contempt.
"Lycaon, I'm off for lunch in four minutes. My contract strictly dictates my break times. Tell the client to call Public Security. It's their job to deal with random strays."
"The request was specifically routed to us, Ellen. Top priority. And since time is of the absolute essence, we've already hired a local freelance Proxy to guide you through the initial distortion labyrinth. They are already waiting at the site. Move."
Lycaon cut the connection before she could argue.
Ellen closed her eyes, taking a very deep, slow breath to suppress her rapidly rising, homicidal annoyance.
She ignored the crosswalk button to reach the cafe where the iced coffee she had been staring at for the last block resided.
With a heavy sigh, she reached behind her, grabbed the skeletal handle of her giant, collapsed loppers resting invisibly against her back, and began to run across the barren, cracked ground toward the coordinates.
As she reached the center of the fenced-off empty lot, she saw it—the Fissure. It was a jagged, violent, pulsing violet tear in the fabric of reality, bleeding chaotic static against the thin evening air.
Standing nervously near the edge was a highly anxious-looking freelance Proxy, sweating profusely while frantically checking their Bangboo companion. The small, simple machine was a dark grey, pill-shaped unit with a thick silver zipper running down its front.
Its two flat, rabbit-like ears were fastened to its head with large, comical screws, and its screen displayed two wide, glowing yellow-green digital eyes. The Proxy was rapidly feeding the downloaded Carrot data directly into the little machine's processing core.
"U-Uh, Miss Ellen? I-I'm ready," the Proxy stammered, visibly intimidated by the maid's deadpan, exhausted glare.
"We have the Carrot path, but the interior spatial mapping is... it's incredibly strange. It's shifting faster than normal."
The Bangboo let out a worried, static-laced "Ehn-nuh..." to punctuate the point, its digital eyes blinking erratically.
"Just move," Ellen snapped, not slowing down as she stepped directly into the violently swirling violet tear.
The moment they crossed the spatial threshold, the quiet, empty wasteland of the city vanished completely.
They weren't in a field anymore. They were standing in the hollowed-out, massive shell of what appeared to be an endless underground shopping mall—specifically, a massive section that appeared to be permanently frozen under active construction.
Exposed, rusted rebar jutted from the walls like broken ribs. Massive stacks of rotting drywall and half-finished storefronts stretched endlessly into the dim, ether-choked distance. Gravity was already acting up; pieces of shattered concrete floated lazily in the air like dust motes.
Two minutes into the rapid trek, the environment had fully warped into a jagged, grey-toned, oppressive nightmare.
The air was incredibly thick, heavy with the stinging smell of old, oxidized copper and raw ozone. They had cleared the first few levels of the construction zone, moving swiftly past distorted office cubicles and heavy steel scaffolding that hung upside down from the ceiling like frozen, metallic stalactites.
Ellen moved with cold, brutal, efficient speed. The Proxy struggled desperately to keep up, hugging the dark grey Bangboo tightly to their chest as they ran.
The Proxy's breathing was heavy and ragged as the small machine frantically recalibrated the Carrot data at every unpredictable, shifting junction.
For ten straight minutes, the deeper levels had been uncomfortably sparse. A few Ethereals—low-level strays drifting aimlessly—managed to cross her path. They are around the construction debris, drawn by the Proxy's signal.
Ellen annihilated them instantly. A cursory, casual sweep of the loppers dissolved two into glitching static; a brutal, bored flick of her tail pulverized a third against a supporting pillar. She didn't even slow down to register the combat.
Ellen adjusted her course instantly with a sharp, fluid, aerodynamic flick of her tail. They moved relentlessly through floor after floor of the skeletal, echoing mall.
The Proxy wiped nervous, cold sweat from their forehead while peering down at the Bangboo's flickering screen. "The Carrot signal is faint, but it's definitely directly below us. But the main stairs are completely blocked by a spatial anomaly. We have to find a—"
Ellen stopped dead in her tracks. Her heels dug sharply into the floor.
