It took K several minutes to reach the biggest building on the factory premises, which was his target. Plaster was falling off from the walls with several meters long pieces on the ground, up to several meters away from the building, next to a makeshift fence with notice boards informing about undergoing demolition. Many windows were devastated and the doors were no longer in any shape to be closed.
K easily jumped through the fence and immediately started looking for any suspicious traces. Unfortunately, as it was quite usual situation in his line of work and even more so in recent cases he worked on, most of prints were already blurred to the point of not being useful at all. Because of that, he spent more time than expected, walking around the square in front of the building until a particular piece of the ground caught his eye with visibly different color than the rest of the soil had. He crouched, took a handful of the sand and started rubbing against his skin until a reddish color surfaced. Then, K raised hands to his nose and smelled it - a scent he knew better than he wanted to, a smell of blood. This ground for sure absorbed a plenty of human blood. It seemed that no demon was wounded, not here at least.
Suddenly, his ears picked up a slight noise. Instinctively, he reached out for one of his guns and aimed at the direction, from which this suspicious sound originated.
"Get lost, if you value your lives!" he said loud enough to be heard from a distance "There are better places for dates than here, right?"
A teenage couple emerged from behind the bushes, running towards the closest gate. They ran withot a word, both fixing their clothes on the way.
"Looks like you interrupted something!" he could hear Asha's laughter in his head "Couldn't you just leave them alone?"
"I doubt anyone would've wanted to die during..."
He interruped suddenly and walked several steps towards the building's entrance - these slipped his vision somehow, but there were barely noticeable footprints there. All these had the same pattern, as in some kind of work or special use boots. At the same time, still no tracers suggesting demons' presence. It was either that they were apt at concealing their identity or simpley capable of not leaving the traces at all. Such details allowed to narrow down the range of potential culprits, though it was still quite wide with several dozens of demon types K was aware of. After wall, similarly as it was for Earth, Garth's fauna was quite plentiful despite all of the damage that world received.
K was not hiding the gun he previously took out - when he previously scared away the teenager couple, the weapon was locked, but right now, he no longer felt it was a good idea, so prepared it to fire at any time. He also checked and readied other weapons at his disposal, just to be sure.
Keeping the gun ready, he started getting closer to the entrance. About five meters from it, K focused his full conciousness on his eyes. Moments later, he was able to see things different than before.
It was one of the things he was able to do on subconscious level, even though he could not recall how and when he learned this skill. However, K still knew how it worked and for what it could be used. This particular ability was enabling him to notice what was invisible to the regular eye - living creatures were appearing in a from of clouds or flames of different colors, regardless of whether there was a wall or any obstacle in the way. The reach of this skill could go from several dozen meters up to about a kilometer of distance, depending on the number of tartgets and the area he wanted to see. Moreover, for some reason, he was able to determine if the being he sees is planning to attack him, as if being aware of whether it was aggressive, neutral or friendly.
This special ability of his, with many advantages, had also disadvantages that made him wary of when to use it. Firstly, it had a kind of a time limit since it was putting quite a strain on his body, thus it was important to monitor the duration for which it is kept active. Secondly, K needed to adjust the way he sees the world around, which - on one hand - could help him pinpoint and individual from a distance, but - on the other - different living beings would become invisible to him, such as those being closeby if he focused on the maximum distance he could monitor. That is why K intended to quickly scan the closest area and stop using the skill immediately after.
Soil that absorbed human blood was appearing in a different color, the same color he could also see in numerous spots inside the building. Then again, he had no intention of immediately running inside. Instead, K was moving his sight dowards various different rooms located there, hoping to notice something important. And he did, and more than he in fact wanted to see. There were numerous "clouds" inside, several or maybe a doen, different ones mixing with each other, making it hard to distinguish and properly count the number of potential adversaries. In the end, he stopped making any further attempts to count and released the ability.
"Of course, I shouldn't have hoped for an easy job" he sighed "They are sitting so tightly in there that it's hard to see properly."
"I wonder what's happening in there" Asha spoke to K "Aura intensity is high, but I still don't feel anything extremely powerful individually. Rather than that, it appears to be a bigger group."
"Well, I'm not sure if I should be happy about it. Sometimes, it's easier to fight a single strong opponent that thirty average ones."
He was not happy about it at all. Sure, weaker demons are easy to beat, but being here by himself, he could only fight a limited number of opponents at the same time effecitvely. Of course, there was still an option to back off, yet it was not his style. Fortunately, smaller rooms could potentially work as an advantage and even up the grounds.
Before getting in, he reached for his phone, which barely managed to pick up a range. Despite bad range, he somehow managed to send SMS to Seika, saying "Looks like I will be a bit late today".
