The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 121 - The Pit Roars // The Heart Does Not

Maeve ran until her lungs burned like bellows and the crowd became a storm of elbows and clanging metal. It wasn’t easy running through the Furnace Warrens. The market swallowed heat and spat it back hotter, while feet, carts, and shouts all mashed into one noisy, metallic roar. She never had a problem running around in Blightmarch because of how perpetually cool it was, but she was already sweating bricks after three minutes.

Still she kept her head down and her briefcase clenched, following the man in a blacksmith’s apron slipping between stalls and weaving around pillars like he had something to hide.

The closer she got, the more she noticed he was thinner than she’d thought—more hollow-cheeked than haggard, shoulders bowed as if he were carrying someone else’s weight. Typical symptoms of being host to a Myrmur. He was, however, moving faster than she expected a sick man could, slipping through gaps and vanishing into alleys so quickly she could barely keep up.

But once she rounded a final corner and followed him into a dark, narrow alley, she drew in a breath before he could duck into a doorway.

“Mister!” she shouted. “Stop! I’m an Exorcist, and you have a Myrmur inside you! Please stay where you are and—”

The man whipped his head around, panicked, and immediately sprinted through the doorway.

… Right.

This isn’t Blightmarch.

In Blightmarch, a shout like that would’ve been enough. The people knew the clinic, knew Maeve, and knew the relative ‘gentleness’ with which Gael removed Myrmurs. Here, nobody knew her. Here, the local Exorcists were probably trained to follow their decree: ‘The curses do not spare, and neither do we’. They’d kill any Myrmur Hosts they came upon without question, so it was optimistic—and perhaps foolish—of her to think the man would stop for her.

She ran after the man, ducked into the dark hallway, and yanked her ankle chain as she did with the quick one-one-two hard tug Gael should feel and recognize. It was the call-sign that she’d found a Myrmur Host and needed his presence.

Where are you, Raven?

I need you here!

The hallway swallowed sound. It was narrow and grim-streaked, but the light at the far end was bright as a wound. The man was already sprinting full speed ahead towards it, and while she hollered once more— “Stop! I won’t hurt you!”—the plea just dissolved against stone and metal. He kept going.

No choice then.

She whipped her briefcase into its umbrella form, and then she pointed the tip behind her, discharging a thick, pressurized jet of blood at her feet. The recoil immediately kicked her forward, and she closed the distance with a hand out, ready to grab the back of his head and slam him into the ground.

But he whirled as she neared him, and metal unfurled under his sleeve. A huge hammer with joints like a folding gate. He spun, gripped it with both hands, and swung the hammer with the blunt, mechanical force of a smith’s strike.

Her eyes widened.

She met the hammer with the umbrella’s shaft, and steel struck steel as the corridor lit with a raw, white clang. Then she quickly danced back the length of the hallway to dodge as the man began a wild, desperate flurry: a step left to dodge a wayward swing, a step under to duck under a horizontal swipe, and she jabbed him in the ribs with her umbrella as he lost his balance for a second. The man groaned and staggered back. His swings were slow and terrible, and there was nothing practiced or elegant about it. He was just trying to swat her away.

But her blows were small and precise as well, because she was careful not to break him.

… When’s the Myrmur showing up?

Honestly, she’d expected the Myrmur to have manifested by this point. They weren't usually one to stand by and do nothing while watching their Host get beat up, but the man, while panting hard for breath, stayed stubbornly whole. Unnaturally whole. That made her frown as she took a step back cautiously—and when she stepped in again to jab his ribs one more time, just to provoke the Myrmur inside him a little more, something went crack underneath his blacksmith’s apron.

As she lunged in, the chitin plates beneath his clothes—ones she hadn’t seen or noticed—fractured outwards, and they expelled a wave of black, toxic oil.

It hit the air and spat against her dress. Heat kissed the fabric, and the fibers smoked where the oil struck. A white-hot sting lanced her thigh and she hissed, stumbling back, pressing one palm to her skin.

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Ow!

This is…

She raised her head and glared at him as he turned around and limped away, trying to reach the light at the end of the hallway.

[Identification Complete]

[Name: Arnell Runnel]

[Grade: A-Rank Wretch-Class]

[Advanced Class: Oil Beetle]

[Passive Mutation: Oil-Joint Vesicles]

[Brief Description: The user has developed chitin plates across key locations on their body, inheriting fifty percent of their toughness level, and all movement generates bioarcanic oils within the user’s chitin plates]

[Swarmblood Art: Caustic Oil]

[Brief Description: The user can concentrate bioarcanic essence into their chitin plates, rupturing them and releasing the built-up bioarcanic oils within. The bioarcanic oils are highly corrosive, and the ruptured chitin plates must be regenerated before the Art can be used again]

[Brief Description:

[Aura: ~900 BeS]

[Strength: ~4, Speed: ~3, Toughness: ~4, Dexterity: ~5, Perception: ~2]

He’s got an Advanced Oil Beetle Class?

