Akazukin travels down the underground highway to find an entire city made by and for such treasure-hunting adventurers. “Welcome to Carmot City!” her traveling companion tells her as she looks around in complete awe of it all. The place was huge with so many buildings and there was even an underground river than ran down the city. There was an entire system of railroad which had minecarts traveling up and down tunnels carrying value resources. In a distance she saw a building that had a chimney which spewed out a glowing purple mist. Akazukin as what it was and her companion tells her, “That is the Carmot Infusion Processing Plant. This is where we safely introduce various elements into the carmot.”
A bell chimes as the clock on the clock tower strikes three o’clock. “Quick we must hurry to the hospital.” The reason for Akazukin’s visit to this underground city is because of a basilisk problem they have been having and a few citizens of the village have been petrified. Being that the basilisk natural habit is the swamp and Akazukin spent many of her childhood within the swamps of her homeland and thus she is familiar with this creature and its afflictions. For one she knows that basilisk petrification does not turn someone into literal stone. That is a misconception that Akazukin never really understood, because if that was true then basilisk diet would consist of rock.
Basilisk petrification makes the surface of the skin harden and calcify, but in the early stages it is still fairly thin and brittle, so the body's movement makes the hardened tissue split into a network of cracks. In later and more severe stages look somewhat like patterns of scales. In later stages the hardened flesh becomes mottled grey and black as it dies, resulting in the flesh appearing to have the texture of cracked grey stone. In the very final stages it starts attacking the body's internal organs, hardening them as it did the outer flesh. The rate the petrification spreads depends on the age of the basilisk. For younger basilisk it can take a little over an hour to hit the final stages, while older one can fully petrify a person in a couple of minutes.
Within the small hospital she was escorted to a room where the victims were kept. Before her eyes was a dozen of people in the final stage of petrification. Normally this was the point of no return, but Akazukin was special with her temporal powers. In her case she was not exactly healing but rewinding an individual's time to the point of health. As long as it makes a person no longer injured the medical branch was not going to argue over semantics. Thankfully her abilities were enough to cure them of their affliction, but the problem of the basilisk still remain. You can say the medical part of the mission may be over but the ranger part has only just begun. “Where did you come across the basilisk?” The people of the city inform Akazukin that it has been lurking around the river.
Rangers are known to be able to find footprints in the midst of raging sandstorms. They are expert tracks and Akazukin is no different in that matter but her tracking abilities are a little different then most for it not exactly tracks she finds. Standing at the river the hands within her tokeigan spin and she begins to see echoes of the past; footprints in time. They were images that would lead her to her target, but she must be careful. Basilisk has one of the most dangerous venom: unlike snakes, spiders or scorpions a basilisk venom is not injected into the bloodstream but merely applied to the skin. It is a topical poison that seeps within the pores of the skin.
Walking along the bank of the river with musket in hand, she follows the footprints into a poorly lit tunnel. She continues until her target comes into view, but it was the smell that hits her first. The oder to the cave was fowl and reeked of death. She figures she must be nearing some sort of food cache or something the creature might have made. However when she finally sees the basilisk, she could tell it was dead. Not only dead but being eaten by some sort of monstrous humanoid beings. Akazukin raises her musket into the air and a large clock forms behind her. Firing the gun she made sure that these creatures were aware of her presents, if they weren’t all ready.
