>>5454000>>5454214Xil tosses out two spanners towards the third and fourth tendrils, hoping that the small pieces of metal rods will distract them.
As the first two tendrils begin exerting more force on her, she undoes the straps of the holsters and hold onto the pistols, letting herself to flung into the webs of sharp metal fragments.
With the blunderbuss on her back moving along with her, the third and fourth tendrils miss their chance at grasping it, and turn their attention to the metal spanners that are barely drifting in the water instead.
Bend Time!As she is pulled closer to the dormant tendrils, she commands her horse to create a sphere on it, allowing her momentum to be halted before she could be cut by the drifting metal shards that surround the tendrils.
She lets go of her pistols, letting the first two tendrils take them so that she can use both her hands to push aside the slowed down tendrils away.
Xil mainly uses her fingers to alter the trajectory of other objects to ensure that her limbs and body do not accidentally bump into objects and undo her work.
After moving the metal covered tendrils away from her, she pushes against the cramped walls of the Kodachi to send herself into the front of the ship.
Once she is past the small bottleneck, the sphere fades away. The tendrils fruitlessly swing and swipe everywhere around the compact passage, trying to detect whatever touched them.
She lost both of her pistols, but she still has the blunderbuss and remained undetected.
Good enough.
The front of the ship is unusually normal, with decomposing beds and lockers still loosely attached to hull. Seems like the infestation of the sentient tendrils and metallic shell blobs are not present here.
There’s gotta be someone or something that prevented this.
She spends several minutes checking the furniture of the vessel, going over all the potential locations for the fourth fragment.
Nothing.
Only one place remains, the furthest north of the ship - the weapons control room.
With her blunderbuss charged with gravitational energy in hand, she ventures further into the ship.
She comes across a human with barely any skin and bones on him, with several black lines buried deep along his legs and torso.
Bumps and dark spots on his body shows a trace of cuts and bites he must’ve suffered a long time ago.
Those black lines are a dead giveaway of a sinner being tortured in the second sector, as they primarily brand them with black lines.
His body rests against the boxes of metal rods, the ammunition for Kodachi’s main guns. In his shriveled right hand is the fragment you are looking for.
(Cont)
