The Caretaker of Tenants From Another World - Chapter 118 (Patreon)

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Chapter 118

We raced into the hospital and were stopped inside the lobby by two armed personnel from the laboratory. They were just as spooked if not a little on edge by recent events.

"How's the professor okay?" I asked.

"Doctors told us he was badly hurt. We don't know anything else. A netherfolk with healing magic is currently being dispatched here from the lab," one of them said.

Ange opened her mouth, but I shot her a look not to. She also had healing magic and could very easily help them. Doing so, however, would only reveal to them that she still possessed magic when it shouldn't be possible anymore. These were just the hard decisions we had to live with.

"More pressingly, Akira, you three need to return to the dormitory immediately," the other added worriedly. "If a netherfolk attacked the professor so close to the city, there's no telling if they're here by now."

"The last one attacked us at the dorm… is it even safe anywhere?" I sighed.

"Hold on… We're just now receiving bodycam footage from the guards in the professor's car," the first one said, pulling out a small device from his pocket that was like a phone.

The screen switched on, and we were staring at a steering wheel. Whoever's camera it was had been positioned around the chest, revealing the dashboard and part of the windshield. They were driving down a street with little traffic, then a stretchy pink tentacle punched through the passenger windshield.

Screams assailed our ears before everything was flipped sideways and the sound of bending metal joined the cacophony. Whatever happened next, the camera blurred and stopped recording.

"Saralash…" Mercutia folded her hands together.

The blood in my veins went cold. It was too late. Saralash was no doubt somewhere outside waiting for us to be on the move again, then she would attack the van like she did the professor's car.

Coming out today might have been a fatal mistake.

With little other choice, I turned Ange and Mercutia around so we could head back to the dormitory.

Our escorts were waiting outside when we returned to the van, and the hurried cadence in their movements was evidence that they were just as tense and aware of what happened. I kind of wished they didn't let it show on their faces. Now I was cautious.

"We'll protect you with our lives. If we can make it back to the dormitory, at least Cresta and Irapesha should be able to keep you safe," the harpy said.

"Don't forget to stay safe yourselves," I replied, drawing a smirk and nod from her as she unfurled her wings to take off like a rocket.

As we began the drive back, Mercutia erected a barrier around the van right away. It gave me some sense of security, and now I was wondering if we should stay out to keep the others like Tamara out of danger.

"Mercutia, what can you tell us about Saralash? Just the first things that come to mind?" I asked.

"I've never met anyone as nice as Saralash before, but just the same, that kindness becomes so sadistic around demons that it terrifies me. I know she really likes milk, but I'm not sure why," Mercutia said.

You and I both.

"What about her capacity to fight? How deadly is she compared to the others?" Ange asked.

"We would often come across physically gifted demons. Clarissa always relied on Saralash to restrain and take care of them. I wonder—"

Thunk!

I thought a bird had flown into a window, but that was impossible. Mercutia's magical barrier was raised around us after all. It wasn't until I noticed Ange's gaze fixed to her side of the passenger window, because past her was a pinkish appendage that seemed to inspect the unseen obstruction that blocked it.

"It's Saralash!" Mercutia exclaimed.

All of a sudden a curtain of shadow shrouded over us. I slammed the brakes as an airborne car smashed into us and bounced off the barrier. Dozens of slimy appendages surrounded the van, some shaped into sharpened spines like they were ready to skewer us.

Outside, other cars screeched to a stop or tried to drive around. Panicking people, who took their chances on foot, ran for their lives as their vehicles were picked up to be used as weapons.

Two armored vehicles rammed through the empty cars, and operatives from the lab poured out to open fire at the tentacles. Shots that hit their mark froze the appendages, shattering them into pieces. However, their efforts were in vain because they would only regrow the moment they were destroyed.

Whipping tentacles smashed the ground with enough force to crack asphalt. The soldiers leapt behind abandoned cars for cover. Those unlucky enough to be caught in their frenzied flurry of attacks were sent flying or lifted into the air. One soldier flinched and raised his weapon to shield himself from an oncoming tentacle, but it struck another barrier instead.

