Journey To The Underworld

So the "doom" of the world is somewhere under my feet? That's pretty heavy.

"How are you so sure that whatever is hidden away in the sarcophagus will doom this world?" I ask The Voice, "For all you know, it may be just a vanilla nuke or a bio weapon. Serious sure, but hardly anything world ending."

The Voice responds, "I have the power to sense matter on a far larger scale than what was provided to you. While there are limitations to this power, I can sense whether or not something poses a danger to this world and myself. That is the reason why I sent you to the warehouse despite not knowing what your target was. I knew for a fact that something was placed there that posed a deadly threat to me."

"To you? Not the world?" I query. Slip of the tongue there, eh?

"Same thing. Concentrate on what matters Transmigrator." The Voice immediately rebuts. Looks like I hit a nerve.

"Fine. Answer this then, why the need for the drones? You can just provide me with another backpack of explosives and point me in the general direction of the mystery mcguffin." I respond.

"I suspect that the militia has taken steps to conceal the mystery item from my sight. Most troubling. I have no idea how this was done, which is why I need eyes on the site." The Voice answers.

Looks like Fate is stepping up its game. "What about the link between the Hero's family and the militia? What came out of that?" I press on.

"I can confirm that the militia was receiving instructions from the Hero's family, specifically Nicholas von Amsterg and his agents. It appears that several years back, a family friend of the von Amstergs and highly placed official in the Legion, Marshal Yvonne St Clair, approached Nicholas with the offer of helping him bolster his chances at succeeding the current von Amsterg patriarch."

A picture of a young girl barely in her teens dressed in the Gothic Lolita style appears on the screen of the laptop. Pale, porcelain like skin topped with flowing green hair. Her blood red eyes stare hungrily at me.

"A piece of jail bait. Who is a marshal. Please don't tell me that she is a thousand year old demon in the body of a barely but probably not legal girl." I say.

The Voice chuckles, "Marshal St Clair is a one thousand five hundred year old vampire in the body of an absolutely not legal girl. Jokes aside, Marshal St Clair is one of the strongest existences in the world. She has very cleverly taken advantage of the fact that although her vampiric condition prevents her from physically maturing, it has also allowed her spirit core to grow without limit. You can guess how powerful more than a thousand years of core development has made her."

I whistle, "So Nicky has a real powerhouse backing his claim then. That means the Legion has already decided on the successor?"

"Not necessarily." The Voice responds, "From what I can gather, Marshal St Clair has been quietly recruiting for the militia behind the Legion's back. Both she and Nicholas have also been very careful to conceal the true size and mission of the militia from Gustav. All this caution would be not be needed if the Legion had already come down on Nicholas' side. There is also one very unusual fact about the militia that both Marshal St Clair and Nicholas have been hiding."

Oh? Whatever could that be?

"Officially, funding for the militia comes from a cabal of wealthy businessmen that has been routed through an off shore company. However, this is merely the icing on the top of an elaborate deception. I have traced the militia's money trail and it took me from Panama to the Cayman Islands and to the new colony up in Antarctica. It was only there I managed to track down where all the money actually came from." The Voice rumbles.

"Don't keep me in suspense here." I prompt The Voice to continue.

"Every single cent of the militia's funding originated from The City." The Voice rasps, "More specifically, the funds were siphoned from a bank account owned by the urban redevelopment corporation involved with the Six Trees District. The district that was just taken over by the Host."

I blink in surprise, "A demon PMC is being bankrolled by Host money? But why? Is the Host sticking its oar in the Hero's family feud as well?"

"I do not know. That question is something the money trail cannot answer." The Voice rasps, "Until we find a way to acquire a source connected with the urban redevelopment project, I am afraid that all we can manage is speculation."

I rub my temples. This is getting way more complicated than I thought it would be. What happened to the days when all you needed to do was to march to the demon king's castle and whack that asshole? All the players in this world are hiding in the shadows or using proxies. Was there even a convenient demon king castle lying about?

"Yeah, I get the picture, more or less." I tell The Voice wearily, "Lets just deal with what is in front of us for now."

...

So when morning rolled around once more, I left the apartment to find the black cab already waiting for me just outside. The cab's interior was packed to the brim with masses of cardboard boxes, no doubt holding the drones The Voice was talking about. After managing to squeeze myself into the cab, the cab's engine sputtered as it sluggishly crawled its way out of the campus, burdened by the weight of all the drones.

The cab makes its way through the streets of the Dreaming Spires District, finally turning into a cul de sac located behind a pair of apartment blocks. Sitting unobtrusively at the cul de sac was one of those inclinators with its shutter sealed tight. The Voice stops the cab right in front of the shutter and opens the cab's glove compartment, revealing an unmarked key card within.

"Use the key card on the slot at the shutter." The Voice instructs, "This will unlock the code box below the slot. Then enter any random combination of seven keys. I will do the rest."

Alright. Sounds simple enough. I climb out of the cab and swipe the key card in the slot available. Directly beneath it is a large metal box protruding from the inclinator's frame. The light built into the box turns green and the cover swings open, revealing a keypad bearing several hundred numbers. Whoever built these things wasn't messing about with security. It would be quite the task to crack the code box, and that's discounting the time bar gimmick it was programmed with.

A loud hum emits from the inclinator and an LED screen mounted above the shutter flicks on, showing the word "WAIT." The Voice had told me that all inclinators require several minutes to power up from their locked down states before being used. With nothing else to do, I examine the map of the sarcophagus The Voice had given me yesterday.

The plan was fairly simple. The inclinator would take me down to a hub within the sarcophagus, a point where refugees and supplies were meant to be processed. Under The Voice's guidance, I would bring the hub's slumbering systems online without the automated notification going out to The City. The Voice would then take control of the hub and through that, the sarcophagus's internal monorail network.

A monorail shuttle would be summoned to the hub and I would unpack the drones and load them onto the shuttle. The shuttle would be sent on a grand circuit of the entire sarcophagus, dispensing the drones at every stop.

While it would probably take a while for the drones to sweep the sarcophagus and turn up something useful, this plan had the advantage of turning control of the monorail over to The Voice. Anybody attempting to use it would immediately be noticed. The moment the militia tried to move the mystery mcguffin out of the sarcophagus, we would know and be right on top of them.

The inclinator finally completes its power up sequence and the LED screen switches to "READY". The shutters open with a roar and The Voice drives the cab into the inclinator's maw. Stagnant air fills my lungs as unseen motors growl and we begin out descent into the heart of The City.