In his fairy doll mansion, Robert thought about the information Titania shared.
...
"... these are the three factions that would have a beef with you big enough to post that bounty."
"And if these factions suffered unfortunate accidents, to which would you send your condolences?"
"Spare the Toledo family. Or better, just cause some property damage at this warehouse," she wrote down an address. "The security will be heightened but I'll sell it to them as a tip and cement some deals. Yes, this is work alright."
"What about the other two?" Robert asked just to be sure.
"Fuck them. Fuck them with the biggest dick a Life Arch can make," She winked at him, making Robert blush.
She also asked if he was finally over his aversion to scrambling people's brains. To Titania, it was no different than scrambling one's bowels, for example. Why would the stuff inside the skull take precedence over the stuff inside the ribcage, for example? When Robert told her of his current ethics, she laughed and said it was good enough.
...
Titania taught him five spells. Suggestion placed a thought in someone's mind without alerting them that the thought was from a foreign source. Mind spike was a single target spell that dealt psychic damage. Detect Thoughts was your classical surface thoughts reading. It was almost undetectable but only caught what the person was thinking at the moment. And most people thought tons of shit, which the spell didn't filter or gave any deeper meaning. Mind Probe was secret agent stuff. Robert could do it with Mind Blackout but Mind Probe cost literally eight times less. Finally, Psionic blast was an area attack that created mental static and could inflict stun, lingering disorientation, or nausea.
Robert finally finished his imprint. He now had a second line of thought, one for his real mind, and the other for his clone in the mind palace. They were both the same person. It was the mental equivalent of what Leonardo da Vinci allegedly could do, writing two pages of the same book at the same time, one with each hand and the left backward. They were always in synchrony and the copy could take over the body if the main mind was damaged or inoperable. Robert could rebuild his brain from the copy as it worked as a backup.
This was the equivalent of the parallel thinking talent some Archs had. It just took a century of work to achieve. But this wasn't the only change to the mental palace. The mental landscape had expanded greatly, quadrupling its area. The maps of several passage realms he visited now hovered high up in the sky, like moons of floating islands. Robert could move anywhere in that place with a single thought so he could check these maps anytime without them clogging the sky.
The bastions were also big enough that he could add another defensive feature. He had two choices.
Mental Barrier was a forcefield that stopped direct psionic attacks. Most attacks would already fail to affect Robert but they would cause minor damage to the mind palace. Cracks in the ground, destroyed or burnt vegetation, and so on. Let this damage pile up long enough and he would have to dedicate a lot of time to fix this damage. Mind Shield stopped these attacks before they invaded the mental space.
Thought Shield protected against insidious attacks like Id Insinuation or those that flew under the radar. It also made it impossible to read his mind and very difficult to detect his presence, even the surface thoughts. The attacker would need to crush the Thought Shield to reach those thoughts.
Robert's choice was obvious. Most Mental-affinity users would select Mental Barrier because time spent fixing the damage was time not spent improving one's mind palace. But he had plenty of it. Thought Shield felt like the best option. Eventually, once his mind palace became bigger and more complex, he could add the second defensive fixture.
The top of his Tower of Iron Will became surrounded by a translucid bubble.
He used all the essence he produced to focus on developing just a few of his most used spells and techniques.
Serendipity reached the end of stage 0 after a series of accidents involving squeezed fingers and toes that fell into gears. It received the concept of "luckiness". Right on the nose but sometimes those were the best.
His Void heart reached the maximum for stage 2, with its capacity increasing to 360 points of essence. A quick visit to the Academy gathering facility after they left the clockwork Dungeon added the concept of "Immenseness", completing the triad. The official name was now Vastness Bottomless Immenseness Void Heart. The capacity increased by 30% from this concept, reaching 468 points.
The Void Gates of Nirvana also reached the end of stage 0. At a resting heart rate, the void heart could pull a hundred extra points of essence per hour. Robert used the concept of "productivity", giving it a 25% increase in Essence production.
The spells Titania taught him were also ready for an upgrade. Suggestion gained "persuasiveness". Mind spike received "perforation". Detect Thoughts gained "subtleness" to keep it a secret even from perceptive people. Mind Probe was the opposite. It received "punctiliousness", to make sure he didn't miss any details. Finally, Psionic blast received "perniciousness" which greatly increased the severity and potency of the debuffs.
He also fully trained and assimilated the archery mastery he stole from the hunter who cornered him in Old London.
*
*
The first organization that might've posted the bounty was the Shayver group. Robert thought that if they were doing something that dumb, they deserved what was coming their way.
Fairy-Robert hid his lifeforce, his stars' pressure, his spatial and gravitational influence, his time ripples, and shielded his mind entirely. His invisibility also concealed his thermal signature because it was also light in a sense. With a faint application of diffuse telekinesis, he also stopped causing small air currents or pressure waves, AKA sound. With this combination of low-power effects, he was almost as undetectable as Freddy.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He moved like a ghost, blinking around the Shayver compound, knocking people unconscious, reading their minds, and erasing signs of his passage. As he climbed the ranks, he found no evidence they were related to the bounty. But he found evidence of illegal alchemical products. Even after sanctions from the Empress, they were still making these temporary talent drugs. The side effects were nasty, to say the least.
Robert stole the knowledge of alchemy and how to make these drugs from their lead chemist. The process destroyed Prime Vestiges to grant their talents to the potions. The idea made Robert so disgusted he turned the alchemist's mind to pudding. Then he had to kill the guy to hide the fact that he used Mental magic on him. It would point a finger directly to Titania and the Shayver group had a five-year protection from direct attacks from other factions since their four-star leader died.
