Chapter 459 - Madness ensues (Patreon)

The inside of the hotel was a mess. Not just counting the rubble and all the smoking and soot littering the floor, but it looked like it had been ransacked, which probably wasn't the case since there are cameras everywhere. What probably had happened was that the moment people knew of the attack, they grabbed everything they could and ran. Another issue was that the elevators weren't working. That was probably for the best since elevators would become a deathtrap if one of the monsters attacked this building.

Hera and Alex quickly went up the stairs to the third floor, where the room they were staying in was. They ended up being very lucky because the staircase had collapsed after the 4th floor, and the room to their side had been completely removed from the building. Yet, by nothing short of a miracle, their room was intact, and all their belongings were there, just waiting to be collected. The two quickly gathered everything, Hera mentally thanking Bonnie for packing light. Each of them had two backpacks, while Hera also had the small bag that a certain researcher made sure to only have the essentials.

"Did you find what you were looking for? Hera asked as she tied the straps of the backpacks together to make them secure around her body. She had Helena's bag on her back and her own in the front.

"I did," Alex waved a notebook with a large smile.

"We came all the way here for that? Didn't you buy that one when we were in the Waperath Kingdom?" Hera frowned.

"Yeah. It's a bit more complicated than that. I promise you that I will explain things later.

"Fine. But it better be a damn good explanation," she was thinking about making a snarky remark, but it wasn't time for her to be petty. There would be plenty of time to complain to Alex about the risks they took because of a book if, in the end, it wasn't something irreplaceable.

Before leaving the room, Hera grabbed her glaive and double-checked that they had cleaned out the fridge and snack cabin. She wasn't going to risk her life to get her new equipment, but now that she was already here, it was a waste to leave it behind. Not to mention she would need a weapon just in case. If push came to shove, Hera could use one of her blades as her own weapon, but summoning an object out of thin air was already going to draw some attention to her, attention that she didn't want.

"I'm ready. Let's get out of here," Alex finished securing the bags she was carrying.

The two of them left the room and started heading downstairs. Everything seemed to be going well until they reached the hotel entrance. In there, they heard a yell from the centaur across the city, "May you fight those you hold dear. May you kill your peers. May you die by the hands of your brethren," her voice was carried by the wind. It's spread far and wide throughout the entire city. What followed was a burst of manic laughter, "Now I don't have to worry about the vermin hidden in the buildings. All of you will die!"

Hera missed the second part. When that weird chant hit her ears, the explorer saw the world in a different light. She became angry. Angry at the monsters, angry at the people who were just hiding, angry at herself for coming here, and most of all, angry at Alex, who was responsible for making her risk herself like that. Everything around her seemed to be dangerous. The walls had spikes that were closing in, the floors were made out of lava and Alex now had a monstrous appearance of something straight out of her nightmares.

"Ugh, what the hell was that?" Alex groaned with a hand on her head.

"That was the sound of you leaving me to die," Hera barked back, turning to Alex and holding the glaive, getting ready to attack.

"Hera?" Alex was taken aback. She felt guilty about running away while the building started to fall, but the way Hera was acting was weird.

"Don't look at me like that. You left me to die. You put me on a catapult and pulled the trigger. You've probably been trying to kill me ever since we started working together. Maybe you were planning that even before then. Maybe you were the one who stopped me from being an explorer. Maybe you are the one who made sure that I spent years on dead-end jobs trying to survive just so you could come and give me the mercy of death," Hera's voice was becoming increasingly frantic. Her body language was feral and unpredictable. She went as far as punching the wall with all her strength in the middle of this small speech, causing her knuckles to bleed.

"What is going on?" Alex realized that those weren't Hera's true feelings. She could have a different opinion if it was just about the catapult and the falling building. However, the rest was too deranged for it to be anything that the explorer ever truly considered.