The air had changed.
The heavy, metallic tang of ozone was suddenly, sharply cut by something else. Something hot, thick, and wet.
The unmistakable scent of fresh arterial blood.
Ellen's crimson pupils contracted instantly, snapping from bored circles into thin, vertical, apex-predator slits. She knew that specific metallic scent perfectly.
It belonged to her kouhai.
"Cedric?"
Her signature, heavy lethargy completely inverted. It turned into a cold, hyper-focused, terrifying oceanic pressure that literally made the air around her heavy and difficult for the Proxy to breathe.
The moment she realized whose blood was spilling in the dark right below her feet, she moved.
"Proxy! Give me the most direct vertical drop to the basement floor! Now!"
"But... the Bangboo's data says that path is structurally unstable! It's a fifty-meter freefall through active spatial distortion! I can't guarantee you won't be torn—"
"I didn't ask for a damn guarantee! Open the route or get out of my way!"
She launched herself forward. Her massive shark tail whipped violently, providing a massive surge of kinetic force as she dived headfirst, straight down into a central, completely broken elevator shaft, leaving the stunned Proxy and their trembling Bangboo far behind.
She crashed violently through layers of structural debris, using her giant loppers to smash through hanging steel cables. She moved with a fluid, terrifying violence that completely ignored the Hollow's shifting traps. Her only, singular focus was the source of that scent.
She arrived at the basement floor like a meteor, just as the dust was settling from an invisible, brutal impact.
She saw Cedric—small, broken, his right hand a mangled horror, pinned under a massive steel beam.
And she saw the Hati, its blocky stone helmet glowing with the toxic yellow-green light of a final, lethal execution.
The beast's heavy claw began to descend.
In that singular heartbeat, Ellen swung her giant, heavy loppers like a massive battering ram, slamming the broad flat of the heavy blades directly into the side of Hati's skull with a concussive sound that shook the foundation of the entire floor.
…
…
…
The basement air hung incredibly thick with the metallic, cloying reek of Cedric's blood. It was now violently mixed with the sharp, burning ozone of shattered ether and the faint, acrid bite of scorched concrete from Ellen's entrance.
Absolute zero frost crept across the floor like living, predatory veins of ice, born entirely from Ellen's mere presence. The heavy, electronic synth bassline from her W-Engine thumped continuously against the cavern walls, vibrating the loose pebbles on the ground.
Each slow, deliberate step she took left delicate, beautiful crystalline patterns that spread outward in jagged fractal webs, as though the very ground feared the touch of her heels. The ambient temperature had already dropped an impossible ten degrees in the last thirty seconds alone.
Hati, the hulking, armored beast of jagged dark-grey stone and writhing black sinew, loomed at the far end of the cavernous chamber. It had recovered quickly from the initial blow. Its highly volatile yellow-green ether core pulsed erratically like a diseased, glowing heart deep inside its gaping, stone-armored maw.
The monster's massive claws scraped deep, screeching grooves into the concrete with every impatient, aggressive, feral shift of its heavy weight.
Ellen stood opposite it. Her massive, frost-covered black and white loppers rested lightly, almost casually, across her shoulder. Her heavy shark tail swayed behind her with a metronomic, predatory, absolutely terrifying calm.
At the delicate nape of her neck, a single strand of her otherwise midnight-black hair had begun to glow—a faint, pulsing ember-red. It was the very first warning sign of absolute, devastating power stirring violently beneath her clinical, maid-like restraint.
"Keep your mouth shut," she said, her voice as flat and emotionless as a surgeon's scalpel edge.
The first strike was not a blow—it was a declaration of absolute war.
The electronic beat spiked sharply. Ellen blurred forward, crossing the massive distance in a single, impossible heartbeat.
Hati roared, lunging forward with locomotive force to meet her, its massive, crystal-lined jaws snapping shut to bite her in half.
Ellen dropped low. She plunged the heavy tip of her giant, frozen loppers directly into the solid concrete floor, driving the blades a foot deep into the stone. Using the firmly planted, massive weapon as an immovable pivot point, she grabbed the complex handle and swung her entire body around it.
