For a moment, no one moved. The crowd, caught between the defiant pack of teenagers and the orange-robed monks, simply stared.

Then, the retreat began. It wasn't a panic, not a stampede. It was a slow, collective backing away, a widening of the circle. The prads were distancing themselves from the epicenter of a growing conflict. My words about astral fungus and soul-eating had been too bizarre to process, but the raw, unyielding power in my voice and the machine gun-toting Strand raptor above me was a language every delver understood.

"Friends, please," Zheniya called to the retreating crowd. "There is no need for alarm. This is merely a misunderstanding, born from youthful passion!" Her gaze settled on me, not with anger, but with a look of profound, patronizing pity. "This young man and his pack have clearly been through a great deal recently. They are tired, stressed, and they are lashing out at those who only wish to help the community. What you see is not malice, but a cry for guidance!"

She was good. In a few sentences, she had reframed the entire situation, painting us as troubled kids and herself as the benevolent authority figure trying to manage our emotional outburst. Several onlookers nodded, their expressions softening.

Sage seized on her narrative. "Nessy, see?" He pleaded. "The temple is trying to help! Just come back to us, and we can sort this all out!"

But I wasn't going to let them control the story. I ignored Zheniya, ignored Nessy's distraught ex-packmates, and turned my full attention to the power that had just arrived.

"Principal Kerberos," I said. "Professor Fern. TA Shashorth. You put me into your program, you asked me to be a leader. You placed the well-being of my pack in my hands during the simulation. So I'm asking you now—are you going to stand by while a threat to your entire student body operates freely within this town?"

Kerberos's eyebrow arched up, the only outward sign that my direct address had registered.

"These 'monks,'" I continued, "are not what they seem. They are hosts. Their bodies are piloted by Astral parasites—extradimensional beings that Candace identified as 'Archangels.' They feed on prohibition, on sacrifice of emotions, on the very souls of their followers. The Well of Severance of the Krishna Temple isn't a tool for spiritual healing; it's a feeding trough for some vile Outsider entity!"

The crowd gasped. I saw a flicker of something in Kerberos's ancient eyes.

"These outsider-infected monks are a threat to Ferguson," I stated, my words ringing with absolute conviction. "A threat to every student at your school, to every family in this town. They offer a false peace in exchange for absolute servitude to their parasitic masters. Are you going to investigate this threat, or are you going to let them continue to 'help' students like Nessy by hollowing them out from the inside? The Omnicorps you assist in employee acquisition likely won't appreciate the fact that the prospective talents they're looking for are being eyed by another party as a food source!"

"Ignis," I turned to the professor. "You and I have already uncovered one dastardly plot recently. This is another. I need your help. There is something akin to a dungeon in this town and these monks are its Sentinels."

"Sentinels?!" Zheniya sputtered. "We are not dungeon Sentinels!"

Marlena shifted her weight. Her cheerful demeanor vanished, replaced by the focused readiness of a high-level combatant. Her large body, which had seemed endearingly clumsy before, now looked like a coiled spring of immense power. Water vapor began to condense in the air around her, forming small, swirling vortexes.

Kerberos remained still, but the air around him grew heavy. He didn't cast a spell I could see, but I felt it—a deep, probing scan that seemed to peel back the layers of reality itself, his shadow splitting into three.

Zheniya's serene smile finally faltered. "Child, your imagination is running wild. These are baseless and insulting accusations—"

"Unbind Astral Concealment!" Candace barked, pointing both of her hands forward. A ripple of something sheared reality and just for a fraction of a second, silver, monstrous blooms seemed to come into existence above the monks.

The fox fell onto one knee, Adelle grabbing her before she completely toppled over from mana-overuse.

Professor Fern's reaction was swift. Her one burning eye narrowed to a slit. She raised a hand and barked, "Identify!"

A spell left her hand, striking the monks.

"By the Slayer..." Ignis gasped, the flames of her mane flaring violently. "What in the Abyss are those?!"

"What did you see, Ignis?" Marlena asked.

