"Hayden Asterox," Nyz said as he approached, checking the messages appearing on his suit's glasses and mentally comparing them to what Kal told him. "You stole something from me."

"I've stolen nothing from you," Hayden said as Nyz stopped walking, standing behind the pair of leather chairs facing the desk. "You, on the other hand-"

"Not me directly," Nyz stated. "And not you directly. However, you had soldiers from your corporation steal something from a friend of mine. My partner. Return it."

"The orb," Hayden said. "It's tricky, figuring out how to use it. But once we do, Asterox will be the leading power supply as well."

"It's impossible," Nyz stated. "First, the orb is keyed to a specific network. You can't use it unless it's in that network, and each key is unique. You would have create a new orb yourself, as well as create the necessary magitech to channel the power through. Second, creating a new orb isn't an easy task. Each time my friend has created one, he had to risk his life at the Nexus to do so. Third, human minds are simply too inferior to manage to decipher the magic woven into its very existence. It takes magitech to an entirely new level."

"You seem terribly confident in your friend's abilities," Hayden said.

"As should you," Nyz stated. "Considering all you can do is follow the design he created. You've had a decade, yet your top magitech engineers haven't managed to reverse engineer his creation."

"Ten years to-" Hayden began, then cut off, eyes widening. "Kal? He's alive?"

"Very much so," Nyz stated. "And he's quite pissed over you stealing from him."

"So he sent you to kidnap my daughter?"

"Didn't you hear?" Nyz asked. "She came to us willingly. She knows about the thefts of the students at Asterox Academy. She even attempted to talk to you about that and put things right. Sen Asterox disagrees with it and wishes for them to end and for those wronged by your company to be compensated, credit given where it's due."

"Thefts?" Hayden asked. "We aren't stealing from the academy."

"Correction," Nyz said. "You are stealing the works of the children and teens attending it. You pass it off as something from your researchers, and when the children grow up into adults and complain, you silence them in some form."

"Of course we use their work as ours," Hayden responded. "Their work and research is their payment to us."

"They did not agree to that," Nyz stated. "It is theft, plain and simple. You have no issue using others to give yourself more power."

He frowned at the message on his glasses, understanding upon reading it why Kal wanted him to take the stairs on the way up.

"I only shot those who attacked me," Nyz stated. "Just like at the secret facility you have hidden deep in the Fog Zone. Yet you didn't inform your security forces of this. You also didn't inform them they stood no chance against me. You were fully aware that my equipment and defense surpasses military-grade, yet sent them to attack me anyway, knowing they would die. This was yet another plan of yours."

"Of course," Hayden said. "The world will see that you are a menace. The military forces of the world will work together to take you down. You can stop attempting to broadcast this, by the way. We're blocking all signals in and out of here for the moment, and when you air it later, we'll easily disprove the authenticity of the broadcast."

"Didn't you hear me?" Nyz asked as the TVs mounted on the walls behind him came to life, showing the news. "Kal's magitech is superior to yours in ways you humans could never hope to compare to. That includes his signals. He performed a live broadcast to entire world with your admission to the theft of the orb, your admission to sacrificing lives needlessly, and to stealing from the students at Asterox Academy. He hijacked every single television station across the globe for this."

Hayden stared at the screens behind Nyz, who could sense the man's shock and annoyance.

"You-"

"You will be silent," Nyz stated. "You have one week to return the orb to us. Fail to do so, and my next attack will not be to talk. It will be offensive in nature. One week from today, at four in the afternoon, I will be at the Obritz ruins in Troak. The orb will be there. What happens if it is not will not be something you will like, Hayden."

The TVs turned off.

"You stole from forces you should not have stolen from," Nyz told Hayden as new information appeared on the glasses in his combat suit. "It is time for Asterox to pay the price. We will start with the Berut Research Facility if our property is not returned to us by the appointed date and time."

As Nyz finished speaking, Kal spoke at the same time.

"Transferring in three… two… one!"

Nyz found himself back in the equipment room at the base on the island, and immediately changed out of his suits and into his casual clothes once more, before making his way to Kal's control room, where Sen sat, staring at the screens in shock as she watched the slaughter Nyz performed on his way up to her father's office.

"He just… let them all die," she said. "Hundreds of security guards, and Father let them be killed. He knew, yet didn't warn them."

"You're seeing your father's true face," Kal told her. "We've shown you some of it already. This is more of it."

"We've upheld our deal," Nyz said. "We've exposed your company's crimes."

Sen was silent for several moments, then nodded and looked at Nyz.