The intense centrifugal force, combined with a sudden, violent thrust of her muscular shark tail, launched her in a perfect, fluid, aerodynamic arc right over the charging, massive beast's head.
As she sailed gracefully over its blind spot, she violently ripped the heavy loppers free from the ground. The frozen blades trailed a beautiful, deadly crescent of icy mist in the air. Utilizing her falling momentum, she brought the massive weapon crashing down in perfect time with a heavy bass drop.
THUD-CRACK!
The blunt impact slammed directly into the side of Hati's pristine, armored skull with the devastating force of a wrecking ball dropped from orbit.
The hyper-dense, dark-grey stone plates spider-webbed instantly across the beast's jaw and right shoulder, then detonated outward in a gritty, high-velocity explosion that peppered the distant walls with jagged shrapnel. The shattered pieces of ether simply dissolved into glitching, neon-green digital static as they fell through the air.
Hati's head snapped sideways so violently that the beast's own thick neck vertebrae audibly ground and popped together. It staggered three full, heavy steps sideways, its thick claws gouging deep, screeching furrows into the floor as it desperately fought to maintain its balance.
The core in its maw flared even brighter, vomiting a distorted, corrupted roar of static that rattled the basement's heavy overhead pipes and sent a rain of loose dust cascading from the ceiling.
Ellen simply exhaled once, deeply, through her nose, her tail flicking once like a great white shark tasting fresh blood in the water.
The Cleaning Sequence officially began.
It was a macabre, flawless choreography—cold, agonizingly deliberate, and fiercely, unbelievably brutal, perfectly synchronized to the pumping Woodpecker Electro track.
She stepped in again, closing the distance instantly, moving faster than the beast's glowing red optical sensors could track.
She dropped her center of gravity low, planted her left foot, and thrust her right leg out, kicking the heavy, skeletal tail-end of the loppers with devastating, explosive force directly toward the beast.
The brutal kick sent the giant, heavy weapon flying forward and spinning wildly in the air, transforming it into a massive, levitating buzzsaw made of absolute-zero ice.
Vrrr-vrrr-vrrr!
The spinning ice wheel shredded directly into Hati's exposed, broad chest, the grinding sound harmonizing perfectly with the heavy Puffer Electro bassline. With every consecutive strike of the buzzing blades, the W-Engine fed off ether, ramping up the track's BPM.
The music was evolving, growing louder and more aggressive as the sequence deepened. It tore effortlessly through the remaining layers of thick stone armor and violently flayed the hyper-dense black ether body beneath it, sending a massive shower of glitching black static and shattered grey stone erupting into the air.
Before the beast could even register the damage, Ellen yanked the spinning loppers back into her grip by the handle. The moment the heavy weapon returned to her hands, she channeled a massive surge of ether directly into the tip of the blades.
Absolute-zero ice rapidly condensed and gathered at the very point, glowing with a blinding, piercing cyan light. The Woodpecker Electro beat fractured into a rapid-fire staccato.
With a fierce, horizontal swing, she unleashed the gathered energy, firing a massive, long-range crescent slash of pure, condensed ice. It tore through the air with a supersonic shriek and slammed brutally into Hati's flank, knocking the massive, three-ton beast entirely off its feet in an explosion of frost and digital distortion.
Hati roared—a heavily distorted, hollow, desperate bellow that physically shook the air. It scrambled back up, lunging again, now fully unburdened by the heavy stone armor it had just lost.
Its speed doubled in an instant. It became a blur of black shadow. Claws the length of Ellen's entire forearm whistled through the freezing air in a storm of overlapping, lethal black streaks.
She flowed seamlessly through the barrage of lethal strikes. The soundtrack swelled, adding layers of distorted synth that perfectly matched her accelerating tempo.