That didn't stop Robert from raiding their Prime Vestige vaults and stealing everything that looked valuable. As he killed everyone involved with their illegal drug operations, he learned what every reagent they had was used for. He recorded these people's knowledge of alchemy, Etherthech, and artifice in his dear VHS tapes.
Climbing to the top of Shayver Tower in Nova York, Robert reached the elders' apartments. There, he skimmed the surface thoughts of anyone whose brain he could get his metaphysical hands on. Those who seemed to have something to hide were probed once unconscious. Dismayed, Robert learned they didn't have anything to do with the bounty.
He left the Shayver facility and went to the Academy to have Noah deliver an anonymous tip to the Imperial Knights.
*
*
The second organization, Michigan Consumer Products, was related to the Headmaster. They lost the most during the tournament. Their headquarters was located in the Great Lakes region, a megalopolis known as Omni City. Built upon the ruins of several American and Canadian cities, the sprawling city covered most of the lake's shores. The corporation specialized in consumer products but from what Robert saw, they were trying to get a buy-in with several City Lords to supply them with Ethertech-enhanced police.
Robert waited for the night to fall and started his operation.
He went through the rank and file of that organization, using Suggestion and Detect Thoughts to probe for information about the bounty. The two spells worked marvelously together. Suggestion placed the thought in the target's mind, causing them to think about it, bringing information to the surface. No clue so far. He also probed them for any illegal activity by their organization. Where the good stuff was. Cash, Prime Vestiges, materials, weapons, alchemical potions.
Just like the other time, this organization too was doing a lot of stuff that had to remain under the radar. But it was mostly dumb shit like marketing products as being of a higher quality than they really were, using food additives in consumables that were supposed to be "green" or "healthy".
Being able to see magic, the wards, and alarms were no obstacle for Robert. They were easy enough to dismantle or bypass, it just took some time. It would leave signs of tampering behind but he didn't care. So long he didn't leave any identifying evidence, Robert was in the clear.
Robert had to move up the echelons to get some decent information. He started to inquire about who had contacts in the criminal underworld and black markets. That gave him some leads. Visiting these people, he started to fill a catalog with names of contacts, fixers, information brokers, and mercenaries.
Finally, he found a lead. Someone knew that the boss was royally pissed because of the incident in Bosstown. He took that personally. While this someone didn't know why, they knew someone who had more information.
With that, Robert moved to the "elders" of the organization, the three stars. After he went through a few of them, he found three of them that he had to drag down to the true void because they were involved with shit that deserved an instant execution. Human trafficking, child abuse, and other stuff.
The void devoured them and rewarded him with affinity orbs. He had no idea what his talent did with them but as he got more and more of the same, the effects increased. Ice orbs, for example, caused acute pain when absorbed. He formulated a hypothesis. Those orbs were tempering his soul. He had to see if he was getting any stronger against these elements and Ice seemed like a good candidate.
But despite the world turning into a better place without these three elders, it wasn't like the others were innocent. They just didn't go down the path the degenerates Robert murdered did. It sickened him. He had half a mind to just eradicate them. Make sure they would never wake up to hurt anyone else but the others hadn't committed any crimes he thought deserved instant death.
Robert stole their storage rings, however. When he learned the location of their vaults, he took what was in there too. The bulky stuff shifted to the liminal void and left it there.
Finally, he found the headmaster's brother, Peter Murphy. The powerful three-star Arch sat on the MCP's board of directors. Robert eroded the man's willpower with id insinuation and dominated him with his Mind Blackout.
With Peter's memories spread like an open book to him, Robert found everything. The MCP CEO, Emmerson Murphy, was the headmaster's uncle and the guy who put the bounty on Robert's head. Disintegration Field was being groomed to become the next leader in case his uncle died. Even if he didn't, the headmaster had a promising career with the empire. Then the guy had to fuck it all up by siding with the Shayvers.
They were equally mad with the Empress but without a five-star of their own, they were powerless. A spark of hope ignited when she declared the trial by combat but the idiot had to die in less than two seconds. Emmerson couldn't attack Samson directly. He intended to kill Amanda but Titania pre-empted that with the marriage interviews. Removing the girl from the board would earn them the enmity of too many people.
Robert felt both relieved and angry when he learned that the only reason they hadn't killed his whole extended family was because he had none. He raided Peter's memories for all the secret access codes, passwords, and bank information. Then he robbed Emmerson of his last nephew.
With the access codes to the secret vaults, Robert caused more damage to MCP than the ten billion bounty on his head. Most of it was stored in the liminal void for later pickup.
Finally, it was time to confront the boss. Robert blinked to the man's bedroom after disabling the wards. Emmerson, a four-star Archhuman, was sleeping in his bed with two women. A quick probe told him they were professional bedwarmers.
He approached carefully to touch the man's exposed foot. Just a little trip to the liminal void. His Prescience lit up like a 5000 Watts orbital laser. He saw instant obliteration and nothing changed that prediction. Robert found he couldn't move or teleport. A sheath of Ether surrounded him.
Emmerson vanished from the bed and appeared next to him. It was so smooth Robert barely caught the spatial fluctuations. "It seems we caught us a little rat."
The man's hand became covered in flames as the muscles in the arm popped and swelled. Then he crushed through Fairy-Robert's mage armor and popped his tiny head like a grape.
*
*
Emmerson rubbed his hand. Pink hair, brain matter, and what appeared to be a tiny head with pointy ears appeared in his hand. He had sensed the invisible attacker because of their killing intent. But what the fuck was this, and why didn't the creature leave a body behind when it died? He didn't recognize the face but it was mangled beyond imagination. Who knew the damn thing would be so fragile?
He burned the remains of the creature sent to assassinate him and shelved it as just another failed attempt in a series of hundreds caught by his talent When would these idiots learn that ambushing him was idiotic?
[BOOK 3 END]