With Warfarin firmly in Kal'tsit's iron grip, the group moved away from the courtyard and stepped through the threshold of the Babel landship. Inside, the signs of conflict were even more glaring. The massive primary blast doors had been violently blown off their tracks, and the surrounding stone floor was severely cratered and deeply gouged.
Anyone with working eyes could tell a brutal siege had forced its way into the threshold. Unless a rogue real estate developer had suddenly materialized inside the fortress to initiate a violent, unauthorized remodeling project, there was simply no other logical explanation.
Staring at the heavy steel frame that had been torn away by raw, explosive Arts, the elite operators grew deeply quiet, their expressions hardening into somber lines as they quickened their pace. They wanted to see the internal structural damage for themselves.
They had all known that leaving the Babel flagship would leave the domestic garrison thin on numbers. But before their departure, the Doctor had explicitly promised that absolutely nothing would go sideways until their return.
Walking deeper into the main hallway, they bypassed several massive craters left behind by the blast that shattered the entryway. Jagged, twisted fragments of reinforced steel reinforcement plating lay scattered across the floor like shrapnel.
Yet, as Kal'tsit carefully scanned the debris, her clinical eye noted a distinct lack of any standard biological tissue. There wasn't even the telltale dark-red staining of dried blood on the walls. It was clear the Doctor had detected the infiltration long before the enemy reached the inner perimeter and had smoothly engineered a tactical evacuation to keep the core staff out of harm's way.
This detail thoroughly confirmed that the chaotic sequence was playing out exactly within the parameters of the Doctor's grand strategy. Though none of them quite understood what that cryptic tactician's long-term plan actually entailed, they kept moving forward to find out exactly how the defense had ended.
As they walked, Kal'tsit quietly pointed out various structural wings to Jeanne, introducing the sprawling, fortress-like tower. This place was their final line of defense against Theresis, but more importantly, it was the sanctuary that she, the Doctor, and Theresa had poured an immense amount of personal energy into building from scratch.
They had lived within these industrial walls for so long that it had genuinely become their home.
"To be frank, there aren't many state secrets hidden within these general sectors," Kal'tsit murmured, her tone even. "And strictly speaking, this structure shouldn't even be classified as a proper tower. As you can see, its physical height doesn't exactly fit the architectural definition..."
Kal'tsit didn't seem to be in any frantic rush. She maintained a steady, measured pace, giving Jeanne a practical tour of the layout to ensure the guest wouldn't accidentally take a wrong turn into an industrial hazard zone.
But as they drew closer to the central junction, Jeanne's nose twitched as a thick, overwhelming scent of blood drifted down the corridor. They were clearing approaching the exact zone where the garrison had intercepted the vanguard. Based on the sheer density of the odor, a regular person would have assumed a bloodbath of nightmarish proportions had occurred here.
Yet, Jeanne didn't jump to that conclusion. Amidst the heavy metallic tang of blood, her senses picked up a faint, deeply familiar presence cutting through the rot.
It was the distinct, unmistakable resonance of holy water.
A sudden realization dawned on her: the Doctor had opted for the absolute most efficient, devastating shortcut available, weaponizing the pure holy water to dissolve the invading Sarkaz forces.
Kal'tsit seemed to reach the exact same conclusion at the exact same moment, her boots coming to a sudden halt.
Directly ahead lay a series of horrific, utterly repulsive pools of sludge scattered across the deck. The biological remnants had degenerated into a state of advanced, slimy liquefaction. It looked so viscerally revolting that a standard observer would have immediately lost their stomach and found themselves unable to look at food for a week.
And this was after the engineering drones had already run a preliminary wash over the sector. The bulk of the dissolved tissue had already been flushed away, leaving only these stubborn remnants. If this foul substance had been coating the entire reception hall at the height of the breach, the sheer visual horror would have been beyond comprehension.
Fortunately, no one in the current party possessed a weak stomach. They had all witnessed far worse atrocities on the battlefields of Terra, so nobody lost their composure, though their faces turned quite grim.
"I'm curious," Kal'tsit said, her cold gaze shifting downward. "How did you manage to walk through this sector unbothered? And what exactly did you people do to turn the corridor into... this? Is this really the state of the floor after a cleanup?"
She looked directly at Warfarin, who was still trapped under her arm. The eccentric Vampire was twisting her face into an expression of profound disgust, looking as though she would actively prefer to run back outside and dig shallow dirt graves for the next century rather than stand in this hallway for another second.
"I already told you to just go grill the Doctor yourself!" Warfarin whined, her limbs flailing dramatically. "Why did you have to drag me into this biohazard zone?! What did I ever do to deserve this... I swear the blood I had for breakfast is about to come right back up!"
"So... you did sneak into the medical stores for a drink?" Kal'tsit's flat, unreadable voice cut through the air, causing the struggling Vampire to instantly freeze mid-twist.
"Look, I'm not in the mood to reprimand you," Kal'tsit continued, her voice oddly reasonable as she began to employ a rare tactic of emotional persuasion. "Given the intensity of a midnight siege, a minor celebration afterward isn't entirely outside the realm of acceptable behavior. However..."
