Riley had sprung her sight at a woeful Liss lying like a cadaver. And she felt nothing for her in that stone-cold joke of a heart underneath her chest. But she couldn’t give up on a once-in-a-never offer like mastering a slave soul around just for serving her attitude latter of which she could do at any time given the power stature of her crank.

“Fine. Whatever. Let’s get going.” she said, her hand waving over her wrist as if she was shooing a dog. It was her gesture for Sir Nick to quit his knees-palms-forehead-to-the-ground posture. A dim ray of hope seized an impotent Ryan and Zoe and brought a slow smile to their lips.

“But first transfer your soul’s entitlement onto me,” she said looking at Sir Nick as he stood up on his feet. A wry smile twisted her lips, her gaze partly ardent, and at the same time faintly annoyed. The expression on her face could tell she had found that dreadful and unsettling turn of events quite amusing.

“You sly, devious bit...” That sardonic smile across her face, and the glint of sarcasm and mockery flashing her eyes stung Ryan deep into his patience as he couldn’t contain himself and lashed out at Riley. But before he would say something he could’ve paid for, later on, Zoe halted him by pulling him back, her hand clasped his wrist.

“Madam Riley, Renouncing one’s claim to the soul demands a huge amount of time. And time is what she would be running out of every second we waste arguing.” Zoe knew better than to try and reason with her, but she went ahead and did it anyway.

“We better hurry then,” Riley replied. There was nothing more appealing to her than the desperate and helpless begging of her fellow team members. She’d always been very cocky and full of herself and the most self-centered person they’d ever seen. But that was a whole new low even for her. Zoe and Ryan were rendered speechless listening to her revolting dialogues. She didn’t just disappoint them. She disgusted them. The smell of her very scent felt sickeningly nauseating to them.

Ryan and Zoe stood far from each other across the room, both clenching onto one end of the energy mat each. Creating an energy mat was a two-person job at the least and it wouldn’t consume much of the energy of either party. It’s like a stabilizer to a high voltage electrical appliance. It wouldn’t cost much to have it around, and it would be a lot safer once you installed it.

Sir Nick sat down on it almost at the center, his legs folded one crossing another like in a lotus pose. Sitting before him, her front side facing his, was Riley, folding her legs in a similar manner. Both then crossed their hands as they extended them forward toward each others. And they met exactly at the center of the mat. Those hands of theirs joined crossed had formed a diamond-shaped free space in between them. That would be the nucleus for the pact ritual they were about to perform.

They both closed their eyes and meditated to regulate the oxygen amount they were taking in as their heartbeats slowly started to synchronize. Sir Nick piloted his sorcerer’s key into the nucleus one scintilla after another. A sorcerer’s key is unique for every soul and one can gain access to the unfathomable energy contained within a soul provided its sorcerer’s key had fallen into their possession either through rigorous training or by forming any soul-pact.

No cranker can touch other’s cranks without their sorcerer’s key. If they do, their whole body burns in the flames of the afterlife contingent on the amount of time they came in contact with them and the rate at which they tried to siphon the energy from them.

The scintilla that had currently entered the nucleus would be bonded with the existing marshal, an assemble of all the scintilla entered prior to it. That marshal of scintilla steadily molded into the shape of a key. It was made of the dynamo, a heavenly crystal known to had been forged from the living bark of a seraphic conifer that would grow in the fields of the afterlife.

That magnificent crystal key had various shades of blue to it like it’s oval-shaped bow tinted pitch-dark blue, and it’s eight inched shanks painted dark blue while the collar, thrusting, pin, and bit portions had a light blue shade to them. It’s divine and saintly glow had penetrated their outer human shells as Ryan and Zoe had both found their soul very soothed and comforted the moment they laid eyes on it.

The fully animated key inside the kernel of the nucleus then dispersed back into a trillion luminescent scintilla particles which drove their way through inside her arms into Riley’s heart one scintilla at a time and got absorbed in. The mat underneath them began to evaporate when the last handful of them scintilla gradually grew faint and disappeared into her heart.

“Her condition can’t get any worse. She is cold as ice. I am afraid we might be late.” Zoe told Riley, tears watered up in her eyes but she tried to look brave while Sir Nick raised to his feet carrying Liss in his broad-shouldered arms. Tears coursed down his scarred cheeks without pausing.

“Hey. Save your waterworks for when she wakes up, you hear me. I gave you my word. And it means something where I came from too. Let’s roll, suckers.” Riley phrased, her words sounded strangely reassuring to them despite everything she had done.

Walking straight forward through the holographic wall, they found themselves stepping into a large cavern-like chamber that could fit quintuple their numbers, quadrupled their sizes, without breaking a sweat. Bones were piled up all over the place, of humans and monsters both. Riley and the team were surrounded all around by them as they trooped right into their midst. Some still had a few pounds of flesh sticking onto them. That could very much explain the insane amount of putrid stench infused in the air that surrounded them.

“God! This place reeks of death and demise.” Riley complained. Her thumb and forefinger joined toward clipping onto her nose.

The ground beneath them had convulsions and they thought it was an earthquake. But soon after they realized that it wasn’t when the whole flooring they stood upon began to ascend lifting them into the air along with it. It was an escalator but it hadn’t any cables attached to it neither on top nor up the bottom.

“We’re dealing with a boss alright,” Riley commented before she turned over to speak to Ryan. “You’re awfully quiet. It’s never like you.”

He was zoned out, staring into space and his wrinkled forehead suggested that he was ruminating on something that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him. He twitched when Riley tweaked his ear, she yanked it pretty hard.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Ryan got her attention, pretty good. “You’re hurting me!”

“What were you storming your brain for, genius?” She asked. Sir Nick and Zoe paid mind to their conversation.

“Not one thing adds up no matter how you look at all this,” Ryan said. “Why would a boss send higher floor beasts to the first floor when one is destined to face them on their way up anyway. Moreover, no creature on earth can dominate those hybrids into submission to form a pack, no creature except one. That’s what led me to think that this might be the doing of an omega.”

... to be continued.