"Greg!" Yelled the Boss, immediately spinning on her heel to check what fresh mess her underling had cooked up.
Honestly, she wasn't the only one thinking along those lines.
[Ego what the hell is-]
[Fine! We're fine. I just had to knock Greg out myself before he blew the whistle. But we're still searching for the cuff key, so no matter what you have to do, don't let anyone up here!]
[...Understood.] He projected, his thoughts a jumbled mess from the idea of the Monk hurting anyone.
How the fuck was Morgan going to keep a paranoid criminal from investigating a suspious sound originating from where her underling should be disposing of a potential danger?
Simple. Give the foe something more dangerous to worry about. In fact, the sudden challenge excited him.
"Are you sure going up to check up on your minion is wise?" Morgan called out to her retreating back. "You'd be leaving me here unintended. Who knows what I'll get up to?"
She paused, and for a second, Morgan thought he had her.
"PETE!" Bronte roared with enough force to alert every pete in a 10km radius before turning around to give her prisoner a nasty grin of triumph. "To your latest question, the answer is nothing; my minion will keep you company. As for whether my action is wise, I will have to answer yes. Now be a good chained mutt while I make sure my other goat hasn't been gutted by a hound."
Huh, well, that failed miserably.
Now, the Professor was going to have to do something idiotic. A stalling tactic that might not even work, and even if it did, there might be hell to pay down the line. However, Ego had said 'no matter what'. Hopefully, that wasn't hyperbole on their part. If it was, then the Spirit had only themself to blame.
Besides, the Scientist had wanted to do precisely what he had in mind since seeing his first Satyr.
"And just like that, I've run out of questions, and by your count, you still have two. Impressive. I wasn't expecting such quick thinking from you." He praised the Sage as she placed a foot on the staircase. "But with an Intellect Stat of 103, I guess I shouldn't be surprised."
*Crack!* The wooden step of the staircase snapped in half under the force of a startled Cyclops.
"...What was that?" Bronte asked in a deadly whisper that was more frightening than her screaming.
"No need to act coy with me; be proud of your achievements. I'm not sure how you rank among others at your stage of Cultivation. Yet, I can confidently say that a Stat over a hundred is the highest I've ever seen. Honestly, I find your Overall Rating of Middling as strange." Morgan gave her a short-lived smile, unable to help himself. "Is that answer enough for you?"
Upon answering her third question and satisfying the terms of their Oath, the Professor felt relaxed. Or rather, he felt as if the figurative noose around his neck had been removed, and the return to normalcy was almost a blessing.
It was hard to tell if the other party felt similarly or had even noticed. Since the Cyclops had slammed the mask visor down and closed the distance with a speed that did not match her massive frame. Bronte's dinner plate hands grabbed the front of Morgan's lab coat and lifted him off the ground, raising him above her own head.
"Eh?" Morgan frowned down at the masked Cyclops, angrily sputtering in his shadow. "Did I touch a nerve, Bronte Legionborn?"
Her mighty arms trembled, and he doubted it was from muscle strain.
"Shut up, mutt! I'm the one with a valid question to ask; I don't have to answer a damn thing! For my last question, I want to know if-"
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure our Oath stated that we needed to speak with each other eyes to eye." Morgan interrupted, opening his fist behind his back, and willed the surprise hidden inside to zip down on the deck.
"AH!" Bronte slammed the visor back up. With her eye opened so wide and the air drenched in the scent of ozone, he half-expected lighting to shoot from it.
Was he smelling the gathering energies before the Skill triggered? He shouldn't be from what research and experience taught him. Prana energy would be as reactionless as ambient Aether until triggered, but triggering a Skill should be impossible with his own Foundations so close. If only the Scientist could satisfy his curiosity with a quick peek with Perception.
But the foe was cagey enough without adding Bloodlines to the mix.
"Good." He said, watching the surprise hover just behind her head, ready to move at a moment's notice. "Now I can properly enlighten you."
Morgan jerked his head to the side, allowing the afternoon sun to shine right into Cyclops's sensitive eye. The pupil shrank to a pinprick, desperate to limit the light flooding in. She blinked hard, and Morgan willed his surprise to hide in a location where it could be of more use when the time came.
"That was a cheap shot, you bastard!" She shrieked and turned so the sun was to her back. "No more games! Tell me, are you an Inquisitor?!"
"Good question. Personally, I would have asked that instead of questioning your stupidity, but to each their own." He raised a brow as her jaw dropped wide open. "Don't look at me like that. I warned you about being predictable. "
"T-that wasn't a question!" She protested vehemently, shaking him with every sentence as if answers would come tumbling out of the man. "That was sarcasm! It can't count!"
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Well, clearly it did; otherwise, they'd still be under the Oath's effect. But seeing Cyclops so distraught was a good sign; it showed how valuable his information was. Now, the Professor had the leverage to coerce Bronte into another Oath, this one favoring him. If she refused to make a deal, then he could just set off his… surprise?
Was someone speaking behind him?
"...get sent down here to do the drudge work, then not five minutes later, it's all banging and shouting for me to come back up. Can't stop in the middle of fueling up the Array, yet these damned hoofless…" Muffled, raspy complaints rose over the silence just before the trapdoor to the hold popped open, revealing the top half of Pete the Unicorn's head. "Here I am, no need to-"
Both Cultivators turned to Pete, who had become a deer in the headlights at the odd scene he had entered.
Oh shit, Morgan had forgotten about him.
"My apologies." Bleated Pete nervously. "Clearly, I'm not needed here, so I'll-" The Satyr paused when he glanced at Bronte before pointing a finger at his forehead. "Boss. Why do you have a Realm Hopper egg under your helmet?"
Well, there goes the surprise.
