Chapter 395 - Krauls

"Thank you," Caroline whispered.

"Loneliness kills," Zeel replied, indicating he was keeping her alive more for himself than anyone else. "And I have only recently become re-accustomed to being lonely."

"Your wives?" Caroline asked, noticing that Zeel was separating the weapons in the armor.

Rifles on one side, and pistols on the other. Caroline didn't know why Zeel arranged the weapons in such a matter, but she followed his lead nonetheless.

"Yeah," Zeel replied to Caroline's inquiry about his wives. "Honestly, marriage was never a thing where I came from, but… well, Alice just caught my attention to moment I saw her."

"What about the next girl?"

Zeel shrugged. "She loved Alice and I loved Alice and we shared that common interest."

"But did you love her,"

Zeel spun and pointed the muzzle of the rifle in his hand at Carlone's head. "Would you be willing to take a bullet after I answer that question?"

Caroline panicked internally, but her face remained calm. "Sorry I asked."

"It's not that you asked," Zeel corrected, back to sorting weapons "It's because every weakness is worth a bullet, so if you let anyone know your weakness, be sure to leave a bullet in their head."

"Now I know you were fucked up as a child," Caroline laughed, finally figuring out why Zeel didn't even flinch when Carlos was being cooked and eaten by Militants.

"You couldn't even imagine."

"What does your family even do?"

Zeel paused and thought for a couple of seconds before he replied. "We're Treasure Hunters in a sense… and we travel vast distances to search for treasure… we are a bit emotionally unavailable most of the time."

"That explains a lot," Caroline mumbled, then tossed the final rifle into the pile. "So, why are you separating all these weapons? Their accuracy is shit – about ten meters, right?"

"About twenty meters in my hands."

"You have good aim," Caroline complimented, "But that doesn't answer my question."

"Let me show you," Zeel replied and grabbed two rifles from the pile, and one pistol from the other pile.

Slowly and surgically, Zeel sent a thin wisp of Divine Energy into his right forefinger, allowing darker-than-usual black lightning to grace that specific finger. Zeel's lightning easily cut through the metal of the rifles and pistols, removing the barrel, resizing firing clips, bending the lever, and melding components together.

Caroline watched with no small amazement in her mind, since she recognized what Zeel was trying to do. She had been trained to put a gun together a thousand times, so how could she not recognize when the weapon was being split apart and remade.

Nearly five minutes later, Zeel brushed the sweat on his head, and carefully used his lightning to shred an additional rifle into thin copper wires that he circled around the internal structure of the new weapon in his hands.

Very carefully…

More carefully than he had ever done, and with a wide smile on his face, Zeel activated [Medium Time-Zone] and spun the newly installed cylinder on his weapon. The cylinder spun and spun.

Until…

The copper wire heated and pulsed with blue energy, creating an electromagnetic field that stabilized the ambient energy in the air. And then, Zeel deactivated his Time-Zone and the weapon was completed.

"What the fuck is that?" Caroline questioned, appearing genuinely afraid of the monster-of-a-weapon in Zeel's hands.

The new gun Zeel designed had three muzzles with a large cylinder aligning with each bullet chamber, and copper wiring wrapping around the cylinder, creating a rapidly deteriorating energy cycle.

"This is a bit unexpected," Zeel frowned, noticing it was a bit too easy to make this weapon without his nanites.

After all, he was basically estimating, and while the weapon should have worked, it shouldn't have worked this fast or well.

"Who the fuck are you?" Caroline asked, raising her guard. "No treasure hunter can invent a new gun like that,"

"Oh…" Zeel rolled his eyes mockingly. "What gave it away? The lightning coming out of my hands?"

"I am not kidding," Caroline threatened, grabbing a rifle from the ground.

Zeel sighed and stared at the gun in his hands "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Ye—"

Caroline couldn't even finish her answer as Zeel spun around, and with a pulse of blue light, there was the sound of the whistling wind. Caroline froze as a cut mark appeared on her cheek.

---THUD---

When Caroline heard something falling to the ground, she initially thought it was her body that fell while her soul remained standing, but after a couple of seconds, she realized she was fine. Slowly, she turned around and was greeted by the sight of a creature – something like a bat but much larger.

