The encampment transformed over the next four days. What had once been a chaotic mess of supplies and hastily arranged vehicles was now beginning to resemble a functional base of operations.
Tents had been erected in neat rows, forming designated zones for rest, medical care, and storage. Portable floodlights bathed the ruins in a stark white glow, their beams cutting through the perpetual gloom that clung to the underground city.
If one of the members bothered to remove their mask, they would smell the scent of damp stone and rust, which was now joined by the less ominous smells of fuel, sweat, and freshly cooked rations from the makeshift mess area. Engineers and technicians bustled about, fine-tuning the sensors, turrets, and communication relays that had been painstakingly set up.
The once-dysfunctional signal local network was finally beginning to stabilize—though it still suffered from occasional disruptions due to the strange electromagnetic interference in the area.
It had been a real struggle to get to this point. The base wasn't just a meeting point for the crew, it was a powder keg waiting to explode. The mixture of high ranking mercenaries, engineers, and Family retainers made for an unstable cocktail of egos and short tempers. The retainers assigned as security officers had their hands full breaking up brewing conflicts as it hadn't taken long for grudges and old rivalries to flare up.
A brawl had already broken out near the eastern barricade on the first day, sparked by a simple argument over tent space between the Shadow Sisters and the Black Vipers. By the time the security retainers intervened, the fighters had drawn knives, and one man already had cut marks on his arm. He was currently still in the makeshift med tent, cursing at the field medic who was resealing his wounds with a portable auto-stitcher.
It wasn't the only dispute that had nearly come to blows in this short period of time. Over by the vehicle bay, a mercenary team and some retainers had squared up against each other, heated words exchanged before a senior member of Team Alpha had broken it up.
To keep the camp from descending into total anarchy, Commander Kellen made a decisive call.
"Team Beta, you're up," she ordered on the third day.
The squad—consisting of a mix of veteran scouts and combat specialists—had been assigned to conduct a preliminary sweep of the ruins some distance beyond the encampment's boundaries. Their goal was simple: identify any immediate threats, map potential routes for further exploration, and, if possible, recover anything of value.
Since the base was coming together nicely, there was no longer room for idle hands or flaring tempers. That was why she made the decision to send out Team Beta on a scouting run—to get the restless mercenaries out into the field and bring back some useful intelligence.
With a nod, Team Beta's leader acknowledged the order. Within minutes, their jeeps were loaded with supplies, their weapons double-checked, and their engines rumbled as they set off into the ruins.
As time passed, the atmosphere within the camp changed. The earlier restlessness had settled somewhat as the mercenaries, technicians, and engineers found ways to occupy themselves.
Some had been assigned to reinforce the barricades, welding metal plates together to form sturdier defenses. Others were running final diagnostics on the sentry turrets, making sure their targeting systems wouldn't suddenly malfunction at the worst possible moment.
Still, despite the forced productivity, an underlying unease remained. The ruins weren't just an ordinary abandoned site—they felt wrong. The deeper one looked into the crumbling structures beyond the encampment, the more unsettling the details became.
Some buildings appeared partially melted rather than collapsed, as if exposed to extreme heat or corrosive energy. Other structures bore deep gashes along their walls—marks that looked eerily like claw strikes, though nothing in official records suggested what could have caused them.
It was during this uncertain calm that Team Beta returned.
The watch shift had begun and the engineers had completed their adjustments to the base's perimeter defenses. Suddenly, a faint but unmistakable rumble reverberated through the ancient underground ruins.
Engines.
Heads turned, conversations paused, and those off-duty instinctively reached for their weapons.
The approaching vehicles came into view—three rugged jeeps, their armored exteriors battered and streaked with fresh claw marks. Dust clung to their tires, trailing behind them like a spectral haze. The sound of the engines reverberated off the cavern walls as they rolled into the staging area.
When the first vehicle came to a halt, the driver—a wiry man with a bandana wrapped around his head—exhaled sharply and jerked the gearshift into park. He glanced over at his squad leader as he adjusted his mask. "That was a hell of a ride."
The second jeep pulled up beside the first, its passenger-side door swinging open before the engine had fully died. A merc clad in light combat armor jumped out, rolling his shoulder with a grimace. "I think that last one almost cracked my ribs," he muttered, wincing.
The entire camp had gathered by now, drawn by the sight of the returning squad—and more importantly, what they had brought with them.
Dragged behind the second jeep were the massive, grotesque corpses of two mutated beasts.
One was a hulking quadrupedal beast with a twisted, skeletal frame. Its hide, though partially flayed, was unnaturally tough, thick with sinewy layers of flesh that shimmered with an almost metallic sheen. The other was a serpentine creature, its elongated body riddled with deep, gaping wounds. Even in death, its eyes—milky white and bulging—seemed to glare at the gathered crowd.
Gasps and murmurs spread through the crowd.
Men and women who had been bickering moments ago now stood side by side, staring at the monstrous remains with something between horror and fascination. Even the most hardened mercenaries, those who had fought in countless battles, moved closer to see the haul that had been brought over.
One of the younger mercenaries exhaled sharply. "Shit. Those things were out there?"
"More of them most likely still out there," one of Team Beta's men muttered as he climbed out of the third vehicle, his armor scratched and smeared with dark ichor. "These two were just the ones unlucky enough to pick a fight with us."
Commander Kellen, who had been standing near the front of the crowd, stepped forward, her sharp gaze sweeping over the battered squad before settling on the mutated beasts. She studied them for a moment before nodding.
"We'll discuss this properly inside." She turned toward the gathered personnel. "Everyone, meeting in five minutes. I want every squad captain and team leader present."
