Yuriko carried Michael and Victor along as she ran back towards the main building. 

Flick! Swish! Thunk!

While beheading the flesh golems hadn’t worked, it seemed that destroying their brain stems did. Invisible Edge was too fine to do the job properly, as ironic as that seemed to her, but she adapted by striking the same place twice using different angles. That effectively enlarged the cut and made it nearly impossible for the golem to reanimate before it disintegrated. 

The golems had turned to ashes a few seconds after she crushed the head, only for a similar-looking one to emerge from the ground a couple of minutes later, lending credence to her thought that the things weren’t actual corpses but a manifestation of the interstitial space. A Chaos Fount it was not, so she didn’t know how to call the place other than a twisted reflection of the material world but that label was even longer than the first. Of course, she used one of her idle strands of consciousness to ramble while the rest was focused on everything else, something she’d been doing for as long as she could remember. It allowed her unmitigated focus since the idle strand handled all other odd thoughts, and sometimes, the practice allowed her to come up with unusual solutions or see things from a different point of view. And right now, she was furiously wondering how to get out of the space since there was no portal and her incarnation had no access to Fri’Avgi. 

Perhaps if she gathered all of the Swordlight she rolled up in her core, all ten of them, she could boost her Invisible Edge enough to cut the metaphysical, or perhaps it would only use up her limited resources as regenerating the Swordlight took time and Animus. 

So while she carried the two unconscious boys as well as the camera with her kinesis, she was furiously exploring ways to exit. She slammed her Anima against the fabric of reality, but without her Anima Telum, she couldn’t even create micro fractures. She tried to use the Bladeless Sword, but she wasn’t far enough along to actually affect anything but the physical world. She was sure it would change as she got closer to Colligia, or if she managed to fuse it properly with Radiant Flying Swords, but for now, it was impossible. She didn’t dare try to forge a sunblade as her Radiant reserves were limited. There was also no sunlight to absorb more Radiance from, and the Luminous Moon was headed towards Dark. Even If it were the Full Moon, the light reflected from it was Luminescence, not Radiance, though she was sure refining that energy to Radiance would be easier than doing it from anything else. And while she could devour ambient energies to create Radiant motes, it was a time-consuming process without a Radiant Core. 

Sometimes, well, times like now, she wondered if she had been foolish not to make a Radiant Core, but doing otherwise had already given dividends in the form of the Bladeless Sword. She was certain it would have been impossible to do if her incarnation body was tied to Radiance. She also thought about using Swordlight as a basis of her physique refinement rather than Radiance but instinctively knew that doing so would diverge her paths enough to create worrying dissonance between her bodies. 

She entered the building a moment later, and she rushed over to the third floor where the girls lay unconscious. Thankfully, there weren’t any flesh golems nearby, but some were already entering the reception lobby. She’d moved far enough that she couldn’t sense Alexis, Zachary, and the third cameraman, Graham Lowe, but last she checked, the shy young man had dragged his companions to a more defensible location and had continued to blast the golems with his lightning. He was still scowling, and every time he managed to torch a golem, his lips twitched into a vicious grin. 

She laid the two down next to the girls after she adjusted the unconscious women into a more comfortable position. She blinked as she saw the inside of Michael’s forearms start to darken. Eh? Black lines appeared on his skin, and formed intricate patterns, though upon a closer look, the patterns turned out to be pictures half an inch tall. The one that formed first looked like an elaborate knife, but the one next to it looked like a hound. The young man convulsed and started to cough loudly. Yuriko turned him over to his side and wondered if he would start vomiting. 

Victor began convulsing as well, and when she turned him over to a side, green lines appeared around his eyes and formed a similarly intricate pattern. Unlike Michael’s, however, they did not form pictures but just esoteric…huh, was that runescript? Yuriko frowned as she watched the etching as it slowly revealed its meaning. 

“Augmented Sight? No, senses,” Yuriko muttered. The runescript lines grew more complicated but at the same time, shrunk until it took her using Enhanced Sight to even make out the individual strokes. She looked at the three unconscious women and switched over to Chaos Sight. 

Haley stirred awake, gasped loudly and shot to her feet. The ambient energies washed off her body, but most of the remaining clung to her throat and torso. The camera woman, Sandra Baker, had the energies clung to her entire frame, though Yuriko wasn’t sure what that meant. As for Christine, like Sandra, the ambient energies wrapped around her whole body, but instead of clinging to the surface, the energies drilled into her body while more and more of the ambient energies were pulled towards her. 

When Yuriko looked up, the energies formed a vortex above the woman. The hallway was comparatively narrow and caused the rushing energies to thicken and stir the dust. And it also attracted all of the flesh golems around them. 

“What happened?” Haley yelled. The relatively short, brown-skinned woman yelled, and her voice created shockwaves, pushing air, dust, and even ambient energies away. The shout even affected the energy vortex for a moment, caused it to wobble and almost collapse, but Christine’s…Alteration continued unabated. Something that Haley recognised by how wide her eyes went. They darted to the other unconscious people, then centred on Yuriko. 

“You’re Altered.” 

Yuriko shrugged, then said, “You are Altered.”