"I'm not gonna let you do that to me. If you're trying to kill me, I'll make sure to kill you first," Hera stabbed with her glaive. The attack was easily dodged by Alex, who started to move away from the explorer, "I'm not letting you kill me!"

Suddenly, Daskka popped out of the necklace. She had entered when they were about to leave the tower not to attract even more attention to the two. The snake slapped Hera's face with her tail and called, "Ooze!"

The chakram appeared here, and Hera blinked a couple of times, rubbing her eyes and trying to collect her thoughts. Her memory of the last few moments was fuzzy, and she wasn't even entirely sure of what she said or did during that time.

"Hera! Order Ooze to see you and only you," Daskka ordered her, and the feeling of urgency came along via their Naga connection. While that was going on, the shack room started spinning and hitting the walls before slowly moving towards Alex menacingly.

"OK…" Hera was still confused, but she did as Daskka commanded, "Ooze, the only thing you can see is me. You can't see anything else."

"What is going on?!" Alex gasped, still wary of the situation.

Hera looked at Daskka inquisitively, and the snake explained, "You were hit by some sort of mind control. It forced you to attack anyone and everyone around you. Because of the Army of One skill, we can force the effect to hit only one of your blades. Just like we did in the jester's trap."

"But how did you call Ooze?" Hera asked.

"I'm the Royal Adviser. In situations where you are in danger or are being affected by something that can incapacitate you somehow, I can take control of your court to remove the effect afflicting you. I can only do things like that to protect you from these kinds of effects. Passing the effect to one of your blades was the best way to remove it, and Ooze has the least dangerous ability in case it tried to use it before you told him not to see anything else."

"Are you telling me that I can control the senses of the blades to this degree?" Hera gasped. That sounded even worse than mind control.

"Pretty much. Your orders are absolute. If you tell one of your blades to forget their names, they will forget it. I know what you're thinking, but don't worry about it. I'm aware that you don't like doing these things, and I won't force you to do it again unless in a situation like this one," Daskka explained.

"Hera, what the hell is going on?" Alex touched the explorer's shoulder.

"Sorry. There was a mind control effect, and I don't know what happened. Are you OK?"

"I am… so that's what that was. I felt it too, but I just shrugged it off," Alex scratched her head.

"Maybe that's something that some people are more susceptible to, or… I don't know," Hera shook her head, "Either way. Let's get out of here. Daskka, can I dismiss Ooze?"

"If you send him away, the mind control will affect you again. This is how the skill works. Instead of you being affected by it, one of your blades is affected by it. It doesn't mean the effect goes away. You just changed its location, but since Ooze can only see you now and you are the Empress, he can't try to attack you," Daskka explained.

"OK. Got it," Hera called Ooze to her side and strapped the chakram on her waist.

"Are you really OK to move?" Alex asked.

"I don't know. But we need to grab the girls and go to a doorway. I'm sure that if we are inside my private room, all this won't affect us," Hera sighed.

Alex nodded, and the two of them started to move again. They had barely taken five steps outside the hotel when they heard the screams from people in the surrounding buildings. It was a mix of cries for help, people asking others to stop, and angry feral screams of people attacking others seemingly for no reason. Hera and Alex had to tune those screams out. Mostly because they didn't want to attract even more attention to them. They were already the only two people walking around the city. Or, at least, they thought so.

When they moved, a few people appeared coming from the buildings still standing. They had bloodshot eyes and were leaning forward, leaving their arms dangling in front of their body as if they didn't have proper control of them. Each one of those people seemed to be searching for something, and when they looked at each other, they started fighting and trying to rip anyone else apart. Hera and Alex had their skills active, which helped to hide from monsters and crazed people who were beginning to appear. Several times, the duo had to stop themselves from screaming when they saw one of the frenzy people appearing out of nowhere or someone having their guts ripped out from inside their bodies. By all stretch of the imagination, they were in the middle of a horror film. Everyone had gone crazy, and they were fighting mindlessly, just trying to kill each other in the most gruesome way possible. At the very least, no one was using spells or any other type of ability they had. It was like the people inside the room had turned into animals.