A perfect, calculated micro-adjustment of her shoulders let a massive claw pass so incredibly close it sliced three razor-clean lines through the frilled hem of her black maid dress, the fabric fluttering gracefully like torn war banners.
In that exact same fluid motion, as the beast overextended, she stepped deeply inside the monster's guard. The giant loppers flashed violently upward in an uppercut motion on the exact beat of the music.
SNIP.
The icy blades caught Hati's right front leg mid-stride and sheared cleanly through the thick joint with surgical finality. The heavy guillotine sound of the blades parting pressurized black ether functioned as a brutal percussion strike within the track.
The severed limb fell heavily. The hyper-dense black ether instantly destabilized into jagged chunks of corrupted data. The pixelated fragments hit the concrete with a heavy, unnatural thud, glitching violently in neon-green and black static before slowly erasing themselves pixel by pixel.
"UOGHHHH!!!"
Hati screamed a sound of pure digital agony.
The volatile core inside its maw ignited like a nuclear furnace. The beast exploded forward in a blind, savage, utterly suicidal frenzy.
It adapted instantly to its amputation—losing the weight of its armor and its limb had turned it into a desperate, hyper-fast, living missile. Its remaining claws raked the freezing air in wide, overlapping arcs, each swipe packing enough kinetic power to effortlessly carve deep trenches into the reinforced concrete walls behind Ellen.
She moved between the frantic strikes like a ghost draped in black silk. Her massive tail lashed out repeatedly with bone-breaking force to deflect heavy, incoming blows that would have bisected her cleanly. Blinding sparks flew every time heavy claw met hardened fin.
Each precise counter she delivered came with the heavy, deliberate, calculated arc of her giant loppers. They were shallow but brutally freezing gashes that bit deeply into Hati's shoulders, remaining thighs, and flank.
Because she was angry—because she had seen Cedric's mangled right hand—she deliberately, sadistically wrenched the heavy blades sideways the moment they landed, violently tearing and shredding the dense ether structure rather than cleanly slicing it.
Frost bloomed instantly from every single jagged, gaping wound, deeply freezing the digital tissue and slowing the monster's frantic movements by fractions of a second. Those fractions quickly compounded into precious, undeniable heartbeats of tactical advantage.
The air itself in the basement had become her weapon. Every frantic, ragged exhalation Hati took now emerged as thick, white, freezing mist.
The ambient temperature plummeted another catastrophic fifteen degrees. Condensation beaded rapidly on the rusted pipes overhead and flash-froze into heavy icicles that snapped off and shattered like glass on the floor.
At the delicate nape of her neck, more strands of her otherwise midnight-black hair had begun to glow—a faint, pulsing ember-red. It was the very first physiological warning sign of absolute, devastating power stirring violently beneath her clinical, maid-like restraint.
The glow was the visible, dangerous bleed of her massive internal ether reserves burning hotter and hotter, the Deep Sea Visitor W-Engine inside her loppers ravenously feeding on her rising, furious focus.
Hati, cornered and freezing, adapted one final time. It planted its remaining three legs firmly into the ice-covered concrete and lunged low, its massive crystal jaws opened unbelievably wide, attempting to simply swallow the maid whole in one desperate strike.
Ellen met the charge head-on. She activated the Deep Sea Visitor's secondary stage with a quiet, lethal mental command.
The cyan green glow inside the loppers' internal mechanism flared toxic and glacial. Massive, translucent blades of living, absolute-zero ice extended rapidly from the metal edges with a high-pitched crystalline chime. It instantly doubled the weapon's reach and turned every single edge into a hyper-lethal frozen guillotine.
The temperature in the basement finally plunged to absolute sub-zero. The massive concrete walls groaned audibly as deep moisture flash-froze into glittering, expanding sheets of ice.
She dashed forward, staying impossibly low. Her shark tail provided a massive, explosive thrust that completely cracked the frozen concrete beneath her heels.
The massive, ice-covered loppers came down in a single, crushing, devastating overhead strike—SHHH-CRACK!—opening three massive, deep, frozen gashes directly across Hati's broad chest, stopping its charge dead as the music entered a tense, vibrating buildup.
