Dungeon Raider System-Chapter 625: Hollywood contract Part 3

"Before we leave, what's the protocol for whenever a city wall is breached?" Uriel did his best to ignore Medusa's clumsy movements.

"Whenever something like that happens I send Allegro to deal with the cryptids and the detectives for the cover up. The usual stories are in the lines of power outages, gas explosions or factory accidents, it depends mostly in the location." Lister explained.

"What do you mea cover up? Cryptids don't leave corpses behind." Medusa tilted her head trying to make sense of the governor's words.

"They do, just not their own. Some cryptids leave gory messes behind, but that's not what he meant. They kill the witnesses and victims alike." Uriel explained.

"But that is wrong." Medusa gasped.

"Not really, taking a few lives that would have been lost without our intervention anyway is a small price to pay for the rest of the citizens to continue living their happy lives." Lister casually rebuked.

"And it just so happens that poor people live in the outskirts while rich bastards enjoy their lives without the risk of waking up in the middle of the night just to find out nightmares are real." Uriel grunted, then composed himself. "But that's all going to change today. When your detectives spot flares inside the city, call for the hunter agency. We'll lure as many cryptids out as we can."

"This is senseless! If you do that the city might fall to panic instead of cryptids. You may think we're strong, but our economy is actually pretty fragile just like our hunters. We have a huge population of heavenly rank hunters who reached their ranks without hunting a single day in their lives. They simply bought their way into it." Lister's face distorted while Uriel's remained calm.

"Your city's holy rank hunter is so weak he got defeated by a battle worn heavenly rank hunter which means you can safely eradicate cryptids from the city without risking Allegro's energy signature from leaking outside.

You're also in dire need of flux orbs which you can't get without sending hunters outside, but you can't do that since you have no clue as to what is going on out there other than zeppelins are not coming anymore. Correct?" Uriel asked, directing Lister one of his signature cold glares.

"Is that how you figured out what was I going to ask you to do before I even showed up here?" Lister's eyes reflected Uriel's and they remained silent for an entire minute. Judging by the way they looked it seemed as though they were holding an entire conversation, though in reality they were just unraveling their own thoughts and trying to anticipate the other's movements.

"What's it gonna be? We don't have all day." Nika's disinterested voice cut through the dense atmosphere like it wasn't there in the first place.

To her it didn't matter if Lister and Uriel were having some sort of battle of the minds or if they were just flirting, she was too hangover to think straight and all she wanted to do was to get over with whatever she was tasked with and return to Uriel's shadow.

"Fine, I'll make sure the hunter agency responds instead of the detectives." Lister said through gritted teeth.

"Then we're off." Uriel replied with a cocky smile that hurt Lister more than a punch would. It was Uriel's way of repaying Lister for the aggressive way he approached and also to rub the fact that he didn't actually have a choice in the governor's face.

Uriel's group exited the airport and mixed in with the crowd seemingly walking without a sense of direction, but nothing could differ more from the truth. Dispatching all their hunters would have been the quickest way to set things in motion, but they needed to make it appear as though the wall was breached, not that the city was already under attack from the inside.

This meant that they needed to find a cryptid powerful enough to cause the right amount of fear to spread, one that could be easily defeated after serving its purpose without causing any casualties. Finding such a cryptid was bound to be difficult, more so at that time of day, but they all counted on Luna's nose for anything related to cryptids.

This didn't mean her actual sense of smell which, albeit powerful, was still mostly useless since most cryptids didn't emit a recognizable scent. Luna's knowledge about cryptids had sharpen her detection capabilities to the point of it being uncanny, especially since she remained an ascended and lacked anything remotely close to a mystical sense.

She relied simply on lore, rumors, sightings and most of all, her gut.

"Over there, in that building." Luna pointed her finger at an old looking building in the slums. There were long stripes of green moss crossing it vertically, poorly covered holes varying from the size of a fist to that of a refrigerator and no electricity. In short, it was plain looking and there was nothing out of the ordinary in comparison to any of the neighboring buildings.

"Are you sure it's the right place?" Medusa asked after failing to notice anything with neither her mystical sense or her enhanced senses.

"Absolutely, there's an entity rank cryptid dwelling inside." Luna nodded.

"How can you be sure it's an entity rank cryptid?" Nika asked knowing she wasn't lying, she just wanted to know what made her so sure it had to be an entity rank.

"Uhm... It's because there's no living being inside," Luna hated explaining what she considered to be obvious, but judging from the face both their friends made at her statement she realized it wasn't obvious for everyone. "When searching for cryptids you can't rely in your senses alone. Most of them leave behind clues you can follow and sometimes, the lack of clues is a clue in itself."

Nika furrowed her brows trying to understand what Luna meant by that, but the heavenly rank hangover prevented her from doing any thinking and decided to just nod in reply while inwardly regretting drinking so much last night.

The first one to enter the building was Medusa who didn't fit through the door due to how many gadgets she decided to bring along and was forced to leave some of them behind. The clanking sound made by the huge shield she dropped on the ground echoed inside the building and Uriel took the fact that no nosy neighbor showed up to see what happened as confirmation that the building was abandoned.

Right after entering the building Uriel felt a nudge on his ribs and turned to see both Luna and Nika looking at him as though they were expecting something from him.

"Fine, I'll ask. Medusa, why did you bring so much stuff?" Uriel spoke in a disgruntled voice.

"I saw how the detectives fought and even though they were weaklings, the fact that they held their ground against someone like you made me understand I wasn't putting any of Professor Fermi's teachings to good use."

"I see." Uriel nodded with a hand on his chin while reminding his last encounter with the eccentric professor. If he had a strong or a weak trait remained a mystery to Uriel, but the cold feeling of his robotic arms grasping him and leaving him completely defenseless despite his battle experience was impossible to forget.

"This is the first time I see an engineer carrying their entire workshop on their backs." Nika chuckled.

"Oops." Luna embraced her 'cute' cryptid doll as she stopped in her tracks making everyone turn towards them expecting her to reveal the identity of the cryptid they were currently hunting or maybe dreadful news about their safety.

"What is it?" Uriel fought the impulse to grab Luna by the shoulders and force her to speak. She was the most knowledgeable of them all in anything related to cryptids, but she was as annoying as her knowledge was bast.

"I forgot... uhm... my medkit." Luna spoke slowly.

"Don't you scare us like that! You almost gave me a heart attack! I thought we were in danger or something like that." Nika scolded Luna while Medusa limited herself to place her hand on her chest and heave a relieved sigh.

"Oh, but we are in danger." After her short statement she fell silent, but this time Uriel couldn't hold himself and shook her like a fruit bearing tree.

"What is it!? Don't leave us hanging! How can you be so smart and so annoying at the same time? Also, what kind of field medic forgets their medkit during an incursion but remembers to bring the ugliest doll for no reason at all!" Uriel shouted without stopping her torment.

"In my experience, smart and annoying is the same thing." Nika said picking her ear with her pinky finger annoyed by the loud sound of Uriel's voice.

"We are in danger because I don't have the means to heal any of us if we get injured." She explained, the only sign of her distress was her face looking the other way which allowed Uriel to see a small sign right behind her that read 'condemned' at the same time he received an ominous message from the system.