O.C. Saar
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Omega Release | Chapter 25: I Hate Spiders
🕑 Added 2025-06-20 18:00:03 +0000 UTCReina and I took the elevator down, and as we approached the reception area, I heard Dinos talking to the receptionist.
“Look, just send a message to Elder Fernando.” Dinos was saying, sounding frustrated. “Please send him a request to stop changing the design of the transportation terminals. A regular concrete booth with a screen doesn’t fit the aesthetic, sure, but we can’t have unsuspecting people dying to the Lava Pangolins just because they can’t tell an obsidian obelisk is a terminal.”
“Certainly, Elder Dinos.” The receptionist replied politely. “Anything else you want to include in your message?”
“Yeah, tell him that Master Yusuke’s idea of introducing the wild Lava Pangolins to the Scorched Plains is proving far more beneficial than we initially suspected, even if overseeing all the trainee squads is a pain in the ass.” Dinos paused for a moment. “Leave the last part out.”
I walked into the lobby and saw the receptionist nodding. “Anything else, Elder?”
Dinos waved his question away. “No, I have to get back to my trainees.”
Dinos turned to leave, and that's when he and their receptionist noticed me walking into the room. Our eyes met, and Dinos smiled, whereas the receptionist sneered ever so slightly.
“Hey Dinos, hey… guy!” I said to both of them. Dinos’ smile grew wider, and the receptionist’s sneer became more apparent. Then, Reina walked into the room, and their expressions changed immediately.
At the sight of her, their expressions went utterly neutral. The receptionist, in his hurry to stand up, spilled a glass of some blue liquid all over his crisp, white pants, but he didn’t seem to notice as both he and Dinos bowed deeply at the waist.
“Mistress Reina.” They both intoned reverently.
“As you were,” Reina replied crisply, and they stood back up to attention. “I heard what you were talking about.” She said, turning to the receptionist, who grew pale at her attention. “Add to that message that I think Dinos is correct. The terminals will change to their previous default appearance, on my authority.”
The receptionist bowed deeply again. “As you command, Mistress.”
Without another word, Reina started heading to the door. As I passed by him, I met Dinos’ gaze, and he gave me a “I have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, but I bet it's funny” look.
I rolled my eyes and gave him a cheeky half-grin before exiting the building.
A black, expensive-looking car waited outside the building. The driver, wearing a black suit and looking more like a hitman than a chauffeur, held the door open for us. Reina and I got in the spacious car, and we took off.
The rustic town where most of the core Molten Fist Clan lived passed us in a blur. I tried to take it in as much as possible. Last time I visited the Molten Fist, their headquarters were in an area just as large as this one, but far more pedestrian. It didn’t have a flying fortress or a volcano, that’s for sure.
The town’s buildings were all largely uniform, made of stone, obsidian, and iron, set at fixed distances. It gave a very militaristic feel, only slightly marred by the bright and flashy signs, posters, and graffiti that every building proudly bore.
“I suppose if you cannot be creative with the size of your building, you can be creative with its decorations.” Hob mused.
I sent him a mental nod and looked at the cheerful faces of people going through their day. “Can you imagine it, Hob? Living in a place where the threat of the Ecclisiarchy feels so… distant?”
“Then why don’t you?” He asked, looking at me with curiosity.
“And tie myself irrevocably to an organization like the Molten Fist? I’ll pass.” I thought bitterly. “It doesn’t matter how benevolent a clan seems to be. All it takes is one bad apple to get into a position of power, and you’re suddenly stuck with people who went from White to Gray to Black. Hell, even Cardinal, if things get really dire.”
Hob looked alarmed. “I thought the ecclisiarchy didn’t have a presence in the Otherside.”
I waved at a little kid who waved at the car as we passed. “If only, bud. The priests don’t have a presence here, but that’s why Cardinals exist. It’s an open secret that some gangs, and even clans, have undercover Cardinals working to further the Ecclisiarchy’s aims.”
“Oh.” Hob looked taken aback. “Even the Molten Fist?”
I sent him a mental shrug. “Who knows? Yusuke and his people are far stricter in their vetting process than most, but we can never be sure their clan is free of the Ecclisiarchy’s influence.” I glanced at Reina, who was sipping a tall glass of champagne and reading something in her Novas. “In this world, the only person you can truly rely on is yourself.”