"So what's the Nexus?" She asked. "You mentioned it while talking to my father, and I feel like I've heard you mention it before."

"Erm," Nyz looked at Kal. "You're better at explaining it. I don't remember everything."

"The Nexus," Kal said as Sen looked at him. "Is the source of the fog and the Anomalous Magic Force. It's a pool of liquid magic. Not magicarite, but actual, raw magic. Touching it is pretty lethal to nearly anything living. I use a small bit of it as the core of the orbs of power. The fog and AMF is a direct result of someone messing with it in ancient times and doing something they shouldn't have. As we said before, we could honestly stop the fog if we wanted."

"But it'd cause other problems by doing so," she said, remembering what they had told her before.

"Yeah," Kal responded.

"So if the source of the fog and AMF," she said. "Is the Nexus, then what was the Source that Nyz killed?"

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"Defeated," Nyz corrected, and Sen gave him a look of confusion.

"It's not dead," Kal explained. "The Source is a sentient portion of Anomalous Magic Force. Its mind is spread through all of the AMF, so we'd have to completely shut down the AMF to actually kill it. We call it the Source because that main body Nyz attacked is what creates new monsters. In other words, it's a source of monsters. It's probably what put the venarus plant in Virtul. It'll regather itself a new body in time."

"I thought monsters bred?" Sen asked.

"They do," Kal told her. "But the Source can make more of them, and it can make entirely new ones, too. Nyz actually fought it a few years ago, and we got to see its creation ability live."

"So what was that bomb he threw?" She asked. "It was over in a flash, the Source dead. If it's as powerful as you say, then how did he defeat it with just a bomb?"

"That was a bomb I made extracting essence from Var-Var's blood," Kal told her. "Plus a little extract of fog and AMF. I was able to make exactly three of them with the blood Var-Var donated. Basically, it flash-ignites the AMF. The amount of AMF it can ignite is determined by how much extract of a phoenix's blood I used in it. I developed it specifically for dealing with the Source, though hadn't expected to need to use it so soon."

"The source was defeated, not killed," Nyz tells Sen. "Stop saying it died."

"You should've said that before I started talking," Kal mutters.

"I let you answer first," Nyz said, then looked at Sen for a moment before returning his gaze to Kal. "Speaking of phoenixes-"

"Go ahead," Kal told him. "We've not got anything else to do until the deadline. I've already learned everything I can regarding that case without talking with Var-Var or another phoenix, and Var-Var's the only one who I actually have a way of contacting."

Nyz nodded, then looked at Sen.

"Come with me," he told her.

"Why?" She asked.

"Because you need to know something."

Nyz left and began walking to one of the rooms where he practiced his magic, Sen following. The training room consisted of a large, open space one hundred feet in height, that much in width, and twice that in length. Various training dummies were set up, made with an alloy Kal made to resist magic better than the standard adamant-mithril mixture.

"Kal said this is one of your magic training rooms," Sen told Nyz. "Are you just wanting to show off?"

"I don't 'show off'," Nyz stated. "Stand in front of me, facing away."

"Why?" She asked.

"It's easier to show you, then explain."

Skeptical, Sen moved in front of Nyz and faced away from him. He reached forward and placed a hand on the back of her neck, swiftly taking control of her body. It wasn't something that made him happy to do, but it would make things easier for her.

Raising her right arm, Nyz had her hold her palm up in front of her, then focused on feeling for her own mana, something he knew she had due to her phoenix genetics. Manipulating it, Nyz formed a ball of flames the size of a watermelon above her palm, then had her throw it at a target.

The demonstration done, Nyz pulled his hand away, releasing his hold over her. He only needed to control her for those few seconds, and had no intention of controlling her further, nor ever again.

"Two things," Sen said, staring at the target the fireball struck. "One, please don't ever do that again, that felt disturbing. Two, why did you use magic through me?"

"I used your own magic to do that," Nyz stated, and Sen spun around, giving him a disbelieving stare. "You're seven-percent phoenix, and Kal can't figure out why. Both of your parents are human, and there was no experimentation done. Even your father can't figure out why you're not fully human, though he hasn't figured out what you are."

"You couldn't have just said that?" She asked. "I mean, I know I'm not really believing it, but-"

"Remember that feeling you just had?" Nyz asked. "That wasn't from me controlling you. Well, the part where you were uncomfortable by having your body move without your wishes? That was. But that disturbing feeling of something moving through you? That was your mana being shifted. It was inert, unused. However, if you train it, it'll flow more smoothly and feel more natural."

