Teenage Devas (Part 8)

Since Metro's body had the Holy Boost, Fortitude, Gluttony Bloodline, and the slightly reduced damage from the Newman Coating, all of them stacked up to make him recover moderately quicker. He had largely recovered to 50% of his peak condition when he was shooed out by the blue-haired man.

"Remember, this device will be buried deep within the ground, so you will have to dig around a bit if you wish to reach the signal. Here's a shovel to get your started." Metro grabbed the sturdy shovel that was thrown to him in mid-air. Turning his back on the man, he started walking up the stairs, fingering the radio.

The radio was just like a brick, with no buttons on it, except a few tiny holes that the sound came out of. It was extremely compact, fitting exactly in Metro's palm. Metro had no idea on how the man achieved it. It could have been achieved by black magic or whatever science the man was using, but the system didn't classify it as an item, so Metro did not really care much for it.

The sunlight radiating from above through the entrance was the only light in the chamber after he climbed the first loop. The stairs were lit dimly, so Metro had to touch the side of the walls to find his direction, while using the shovel to gauge the distance he should lift his feet for every step on the way.

When Metro finally emerged from the entrance, he saw that the sunlight had reduced greatly. "That's strange. How long did I spend in there?" Checking his Death Watch, it had registered that he had spent at most 20 minutes inside.

"Maybe it's just that the sun and moon cycle here is faster?" Metro nodded and convinced himself that this was the case. Then, he looked around for the girl mutant, which appeared to have gone elsewhere already.

"If I find her again, I'm going to give her a taste of her own medicine once I get this worm out of my body." While looking for the girl mutant, he also noted down in his mind that the town's shops had their power off.

It looked like they had closed, although they had been empty since he killed the girl. The shop owners looked to be in cahoots with the Mutant Occupation. It was too convenient that they had disappeared when Metro was here, and the man had even explicitly mentioned that he was raising the girl working in the bakery to become a mutant.

Why were they pretending to be a town then? That was what was most confusing to Metro. Wasn't it more convenient to just create a building above ground and do everything there? All this thinking made Metro's head hurt, so he decided to

The forest that the man had been talking about surrounded the town and the school. It could be said to be the weirdest thing about the entire scenario. Even though everyone in the scenario that he had met so far owned a phone, the town looked to be isolated from the world.

There was no signs of the familiar traces of society. There were no roads or trails to other places that he knew of, there was no police in place, high-rise buildings, anything that evoked the sense of a bustling city. There was just an endless expanse of forested area.

Even though Metro guessed that the forest would likely contain many secrets that would provide him with knowledge of the world and the monsters that were around him, he was wary of him being taken out just to hide those secrets. He decided to stick close to the town for now. It was familiar territory, even though he did not know what would happen when darkness falls.

The forest floor was covered in dry leaves, creating a nice crunchy sound when Metro stepped on them. Metro pressed the radio against his ear, trying his best to pick up any static that would pop up on the radio. After walking around the boundary of the town for a bit, he realised that he needed a source of light to explore deeper into the forest.

"That man. Of course he knew." The man did not offer any light to Metro, even though he knew that Metro would need it. Luckily, Metro came equipped with his Eye of Light. It was powered by the energy of the Holy Boost, which he had stored in his body for emergency situations.

Since Metro was going to die soon if he did not crush up the device, he classified it as an emergency situation. With The Eye of Light, the foliage shielding the sunlight was of no issue, and he could explore the forest properly now.

The trees in the forest were incredibly large, and all of them were almost identical to each other. They had black in colour, often had thick roots poking out of the ground, and were for some reason clumped together, preventing Metro from seeing past them unless he got closer. It was an unnatural behaviour, since plants would normally stay far from each other to get more nutrients. It only added to the sense of dread in Metro's heart about the mysteries of this scenario.

Since Metro wanted to make sure that he had a trail leading back to town, he took great care to scrape unique symbols using the shovel on every tree he passed, along with swiping away the dry leaves on the forest floor.

Walking aimlessly, Metro felt incomparably elated when he finally felt a slight buzz from the radio. Waving it around, he caught more of the signal, and the static grew more intense. From then on, it was as simple as repeating the tried and tested method of swinging the radio around until a better signal is obtained.

The final location that Metro obtained from the radio's static was in the middle of nowhere. It was just a small patch of dirt that did not have visible changes to it, and he would have not found it if not for the radio. It was buzzing consistently with static when he got there, even though there were small blips of silence when he went even just a few centimetres away from the zone.

Plunging the head of the shovel deep into the dirt, Metro shovelled the dirt away from the spot, and occasionally held the radio down the hole to confirm that it was absolutely the right location. The louder pitched static proved his judgement right, motivating Metro to shovel faster.

It was only when Metro heard a small "Clink!" that he stopped. There was the top of a brown box, the payoff of Metro's efforts. Throwing the shovel to his side, Metro scrambled to see the device that he had been looking for. Digging out the box using his bare hands, he took it delicately and slowly, as if it was his baby.

Even though the man had told him to just destroy the box, there was no way that Metro was going to destroy it without looking. It could contain something that would pose enough threat to even the man, helping Metro tremendously, or perhaps even hold the key to the entire scenario.

What he saw inside took away Metro's breath. It was not a weapon, alien technology, injections, or anything. He tried touching the cockroach inside the box, but there was no response from the system.

"Huh? Huh? Huh?" Metro's mind fell into a state of delusion. "Were cockroaches the secret to killing the man all along? What the hell is happening now?"