Lucky's Expedition (2)

Met with his untimely demise fast approaching, Lucky did not even bother to evade or even deflect the attack.

No, for the fighting style of Lucky was one where he put complete faith in the impossible as he had always done.

Suddenly the Sanguis' attack stopped dead in its tracks, as he reactively dodged a piece of falling stone from the ceiling that had fallen in that exact moment.

The dodge, however, was directly into the location of where Lucky's machete was going. Unless one could somehow see the future, there was no reason for the machete to slice in that area...or unless one was Lucky enough to guess correctly out of all the possible moves his opponent could make.

With the stroke of his machete complete, the terrifying enemy that had toyed with him for several minutes on end was forever stilled as his head hit the floor.

'It seems that even monsters like this are nothing in the face of whatever God has blessed me'

Inspecting the corpse, marvelling at the veins that were outside the man's body, he took out his phone and began documenting the new look and abilities of this new foe. While he was doing so, the veins of the now deceased man began to break and bleed all over the place as his entire body became a bloody mess.

"Now that is weird, though I should say as expected for veins that are somehow freaking outside of the body like that. How is that even possible?" muttered Lucky as he continued to take pictures with his free hand.

"Oh it's simple really," said a voice from behind Lucky who slashed at the owner without a second thought, " just a bit of applied blood manipulation using a surrogate heart as a relay station."

The owner of the voice easily dodged Lucky's blow, or at least Lucky assumed that he had dodged it for his blade just went right through the speaker and came out the other end without doing any damage.

"Good reflexes, albeit you might as well be moving at the speed of a snail....how exactly did you kill my experiment subject, I wonder?"

The speaker looked exactly the part of a researcher or scientist, wearing a pure white lab coat with a head of greying hair and large spectacles resting on his nose.

'Yet the stench of death is stronger on this one than anyone else, and I feel even more threatened than when Bazel went all out on the day of the Sanguis HQ attack...'

Understanding that any normal resistance was pointless, he spun his machete in his hand and sheathed it in a seemingly suicidal move.

"Luck, it's always luck," explained Lucky as he thought of his next move, "that which cannot be measured but is ever present."

The scientist looking fellow nodded at this and said, "It would seem so, since based on your current level of strength there is no way for you to ever beat it. Unless you are hiding your true abilities..."

As the last syllable left the lips of the old man, Lucky was suddenly gripped by primal panic and fear that easily tore through his iron will.

His entire focus was taken up by the man in front of him, no, the force of nature that was present in the same room as his figure appeared to be as large as a skyscraper.

As quick as the terror had come, however, it had passed as Lucky's vision returned to him and he was able to perceive the world around him once more.

The first thing that he had noticed was that he was now in the back of the room with his back against the wall, his normal machete drawn defensively in the direction of the scientist looking fellow.

"Hmm, I suppose that is all you have," said the man as he wrote in a notebook he had pulled out from somewhere, "well, then I suppose you qualify to at least come and chat with me over tea. It does get pretty boring being all alone, as the next shipment of research assistants will not arrive for some time.

"Ah...I miss my old lab, but apparently there is something big going on in this city soon so I was ordered to come here ahead of time."

The rather talkative researcher walked out of the room as he talked, only stopping when he noticed that Lucky was not following.

Popping his head back in with a gentle smile the man said,

"Well? Are you coming or not? The time for tea is fast passing, and after that...well I think you will not want to waste the jovial time we have left between us."

'Not like I have much choice in the matter. Assuming I survive this, I could gain a lot of valuable information from this talkative fellow'

And so much to the pleasure of the old researcher, he followed along obediently.

---

Curiously enough, the old man asked Lucky to lead the way as he pointed out the direction to his office. Every now and then the man would ask Lucky to choose from one of several options, in regards to which door to take or which path to travel to get to their destination, and every time a choice was made the researcher would jot down things on his notepad with fervor.

Finally they reached the office of the strange but deadly man, a simple room with a desk and two chairs. But when the man switched on the lights, Lucky immediately could tell that the room was anything but simple.

Lined all along the walls were several shelves and on every single shelf, filling every single inch of space, were glass containers containing floating human hearts perfectly preserved.

Noticing what Lucky was staring at, the scientist explained,

"These are all the raw materials of my research, the surrogate hearts that I mentioned earlier. I got them from several sources, such as from the bipedal sheep that naturally inhabited this place when I first got here, groups of gangsters that were roaming the area at night, and of course my own research staff after they had outlived their usefulness."

Finally understanding what had caused the deaths of the homeless, not to mention the various added deaths that he was unaware of, rubbed Lucky the wrong way especially considering that he and all of his brothers used to belong to two of those groups that were talked about as if they were sheep to be slaughtered.

Keeping a cool head, as letting his emotions run rampant right now was akin to a death sentence, Lucky took the words in stride and instead entered the room and sat down.

The researcher did not notice Lucky's sudden internal dilemma, but even if he did he made no comment on it.

Instead he sat down across from Lucky and pulled out several cups and snacks from inside his desk. Then from a small fridge he grabbed and poured what looked like chilled green tea from an antique looking tea pot.

Curiously, he poured several cups of the tea instead of just one for each of them and laid out several plates of snacks as well.

"Will there be more joining us?" asked Lucky.

The scientist shook his head and finished setting up the feast, then look at Lucky carefully before saying, "Choose one cup and one plate of snacks if you may."

Though he was polite in asking, Lucky was under no illusion that he had a choice in the matter.

Doing as he was asked, Lucky chose one cup and one plate seemingly at random and began to eat and drink without a care.

"Fascinating," said the man as he recorded who knows what in his notebook, "all of the drinks were poisoned but one and all of the plates of food were also tampered with but one. Yet you chose the correct one each time...what Luck indeed."

The researcher then presented both of his hands to Lucky and said, "Shake one of my hands."

And so Lucky did so, which caused the man's jaw to drop.

"I would have killed you on the spot if you had chosen the other one...what a freak you are. How interesting!" concluded the researcher happily.

"It seems that you being here is also my luck, for I have such an interesting topic of study that walked into my own doors. Looks like I will have to put that other nonsense on hold for awhile, haha who cares about whatever plan to assassinate some nobody cattle.

"Something much more interesting is in front of me..."

Lucky, who had heard something he was most interested in, bravely asked, "What assassination plan?"

The man cocked his head side to side for a moment before finally saying, "Trying to get information from me? Well, you are quite lucky...maybe somehow you will convince me to not slowly erode your body away in the pursuit of science? hahaha.

"Well I do love a bit of good gossip anyhow, you see House Sanguis has found some new evolution or whatever but it seems that securing them has caused an all out war between the local cattle and the pathetic branch family that was sent here.

"So in response we snuck a number of assets from a higher quality branch in under the noses of the other Houses, and within a day or two they will start to assassinate all the leaders of these dogs, cows, or whatever animal they are.

"Then with their leaders gone, the stupid little things should fall even to the incompetent family that was somehow chosen to lead our charge into this formerly neutral zone."