After walking inside, K almost puked due to foul smell surrounding him all of a sudden. In such cases, having good senses as he had was not helping and could be treated as a disadvanted. Some remains must have been in here for quite a long while, definitely not less than several days. No matter the origin, rotten meat always smelled terribly.
K had no idea what happened in here and the state of corpses made it hard to determine if these shambles were a result of a fight between humans and demons or maybe someone or something was simply hunting in the area and bringing all the bodies here, regardless of age and origin. Having sid that, there was no doubt when it comes to one thing - it was because of these corpses that K felt such a disruption of aura, the energy every living organism had, and which he could see in different colors and shape owing to his special ability. The energy he was observing here was gray, one K particularly considered to be unpleasant, and mixed with aura of demons present in the area, making it hard for him to take advantage of the skill bound to his eyes.
In such circumstances, he continued moving forward, carefully watching for his steps to not cause noise. While walking, he was also wondering why the owner did not mention what could be found inside the building - was it intentional or has no one checked the place in a while? Or maybe the man in charge was not fully aware of the situation? Something smelled badly here, yet it was not about the rotting flesh. After all, starting a demolition without checking the building beforehand was not something he would have expected.
Either way, curiosity and his goal were completely different matters, so he ultimately decided not to dwell on this topic for now, and just focus on getting the job done, for which keeping his cool was a key.
With all of these thoughts in the back of his head, K was passing subsequent dismembered bodies and splatters of dried blood, both red and black in color. In several spots, there were symbols on the walls painted with blood. Owing to a vague recollection of some past knowledge, he was able to recognize the language of Garth - not like he was fully able to decipher absolutely everything using blurred images he had in his head, yet still K was confident about the origin of this writing and most likely function it had.
His deduction, if it proved correct, meant that he most likely misjudged the owner of this facility - it appeared that a barrier was erreced, making it impossible for regular people to notice what was inside the building. Only a strong aura K possessed caused this demon magic to be weakened, therefore he could see all the bodies and seals without a problem. All those people must have entered this dangerous ground completely unaware. However, now that he understood the workings of this place, K had some additional questions: was it supposed to be some kind of hunting grounds or a trap? Or amybe it had some different purpose he could not think of?
Whatever it was, K could tell what kind of magic it was, yet lacked knowledge of how exactly it worked. He knew its main purpose was creating a barrier, but could not exclude a possibility of additional effects being applied. Therefore, because K preferred to be safe than sorry, he started destroying the symbols on the wall, ultimately breaking the seals.
"K. I don't know if it's a good expression to use in my case, but I feel unwell" Asha informed him "If I had a way of doing it, I would have puked by now."
A slight smile appeared on the man's face.
"A puking sword, huh? That sure sounds amusing."
Yet, he regained a serious tone within seconds. In the end, the way Asha said that suggested something disturbing is happening.
"You are not talking about the scent, I suppose?"
"I wish that was our biggest concern. This place seems to be placed above some energy vein."
K managed to recall some information about energy veins. These belonged to natural sources of aura, which were running through Earth, resembling veins in a human body. Stretching from the Earth's core towards the upper layers, the farther from the core the thinner and more branched they become. Still in such places where a vein runs, the soil is more fertile, the plants grow better, but also various natural phenomena grow stronger.
"The fact magic is stronger here should be a good information for us, right?" K asked Asha.
"Yes, but it's not about that. The vein is pretty much a source of a raw, pure aura, yet here, because of various reasons, it's become sullied, meaning its connection to the core is now weaker and can be easily shattered."
It still did not explain why K should worry about it.
"I don't quite follow, to be honest."
He could hear a sigh inside his head.
"What I'm trying to say is that the vein will cease being a part of the system. Accumulated energy can be taken over and redirected using that method. In other words, people of the past would have said that someone's using a black magic. I cannot specifically estimate how much power does this fragment have, but it's definitely a bigger stock than your personal aura pool. I would even dare to say such amount could be enough to cause a rupture in interworld."
This explanation was much clearer to K - to put it in simple terms, demons could use this energy to open a path between worlds and bring more of their kind to Earth. This was definitely not an optimistic perspective.
However, taking Asha's opinion into consideration, it seemed quite strange for a place which such a high importance for Garth's potential war effort to not have bigger security - after all, K did not encounter a living demon so far, while spending here more than one hour already.
Surprisingly, it was extremely quiet around, aside from delicate sound K was making when walking, and he was quite good at staying silent, which meant there was basically no noise for most of the time. Well, maybe - once in a while - a sound of water drops hitting the floor or a stronger gust of wind could be heard inside, but that was basically it.
Strange as it may be, K did not like such an atmosphere of supposed calmness, while in reality an enemy could be lurking around the corner, in every nook and cranny. What he could compare this kind of situation was a sudden change of weather in mountains, where you look into blue sky for it to get dark and for the storm to start in a matter of seconds.