Nero narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the apartment. Everything was still, and the sound he heard was barely audible. The absence of the fire alarm, which had been so deafeningly loud, somehow made the quiet even more deafening. But it was exactly because of these reasons that the sound had been so prominent.
Without lowering his guard Nero made his way to the source: a closet in one of the rooms. He was fairly certain that one of the vine creatures would not be hiding, but he was not going to take a chance.
Nero raised his knife, ready to strike, before abruptly opening the door. But what waited for him was not a vine creature, but a pale, frightened looking boy hiding among hanging clothes. He was frozen stiff, and hadn't even reacted to the opening door.
Nero checked him for wounds, but he was unharmed. The kid was, however, in shock. Nero tried moving him to get him to respond, but his mind seemed to be blank.That left Nero with only one option.
He checked if his Muted self was still in effect, before slapping the kid across the face. It was not the most polite way, but it did the trick as the stinging sensation across his face woke the kid from his stupor.
Unfortunately for Nero, the next thing the kid did was open his mouth and wail loudly. Startled by the idiocy of the kid, Nero covered his mouth and said, "if you attract any of the creatures, I'll leave you here for them."
The threat worked, as the kid suddenly choked trying to suppress his voice.
"Do you know what happened? Where the creatures went?" Nero asked, though he had no hope for an answer.
Instead of answering, the kid vigorously shook his head, stating that he had no idea.
Nero considered his options for a moment, but decided he did not want to waste time escorting just a single person back.
"I'm going to continue searching the building. You can follow me, or continue to stay here, but if you follow me, you obey my orders, understand?"
"Don't leave me!" the kid squeaked desperately, trying his best to keep his voice low.
"Then use this card and follow me," Nero said, handing him Muted self. He saw no hope in the kid actually trying to stay silent. Clearly he was not built for combat situations.
The kid did not even hesitate and grabbed the card, nearly crumpling it under his tight grip as he used it. Suppressing his irritation, Nero took back the card and gestured at the kid to follow behind him.
Damaging the card would ruin its durability, reducing the number of times it could be used. But there was no point in crying over spilt milk.
Nero searched the rest of the apartments, but found no one so he moved to the staircase. If the hallway was a gruesome mess, then the stair hall was even worse. Although there were still no bodies on the ground, chunks of meat and cut vine lay on the floor, leaving it up to the imagination to wonder just what horrors took place here.
But amongst the drying blood, Nero could see signs of things being dragged up the stairs.
"I'm going to go up to search," Nero whispered to the trembling boy. "You can go down yourself if you want to escape."
"No, no, let's get out of here together! Please!" the boy pleaded, somehow becoming even more pale at the thought of leaving alone.
Nero didn't bother explaining and just shook his head. It was too quiet, not just inside the building, but outside it as well. Something unusual was definitely going on, and he wasn't exactly sure going outside was any better than staying in the building.
Before exiting his apartment, he had blocked the door to his room, so hopefully Gabriel would remain undisturbed. That's the best he could hope for considering he had no idea what was going on.
Slowly, he made his way up the stairs, realising that somehow the lights were getting even dimmer! He made a mental note to procure a card for some kind of night vision. He had checked Maxim's card shop last time, but discovered nothing like it available in 0 star cards.
He reached the second floor and peeked into the corridor, but discovered that it was empty as well, though the fighting here was clearly more desperate. Not only was there a pool of blood covering the floor, broken doors covered the hall, and there were countless dents on the walls.
Nero was about to step in when he felt something tug his shirt. He turned back to the sight of the boy trembling visibly, and pointing up as if he saw something. He looked up, ready to face danger, but saw nothing. The stairs were empty.
"There's something on the wall," he whispered.
But before Nero could look, as if attracted by his voice something moved in the darkness. The particular 'swish' sound was all too familiar to Nero, as it was the sound of a spear cutting through the air.
Acting on instinct, he lit his blade on fire and swung towards the sound. That's when he saw it. A thick, shrap vine darted towards the trembling boy ready to grab its prey.
But Nero had reacted quick enough, and though he was not able to cut through the vine, he managed to knock it aside.
The situation was far from salvation, however, as the blue flame allowed him to finally see something he had missed in the deep shadows of the stair hall. An extensive network of creeper vines were growing on the underside of the stairs above them, wrapped tightly around the walls.
There were large clusters in many sections, and Nero did not need to observe their shape or odd protruding design to know that the students' bodies were probably under them.
How had this grown so quickly?
But he didn't have time to wonder as he grabbed the kid and immediately pulled him into the next hallway. But the stillness was already broken, and they had attracted the attention of the vines. A few more stabbed after them, but the vines could not manoeuvre well, and besides a quick thrust, they had no other prominent weapon.
The creeper network seemed to be concentrated on the upper floors, and had not extended here yet so the hallway provided them a respite, but Nero did not think for a moment that they had escaped pursuit.
He ran through the hall, looking through the various rooms for anything he could use. If he could not find anything useful, then he could just use the emergency escape which was on the other side of the building to go back down.
"Tu- turn off the fire, they're attracted to aether," the kid said, unable to keep his voice down in a panic.
The information clicked in Nero's mind, and he suddenly made sense of a few things he noticed earlier. Gabriel had lost control of his aether. The emergency lights were dimming much quicker than normal, which meant the batteries were being drained quickly. The plant's growth was abnormally fast. It only made sense then that they used aether to grow, and were attracted to it.
The main question was… even Nero had not realised this since he was too caught up with other things, how had the kid? It wasn't that Nero thought himself an unsurpassed genius, but the kid was a nervous wreck. Did he know what kind of vines they were? Otherwise, Nero found it difficult to imagine how he could make such an observation in his state.
He turned off his flame, drowning the two in darkness, and asked in a hushed tone, "how can you tell they're attracted to aether?"
"I- I can feel others emotions," he said, almost sobbing. "It- it's my- my innate ability. There's so much- much pain, and fear…" he said stuttering.
Nero suddenly stopped and pulled the kid into a room alongside himself. He used the Darkness card to spread the darkness in the hall outside, obscuring the room they entered and a few others.
After scanning the room once and ensuring there were no issues, Nero pulled the two of them into one of the rooms and closed the door.
He was not hiding. Instead, he needed to check a few things. The kid's innate ability gave him an idea.
"How effective is your ability? Can you track the vines using their emotions? Wait, do plants even have emotions?"
"Th- they do. They're hungry… and angry. Bu- but I can't- can't track them, there's too- too many emotions. I- I… I…"
He was having trouble speaking, and that would have normally annoyed Nero, but right now he only gave the kid an understanding look. It wasn't that the kid was a coward, but if he could feel all the other emotions around himself, then it was no wonder he got overwhelmed. He could not even imagine the deluge of fear and panic that must have hit him… must still be hitting him.
But Nero needed him to focus. His innate ability was incredibly useful!