27 - Chapter 26 - Day 1811
Adya made her way back to her mother’s office to see how things had progressed in her absence. She was happy that in the current situation they now had almost thirty retainers that she was confident in. She had a feeling that they would need them.
The fact that someone had managed to get to Kevin meant that her family was being targeted. Hopefully Kevin had been able to provide some answers, but somehow Adya doubted it. She didn’t feel their adversaries would be so stupid as to let their pawns have any knowledge that could compromise them. They would have worked through multiple intermediaries to ensure that they were protected from discovery. It would take the targeting of each of the links in the chain for them to be identified. The adversaries no doubt expected to learn of it long before all their middlemen were identified. Stopping the investigation would require nothing more than killing a few layers in the middle.
That thought made her think back to the five bandits who had chosen to die rather than accept her soul mark. No, it couldn’t be that simple. Could some of them be spies for other organisations? By this point she had arrived back at her mother’s office. She knocked and entered.
“Before we get into anything else,” said Adya as she entered, “Parth, can you take 2 guards, and strip search the remaining bandits. Most accepted my offer, but five refused. I was so focused on marking them, that I did not stop to think of the possibilities. It seems coincidental that we have multiple different groups targeting us at the same time. Best to check. Also please make arrangements to retrieve the family members of the former bandits. They don't need to become retainers, but can settle in and find work as part of the farming village.”
“Yes Miss Adya,” replied Parth, then went off to carry out her orders.
“So mother, what have we learned?” asked Adya.
“We have identified the person who was the handler for Kevin.” replied Gauri. “He is actually a minor functionary who works in the finance office. Are you up to creating more soul marks?”
“I will do this one more time tonight, mother,” replied Adya. “Then even I need food and rest. Working at this pace will just lead us to make mistakes. Let's capture this handler, you can get information out of him while I rest. Then we can start fresh tomorrow.”
Gauri gave orders for the spy to be called to her office on some pretext. While they waited for the man to arrive, Adya spent time clearing her mind and entering meditation. She really wanted to start the experiments to understand how power scaling worked, but she needed to give her mind a rest.
She was jolted out of her mediation by the door of the office opening. The spy entered, looked around and tried to make a run for it. He was seized by the guards entering behind him. Before he could take any other action the guard struck his head, knocking him out.
“Strip search him, “ ordered Gauri. “ We need to be sure.”
The guards started to search him roughly and it didn’t take long to find the formation. It had been placed in the same place, on the inner thigh.
“They really like using a position to maximise damage, don't they.” replied Adya. “Not having seen the full effect, I can still make a guess from the formation design. Not only is it designed to kill painfully by destroying the femoral artery, but even if someone manages to save them, the men are likely to have to learn to live without their manhoods. A most diabolical design.”
“Yes, I think that would be for the more senior members of their group.” mused Gauri. “An explicit threat, that if you betray us and somehow manage to survive, you will no longer be a man. A most potent threat, I think most men would rather die.” as Gauri spoke she noticed the men in the room all nodding looking horrified at just the thought of the formation’s functions.
Adya proceeded to place the enforcement formation on the passed out man. With all her practice, she was down to around 8 minutes to place the formation now, and she was soon finished. The only minor amendment that she made was to use the merged soul originator mark, making him enslaved to both her and her mother. The same prompt appeared for her.
The person you are trying to soul mark (loyalty enforcement formation) is bound by an existing loyalty formation.
Options
1, Override the existing formation, replacing it with your own.
2, Break the existing formation while allowing failsafes to take effect.
3, Break the existing formation and suppress all failsafes.
Interestingly her mother received a very different notification.
The person you are trying to soul mark (loyalty enforcement formation) is bound by an existing loyalty formation.
You are unable to override or break the existing formation.
You are attempting to form a soul mark in conjunction with another person. Their choice will apply to your soul mark.
Interestingly, her mother could nor force the soul mark, but whatever option she picked, would also apply, still giving her mother the same level of control. The system really was paying attention to the details. The other thing of note was the sheer amount of willpower that had been required to force the formation in place. This person was much stronger than Kevin. Again not wanting to take the risk without more information, Adya went with option 3.
Again the formations changed from solid to liquid and melted into the body. The identification came across showing the soul mark was now in place.
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While Adya had been working, Parth had already returned and was waiting patiently for her to finish.
“Out of the five, four had formations on them.” replied Parth to the unasked question. “Two were the same as Kevin and this one,” he said pointing to the man Adya had just finished with. “Down to the location. The other 2 had, what looks to us to be different designs, one was placed on the chest over the heart and the last one was on the back, also over the heart.”
“What have you done with the four of them?” asked Adya. Now that she knew that the four had been under the control of the formations, the fifth seemed even more out of place. These are no loyal knights or house soldiers, for whom honour meant everything. Why would a bandit be willing to die? No, something was not right here. “Did the fifth one have any scars, even though he did not have a formation?”
