-The Bureau is working with the military though? That is quite surprising to see, from what I know, the humans never agreed on anything concrete regarding the realm of Gardenia.
At the sudden influx of information, Cale pretended for a while longer, trying to hook as much information as possible. Another voice addressed the previous, pointing out the obvious.
-Makes sense no? Storiems in general are the only thing that could give them a chance regarding the students of Gardenia, those students are the only ones that went through the 'baptism' after all.
'Baptism? Did I ever go through some sort of baptism?'
Cale coughed a few mouthfuls of blood packs to his clenched fist, ear still perked.
-True, but the items within a storiem isn't that groundbreaking since they are either too niche for actual daily use or just require too much payment.
The static in the radio grew quiet, they had stopped talking to each other.
Cale believed that they just weren't that much in the mood to do so.
He didn't like how a possible source of information slipped by like this, so by coughing up a little, he pretended a while longer, making sure that his hand covered his ear.
"Sergeant? Is that you?"
He lied as naturally as he sits in the restroom with a straight face.
-Seems he reconnected...
-Hope he dies gruesomely for the crime of giving me hope.
-Shut up hag! This is the only form of entertainment we're getting for a while, so shut your loose and saggy mouth.
-What!
Ignoring the squabbles inside the radio, Cale resumed reciting his bullshit script he made in an instant.
"I see....You require me to clear the storiem? With no reinforcements at that? Sergeant, I cannot do that with such limited information surrounding this storiem."
He paused, letting his words hang in the air as his throat constricted with anxiety. He was afraid that everything he said would get them to suspect something, but that worry seemed one-sided as each voice in the radio spoke with newfound amuse.
-Haaa....There we go again, those Bureau people are really heartless, not even telling their own agents about the storiem. This guy seems pretty young for a human too.
-No, wait, this is even worse. You heard him say 'reinforcements' right? The guy doesn't even know that the storiem locks itself shut after the cause of its awakening is 'eaten' alive. This human probably doesn't even know the basics of what a storiem is!
Cale's Adam's apple bobbed up and down at his slip of tongue.
-Poor chap, look at his pitiful state, already growing more and more nervous.
Using the newfound information. Cale added more lines to his bullshit.
He stood up, face contorted in instant fury.
"What do you mean I can't?! Fuck! You set me up! You said that this wouldn't be hard and I could always ask for reinforcements in case things got dangerous."
Cale shrunk, hiding his expression as he strained his new vocal cords even harder than before, ruffling his hair erratically as a few tears of pain streaked down from how much he screamed.
"Didn't you say I was important! Why abandon me like this? Hey! Are you listening?! Don't you dare hang—!"
Cale's voice stopped abruptly, hand weakly dropping to the side as he slowly landed on a fancy chair, head sagging downwards.
He stayed like that for a while, not daring once to move on his own, soon enough, voices from the radio rang out again with the familiar static he now memorized.
-Kek...
-Pft.
-P-Pathetic.
Two of them openly chuckled, the other barely holding its laugh together.
-Damn! Bale, you really were right! This is hilarious!
The voice of a woman flowed with hearty laughter.
-What did I say hag? Enjoy this whilst you can before it gets axed!
Cale, feeling embarrassed from the words, kept his head lowered, his ears peeking a glance at their conversation shifting away from the boring.
-Still, should we at least help?
A single sentence shut every nasty mouth in the radio, silence permeated throughout the room, static rattled for a while.
Cale felt the room chill through the silence, being so focused on their conversation, he had forgotten to take a good look at the room.
Observing the room, he made note of many things, one being that it was extremely out of place, like something only royalty would use.
'Just what exactly is the theme of this room?'
There wasn't anything that told him what was going on, so he had to figure out everything from the few crumbs he could find on the ground the rich in this situation carelessly threw.
It was easier said than done.
To his side, there was a door made out of metal wires, something that would be used to keep livestock in.
'A cage then?'
He was going off of guesses, but this room resembled more and more like a cage.
As he was about to raise himself up, he heard the static of the radio clear with a voice slicing through.
-How do you expect us to do that then? We are but ghosts unable to pass on and unable to even possess a body.
Cale relaxed his joints as he rocked back on the chair. Hearing the woman speak with an air of noble etiquette tainting her tone despite the modernity of her words.
