Whipping around like Phoenix, he pointed and yelled.
"You're the ghost!" He hit the lawyer pose too.
Everyone scattered, then whipped around in fear to look at the kid.
But….
It wasn't the kid who he'd pointed at.
It had been the woman.
Immediately, some of the shadowy nooks started fading to black, blacker than night, blacker than they already were. Yet, the ink seemed to infect the rest of the room. The dark spread, unfurled, racing across the shelves, floors, ceilings.
Shocked screams and panicked noises erupted around the table, hysteria from some at not realizing an NPC had infiltrated their midst, some from shock and outrage that a forum guide could be so wrong, and some panicked from being so far away from the main table at the point of accusation, devoid of allies nearby, the ones who were first to be picked off.
The air thickened with that familiar pressure, fear trying to crawl up his spine and make a home there. It didn't work on Ah'Ming, at least, but to the other people there? Sheer terror emerged. A thick, pungent smell.
Please, Ah'Ming hoped. Please don't let that be urine.
Gross.
As the room turned to pitch black, (reminiscent of how bright Ah'Ming's future was), bright blue system screens flickered to life in front of all of the unlucky souls who were in the broadcast live. To be completely honest, the people should have been pretty happy at some excitement in their show, Ah'Ming bet that all the viewer ratings and counts were skyrocketing.
He knew his were.
|Views: 21,978
He didn't bother checking the likes.
From what he could tell though, the viewer ratings would likely play as a lifeline, a complete lifesaver. Ah'Ming knew that he'd often tune in whenever a video game live-stream was about to die, since that was often the most interesting part.
The mission this time though? For the ghost?
|Find the [][][][] of the lost
Who the hell was the lost? And the what now?
Welp.
Although Ah'Ming did feel slightly guilty about plunging the group into chaos, it would have happened anyways.
Though the room was dark, it still had the shelves. It was a really novel experience, not being able to see.
Hmm.
If Ah'Ming couldn't see, nobody else could either, right?
Two little strands of hair emerged from his shaggy ponytail, slightly solidifying.
Say, if he killed more of the whatever those things that were coming near him, would he get a higher score? Hopefully, since Ah'Ming really didn't want to get another stupid reward like bone-marrow egg tarts.
Ew.
His hands split mid-motion, fingers elongating, bone and flesh rearranging themselves with a wet, eager precision. Claws bloomed where nails had been, long and hooked, catching the faint light like blades pulled from a forge.
Ah'Ming dashed forwards, ripping some slinky thingies apart. He couldn't really tell, but he thought they were the same shadow monsters from earlier. They seemed slightly stronger now, but not much more. It was pretty curious, how little fear they seemed to hold for him now. At first, at the start of the sub-story, they had all hesitated when approaching him. The only one who hadn't had suffered for it. Yet now? They were swarming, like little army ants. The current mini squadron leader being the slightly taller shadow in front of him.
His claws raked through its torso, ripping the darkness into screaming tatters that dissolved before they hit the ground. The sound it made was short and sharp, cut off as he pivoted into the next one.
They came faster now.
Three at once.
One leapt for his throat. He caught it mid-air, hands sinking into its shape, and pulled. The shadow split down the middle like fabric under stress, unraveling in his grip.
Another tried to flank him.
He spun, backhanded it into the wall with enough force to make the stone crack. The shadow smeared, then vanished, erased by violence.
More poured in.
Claws punched through the first shadow's torso and kept going, driving it straight into a shelf behind it. Wood exploded.
Books burst outward in a paper storm, spines snapping, pages shredding into the air as the shadow dissolved with a shriek. The shelf buckled, groaned, and collapsed sideways, taking two more shelves with it in a domino crash that shook the floor.
"Shh," Ah'Ming muttered reflexively, then laughed, breathless. "Oops."
A shadow lunged from his left.
He ducked, grabbed the ladder it was clinging to, and ripped.
Metal screamed as the ladder tore free of its rail. He swung it like a bat, smashing the shadow apart in a wide arc and continuing through into another shelf. Lamps shattered. Glass rained down, bursting against the floor in sharp, glittering fragments.
Moving faster and faster, Ah'Ming could feel the sludge pumping through his veins, almost singing and crying out with excitement.
A black talon here, shredding through the soft, silky material of one creature, combined with large, sweeping movements of all four limbs.
He vaulted onto a table (not the main table, somewhere quite a bit away), claws gouging deep furrows into the wood as another shadow leapt for his legs. He stomped down, driving it flat, then dragged his foot back. The shadow peeled up with a shriek and came apart like burned paper.
Ah'Ming climbed onto the shelves, twitching, feeling the vibrations in the air, before jumping and diving down to rip out the non-existent organs of another thing. Faster, faster.
He tore through another two.
He ripped through more.
Movement became instinct. Fear burned away, replaced by a hot, focused fury that made everything simple. See motion. Destroy motion.
He slammed a shadow headfirst into a bookshelf hard enough to crack the stone wall behind it. He ripped another in half lengthwise and used the momentum to hurl himself forward, shoulder-checking through a cluster of them. Shelves collapsed. Bookshelves became barricades became debris.
Tables flipped. Chairs shattered. Entire sections of shelving gave way, books avalanching down in choking clouds of dust and paper. Shadows tangled in falling volumes, their movements slowing just long enough for Ah'Ming to tear them apart with ruthless efficiency.
When another shadow appeared? He grabbed it by whatever passed for a throat and drove it backward through a reading desk, splintering the wood clean in half. The desk caved. The shadow didn't survive the impact.
He shred some more apart.
They all poofed, disappeared once dead.
Soon enough, his hands were stained by the metaphorical blood of his enemies.
One hand grasping his face, he threw his head back and laughed.
It was proud of what it was doing, though it felt a slight deflation of skill from the lack of use overtime.
Another enemy.
There.
It rushed forwards, and jumped, leaping over with a somersault, before landing straight on the shadow's head in a t-pose. It crashed to the floor, crushed to bits.
There.
Another.
It ran forwards, heart beating, cheeks flushed, claws outstretched—
A warm, sticky sensation covered his claws, dripping down the gouges in his ectoskel—
No.
The monsters….
The monsters didn't leave behind bodies. They didn't leave behind blood.
Crap.
Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. CRAP!
It was okay.
Just a little mistake!
Now. Ah'Ming just needed to double confirm that there were no witnesses. He couldn't sense anyone, but maybe they were just good at masking…
If word got out.
If they caught him again…
No.
There was some movement.
Small movement though.
The only person (well, humanoid. Maybe not human, but at least humanoid.) that small could be the kid.
Coughing nervously, Ah'Ming kicked the not-player-anymore to the side and wiped his hands on his pants. It didn't help much, since he couldn't see how dirty it was, but at least his hands were the slightest bit less sticky.
He hesitated for a second, before deciding what to do.