"Whoa, this place got beat up pretty badly. Tell me, do all you Aegirians fight in such a crude and violent fashion? It feels like you dumped almost all your points straight into destruction."
Jeanne, Skadi, and Fafnir navigated the gloomy corridor, which was littered with cultists who had been bludgeoned unconscious—or worse. The battlefield looked remarkably bloody to any outside observer.
Adding to the sight was the surrounding structure, pulverized into splintered wreckage. It was hard not to wonder whether the intruder had come here to stealthily gather intelligence or simply to demolish the building piece by piece.
Looking at these crumbling ruins, Jeanne couldn't spot a single trace of an intent to slip in quietly. It was far more likely the intruder had eschewed stealth entirely and opted to hack through the front door like a whirlwind.
"Er... Abyssal Hunters are generally endowed with tremendous strength. You know that as well as I do," Skadi offered, surveying the wrecked hallway while trying to offer a mild defense for her captain.
This was without a doubt her captain's handiwork. Amid the shattered rubble, Skadi could clearly spot the telltale furrows left behind by his giant anchor weapon. The marks were unmistakably his.
"This goes way beyond having 'tremendous strength,'" Jeanne remarked, shaking her head. She realized her prior impression of the Abyssal Hunters' restraint might have been overly optimistic.
"It's only natural. We used to battle deep under the sea," Skadi explained. "As you can imagine, down there you don't ever need to worry about preserving your surroundings. Our combat style actually favors causing as much structural collapse as possible. If you want Hunters who leave things intact, you'd have to look into other squads."
Just then, several hulking, misshapen brute-like creatures advanced down the hall toward them. This time, Jeanne didn't even need to draw her weapon. Skadi led the way, carving a path forward while continuing her explanation.
Her fighting spirit was noticeably different from before. Perhaps fueled by the knowledge that her captain was just ahead, Skadi's battle intent flared exceptionally high!
"So different squads have totally different combat styles?" Jeanne asked, stepping into the fray alongside her.
Handling these mindless beasts proved child's play for the two of them. The towering brutes couldn't delay Jeanne and Skadi for long, quickly falling in heap after heap just like their predecessors.
"Though we were just talking about your captain's terrifying destructive power, looking at it now, the two of us together are causing even more collateral damage than he did," Jeanne observed, assessing the newly smashed masonry around them.
The combined efforts of two warriors had yielded a truly impressive result—so impressive that the ceiling above this stretch of the corridor had completely vanished, exposing the upper framework.
Pausing in their advance, the two finally caught sight of what these side rooms were used for. Shattered glass vats lay strewn about, bathed in puddles of unknown, murky liquid. Even using Fafnir's tail to think, one could guess this facility had been built for human experimentation.
Yet that raised a curious question: why would a secret facility belonging to The Deep Sea Church be producing giant-sized mutated creatures? Had the Seaborn begun experimenting with giantism in their evolutionary path?
Jeanne didn't quite grasp the biological mechanics behind it, nor did she care to dig too deep. All she needed to know was that whatever was going on here was thoroughly twisted.
Not far off, the heavy thuds of a massive weapon striking stone echoed clearly through the air. Captain Ulpianus was evidently still battering his way toward his target deeper inside, single-mindedly pursuing whatever goal he had set for himself.
However, in the brief moment Jeanne and Skadi paused, a swarm of grotesquely mutated monstrosities poured out from the adjoining chambers. These creatures bore a far stronger resemblance to proper Seaborn than the brute giants had.
Their physical forms looked as if whoever created them had used a random patchwork of jigsaw pieces to stitch them together—an utterly hideous mishmash of flesh and fins. Jeanne felt these abominations would probably share plenty of common topics with a raving mad Gilles; both were prime candidates for a thorough beating.
Yet the sudden appearance of this horde effectively blocked their path. Leaving these beasts to roam freely wasn't an option. If left unchecked, they would eventually break out onto the surface streets. The local city residents lacked the combat ability of Abyssal Hunters or Saints; faced with such horrors, citizens could only flee for their lives, and few would survive.
Thus, the duo found themselves held up, forced to clear out every last monster before continuing their search.
"I have a sneaking suspicion someone deliberately let these things loose to slow us down," Jeanne noted, eyeing the grotesque creatures steadily closing in.
In the brief exchange that followed, she noted that the beasts posed no real threat to their safety. Given enough time, either she or Skadi could wipe out the entire group single-handedly—it would simply cost them precious minutes.
"I feel the same way," Skadi said, her greatsword whistling through the air with a series of sharp, air-cleaving cracks. "We need to pick up the pace. I have this strange feeling that time is running short."
The sheer force of Skadi's swings created a visual sensation resembling churning ocean waves in the dim light. Jeanne blinked, wondering for a second if her eyes were playing tricks on her.
"You're welcome to keep wasting my time. I happen to have a relatively comfortable margin to spare," Ulpianus said coolly.
Deeper within the subterranean complex, the captain held his massive anchor weapon rested inches above the head of a trembling member of The Deep Sea Church, leveraging the cultist's life to demand total compliance.
The cultist trapped beneath the cold steel was clearly no fanatic willing to die for the cause. Looking up at the formidable Abyssal Hunter, his eyes held nothing but raw terror, his body shivering uncontrollably.
"There are plenty of other cultists in this facility," Ulpianus added indifferently, turning as if to walk away. "You can take your time thinking it over while I go ask if anyone else is more eager to cooperate."
The terrified cultist knew with absolute certainty that if the giant man walked ten paces without an answer, that massive slab of metal would crush his skull.
"Wait! Wait, I'll do it! I'll tell you!" the man shrieked. "I don't have high-level clearance passwords, but I can unlock this terminal and open the safe for you!"
As a low-tier clerical worker, the assistance he could offer was limited. Fortunately for him, Ulpianus didn't require much.
The terminals here—and indeed many of the electronic systems utilized throughout Iberian cities—were built upon technology originally derived from Aegir, whose technical advancement surpassed the surface nations by miles.
As a native Aegirian, given enough time, Ulpianus could breach almost any system on his own. He was simply unwilling to waste precious minutes cracking passwords manually.
"Then move," Ulpianus commanded, spinning around. He had finally found a weak link, saving himself a great deal of trouble. As long as the coward booted up the primary console, Ulpianus could easily extract whatever classified records were stored inside.
He possessed plenty of confidence in his own technical proficiency.
The trembling cultist operated the terminal with frantic, sweat-slicked fingers, flinching at every loud thud behind him. To his ears, those violent noises sounded like deliberate intimidation tactics.
In reality, Ulpianus was merely using brute force to pry open the heavy metal safes lined along the wall. Vaults that the cult had long deemed utterly impenetrable crumpled like thin paper under the captain's heavy weapon.
A few sharp strikes were all it took to tear off the reinforced doors. Ulpianus casually reached inside, pulled out stacks of classified documents, skimmed through them, and tossed aside anything irrelevant like useless trash.
Those are sacred texts! High-level archives! The cultist screamed internally. Only those with High Bishop authority were permitted to view those files, yet he forced himself to keep his head down, terrified to utter a single word of complaint.
Heavy footsteps resonated from the hallway outside. Everyone inside the room turned toward the doorway with varying expressions, save for Ulpianus, who didn't even bother to look up.
"I expected those experimental subjects to delay you a bit longer," Ulpianus remarked calmly, glancing at Jeanne as she stepped through the threshold, holding Fafnir in her arms.
He paused, glancing behind her. "Where is Skadi? Don't tell me she got bogged down by a few weak mutations? If so, her skills have truly degraded."