This time, it took them a lot longer to reach the city's edge. Not only did they have to hide from the monsters who were randomly crossing the streets, but also the people who seemed to be now part of this attack somehow. When the red tower came into view, Hera and Alex sped up a bit. They wanted to get away from this place soon and to see if their friends were affected by this weird effect.

"I'm going first. When I get to the tower, I'll let you know if any monsters are coming from the sides," as Alex spoke, a small plume of dust was kicked off from her side as the assassin bolted towards the red tower where their friends were waiting.

Hera waited patiently, hoping the assassin wouldn't take long to scout ahead. At the same time, she was trying to keep herself hidden, not to attract the attention of not just the monsters but now the people who were crazed and affected by this spell or whatever effect it was controlling them. Hera was crouched by a building, waiting for the signal to go. She adjusted herself, putting one leg behind her to keep a more stable position. While doing so, she inadvertently pushed a rock against a piece of the wall that was holding it aloft and caused part of the structure to collapse, making a loud noise and lifting a small plume of smoke covering the area around her waist.

An elf was very close by, and the madness caused by whatever the centaur triggered was engulfing his mind. He noticed the sound and went for it, running at full speed. It had finally found a prey, someone responsible for all his suffering, and he wanted to destroy whoever that person was. Hera's memory armor would make someone forget that they had seen her. However, that only worked after they looked away. This wasn't the case with the elf. He managed to see Hera even through the cloud of smoke and didn't take his eyes off her. The man lunged at the explorer, trying to gouge her eyes out. Hera wasn't expecting the attack. She was too distracted thinking about the large monsters to see someone smaller and with a much less intimidating presence getting close. The man almost fell on top of her, both his arms clawing at her face. Lucky for her, she could keep him at bay using the shaft of the glaive. The man was even trying to bite her, his teeth trying to go through the metal handle of the glaive, with both his hands going over his head while trying to hit Hera. Whoever this was, they were clearly not in the right state of mind, and here I didn't want to hurt someone like that. Pressing her foot on the man's stomach, she pushed him away, quickly getting up and putting the glaive in front of her to protect herself.

In her mind, anyone would step away from a weapon. No one would be crazy enough to intentionally run into a blade and impale themselves. The problem was that this man was affected by something that drove him mad. He lunged towards her as she raised her glaive, making the blade pierce his chest, causing the weapon to go through him, cutting one of his lungs out and splitting his heart in half.

Hera yelped and instinctively turned the glaive to the side, causing his body to fall from her weapon, a large pool of blood forming on the ground, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no," she dropped down to her knees and started putting pressure on the wound while starting to cast the Luminous Light Litany to heal the man. Unfortunately, there was no longer anything alive that the spell could take hold of. It seemed that not only this madness would cause people to attack each other mindlessly, but it would also reduce their defenses in a way that made it easier for them to be killed. None of that went through Hera's mind. She was still just trying to heal the man she had just killed.

"Hera, you are clear to come. Hurry up. Things are a mess here," Alex's voice came in her ear, but Hera didn't reply.

"Mum, go!" Daskka appeared again and started to push Hera to move, but the explorer couldn't stop. She had to save that man.

"Hera! What are you doing? Run!" Alex yelled this time, breaking her stealth and having to avoid a few people who were attacking her, "Auch! Don't bite me!" her voice sounded angry, and her scream of pain made Hera snap out of her daze.

The explorer looked up and saw Alex in front of the red tower fighting against a few people who charged at her the moment her [Stealth] was broken. Hera got up and held down her glaive, which was still red with the elf's blood. She took a step towards the tower but stopped to look back at the corpse on the ground.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vulmer Keller - Crafter - Deceased

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hera felt her stomach turning but forced it to stop. She didn't have time for that, "I'm sorry," she was fighting back tears but now she had to run towards the tower where another battle was taking place.