Arter frowned, and looked towards all the wounded soldiers around him, and then towards Gabriel and the rest. Although their numbers were not few, it was clear that they were two separate teams, all made of draftees, and still they were in a better condition than the regular soldier he had been assigned.
For a moment it seemed he was going to react strongly to Gabriels words, but then his shoulders slumped.
"Not as strong as you think, otherwise I wouldn't have been drafted," Arter said, feeling defeated. "Besides, I just started my first mission and we already have casualties and injuries. I don't know how I would have survived without the additional help."
While they talked, Nero looked around at the room they were in. It was rectangular, and filled with numerous shelves, though all of them were shattered now. Destroying anything here wasn't easy, which is why Nero assumed that all of this destruction preceded their arrival.
Amidst the rubble of shattered shelves, there were also remains of books. But they had also suffered, their pages decayed and ruined.
Nero found the addition of such a mundane library strange. If everything else in this building was so technologically advanced, why would they rely on such an archaic piece of technology such as books.
He bent down and picked up a nearby book cover, its binding scratched and coming apart, hollow of the pages that once filled it. If there were words written on it once detailing what book this was, they were long gone now.
For a moment, Nero imagined that he was not dealing with a super advanced, ancient race that pioneered the very system of aether manipulation that the human race relied on. He began to imagine that this was just another building in another human country. Why would they rely on books when information stored on computers was more secure?
They could store it more safely and create backups. Then he thought of the berserkers, and how they were called research subjects before. He thought of how they were previously filled with dense aether, but now reeked of cursed energy. He thought of the drastic mutations they underwent.
The answer he came up with was simple. The research they were doing was sensitive, or perhaps forbidden, and they did not want to risk it being discovered. They could make physical records, and if something ever happened, they could easily destroy them.
Nero looked up and saw that Gabriel and Arter were still talking to one another, while the injured soldiers helped one another. Even Leonards teams had stepped forward to help use their cards to heal them as much as they can, and at least stop bleeding or tend to the most serious wounds.
Everyone was busy, so Nero used this time to look around the room, searching for possible artefacts, or anything interesting, but discovered nothing. Once he was certain there was nothing of interest in the room, he returned to his team.
"If everyone is ready, let's head out," Nero said. "There are still more berserkers to face."
His team got ready, but his orders attracted Arter's attention, who had just been assuming that Gabriel was in charge of his team.
"Your team is not fully recovered yet, you should rest a bit more before going out," Arter said, offering friendly advice. But whether it was on purpose, or it was habit, his tone carried a hint of command in his voice, one that he clearly lacked when talking to Gabriel.
Nero looked at him, and felt the urge to give him a scathing response. It would be so easy, and he was good at them. His impression of this scion of the Ferro family was not too great either - Nero assumed he was the one. But he ultimately decided against it.
"We can afford only so much rest, this is not exactly a safe place. You, on the other hand, should stay till your teammates have recovered enough to move. We'll handle the berserkers for you."
Most of them were already dead, so facing a few more should not be an issue. Arter frowned, and turned to look back at his team. With the condition they were in, he could basically not proceed. Many of them would even need to be escorted back to receive more detailed medical attention.
Nero and his team began to return, and when they had gone far enough, Gabriel stepped forward and introduced Arter to Nero.
"That's Arter Ferro, as you probably guessed. He is the great-grandson of Haiden Ferro. I've met him a few times in Lorilem. He's quite talented, but he has an extremely overprotective mother. She never lets him go far, and never without enough guards. But that does not reflect on his own abilities.
The only way that has limited him is in terms of experience. His personal skill is tremendous."
"I noticed," Nero responded. "The way he cut through the berserker's bone was worthy of praise. It's not something that just anyone can do."
Silently, they returned to the main hall, but stopped when they realised that they could not hear the sound of fighting in any other corridor. Nero exchanged glances with his team. This either meant that the berserkers were defeated, or more realistically, that the other soldiers were dead.
"I can sense some strange aether fluctuations there," Remi pointed towards one of the corridors they had yet to explore. "It's subtle, but it definitely wasn't there before."
Nero nodded, and began to proceed where she pointed, stepping carefully to avoid making noise.
Halfway through, they encountered a puddle of blood, and a few bits of meat, but there was no body. Large, red footsteps mingled in with smaller ones continued down the passage where an even larger pool of blood was present.
A berserker corpse lay nearby, covered in numerous wounds, but they had yet to encounter a single human corpse.
Nero used Aether Pulse and discovered a few minor curses up ahead, and a few very significant signatures. The monsters were still alive.
They walked forward and entered into a circular hall with four large pillars dividing the room into inner and outer circles, with a half destroyed statue right in the middle of the room.
But instead of that, what attracted everyone's attention was the sight of four berserkers, huddled over a few corpses, eating them, bone included.
Remi, who had just begun to overcome her fear, once again began to tremble, though she wasn't the only one horrified. The sight of human guts being slurped up caused even Nero to grimace, let alone everyone else.
Nero raised his hand and pointed forward. They had the element of surprise, and he was going to use it to do as much damage as he could. Besides just the fact that they had to kill the berserkers to be safe themselves, this was by far the most intact room Nero had discovered on the third floor. The chances of finding artefacts here was the highest.
He manipulated his internal aether and channelled all his strength in his legs, launching himself forward like a cannonball. By now, after so much fighting, Nero had come somewhat familiar with the anatomy of the berserkers, so he aimed his spear to perfectly slide in between two of its ribs as it cut through the monster's back.
His strength, as well as his momentum, pushed his spear beyond his normal means, allowing it to cut through skin, meat and sinew, emerging from its chest. If the berserker were like a normal human, that would have cut through his heart as well as lung. But Nero did not depend on the creature having a heart of some kind.
Nero lifted his spear, and the berserker along with it, and flung it backwards, launching the berserker across the room screaming and bleeding. The other berserkers reacted, but he was more than ready to face them.
Maybe it was due to suppressing himself from snapping back at Arter, or maybe it was the disgust of watching humans being eaten, but Nero fought with much greater strength than before, holding back three berserkers himself while the others attacked the wounded one he had launched across the room.
Yet he was not the only one who was fighting harder. Red sand floated around Gabriel in thin streaks, as if crawling up an invisible string. He struggled to control them perfectly, but that did not stop him from sending his sand like a serpent, crawling into the berserker's wounds, its eyes, mouths and ears.
Harold was especially fierce with his slaps, throwing the berserker's hulking figure around like a toy.
Everyone was fighting better than they previously had, despite their exhaustion. Even without Nero there to hold the berserker down, they managed to overwhelm it with their teamwork. They were already getting used to fighting with each other, and a silent metamorphosis began to take place.
This team of teenagers drafted into war began to fight like a real firesquad, and it had only been a few hours since their mission started.