[Ego. I hope you've found that key because we're out of time.] Morgan projected and didn't bother waiting for a response before slamming down the helmet visor. Without looking, he pointed a finger at the Satyr, "Wrong, you bipedal unicorn, it's a Wisp."
At the same time, the Professor uttered the name of the fourth and final Technique and ignited the red glowing surprise trapped within the helmet.
Wisp was inspired by the Lamp-plants of Lamplight Isla, and out of his three combate capable Techniques, Wisp was the weakest. It basically made Mana mimic pure light, making it as harmless as a hologram. But what it lacked in power, it gained in vast utility.
The design was as simple as a candle, consisting of only fuel and a wick, both parts constructed from Mana. Morgan surrounds the wick, Mana willed into the shape of a light prism, with a set amount of Mana that will fuel it once he triggers the Tech. By manipulating the angle and rotation of the wick, he can change the color. By adding more wicks, Morgan can create floating neon signs that move as if alive. By altering how quickly the wick burns through the fuel, he can control the brightness.
As a rule, Wisp had to be triggered with a minimum burn rate equal to a candle's brightness, or it fell apart, which was why the Professor had to keep it hidden in a palm. However, now that it was placed on the same side of the visor as Bronte, Morgan could have the wick flash burn all the fuel instantly.
He had tested doing just that in the cave with a Wisp consisting of 3% of his max Mana pool, and that flash lit up the ceiling as if he brought in a miniature sun.
The one inside the helmet had been stuffed with 15%, a little extra on behalf of Bizarro Swamp's dearly departed. The last thing the cyclopean Cultivator ever saw was the Professor's shaded face partially covered by a red sun. That infinite wall of color would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life, and only darkness would greet her waking hours.
For the Mortals on the other side of the glass, they experienced something far less dramatic. First, there was a red flash comparable to what cameras could produce, then came the screams.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!" Bronte howled bloody murder, immediately dropping the Professor before ripping off the now useless helmet and understandably rolling on the floor in pain. “BASTARD OF A MONGREL CERBERUS! I'LL CYCLE YOU FOR THIS! I SWEAR ON THE HEAVENS, THE HOTTEST HELL, AND MY DAO THAT I WILL…"
Morgan began ignoring the screams, as he had better things to do than listen to 50 different descriptions of his plotted murder. Instead, he got up to his feet and started fishing in his pocket for the cuff key—a key that should have been in his inner pocket instead of the empty space his hand felt.
Did it fall when the Sage shook him around like a rag doll?
"Looking for this, you hoofless prick!?"
…This had to be some kind of sick cosmic joke at his expense.
With the quiet, perhaps even mildly insane, wrath of a person who just wanted to take a nap, the Professor turned to find Pete holding his key.
A roll of white gauze had been wrapped around the top of his head, save for the single horn that poked out from the right side. Each nostril had been stuffed with more gauze to halt the bleeding. Otherwise, he looked exactly the same: pants, no shirt, and clearly spoiling for a fight.
"You want this key?" He taunted before dropping it into a pouch within the pants and striking a pose an amateur might consider a fighting stance. "You're gonna have to fight me and take it off my broken bleeding corpse. Don't bother using that Mod Skill; by the way, I'll just close my eyes before the flash. You may have tricked the Boss, but the Bipedal Unicorn Itsawisp is useless against me."
…Holy shit, Morgan did not have the energy for this nonsense.
"A couple of things you should know before you do something incredibly stupid." Lectured Morgan as he started circling around the possibly brain-damaged Satyr, throwing phantom jabs to intimidate him. "First, you are outnumbered as your brother in the cabin is unconscious while the other captive is being freed as we speak. Your leader is rolling around the deck half mad from pain, but soon she will realize this is a very flammable boat filled with people she doesn't like, so I would like to suppress her Class with these cuffs before that happens. Third, you are an Archer without a bow and arrow. Fourth, closing your eyes will not save you. And last, the name is Wisp."
"Greg isn't my brother."
"I really don't care."
"And I don't care if I got your stupid Skill's name wrong." Pete snapped, jumping and moving his hoofs in an insulting intimidation of footwork. "What kind of a Skill name is Wisp anyway?"
"Wisp?" An unfamiliar voice asked with cold consideration. "I can't say I've ever heard of a Skill like that one, modified or not. In fact, I didn't even know there could be a Skill with less than three syllables in its name."
The deck grew quiet as a blind Cyclops, a chained Human, and a one-horned Satyr turned in unison to face the new speaker.
Standing behind them, obscured in the shadow cast by the cabin that had once imprisoned her, was a figure in a purple cloak. Gripped in each gloved hand was a dagger with a honed blade forged to resemble the wing of a bird of prey. From under the hood, eyes of gray steel pierced through the unnaturally thick darkness obscuring the rest of her face.
Those eyes radiated pure, unfiltered hate and spiteful glee at seeing the sorry state of her former captors. If looks could kill, Bronte would be a bloody pool of mincemeat, while Pete would be nothing but mutton on a plate. Even Morgan felt some of the hostility leaking onto him just from being so close, and a desire to put his back against a wall seized him.
When her attention rested solely on the Earthling, her gaze didn't soften at all; however, the hate and spite melted away. Which wasn't a total surprise, as Ego had likely filled her in on the situation beforehand. Even still, Morgan had been worried the Caesar might've blamed him for unintentionally getting her attacked and kidnapped because of a perceived connection. Thankfully, at least for the moment, it looked like she was willing to believe the enemy of her enemy was a friend.
Perhaps if they all survive this mess, she could be convinced to bring them into the Capital or at least point the way.
"Professor Charles Morgan, I presume?" said the Hound, and when the shocked Scientist nodded in the affirmative, she let out a satisfied sigh. "Thank the Heavens, Professor, that we have finally met. I have been looking for you all morning."