'You go girl!' His hand slapped and massaged his face.
-I am Eden of the Spilza family, and even with my power, the best I could do was bind our souls eternally here in this storiem, if it just weren't for that demon...I would have already become the top.
She spoke calmly and slowly, not missing a beat. Despite that, anyone could tell that from the inside, she could barely contain her trembles in her voice.
-So tell me Keith, knowing this, how do you suppose we help the man out when we can't even help ourselves out?
Cale felt the attention he garnered, not sure if it was a good thing or not, he stood up and looked outside.
Keith responded to Eden.
-If we beg that guy....Then it's possible.
Flick! Flick!
The chandelier above flickered on and off at the words. Eden's voice came shortly after. Disgusted at the mere thought.
-You what?
Keith stopped, knowing full well how much Eden hated Feigling, how much she hated his very existence that ripped her future away.
To her, this was as good as betrayal from her loyal subject.
Despite this, Keith resumed shortly after letting his words carry their weight.
-Eden, I know that it sounds bad....But shouldn't we give up now? That guy's already wo—
-Shut that rotten mouth of yours!
Eden's voice growled at the blatant words this spineless fool uttered right in front of her.
-You really have grown far too old, it has only been a few centuries since our mortal shells crumbled down to dust, yet you speak like this toward me?
-Our?
This time another, different voice came hopping around. He scoffed at the words Eden spouted.
-You're the only one who died that long ago, most of your so called servants have already turned into nourishment for that demon. If it weren't for us, you'd still be talking in fancy.
Cale noted that this voice belonged to an entirely different entity.
'There must be a whole lot of them then?'
They kept on arguing and arguing about Feigling. Clearly, there were many ghosts of the past here, all brought together with a single power.
'Is Feigling....A traitor then?'
They seemed mostly irrelevant to the storiem itself, so he decided to ignore them for now.
'Still, the government does actually know about this place?'
That fact alone caught his attention a lot more than it should have. There wasn't any use for it currently, but knowing it for the future to come didn't seem harmful.
Shaking his thoughts away, he began fervently searching in the room, most drawers were either locked or empty, the more he looked the more useless the room looked like.
The only point of interest left was the cage door.
The cage door had a lock on the other side with four different colored buttons.
'Since this seems pretty useless, I should probably leave.'
There wasn't any crowbar in the room anyway, so he thought it was going to be fine.
Leaving through the vent, he could hear the chatters from behind.
Cale patted down his dusty blood soaked clothes. Before moving, he scanned the surroundings again.
There was a noticeable lack of light in the corridor, a faint smell of iron waft in the air as well as the warm air from the radiators that hummed.
Cale walked to the right, heart now beating more loudly than before as he pushed himself to the right, inching slowly to the corner.
He peeked around the corner, the corridor stretched for what seemed like infinite. Cale focused solely on the cage door on the right.
Even though he stepped on a velvet carpet, his steps seemed to echo loudly in the corridor, uncomfortably so.
Reaching the cage door, he took a closer look at the lock and what surrounded it.
"Same thing..."
A force field rejected Cale's hand from the buttons.
He felt annoyed at the ridiculous puzzles thrown at him.
"What do I even do?"
Cale glanced up, gazing at the room. His expression shifted into faint astonishment at the changes shown.
"....."
There now was a crowbar hovering in the luxurious room. Bloodied and unfit for the room.
Cale frowned at the sight, not understanding how he missed it. It shouldn't even be possible to miss something like that, yet he did miss it.
'This...' He looked at the lock again.
'Do I need to open the cage door in order to get the crowbar?'
With wary steps, he walked back to the vent.
Step!
Step!
His steps echoed even more loudly, the radiators gurgled in the back as a familiar unease surfaced.
Cale flashed his silver knife out. Heat rising as he turned the corner, paces away from reaching the vent.
Click...
A radiator then clicked, it resounded, vibrated the bones and shook the very core of the paltry human soul.
Standing a mere 7 meters stood a dark corridor, two dots of white and a curved, thin line of the same white that dripped down like blood.
The drip of Cale's own blood drowned out as his body surrendered to the paradise it felt when staring at the being.
The thin line that curved into a simple smile stretched further than before.
Cale's knife bellowed steam as the stress of pain and fear accelerated the Ego Shard's synchronization further. Already beyond the point of no return…