Hob nodded thoughtfully, and we went back to our companionable silence.
As our drive continued, the buildings started having fewer and fewer decorations. Eventually, we entered an industrial-looking sector with utilitarian-looking buildings. The form factor was the same as the residential buildings but scaled up. In the distance, a building rose taller than all the rest, its brutalist metal and concrete lines casting a long shadow on the street. Our car stopped outside that imposing building, and Reina got out, waving at me to follow her.
We entered the building, where a man in a military uniform met us and gave Reina a crisp salute. “Mistress Reina, the walker is ready.”
She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at the man. “With my equipment on board?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Good.” She said and snapped her fingers. The man immediately moved, almost faster than I could see, and opened a door on the far side of the room for us.
“Walker?” I asked Reina.
“You’ll see.” She said, oh, so very helpfully.
We passed through three separate security checkpoints, all of which were far more complex and thorough than I expected, but at the end of this ordeal, I found myself standing in a hangar looking at a colossal metal spider robot surrounded by engineers, mechanics, and military staff.
The blasted thing looked like the stuff of nightmares. It had long metal legs and a boxy body. A staircase led from its abdomen to the ground, and to my horror, Reina started walking up the stairs.
“ I hate spiders,” I muttered.
Somehow, Reina heard that and chuckled. “Thank the rings that this isn’t a spider, then. It’s one of our Lava Walkers. Now, stop dallying.”
I looked at the Lava Walker's legs, noticing its gleaming claws made of an iridescent metal. They were pretty, if dangerous-looking. I started climbing the stairs after Reina, being very careful not to look at the woman walking in front of me. A lot of eyes were on us as we climbed up into the machine column, and my eyes, wandering to her backside, even by accident, would not go without notice.
The interior of the robot was surprisingly spacious. Men and women in black and red uniforms sat at different terminals, chatting amicably. That chatter cut out as Reina passed by, and they all stood to salute. Reina kept walking without comment until she reached a door at the far end. She scanned her eyes at a terminal next to the door, and the door slid open to a comfortable-looking room.
I let out a low whistle at the opulence of the room. “Fancy,” I told Reina as I flopped on a plush couch facing a screen.
“I’ve never subscribed to the school of thought that austere surroundings are necessary for military discipline,” she said, “Although my father tends to disagree. Still, he didn’t have a choice with the walker.” She walked up to a console under a pair of forward-facing windows and pressed a button. “We are ready for departure,” she said, and immediately, lights started flashing in the room.
“Prepare for departure,” a voice said over the intercom, and the machine lurched into motion, raising itself to its full height, and a pair of giant hangar doors started opening in front of us.
Reina walked behind an ornately decorated synthwood screen, painted to look like a battlefield with flowers on fire and men and women fighting against a giant, fire-breathing dragon. “No peaking,” she said, warning in her voice.
I let out a guffaw. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I reassured her.
“Sure you wouldn’t,” she said, sounding mildly amused.
I did my best to put the rustling sounds of her taking off her clothes and the accompanying memories out of my mind and decided this was as good an opportunity as many to sate my curiosity.
“So,” I started, “This Lava Walker. The volcano. Care to explain? Last time I was here, the Molten Fist lived in a sprawling city with a fortress in the middle, but it all looked fairly similar to the regular Otherside. This is… Different.”
Reina made a disgusted sound. “Yeah. We were involved in a life insurance proxy war a couple of years ago. The volcano was the winning bid. The walkers were our victory bonus.”
“Life insurance proxy war, sir?” Hob asked.
I nodded, free to respond to my companion physically as long as Reina was out of view. “Yeah. Life insurance corporations in the Middle Ring sometimes go to war with each other, trying to hurt their competition’s bottom line. Each corporation sponsors a gang to pick that corporation for its life insurance premiums, and then they all duke it out. In some instances, mega-corps get involved and sponsor whole clans. It’s ugly business, but business as usual for the ghouls in the second ring.”
“But how can that be allowed? Why would someone go along with this?” Hob said, sounding alarmed.