And here I’d pegged him for just another normal man.

That Art was similar to the Standard Wasp Class’ Art as well, which meant—for the sake of her dress—she’d rather not fight him head-on again, even if he’d already ruptured the chitin plates on his torso with that one burst.

I don’t wanna do this, but…

She steadied, cracked her neck, and raised her umbrella like a rifle. She’d been told—by most of the deranged Myrmur Hosts she’d subdued over the past year and a half—that her non-toxic blood cannons were still painful, though very effective, so she typically reserved it only for truly deranged Myrmur Hosts who’d hurt other people if she couldn’t take them down quickly enough.

Today, she was just a bit too hot and a bit too irritated already to care so much about the painful part.

The needles on Mistrender’s handle sucked out her blood from her palm, drew it up the shaft, and then she thumbed the button on the handle to fire a narrow and controlled pillar of blood. The shot whistled almost as fast as a bullet, and it hit the man’s back like a thrown weight, folding him forward on his face with a loud ‘oomph’.

… Sorry.

That does look like it hurts.

While the man tried weakly to push himself up onto his elbows—failing a few times miserably—she walked forward and knelt beside him slowly, seizing the back of his collar and pressing him flat against the ground. Firm, with even pressure, but not cruel. The man had done no wrong… probably.

“Please, please, don’t kill me,” the man begged. “I swear I’ll get my—”

“Relax,” she breathed. “Just breathe. Stay as calm as you can. I’m not here to hurt you. In fact, my partner can help you by removing the Myrmur without killing you, so let’s just stay here and wait for him to…”

Her words thinned as her eyes lifted, checking out where they’d emerged at the end of the hallway.

The two of them were atop a long metal gallery—stadium seats circling a massive underground fighting pit at the bottom of the arena. Hundreds of spectators packed the metal benches around the ring, shouting themselves hoarse over the roar of furnaces somewhere above the ceiling, while below—in the pit—two fighters in heavy steel plating were already locked in brutal, slamming into each other with their hammering weight.

Their weapons were as thick as boiler-pipes, but despite how loud the sounds of metal cracking against metal were, the commentators’ voices were even louder.

“The Hamstringer leads with a full train-stopper swing! Will he follow with a second? Ladies, gentlemen, pray to whatever gods you have—”

“Look at this form, look at this glory! The Anvil of Ironwych strikes again!”

Maeve blinked once. Twice.

Banners sagged overhead, proclaiming the arena:

‘THE BELLOWING PIT, WHERE MEN ARE FORGED AND MEN ARE BROKEN’

And the crowd roared as one of the fighters in the pit was punched so hard his helmet flew clean off. He hit the metal floor with a ringing thunk and didn’t move. The other man raised both arms like a war-bell, basking in the crowd’s applause.

Maeve swallowed.

This was… a lot.

As she steadied her grip, the man beneath her suddenly jerked—and she tightened her hold, ready to slam him back down.

But instead of attacking her, he fumbled into his apron, pulled out a small syringe, and jammed it into his own neck with a sharp thrust.

“Hey!” she snapped, alarmed. “My partner’s coming real soon, so just stay there and don’t—”

“I’m not… I’m not—” the man gasped, breathing in short, ragged clutches. “It’s… just a stabilizer… see? See? I’m not trying to fight, just… keeping it down.”

Maeve tilted her head.

“It’s just a stabilizer,” the man continued rasping, voice shaking. “I’m following the rules now, right? I-It won’t manifest, so your vision isn’t red anymore, right? Please just—just let me go. Please. I don’t wanna die.”

… And Maeve tilted her head the other way, utterly befuddled.

Wretch-Class Myrmurs typically manifested in the form of whatever would keep their Hosts most oblivious to the fact that they were parasites. For Miss Alba, that was an emerald dragonfly trying its best to mimic her dead husband. For Evelyn, that was shrill cicadas pretending to be her dead hounds. Furthermore, they only manifested when they had to defend their Hosts—and by extension, themselves—from people like Exorcists and Mortifera Enforcers. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even bother coming out.

But this man was already pinned beneath her hand, and she could kill him at any time—so why wasn’t the Myrmur coming out?

How is this possible?

What’s going on in Ironwych?