"Alec's right," Fern breathed, her entire mane blazing with dragonfire flames now. "They're... infested. All of them. There's a... a lattice of something inside their nervous systems!"

At Fern's words the crowd of pradavarians seemed to turn against the monks, eyes igniting with silver, claws out, postures changing to attack mode.

Kerberos barked out an eerie, triple-echo laugh.

"You… you don't understand!" Zheniya uttered, stepping back. "The path to Goloka Vrindavan is paved with sacrifice. We offer freedom, liberation from the pain of the infinite cycle! We… We help everyone in town…"

"Ah," Kerberos slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a black keychain with a single button. "It seems my town has a bit of an infestation problem. And I do so hate outsider pests."

The world didn't so much as warp as it tore. The sleek black lines of the Principal's luxury glider split along seams that shouldn't have existed, its pristine surface peeling back not like metal, but like the chitinous plates of some impossible insect. A low-frequency hum vibrated through the flagstones of the plaza, a sound travelling through teeth and bones than simply heard with ears. From the now-gaping hole where the passenger compartment used to be, a space that was clearly larger than the car itself, something unfolded.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

A nightmare given crystalline form.

A massive, blood-red, centipede-like monstrosity, easily fifty feet long, poured out into the plaza with a speed that defied physics. It didn't crawl; it flowed, a crimson blur of faceted ruby-like segments and countless needle-like legs that scrabbled against the stone.

The air around it screamed, a high-pitched whine that was the sound of reality itself being displaced by its supersonic passage. Its head was a terrifyingly simple thing—a tapered, crystalline battering ram.

"Corpse Seeker," Kerberos said calmly as if he was ordering some groceries at the market. "Contain the orange-robed prads."

The command was all it took.

The creature moved.

One moment it was coiled beside the car, the next it was a streak of red lightning cutting through the stunned monks. Zheniya's serene expression finally broke, her face a mask of pure terror as the creature was upon them. There was no struggle, no fight. There wasn't time. The Corpse Seeker's blood-red liquid crystal maw opened, and it scooped them up. Zheniya and every orange-robed figure at the booths were devoured in a single, fluid motion, the movement of the creature demolishing the booths into splinters, torn paper and flying scraps of cloth.

"Corpse Seeker, return," Kerberos said.

The crystalline monster recoiled, inverted itself somehow, changing direction and coiling back to the Principal's side with the same unnatural motion made up of a hundred legs composed from liquid crystals.

The monks were simply gone from the front of the shop.

I saw what had become of them in another moment. All of them were suspended in the translucent, blood-red crystal of the thing's body like ancient insects trapped in amber. Their faces were frozen in silent screams, their limbs twisted at unnatural angles, their orange robes splayed out.

A collective, horrified gasp went through the crowd.

Vivianne and Sage stood frozen in place, their faces ashen, the owl hyperventilating. A chunk of the Loomco book shop front was now missing, the barrier wards devoured, brick, beams, wooden floor melted clean off as if they didn't even exist.

Katherine and her sisters had flattened themselves against another storefront, their earlier arrogance completely evaporated, replaced by the primal fear of prey that had just seen the absolute, apex predator.

My own pack was reeling. Adelle, who had been ready to punch her way through the monks, was staring at the Corpse Seeker with wide, awestruck eyes, a low growl rumbling in her chest that was more respect than aggression. Kristi's gun was fixated on the floating figures within the creature's body. Nessy was clinging to my back like a steel clamp, her body trembling.

And Candace... Candace was staring at the Corpse Seeker not with fear, but with a kind of morbid, professional fascination. I could see the silver light flickering in her eyes as she tried to process the sheer magical complexity of what she was seeing. "Wow," she uttered. "Now that's a serious war machine."

"A simple sanitation measure," Kerberos announced. "All is well now. Go about your business. The Pradavarian Senate Administration will deal with this matter."

The crowd began melting away, moving with a quiet, desperate urgency to be anywhere else.