“The four have been bound and are under guard.” replied Parth. “I am not sure we checked for anything that wasn’t a formation.”
“Mother, come with me, I think you will want to see this.” said Adya. “Parth lead us there, let us start with the fifth one, and make sure to restrain him as soon as we enter.”
They all left, by now used to Adya’s weird instructions. It did not take them long to arrive at the holding cells. Jason was already there trying to convince the man to change his mind. The two guards with them rushed into the cell to restrain the man.
Adya had the guards strip the man, then proceeded to check the man from top to bottom. She did not find anything out of the ordinary. She then asked him to open his mouth, and checked inside, still nothing. She was almost certain that he was carrying a loyalty formation. She just couldn't work out where it could be. She had two guesses, the first was that they had cut him open, placed the formation inside his body, then healed him up leaving no marks. Either that, or someone else could use soul marks. She really hoped it was the former.
She ordered the guards to knock him out. Even restrained, he could try to marr her formation to try and stop her. She then quickly went to work scribing the formation on him. This was another case that required a substantial amount of willpower. Even though she had a massive pool, and massive amounts of regeneration, she was starting to feel fatigued. This was a feeling of mental strain unrelated to her resource pools. It was a feeling she knew well from having pushed herself beyond her limits countless times in the past. She would need rest and soon. The, by now familiar, prompt confirmed her suspicions.
The person you are trying to soul mark (loyalty enforcement formation) is bound by an existing loyalty formation.
Options
1, Override the existing formation, replacing it with your own.
2, Break the existing formation while allowing failsafes to take effect.
3, Break the existing formation and suppress all failsafes.
Now she had options. Obviously without seeing the formation, there was no way for her to know what the fail safes were, so option 2 was out. She really wanted to take a look at this formation. Option 3 would remove the formation and she would have no idea what it was or who had created it. Nor for that matter would she know where it had been placed.
She had another potential option to try and find the formation, that was to push her mana into his body and try to find it that way. The problem was that without knowing what the fail safes were, she could not guarantee she would not trigger some form of anti tampering protection by the simple act of searching.
After spending some time considering the options, she decided to go with option 1. This bandit had been captured on a job for the shadowed hand, and would not really have had the opportunity to target her family specifically. She could take some risks with this one that she could not with the ones found within the house retainers.
With some trepidation, she picked option 1. Instead of anything happening, she was presented with a brand new prompt.
Override of existing formation attempted. Please select one of the following options.
1, Leave formation in place, making all its effects inert.
2, Leave formation in place, and replace the formation controller with Adya Gurg.
In both cases the soul mark will still be created. The soul mark will take precedence over the formation in all situations.
This was certainly an interesting situation. She now knew he had a formation somewhere that could not be found on a cursory examination, and she knew her soul mark would have control above the formation. It seemed the system liked its hierarchies. Since the others could not see the prompts and didn’t know what she was pondering, she decided to share some details.
“So my guess was right.” she started. “He has a formation somewhere. My guess is that he was cut open, the formation was drawn, or placed in him, then he was healed. That's why we can’t find it.”
“It also means,” Partha said through gritted teeth, “That we can’t know someone does not have one if we find no formations. What even made you look for one on him?”
“Well, I could not understand why a bandit would want to die.” Adya replied. “It is not like he would be trying to uphold some sense of honour. Not unless he was working for someone else, or under compulsion.”
While she was explaining, Adya decided to go for option 2. Even though that would change the formation slightly, it was still better for her to get an understanding of what the creators intended. As she had no idea how the formation would be made inert, she did not want to take the risk with this one. She could try that option on another one of the four bandits that were left.
As she selected option 2, she felt a massive amount of mana and willpower leave her and enter the man’s unconscious body. The energy streams entered the man at the base of his neck, where the outline of a tattoo shone for a moment before disappearing again.
The amount of mana and willpower used was the same as had been required to create the formation in the first place. She also felt the soul mark snap into place. Somehow she had an awareness of the formation he carried. She had been right. The formation was placed under a layer of skin just at the base of his neck. It had not been drawn, but seemed to be made of a light metal, though without cutting him open, she had no way of knowing what metal.
What she did have was full awareness of the formation design. Sai spent time reviewing the design and adding the newly discovered elements into their existing language model.
“This one is even worse.” sighed Adya. “You can speak to him when he comes too, but I think he will struggle to come to terms with being free. The formation was designed to force his actions in certain situations. He had no way to accept my offer, the formation simply would not allow him to make that decision. If you people think my formation is bad, this one is much much worse.”
Sai: should we incorporate the mental control elements that we have learned into our formation design?
Adya: would it actually give us any additional control? Or just make our soul marked unable to think for themselves?
Sai: the latter.
Adya: Then not for now. We may have a need for it at some point, so iterate a formation design that incorporates it, but we will not be using it at present.
Sai: understood.
As controlling as Adya could be, even she would think twice about controlling a person's thoughts.