I shrugged. “It all happens in the Otherside. Your regular citizen will never even learn of it happening, aside from their premiums driving up in price if their corporation loses. Most people chalk it up to common greed and never look into it further. As for the why of it,” I looked out of the window at the scorched landscape and the rivers of lava and molten steel. “It has its benefits, as long as you survive.”
I turned the monitor on and switched to an aerial view of the Lava Walker. I thought its spindly legs would be used to avoid the lava, but strangely enough, it seemed like this giant mechanical monstrosity wanted to step into the molten rivers, one of its legs being submerged in super-heated liquid at all times.
“Hey, Reina,” I called over, “Why is this thing stepping into the lava instead of avoiding it?”
Her head popped out from the side of the screen, and she looked at me like I was being an idiot. “It’s a Lava Walker. It walks in lava.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Yes, I get that. I’m not that stupid. Why does it walk on lava?”
She squinted her eyes at me for a second, and I could see a debate raging in her head. Eventually, one side must have won because she sighed in defeat. “It’s not like you can do anything with that information.” She popped her head back, but she started explaining before I had time to complain that I wanted to know anyway.
“The Lava Walkers serve several functions in the Scorched Plains. One is the safe transportation of VIPs.”
“Like you,” I interjected.
“Like me,” she said. “Now be silent, and let me explain before I change my mind.”
“Alright, alright, I’ll be quiet,” I said, sinking further into the soft couch.
“Another one is defense. This walker and all other walkers we own are equipped with an arsenal big enough that, if a squad of priests somehow found a way to resist the Otherside’s vibrofield, a single Lava Walker could potentially hold them off for several hours,” she said, sounding quite proud of the fact. And she was right to be. A machine holding such power, especially in the Outer Ring, was exceedingly rare.
“The final function is that only with a Lava Walker can someone access the most sensitive and crucial facilities needed to run this place. The walker must set a foot into specific slots inside the rivers of lava and metal on our way to our destination for those locations to unlock. Only a very select few know which spots have which slots and the sequences needed for each facility.”
“That explains the Lava Walking gimmick, I suppose.” I mused to myself.
“Partially,” she said, humming. “These machines require prodigious amounts of power to operate. The walkers absorb heat from the rivers they walk in. It’s very similar to how the Lava Pangolins operate, just scaled up.”
That jolted my memory. I had looted an interesting-sounding component from the Lava Pangolin I killed. With a mental command, I pulled up its information.
[Empty Lava Pangolin Core]
Rank: Rare | Level: N/A
Description: A large, hyperconductive ferro-organic composite core found deep in the chest of an adult Lava Pangolin. Capable of storing immense amounts of heat energy. Requires a control unit to function.
Subroutines: [Heat Transference] - Can manipulate and direct heat in and out of the item.
Durability: 230/230
WARNING: OVERLOADING THE CORE WILL RESULT IN A CATASTROPHIC EXPLOSION EQUIVALENT TO OVER 10 TONS OF TNT.
“Can you handle the heat?”
I shuddered. If the core of a Lava Pangolin could explode so violently, what damage could the core of one of these behemoths cause? I doubted an explosion from the Lava Walker’s core had enough force to damage the structural integrity of the Ring, but I had no doubt in my mind that not a single person in this area would survive the inferno.
“What’s wrong?” Reina asked, making me jump. I was so absorbed by my thoughts that I hadn’t heard her approach.
“Bwah! Oh, uh, nothi…” My voice trailed off as I took her in.
She was wearing a double-layered Kyudo-gi, with the left sleeve not worn. The outer layer was purest white, and a single, even line of the vibrant red inner layer poked out, going across her body from her right shoulder. The left side of her body was exposed to the light, but thankfully, her chest was wrapped in bandages. Her long black hair had been tied in a high ponytail, long strands of straight black hair falling down on either side of her face and across her forehead.
“I, um, no, nothing is wrong,” I said dumbly.
Apparently, my reaction pleased her because she took a step back and spun around, giving me a better view of her outfit, including her black hakama pants, white socks, and wooden sandals. She finished spinning to face me with a self-satisfied smile and… Was that spite behind her eyes?
“Take a picture. It will last longer,” she said smugly and turned to the control panel, nodding once. “Hm. Enough fooling around, it seems. Get up. We’re here.”