He turned his gaze to me, and for the first time, I felt I was seeing the real Kerberos—not a school principal, not a corporate recruiter, but an inhuman monster born of a cryptid mother from another dimension, who viewed our entire world as his personal property to be managed.

"Absolute barrier, 10 meters," he said.

A barrier shield projected out of the corpse seeker, muting and dimming the world around us.

"Mr. Foster," he said, the too-wide smile returning to his face. "Your assistance in identifying this particular pestilence is greatly appreciated."

I swallowed hard, the magnitude of what had just happened crashing down on me. I hadn't just made a deal with a devil. I had pointed Kerberos toward his enemies, and he had unmade them without a second thought.

"What happens to them now?" I asked, gesturing to the trapped monks.

"They will be... interrogated," Kerberos said pleasantly. "Their parasitic masters will be studied. If the pradavarian hosts cannot be saved, then they will be disposed of. Regardless, they will not be permitted to return to Ferguson."

"This is just some of them. There are more monks at the temple," I said. "There's a Well there that consumes souls, feeds on dreams. It took what belongs to my mate."

"Your 'mate'?" the half-Omnid repeated, the word rolling off his tongue with a certain relish. "My, my, Mr. Foster. You do move quickly. Barely in town for two days and you've already established a pack, witnessed my… heritage, defeated a dungeon simulation, uncovered a parasitic infestation, and now you're making demands regarding soul-theft." He chuckled. "You are proving to be far more entertaining than your dossier suggested."

"This isn't entertainment," I said. "This is a rescue mission."

"Is it now?" The Principal tilted his head. "And you believe this... 'Well of Severance'... is a threat worthy of my personal attention?"

"It absolutely is," I stated. "It's a subtle poison that's been corrupting Ferguson for years, right under your nose. It's the heart of their operation. You should deal with it, as you have dealt with the monks."

Kerberos's smile finally faded, replaced by a look of sharp, clinical interest. "Your proposition is... intriguing. Perhaps a Quest is in order."

[Quest: Pest Control]

[Objective: Assist the half-Omnid administrator in eliminating a rival parasitic entity.]

[Reward: The potential return of your mate's stolen memories and a slightly lower chance of being abducted by interdimensional corporations.]

[Warning: Your new ally is far more dangerous than your enemies. Try not to get 'sanitized.' Y/N]

I blinked the snarky notification away. "So you'll help us?"

"Hrmmm… No. I will provide my… oversight," Kerberos corrected. "The actual 'pest control' will be handled by your team. Consider it... an extracurricular practical examination."

"What?" I sputtered. "What kind of a shit authority figure are you?"

"The kind whose job it is to evaluate the capabilities of prospective young delvers," Kerberos smiled. "Yes, I certainly could send my Corpse Seeker to plow right through the wards and walls of the Krishna temple. But, that takes away an opportunity for… greater evaluation of your prowess."

"Haven't you fucking evaluated us enough at school?" I grumbled.

"Yes, I've seen what you've done at your delving sim," the half-Omnid nodded. "But that was you facing a bunch of pradavarians pretending to be dungeon monsters. Now, I wish to see how you will deal with an outsider infestation, Mr. Foster."

"Why?" I growled. "What happens if I refuse?"

"If you refuse, Mr. Foster?" the Principal's voice was a placid sea over an abyss of monstrous intent. "Then the problem of the Well of Severance will no longer be your personal concern. It becomes an… Omnid Administrative matter."

"Meaning what?"

He let the words hang in the air. "My Corpse Seeker is not a surgical instrument, it is a single-minded machine, capable of retrieving physical objects or destroying whatever I point it at. The souls, the memories, the dreams you seek to reclaim for your mate?" He gestured vaguely toward the trapped figures within the creature's translucent body. "They do not exist inside a physical body that can be recognized or fetched by my Seeker. There's a very high chance that the temple's ward will resist the Corpse Seeker, which means that the temple, along with everything inside it, would be… set ablaze with dragonfire. Meaning that whatever Astral entity lives inside that Well will be destroyed along with your mate's memories."

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