"Wha—" Caroline could no longer think straight, but luckily, Zeel was unperturbed.

"Krauls… you can think of it as an ancestor of the bats of Earth," Zeel mentioned, frowning a bit. "It's a bit surprising that they're here though… we must be pretty deep for them to show up… maybe, even in a pre-historic pocket environment."

"Me… meaning?" Caroline stammered.

"A huge cave that developed separately from the surface," Zeel replied, popping an empty, smoking bullet out of the gun and placing another one inside. "Basically, we are probably in a world inside a world."

Caroline took a deep breath to calm her mind and asked "And the weapon? What is it? How does it work?"

"This weapon?" Zeel questioned, tossing it to Caroline like it was garbage. "It used Ambient Energy to charge Fermion Particles to create stabilized neutrino bursts that, in conjunction with the electromagnetic field, begin dissolving an ejected bullet into semi-light waves – basically, turns a bullet into a laser that travels a limited distance of one hundred meters."

Caroline caught the weapon and inspected it, noticing her hands started burning a bit when she held the weapon.

"Why were you frowning earlier?"

"Because it gathered Ambient Energy too quickly," Zeel explained, grabbing more rifles from the ground to start the weapon-making process all over. "Neutrinos are not so common on Earth, much less beneath the Earth… so, I was a bit surprised it powered the copper coils so easily."

Caroline released the gun and placed it on the ground, shaking her hands to get rid of the burning sensation.

"Neutrinos, when concentrated enough, are harmful to the human body so try not to fire the weapon too often," Zeel explained, and then looked at Caroline inquisitively. "You don't seem too surprised for someone who was almost eaten by a monster."

"If anything – I am more relieved," Caroline sighed as a weight left her shoulders. "After everyone died and you were unconscious for two months… during that time, I saw things in the shadows and heard things crawling on the walls… I even heard the growling when they came closer, but they never attacked and never showed themselves… I honestly thought I was going crazy, so I was going to kill you and then myself."

Zeel paused his weapon-making. "Why didn't they attack?"

"I don't know," Caroline shivered a bit recalling certain memories "Sometimes when I was sleeping… I could feel them breathing on my neck… it was like they were wondering if I was worth eating or not, but they never killed me and they stayed away from you."

"I guess some things are meant to be questioned," Zeel muttered to himself, trying to restrain the urge to question further since something told him it wouldn't end well.

And a Homo-Superior turned Treasure Hunter would never pursue things that didn't end well for them.

"Can you show me how to make these weapons,"

"You can't,"

"Why not?" Caroline didn't believe Zeel. "All you're doing is creating wires and breaking down old weapons."

"I am using advanced science to make these weapons, and I can only do this due to my unique talents," Zeel explained, back to creating a gun for himself this time "It would take about a hundred more years for humanity to create the most basic prototype of this weapon, and that's is if you guys are still alive by then."

"You say the strangest things," Caroline complained, shifting out of her dirty clothing to dawn a nearby World War I uniform.

It was better than what she was wearing.

"Aren't you gonna cha—"

Caroline wanted to know why Zeel wasn't switching to new clothing, but one look at his attire and she knew he obviously got the best clothing for himself before she even noticed.

"You should get ready," Zeel interrupted Caroline's train of thoughts. "They're coming… why do you think there is a Kraul lying dead and I am making weapons."

"And you didn't think to tell me?" Caroline questioned angrily, snatching the Fermion Gun from the ground.

The weapon still burned her hand a little, but when Giant Bats were coming to kill her, she didn't really mind the burn.

"I honestly thought you knew," Zeel answered, thinking that Alice and Elizabeth would know the moment an enemy was incoming.

Of course, he conveniently forgot they had a deep mental connection.

"What's the pla—"

Caroline peeked through the opening to the armory and turned back around to ask Zeel for the plan. As long as Zeel was around, Caroline had certain confidence they would survive. But when she spun around expecting to see Zeel, he was no longer there.

There was a slight shimmering in the void of space where Zeel once stood.

Caroline was on her own.