<h4>Chapter 467: The Real Rest Stop</h4>


    The pair of demons spent a little longer cuddled into each other rxing. Neither of them really knew how long they should rest, or if the slight resting they did when they shoved all the rats into ce without really using energy counted towards that number or not. In the end, after another ten minutes though, they got up. Neither was the type to leave something undone… and the rat corpses were starting to smell, just a bit.


    Kat was never more thankful that of all her enhanced senses, her taste buds and nose were the least advanced. Her sense of touch was also fairly dull inparison to her eyes and ears, but she wasn''t really thinking about that. Just a great deal of gratitude that her nose was still around peak human level.


    *Wait… is that why Gluttony demons are obsessed with food and stuff? They have different or better taste buds. Wait! Is that how some of them can eat weird stuff like dirt? Kat thought, easily forgetting the time she ate something hot enough to melt a normal human from the inside out when she was participating in Thyme''s Tournament.


    It must be. Hmm… that makes me wonder then… do people who join the different factions actually have their brains changed? Oh shit my brain has been changed. I… do I still think the same way? I think I think the same way… no well… I''m very touchy about my tail now. I have a bunch of instincts I didn''t before… do I have any others?*


    Will I GAIN more? As Kat dusted herself off she turned to Kamiko and asked, "Hey um… before we go kill more rats, I had an odd thought. Does… does what faction your in influence your Rank ups, and if it does, does it change the way your mind works to better keep in line with the factions?"


    Kamiko opened her mouth, before slowly closing it, before a frown settled onto her face. Nose crinkling and adding a few lines to the girl''s face making it clear she didn''t know what to think about the question. "You know Kat. I… I have no idea. I don''t think I want to know either…"


    Kat bit her lip, "Isn''t it… I dunno, important to know that before you pick one for yourself?" asked Kat.


    Kamiko kicked at the dirt and tried to look anywhere except at Kat, but she didn''t have the heart to leave Kat hanging. "I… I don''t know. I mean… like… maybe? It… it''s hard to know. Like… I know people tend to fit in more with a faction the longer they''ve been there but… that''s just how any group works right…? And I mean, Wrath lets people leave ONCE if they really want…


    "And… Elmony does bodyguard stuff but she''s still in the Lust faction… but… hmm, yeah um… I don''t really want to think about it. I''m… I''m going to say that… it probably doesn''t inherently change you, but you might want to fit in more… and… your body changes to amodate the new idea of… better… I wish we could ask D.E.M.O.N.S… that seems like the sort of information it''d be happy to warn us about"


    *Hmm, well… I guess it is.* "Hey, that does make me think though… the factions all have a few people lined up to go into them… why doesn''t your family do that?" asked Kat


    Kamiko shrugged, "It''s not really thatmon. You''re view of things was probably skewed by the Wrath teens and… even Wrath, the faction that probably gets the most young demons interested still doesn''t have many. That''s why we had to go there as punishment.


    "People even remotely in their skill range are hard toe by. There might be like… a hundred people lined up to join Wrath immediately? Less for the other factions, except Envy and Pride… because those guys are both weird. I don''t want to go into that though we have rats to kill" said Kamiko.


    Kat nodded and lightly pped her cheeks. *Yeah, I need to stop procrastinating and get back to killing rats.* Kat cracked her neck and started powerwalking. Kamiko hardly noticed the difference, but Kat knew herself well enough to realise she was trying to make up for wasting time. The break was needed, the questions though, should have been asked before they''d decided to get up and move.


    Of course, Kat soon found another corridor of rats and couldn''t even find herself excited. It was just more rats. So they cleaned out another corridor of rats without trouble or interest. The one right after that though, was strange. Kat noticed that the wall of the mine seemed to have something on it. *Hmm, that probably should be investigated but… I''ll get the rats out of the way first.*


    A quick ''clean up''ter and the pair of demons found themselves staring at a door. It was hanging open somewhat and had yet more rats inside. They cleaned them out as well, before pushing all the corpses out and taking in the room. It was a little hard to identify it''s original purpose at first.


    This was because everything was damaged at least a bit. What Kat was fairly sure was a table had been reduced to little more than wood chips. A whole tworger pieces remained… somewhat intact though not without bite marks all over the edges and even across some of the centre. The walls looked like they once held something, but whatever it was, now it was too damaged to tell. There was only a few scraps of something wrapped around a few metal spikes that were probably responsible for holding up whatever had been there originally.


    In the back of the room was something that had been a fridge, but was the most damaged thing in the room. The door had been ripped off and chewed into majorly leaving a door that had taken after Swiss cheese consisting of more air then steel, even the instion that remained in the holes had been mostly chewed through.


    There was some evidence in the box itself that there had been racks to hold food. They werepletely destroyed and only the guess that it was a fridge let Kat figure out that the few intentionally carved markings had to have been ces to slide in fridge racks. The back of the fridge had seen better days, and the only thing that saved it from total copse was that when the room was made they seemed to have welded the fridge to the wall or some simr process, allowing the free floating chunks that remained to stay stuck to the wall and help support the top which was the most in tact piece of the fridge.


    Next to the fridge was the only thing in the room slightly intact. It was a heavy duty steel box with a big metal handle like you''d find on a bank vault. The surface had more scratched sections then clean ones, but hadn''t been opened, likely due to the low intelligence andck of hands the rats possessed then ack of effort on their part.


    Based on everything else, there should have been some chairs in the room, for what was the table, or at the very least, one for whoever watched over the box but there wasn''t the slightest remaining identifiable piece of one. Still, Kat found herself a little annoyed.


    *I wish we''d known about this before we took a break. I mean, it isn''t much, and there''s blood on the floor plus debris everywhere but it''s not the main corridor and it has a door to close us off. If only we''d gone a little further.* Kat then realised they were already probably past half of their allotted time down in the mine, and that it probably was still best they took a break when they did.


    "So… do we like… open this?" asked Kat gesturing at the metal box.


    Kamiko eyed the offending article spectively. "I''m not sure…" as Kamiko said that, she moved forward and ced her hand on the handle for opening it and gave it a light turn. "It depends really. If this was meant to be secure, I''m not going to get in. I''m no vault breaker…


    "On the other hand, I do know a little bit about locks, and the simple things. If this is more meant to have a bit of security from monsters like it clearly has and less to keep highly secret documents I could probably get it open with some time. Or you could rip it open, I doubt the hinges are strong enough to stop you just based on the fact the rats could scratch it at all. I''m just not sure we should. Stone didn''t mention this at all… and while it wouldn''t take long… it just might not be any of our business."


    *Gonna be honest. Didn''t think Kamiko would be the type of girl to know anything about safe cracking. Lockpicking seemed like a cool skill but I never felt the need for it before. I feel it even less now because of all the magical potential for locks, but it would be useful right now…*