"Mana?" Sen asked. "But-"

"It's because you aren't fully human," Nyz began to sit, a chair zooming from the wall to move under him, allowing him to sit without dropping to the ground. "And possess the blood of a powerful, magical creature. As a result, you have mana, which allows you to use magic. I didn't notice because it's a weak amount of mana and was inert. I only even know because Kal told me about you being part-phoenix."

"So you're saying that I can do magic?"

"Yes," Nyz told her. "Remember that feeling, and focus inward. Magic is essentially just a type of muscle to use. Shift it, focus on that feeling you had, and then draw upon the mana again. You should be able to generate flames. Doing a spell the size I did, though, won't be something you can do without training."

Nyz began to watch as Sen focused, and he read the mana flowing through her. As he expected, she was able to shift her mana within moments by remember how it felt to have it move through her. The teaching technique he used was performed at Obritz, as once someone knew how their mana felt and how it felt to move it, they could manipulate it much more easily than someone simply explaining it to them.

He suppressed a snort as he remembered when they used the technique on him, when they first started teaching him magic at five years of age. He felt the shifting of his mana, figured out how they were doing it, and then used it on them to drain them dry of their own mana.

It took Sen only a minute to manage a small flame above her palm, and she stared at it for a few moments before losing control, the spell ending and flame disappearing.

"It didn't hurt at all," she looked at Nyz. "I mean, I could feel the flames against my hand, tingling, but it didn't burn or anything."

"It wouldn't," he told her. "A quirk of magic is that it generally doesn't hurt the caster during the active casting stage. Once you release your control of it, then it can hurt you, but it generally wouldn't before then."

"I see," she said. "So was that you casting a spell that drew the chair over here?"

"You're much too inexperienced to do that, but yes," he told her as another chair zoomed over. "Want a seat?"

Sen moved the chair so that she she could sit facing Nyz, then once seated, began focusing on casting the spell again. For half an hour, she generated a flame above her palm, then worked on sustaining it while not actively paying attention at all times.

"So," Sen looked at Nyz once she felt confident enough in her ability to sustain the flame without needing to devote her attention to the spell. "You guys don't know why I'm part-phoenix? How does that even happen without some sort of experiment?"

"That's why Kal wants to contact Var-Var," Nyz told her. "He's hoping for answers, and suspects that Var-Var had something to do with it."

"What's your theory?" She asked.

"Mine?" He asked, and she nodded. "I haven't given it much thought. I'm not a super-genius like Kal, so I let the heavy thinking be his thing. Don't give me that look, I know I'm not an idiot."

"I didn't say you were," she said.

"I'm empathic, remember?" He tapped his head. "I can sense the emotions of those around me. It was pretty clear what you were thinking. This is just something that goes beyond my area of expertise, so I don't bother thinking much about it."

"Okay," Sen said. "Well, if you had to take a guess, why do you think it is that I'm part phoenix? Guessing doesn't take any fancy thought or in-depth knowledge of things."

Nyz thought it over for a few moments, then shrugged.

"I would say that Var-Var messed with you while you were in the womb," he told her. "Specifically because of our soul-bound state. He's much more knowledgeable than he portrays, and I'm guessing he knew I was going to be born into a body that wasn't fully human, and so wanted to make sure there was a 'perfect vessel' for the person whose soul is the true mate of mine. It's even possible he knew that the rest of the project would die, including all of the females, leaving just three males behind. In that case, he'd want to create a vessel for my soul mate's soul that wouldn't be killed, and so looked somewhere else. He took a gamble, messed with someone at their conception, and when the soul flowed into it shortly after, saw the gamble paid off. My soul mate would be born into a body that was a little better than a human's, and it would be capable of magic as well, even if not as well as mine. That's what I'd say, anyway, though I'm probably wrong. Hell, that probably doesn't even make sense."

"No, it does," Sen told him. "You're saying it's possible Var-Var did this specifically so that your soul mate wouldn't be fully human, but someone more like you and Kal. Because if they were fully human, you'd probably not be willing to go long-term with them, especially knowing you'd end up dying."

"Maybe," Nyz shrugged. "But it's all speculation, and I doubt we'll ever get an answer if it is Var-Var. By the way, your flame went out."

"What?" Sen looked at her hand and saw that the flame was no longer there. "Damn."

"You're a beginner, so it's fine," Nyz told her. "So. Want to learn more about how to use magic? We've got a week before I'm going on a rampage. I might be willing to take you along… if you get up to par. Though the terrorist isn't coming with me, that's for sure."

"You should really give Taylor some slack," she said. "He made a bad choice, and has accepted that and is trying to help make things right."

"Well, he shouldn't have made that choice."