The absolute-zero frost exploded violently outward from the deep wounds in massive fractal chains. It rapidly, aggressively locked the monster's entire body—its joints, its spine, its remaining limbs—in thick, unbreakable crystalline cages that spread with loud, audible, popping sounds.
Hati froze completely mid-snarl, its massive body locked in a prison of ice, its raw, volatile ether core totally exposed and trembling frantically inside its open maw like a caged, dying star.
Ellen landed softly in a perfect, balanced crouch. Delicate frost clung beautifully to her white lace headdress and the frilled hem of her dress like deadly lacework.
The crimson glow at her nape now burned like a living, roaring flame—while the rest of her hair stayed jet black. She stood up slowly and looked at the completely paralyzed, terrified beast with the exact same bored, clinical, utter disdain she might give a particularly stubborn, nasty stain on a client's floor.
"Let's end this."
She reached up gracefully with her free left hand and firmly gripped the heavy upper handle assembly of the loppers. The electronic track surging from the W-Engine began its final, massive riser—a shrill, escalating siren of distorted synth that drowned out the Hollow's ambient noise.
She pulled the handle back with a sharp, heavy, mechanical sound.
As the heavy metal mechanism was drawn back, the W-Engine securely mounted on the weapon came fully alive. The mechanical, metallic jaws of the shark head began to actuate rapidly, chomping down in a vicious, rhythmic, terrifying metronome of heavy metal slamming against metal.
CHOMP-CHOMP-CHOMP-CHOMP!
The echoing sound was part rabid apex predator, part heavy machinery. It synced flawlessly with the frenetic peak of the music's buildup as she maximized the W-Engine's absolute output. Then, without a word, she released the handle.
KLONG!
The heavy charging assembly snapped violently back into place, locking tight with a definitive, heavy, echoing mechanical click. As the internal mechanism sealed, the W-Engine's outward silhouette underwent a dramatic, absurd, yet entirely lethal final shift.
From the left side of the W-Engine, highly aggressive shark head, a distinctly out-of-place, bright red and blue plastic snorkel abruptly protruded. At the exact same time, directly from the maw of the metal beast where the main blades connected, two prominent, bright blue rubber swim fins—stamped clearly with the word 'LUCKY' in bold white letters—leered outward.
The entire bizarre transformation sparkled intensely with a dangerous, blinding, lethal frost.
The Woodpecker Electro beat accelerated to a frantic pace, and the W-Engine shrieked, its mechanical voice distorting heavily under the sheer, absolute power output as it announced its ultimate state:
>>> DEEP SEA VISITOR: MAXIMUM DECIBEL <<<
Ellen slammed the completely closed loppers point-first into the thick, frost-covered floor. The giant blades pointed straight up like a massive executioner's stake driven deeply through the heart of the earth.
Massive cracks spider-webbed outward for ten meters from the impact point. She crouched incredibly low, her muscular shark tail coiling incredibly tight behind her like a loaded, heavy spring. Her toned muscles visibly rippled under her black dress.
The crimson glow at the nape of her neck blazed to its absolute, unrestrained peak, blinding scarlet that seemed to burn directly from within her very soul. It cast a flickering, violent red light across the entirely frozen, white carnage of the room.
And she launched.
Her tail exploded with immeasurable, raw kinetic force, propelling her body ten meters straight up into the air in a single, physics-defying heartbeat.
The basement ceiling lights blurred into horizontal streaks. Her black dress fluttered violently like war banners in a hurricane, pure frost trailing behind her in a massive comet's tail of glittering, freezing particles. The displaced air screamed past her ears.
At the exact apex of her vertical ascent, she twisted her body once—graceful, lethal, absolutely perfect. She reversed her grip entirely on the giant, heavy loppers so the massive blades pointed directly downward like the tip of a falling, apocalyptic glacier.
Then she dove.
She actively, aggressively dove.