Sweat began to bead on Mercutia's forehead. She was struggling to keep the barriers up.

"Where's the body?" someone cried.

"Follow the tentacles! Find the main body or we won't be able to subdue her!" another ordered.

The harpy from earlier landed on the barrier, just above the hood of the car and glanced over her shoulders to the unfolding battle.

"We'll clear an opening. Don't take your foot off the pedal until you get back to the dormitory!" she shouted to us.

They opened fire together, destroying most of the slime tentacles before they could regenerate. When the road cleared, I put my foot down on the gas. We were gaining speed and zoomed through the streets past the tentacles.

"Akira, watch out!" Ange shouted.

A cluster of tentacles erupted from a sewer grate in the ground to form a blockade. The harpy soared in, firing away at the tentacles and throwing her body against the frozen appendages to shatter them. We passed through without issue until another tentacle snatched her from the air and threw her into the side of a building.

The next thing I knew, the van was airborne. An airbag blasted my face. We crashed sideways to the ground, skidding through a traffic light and into the middle of an intersection.

Dazed and disoriented, I pushed against the suffocating cushions.

"Mercutia? Ange!"

No one answered.

I couldn't see Mercutia from behind my seat and her own deployed airbag. Ange was unconscious to my side, one horn caught on the partially deflated airbag. The van was lying on its side, and the only way out was through my door. Unfortunately, it wouldn't open. The crash must have broken something.

I ripped my seatbelt away and positioned myself to kick the window. As I collapsed my knees to spring my heels up, the door was suddenly ripped away. A pink, slimy tentacle stared me in the eyes.

"Shit—"

It yanked me out by the waist and tossed me across the street. While reeling from the pain, I picked myself up on a newstand in time to see Ange being pulled out next. The tip of another appendage sharpened into a needle-like point, poised to skewer her.

"Saralash, don't do it!" I shouted, and was surprised that my words gave it pause. "Killing her isn't worth it… You're going to give up your chance to lead a normal life on Earth for what? Old grudges against a race that isn't even relevant anymore? Against someone who never had a hand in torturing you?"

The sharp instruments blunted. One coiled around Ange's neck, and others emerged from seemingly out of nowhere to bind her wrists and ankles.

"This isn't about revenge anymore. It stopped being about revenge when I ate Irenis," a feminine voice dripping with sadistic drawl said.

"Irenis… The elf alchemist who experimented on Remmy? He experimented on you, too? I thought the Empire of Granieda had him executed?" I asked, eyes searching the end of the streets in hope that help was coming, but I instead found one of the magic rifles on the ground near me. It must have been thrown away or discarded in the scuffle.

Slime gathered to form a pink humanoid in the shape of a woman. Her features were anything but human. She almost looked like Remmy, except the core in her chest was worn like a gold medallion, and the center of which was a ping pong ball-sized, multi-faceted crystal. The lower half of her body was like an octopus, with thick writhing tentacles that could crush steel, and her upper body was oozing with slime that melded back into herself.

"Oh, he was executed alright. Slowly, painfully, and as excruciatingly as possible. When we captured him, Captain Clarissa gave me the honors of doing as I pleased. He used to take pleasure in clipping slime off my body and chipping away at my core. Since he liked me so much, I thought the best end I could give him was to gestate inside me and watch himself corrode away over the course of several months. I'm just so sad that I couldn't do it a second time."

I shuddered at what sounded like nostalgic joy from her.

The others acted out of rage. Saralash had the same anger under her words, but it also seemed like fun for her.

"You know, that succubus you got there has a bit of a sadistic streak herself. It's more like she enjoys teasing me to the point I want to crawl into a hole. The demons you're treating like toys are just like you and me. Can you imagine ever hurting someone like Mercutia? Because you knocked the car over and didn't bother to check if she was okay!"

"Mercutia's been through worse. This succubus, however, let's see how much we can break her." Saralash grinned.

The appendage coiled around Ange's neck was tightening slowly.

"Don't hurt her, you walking hentai monster!" I jumped to pick up the gun and fired several shots. Most of them missed, but one hit and shattered the tentacle that was choking Ange.