The psychological shift worked like a charm. Warfarin took a sharp breath, instantly straightening up beside Kal'tsit and adopting the incredibly helpful demeanor of a professional tour guide.
"Well, it was basically that holy water stuff! The Doctor managed to rig the supply directly into the main overhead fire sprinkler system. After that, all we had to do was sit back, enjoy the show, and wait for those poor bastards to walk right into the trap! I gotta hand it to you, that holy water has a ridiculous amount of kick!"
As Warfarin rambled on, Jeanne forced herself past the initial wave of nausea to study the dissolved remnants on the floor. Upon closer inspection, she noticed the tissue appeared to have been hit by an instantaneous, high-temperature cellular collapse before rapidly turning into a liquid rot.
Yet, she had never seen standard holy water produce an effect quite this extreme. Jeanne tilted her head slightly, her brow furrowing as she pondered the anomaly.
Could this be an alternate reaction caused by their unique biology? she wondered. How many distinct variations does this substance even have? And is its specific lethality toward the Sarkaz really this absolute?
As Jeanne stared intently at the sludge, the surrounding elite operators began looking at her with a profound sense of awe. They hadn't expected a girl of her relatively young age to possess such an ironclad psychological tolerance for raw carnage.
Jeanne, however, was simply mapping this sight to her previous experiences. She recalled how Patriot's arm had withered to dust upon contact with the fluid, and how the Sanguinarch had been reduced to a squirming, slug-like mass of raw meat. Given how poorly those high-tier entities had handled the purification, it made perfect sense that these standard line soldiers had melted entirely.
Wait... if the reaction looks exactly like what happened to the Sanguinarch, does that mean the assassination unit Theresis sent was composed entirely of pure-blooded Blood Demons?
"Alright, since the immediate threat has been neutralized, everyone should head back to their respective quarters," Theresa announced, her gentle voice breaking the heavy silence and dispersing the crowd. "Let's clear out of this corridor and let the cleaning crews finish their work. It has been a long, exhausting journey for everyone."
The operators nodded gratefully, offering their swift goodbyes before dispersing toward the residential levels to wash off the road dust. Jeanne, Theresa, and Kal'tsit turned their attention toward the administrative wing, planning to stop by Kal'tsit's private office before heading down to confront the Doctor.
"What? Your office?" Warfarin's ears perked up, and the absolute second she heard the destination, she broke away with a level of physical speed that suggested she was about to sprout a pair of bat wings and fly. "Since you clearly don't need my medical expertise for an office visit, I'm going to be a responsible operator and go back to my digging!"
Watching the Blood Demon bolt down the hall like a startled rabbit, Kal'tsit's internal alarms immediately went off. Her mind flashed to a single, terrifying conclusion: The Doctor definitely pulled some unhinged stunt inside my workspace while I was gone. Her pace quickened dramatically, her boots clicking sharply against the floor as she stormed toward her office.
When she finally reached the administrative threshold, she froze. The structural wall that previously enclosed her private office was entirely gone.
The entire room sat wide open to the hallway, looking more like an open-air pavilion than a secure office. Kal'tsit's analytical eyes quickly traced the distinct scorch marks and structural warping left behind by a high-grade demolition charge. Fortunately, her office layout was massive, meaning the primary blast radius hadn't managed to compromise the rear archives or her private quarters, leaving the inner rooms merely dusty and cluttered.
"I need to clear this—oh! Dr. Kal'tsit! You're back!"
A small Cautus girl with long brown ears came bouncing out from behind a stack of damaged files, her movements halting instantly as she caught sight of the group.
This must be little Amiya, Jeanne realized silently, watching the young girl quickly scramble to hide a dusty cleaning rag behind her back. The child's face was a mask of pure, unadulterated panic.
The moment Kal'tsit saw little Amiya emerging from the ruins of her office, a catastrophic sense of dread filled her chest. Her face darkened into a terrifying shade of iron-blue as she stepped over the threshold.
Little Amiya clamped her hands tightly over her large rabbit ears, her face pale with worry as she began to whisper a frantic, desperate prayer under her breath:
"I did everything I could... Doctor, you're entirely on your own now. May the stars have mercy on your soul!"
"I have a brief, highly urgent personal matter to attend to. Jeanne, please give me a moment," Kal'tsit said, her voice dropping into a register so frozen it could have solidified nitrogen. She turned on her heel and marched out of the room, her gaze radiating a literal, tangible aura of pure homicidal intent.
As Kal'tsit stormed down the corridor to hunt her prey, Jeanne stepped into the ruined office and surveyed the remaining clutter. Her eyes immediately locked onto a makeshift desk that had clearly been dragged in from a storage closet.
Resting right in the center of the wood was a massive collection of glass specimen jars, each one filled to the brim with the foul, liquefied Vampire flesh they had seen in the hallway.
And directly in front of those disgusting jars, framed in a neat, pristine border, sat a large, black-and-white memorial photograph of a stern-faced Kal'tsit.