“Yes, I can’t deny it. Not in a place like this. And it looks like all of us will be Altered before the night ends.” Her words spilled from her lips like a waterfall while her eyes darted about, then she focused on something at the end of the hallway, a flesh golem. “Divine mercies! A zombie?”

Yuriko blinked. What was a zombie? Evidently the animated flesh golem, but more than likely, it referred to something else. Yuriko didn’t turn around and only raised her hand, then snapped her fingers twice. The zombie’s head was cleft into four parts, with the intersection in the middle of its brain. Haley’s wide eyes focused on Yuriko instead. 

“Heavenly turd, that was you, wasn’t it?” she yelped. 

Yuriko snorted at the dark-skinned cutie’s swear words and shrugged. “So it is.” She tilted her head and said, “Alexis is also awake, but he’s not here.” 

“How do you know?” 

“I saw them while I dragged these two along.” 

“You’ve got killer finger snaps and super strength, too?” 

Yuriko snorted. “I’m just fit.” 

“Riiiight.” Haley stepped closer and pinched Yuriko’s arm. Her fingers snaked down to Yuriko’s biceps and stopped there. “Heavenly turds…” 

Haley was evidently drowning her fears with satisfying her curiosity, so Yuriko curled her arm and flexed, allowing the muscles to pop. Then, she relaxed her arm and her figure returned to its current softness. 

“How?” 

Yuriko just grinned. 

“Ohhh…” Michael moaned as he stirred awake. A moment later, the two camera crew members did the same. 

“What in the world…?” Victor muttered as he rubbed his eyes. When he opened his eyelids, he screamed and slammed them shut even as he scooted back and started waving his hands all over the place until they smacked Michael’s nose. 

“Ahh! What the eff, man!” 

“Urk, sorry! I thought I saw…no, it’s nothing…?” He blinked hard and groaned. 

Sandra opened her eyes, blinked at the ceiling and sat up mechanically. Yuriko thought she heard something creak, and when the camera woman turned her head, she heard it again. Sandra had been pale-skinned, but now, she had a strangely metallic sheen to her, and when Yuriko used Severing Shard, she sensed that the girl was now…metal? 

“Argh!” Christine yelled and slammed her hands on the floor as she violently woke up. 

Blam! Crack!

The floor tiles shattered underneath her fists and those around her scrambled away. 

There was a long moment of silence when Christine lifted her hands off the floor and revealed a crater on each side a couple of inches deep. 

“Divines have mercy!” Michael yelped as he scrambled away. “You…you…” 

“Altered,” Yuriko said, her tone soft but cut across the jittery atmosphere. “All of us.”

“What? No, it can’t be!” Michael shouted, his face twisting in fear and worry. He raised his hands up, only to catch sight of the tattoos on the inside of his arms. “What the eff!” 

“Calm down. That’s the least of our worries,” Yuriko said, lacing her voice with a Command. As one, all of them took a deep breath. She pointed towards the end of the hallway, then the other ended. “Those are our worries now.” There were flesh golems on either end of the hall, their eyes blank and empty, but their movements with purpose. They trod their way across the hallway. 

Her earlier Command unravelled as panic shot into their hearts. Yuriko snorted irritably, then snapped her fingers, sending Invisible Edges across the distance. She carved up the zombies’ heads, and when they collapsed, they soon turned to dust. Probably to return a few minutes later, but she wasn’t sure if they were the same individuals. She detected no difference in the energy levels of the interstitial space, so she was sure slaughtering its creatures, or perhaps defenders, was the way to go. 

“What the eff!” Michael, as well as every other person other than Haley yelled. 

“We’re not in Hotel De Lune. Not the normal version, anyway,” Yuriko said. “We’ve been brought to a different place, though I don’t know how it happened. And we have to escape. Those things are barring our way. All of you have gained some kind of power, I suggest you find out how to use it.” 

“I…what…you…” Michael sputtered. “Lily, you don’t seem surprised. You…you were Altered?” 

Yuriko shrugged. “I guess you can say that. For a couple of lunar cycles now.” 

“Oh…was that when…” Yuriko knew what he meant but cut him off before he could continue. 

“That’s hardly relevant now,” she said. “I’d suggest getting familiar with your new power now before something worse finds us.”

With that, she moved away from the confused group and into one of the rooms. The main building was not completely ruined, though the dust was even thicker here than the reality it reflected. She headed towards the window to get a better look at the surroundings. The glass was shattered, affording little cover or obstruction for her Anima perception. She quickly located the three boys. They were surrounded and Alexis’ lightning had turned into a dribble of sparks as he tried to keep fending the flesh golems off. 

“Argh!!!” Zachary screamed as he came to wakefulness only to realise he was being dragged by his leg by figures from antiquity. 

“Lilibeth?” Haley followed behind Yuriko, heard Zachary’s scream, and paled as she covered her mouth to keep from screaming in turn. 

“Are you able to fight?” Yuriko asked bluntly. 

“I, no, I’m…I’ve never done anything like that!” 

“I see. Then stay here.” 

“Wait! Where are you going?!” 

“Where else?” Yuriko grunted as she kicked off the remnant glass out of the window frame.

“Don’t!” was all Haley managed to yell before Yuriko jumped out the window.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep