Crab-V #게

The girl sat up from her bed and looked at Aceso, visibly confused about what had happened. Aceso was mesmerised by the girl's eyes but then she looked up a bit and realised she had made a mistake.

"Iris, lie down for me."

"Okay?"

She had forgotten to heal her hair, leaving the girl bald. She picked up all the scattered hair implanted them on Iris' head. Having lost five of her fingers already, she bit off another one and squeezed it dry.

And like that, Iris had hair again. Hair was really easy to heal, Aceso normally wouldn't need to use one of her fingers but took measures for Iris, especially since this was the fourth usage of her abilities.

The last time Iris used her abilities, she sacrificed her whole foot to be able to heal her. But now, she only need 6 fingers, a major breakthrough.

Iris must be healed completely for there to be no further side effects. So the hair and the eyes also had to be healed.

"Is it done, Peso?"

"Yes, how do you feel?"

"Great, a little too great for comfort even."

Iris jumped out of bed, ran around the room, certainly happy with her healed body.

"Where's sir Jean?"

"Let's discuss that later, when Erika wakes up. I want to know why Erika used your telepathy."

"Uhh, miss Erika? I think she said something about saving you guys from a grave mistake but you all seem to be fine."

'A grave mistake? That Erika?'

Aceso was quite confused and also scared when she heard those words but she didn't let it show on her face. And she continued asking questions.

"Why did your throat become like that? I thought the side effects only damage the brain and eyes."

However, when she asked that question, Iris just gave her a questioning look, not knowing what Aceso was talking about.

"Hmm, so you forgot. What was the last thing that you remember?"

"I remember sitting on my bed connecting the four of you in my mind then I heard a loud noise and I lost conciousness."

"What?"

Suddenly, a loud groan could be heard from nearby. Aceso looked in its direction and sure enough, it was Erika. And right upon rising up from her slumber, she cursed Jean.

'This is weird, did both of them lose conciousness at the same time?'

Erika began madly looking around the room, as if looking for something. She looked a little desperate. Then she looked at Aceso.

"How long have you guys arrived here?"

"About two hours."

"Shit, that's 15 hours that I've been asleep."

Erika immediately dashed out of the room. Aceso, seeing this, bid goodbye to Iris and also left the room. She'd been in that room for two hours, what could have happened in that time?

Immediately after leaving the room, Aceso was shocked to find Zirtues everywhere on the floor and they weren't normal ones, they were of the underground type, extremely poisonous and corroding.

She tried to get back into the room to get Iris but then she heard a sharp whistle of wind behind her.

Evading to the side, a loud boom entered her eardrums as she found out that the place she was standing before was turned to dust, and in her place was a massive chela.

A Crab-III was blocking her way. And it seemed that this Zirtue wasn't alone, observing the many Zirtues nearby, she concluded that all of them were grade II or above.

The chela descended upon her again and she dodged it just in time.

"How am I supposed to fight a Crab-III? Damn you Jean, you are never here when there's an attack!"

***

While the others were fighting against an attack, Jean being the human that he was, sat on a log 6500 kilometers away from the Base, in the coast of Germany.

Opposite him was a lit campfire and a figure, Anastasia. He arrived in Turkey by noon and realised that he was never going to find the grade V by looking for it in dry lands. The grade V's up until now were documented to really love water.

So, he chose one of the places left on Earth that had water: the Baltic sea. The Caspian sea, Black sea among with most significant bodies of water dried up due to the giant Zirtues long ago.

Yes, there were more than one.

It was already night, but he didn't care. In fact it worked in his favor a little bit. The angry Zirtues would lunge themselves at him, only to get killed and thrown into the sea, acting as bait for the grade V.

Disturbing his silence was a screeching voice.

"Where's your diary?"

"I forgot it."

"Rookie mistake."

Anastasia then pulled out from her many pockets a giant book that was a quarter of her height and was made from stone.

"Mine doesn't have a core so it doesn't have many pages."

The first time that Anastasia had seen Jean, she always saw Jean carry around a book and so she did the same.

"Let me read it."

"Sure."

The maggots on her face moved with a strange rhythm, their many shadows cast over her face. Passing the book over the fire, Jean took it and read its contents.

Her book contained about 200000 years of time, it wasn't updated everyday but once every ten years. Each page contained 80 years and wasn't that detailed, just like Jean's.

He gave it back to her.

"Quite small."

"Efficient."

"Small."

"Efficient."

Jean gave up as he didn't want to waste his energy on useless arguments.

"You won't prepare anything for the grade V?"

"No, atmospheric pressure should be enough."

He made this decision based on the fact that Platonics were really hard, but hollow. Under normal pressure, they should be okay but the moment there's more pressure outside, the Platonic would be crushed.

Or that was what Jean was hoping for.

Each moment just made him more anxious about his plans. Like, what was he going to do if it failed? Run?

And soon enough, the two of them felt tremors along the coast.