She became a blue-white, blinding streak of absolute zero, accelerating massively with every single meter she dropped. The localized soundtrack spinning from her Drive Discs peaked into a deafening, distorted crescendo.
The W-Engine shrieked with the sound of tearing metal. The glowing scarlet strands at her nape trailed like a single line of living, bleeding fire against her otherwise jet-black hair—a glorious banner of absolute power that painted the frozen ceiling in crimson light as she descended.
Hati's exposed core pulsed frantically, desperately, terrifyingly, trying to break free of its unbreakable icy prison, but it was far, far too late.
The point of the massive, frozen loppers struck dead center, directly into the exposed, volatile ether core inside the beast's gaping, frozen maw. The impact made a sound like the very fabric of the building cracking wide open, syncing perfectly with the final, cataclysmic drop of the Puffer Electro bassline.
The concentrated Ice Ether did not explode outward immediately. It imploded first. It violently sucked every single microscopic trace of remaining heat from the massive room in a single, terrifying, frozen heartbeat.
Then, it erupted.
It was a glacial, catastrophic shockwave that painted the walls, the floor, and the ceiling pure, blinding white in a hurricane of crystalline frost. Steel pipes burst instantly. Reinforced concrete fractured deeply. The remaining overhead lights shattered into dust in a shower of electrical sparks that instantly froze mid-fall, hanging suspended in the air.
Ellen kept driving relentlessly downward. Her arms locked completely straight, she channeled every single ounce of her massive falling momentum, the explosive thrust of her tail, and her simmering, icy rage directly into the blades.
She firmly gripped the handles and physically wrenched them apart, forcing the massive, serrated, frozen edges to grind violently against each other while still buried deep inside the beast.
She was actively, brutally sawing it.
The heavy blades chewed effortlessly through the hyper-dense core, grinding loudly through the heavily reinforced ether spine, and tearing violently through the entire, massive length of Hati's body in one merciless, agonizing, perfectly straight vertical line.
She cleaved the monster completely, cleanly in half from its maw all the way down to its tail. It produced a sickening, drawn-out CRRRRUNCH that echoed through the basement like a massive cathedral bell struck by lightning.
The black core shattered into pixelated dust. The beast didn't just burst; it catastrophically crashed like a corrupted system. The severed halves violently tore apart into massive, jagged blocks of neon-green and black static. There were no physical remains, only a massive, overlapping wave of corrupted digital noise.
The pixelated chunks of its bisected form hit the frost-covered floor with a heavy, unnatural thud. The chaotic distortion buzzed harshly, sputtering and glitching violently as the intense friction of the sawing motion against the absolute zero ice created a high-pitched, screeching wail that filled every corner of the room.
Finally, with a heavy THUD, the blades broke completely through the beast's fading tail and struck the concrete floor beneath it.
The massive Hollow monster agonizingly erased itself pixel by pixel, fading out of reality entirely and leaving absolutely nothing behind but the freezing mist.
The aggressive electronic beat and grinding bassline faded out seamlessly, leaving the room in a ringing quiet.
Absolute silence finally fell.
Only the soft, delicate, tinkling sound of falling, glittering frost remained in the air, sounding exactly like glass wind chimes hanging in a frozen, empty cathedral.
From the heavily frosted mechanism of the weapon resting on her back, a quiet, chiming digital voice finally spoke, confirming the end of the cleaning sequence.
>>> ENDLESS WINTER <<<
Ellen landed incredibly lightly in the absolute center of the frozen carnage. Her knees bent just enough to perfectly absorb the massive impact without making a single, solitary sound.
The fierce, blazing crimson glow at the nape of her neck slowly, gradually dimmed. It retreated strand by strand back into the deep, glossy black of the rest of her hair until only one faint, tiny ember of red remained.
She rose smoothly to her full height, effortlessly resting the massive, incredibly heavy, frost-covered loppers against her back with completely casual, practiced ease.
With two fingers, she delicately adjusted her white lace headdress, brushing a single, tiny flake of ice from the brim.