The room was packed with the highest-ranking members of the various teams. Rion and Vance stood near the back, observing quietly as Kellen took her place at the head of the gathering.
Seated around her were key personnel: leaders of the scouting teams, engineers responsible for equipment maintenance, and the retainers overseeing the security operations.
A large, makeshift table in the center of the tent was covered in hastily drawn maps, rough sketches of the ruins based on the limited scans they had managed to complete, various sections marked with preliminary notes and hazard warnings.
When everyone had settled in, Kellen nodded toward the leader of Team Beta—a surprisingly handsome middle aged man. "Report."
The man, known as Darnell, exhaled and gestured toward a portable projector, which flickered to life, displaying blurry drone footage from their excursion.
"We started southwest," Darnell began, his voice hoarse. "Initial readings suggested stable ground, so we pushed forward. Found some tire tracks which led us to some intact structures, but most of them were stripped clean—either by time or by Adli's crew who had come before us."
Darnell clicked a button on the projector's remote, and the footage shifted. The grainy image showed the team's jeeps maneuvering between collapsed buildings, their headlights sweeping across the crumbling remains of what must have once been a research sector.
The structures were eerily symmetrical, their walls marked with faded symbols and unreadable text. A few places still bore the remnants of signs, but whatever language they had been written in had long since faded.
"We encountered movement within some of the larger structures," he continued, adjusting the display to zoom in on one of the buildings. "We didn't want to risk a firefight in case it was one of Adli's troops so we went around them."
Kellen gave a short nod, motioning for him to continue.
Darnell switched slides, and the next image displayed what looked like a torn-up road. Deep gouges marred the asphalt, and large chunks of concrete were missing as if something massive had torn through it. A faint but undeniable trail of clawed footprints led deeper into the city.
"That's where we ran into trouble," he said. "We followed the trail, hoping to get an idea of what made those marks. Turns out we didn't have to look far."
The next clip showed a shaky, first-person view from one of the squad members' helmet cams. The camera panned over a dark alley, then snapped toward movement—just in time to capture the hulking form of one of the creatures they had dragged back to camp.
A quadrupedal monster lunged from the shadows, its elongated limbs covered in chitinous armor. Its unnatural speed made the footage blur as the squad scrambled for cover. The screen filled with muzzle flashes as gunfire erupted, illuminating the beast's reflective hide.
Even with sustained fire, the creature's wounds rapidly closed up. It barreled through one of the jeeps, tearing a deep gash across its armored plating before the squad managed to bring it down with concentrated armor-piercing rounds.
"The first one went down with minimal effort," Darnell continued, his tone grim. "But we barely had time to catch our breath before the second one showed up."
The footage cut to another perspective—this time capturing the massive serpentine creature slithering down from the ruins above. Its pale, bulbous eyes seemed to glow in the dim light, and its body, riddled with old scars, twisted unnaturally as it closed the distance.
The squad had no choice but to fight again, their bullets tearing into the beast's thick flesh. Like the first creature they had faced, this one possessed an unnerving ability to regenerate at an alarming rate. However, unlike its predecessor, which had relied solely on raw, brute force, this serpentine beast exuded an eerie, almost otherworldly presence. Its movements were calculated, its strikes precise, and its glowing eyes seemed to gleam with a chilling awareness.
At certain moments during the chaotic battle, the beast displayed flashes of intelligence—far beyond what any mutated creature should possess. It would anticipate their tactics, dodge ambushes, and even exploit weaknesses in their formation.
"We managed to take it down, but something was off about it," Darnell admitted, rubbing his temples. "Even after it died, there was this... pressure. Like there was something else still watching."
"Aren't the beasts here supposed to have been cutoff for over a century?" mercenary captain Kessler suddenly asked, expressing the bewilderment of much of the people present in the room. "How come they are still alive and kicking?"
"That's something for the biologists to explain." Darnell nodded to the biologists who patiently remained at their seats. "All we know is that their fast regeneration made it more of a hassle to down both beasts. We are lucky to not have lost any men during the fight."
All the people around shuddered at those words. They'd not even started the mission proper and were already on the verge of losing personnel.
"This looks troublesome." Kellen said as she turned toward the team of biologists. "Doctor Faina, is there anything you can tell us about these mutated beasts?"
An older man with graying hair and a lined face stood up from his seat. He adjusted his glasses before speaking.
"Based on the footage and physical samples, I'd say the quadrupedal beast is a Marrow Hound, a predator adapted for hunting in environments with extreme scarcity."
He gestured toward the massive, skeletal creature. "The exposed bone plating isn't just for protection. It serves as an external storage system for minerals and nutrients, allowing it to survive prolonged periods of starvation. It's likely been in hibernation, waking only when it detected movement in its hunting grounds."
The murmurs in the room grew louder at that. A mutated beast that could endure over a century in near-starvation? That was unnatural.
The biologist's voice dropped as he examined the mangled remains of the second creature.
"Regarding this one," he said, gesturing towards the serpent, "it's a Surubian Serpent. The troubling part is that both this serpent and the hound are classified as Minion-class mutated beasts. Since both exhibited enhanced regeneration that made them trouble for an elite team like yours, in addition to the high level of intelligence that you say the serpent displayed, all those things paints a concerning picture to say the least."
One of the mercenaries exhaled sharply. "So, these things have just been down here, stewing in the dark, waiting for something to stumble into their territory?"
"More likely, they were kept here," the biologist corrected, his voice uneasy. "This place was once a research city, right? What if these creatures weren't just survivors of whatever happened here—but remnants of an experiment gone wrong?"