Saralash snarled and sent an army of tentacles to pursue me. I couldn't shoot them all down. The gun had no recoil, but I was untrained and panicking too much to hit enough to make a difference.

The force of a truck bodied me out of the way, causing the tentacles to puncture the sidewalk where I was just standing.

"You missed me?" Cresta flashed a fanged smile.

"Where the hell did you come from?!" I gasped.

"Hanging out at the station," Irapesha said as she lifted an upturned car to pull the trapped passengers out from underneath. "We saw you guys leave and thought sticking by was for the best."

"I'm here, too." Remmy, in blob form, peeked out from Irapesha's back and was clinging to her like a backpack.

"Why did you bring Remmy? Do you know how dangerous it is out here!"

"I asked them to, because I wanted to talk to Saralash," she said, returning to the humanoid form to confront her larger, pink counterpart.

"Oh?" Saralash's slime body shivered with curiosity. "I know who you are, Remmy. If you're here to convince me to change my mind, then you have come for nothing. It doesn't matter that we were both experimented on. So what if we shared the same suffering and walked different roads. My resolve is made and nothing you say can steer me away from that."

The slime on my tenant sagged like melting ice cream.

"I thought we could make friends with you, but if that's how you feel, then I guess we have no choice," Remmy said.

Saralash raised a brow.

"We?"

Remmy divided into five other slimes to attack Saralash at once. Cresta and Irapesha  flinched in shock.

"Did you expect that to happen, too?!" I asked.

"No!" they answered together.

Six Remmys threw themselves into Saralash, becoming a singular amorphous mass of purple slime from their mixed color. The fight was unlike anything I'd seen before. They were like a balloon being forcibly molded and shaped. Saralash reformed her humanoid upper body, only for Remmy to amass and envelope her.

Ange, released from the appendages, fell to the ground.

"Cresta!" I pointed to Ange. "Mercutia is also still in the car!"

She let me go to fetch Ange while Irapesha ripped open the side of the van door to pull Mercutia out. They brought them back to me and away from the fighting. I pressed a hand to Ange's wrist and was relieved that there was still a pulse.

"Damn it. I want to help Remmy, but how the hell do we get into a fight like that?" Cresta growled.

Throwing caution to the wind, Cresta went in anyway. A mostly pink slime tentacle reshaped to grab her and slam the assassin repeatedly into the ground. I grabbed the gun, thinking to help, but the crystalline magazine had gone dull. It wouldn't fire anymore.

"Saralash… can't be fought normally… physical attacks, blunt force, sharp weapons… they do nothing to her," Mercutia said as she was gradually coming to.

"Then magic was the only way?" I muttered.

"You're a nuisance!" Saralash seized control of the body, holding Remmy by the neck and forcing her at an arm's length away. "If I have to kill you to get to the demon, then so be it. Just know that I take no joy in this!"

A sharp spine materialized from the pink slime and punctured Remmy's body, shattering the cracked core in her chest.

"Remmy, no!" Cresta shrieked, the cry of terror was like a hot iron going through my own chest.

Remmy, the blue slime girl, stiffened and glanced down at her chest. Parts of her slime, beginning at the feet, were no longer adhering to the main body and slipped to the ground where it crumbled apart like sand.

"I wanted to show you… that instead of hurting people… playing games can be… a lot of fun." Remmy smiled before the rest of her deteriorated into a pile of sand.

"Remmy…?" I walked ahead in disbelief, then fell to my knees to clutch handfuls of sand of my third tenant that slipped past my fingers. She wasn't coming together anymore. All that remained of her was the marble core broken into three pieces.

"How could you do that to her?"

Everyone turned to the voice that had spoken. It was Ange, conscious now, rising into the air with hands simmering and sparking with volatile magic. Her eyes were like the sun, reminiscent of the wrath that she displayed seeing Tamara bullied at school.

"Remmy was such a sweet, gentle girl. She didn't deserve that… but you, if it is a demon you wanted to face… then a demon you shall have!" Ange cried.