Alfa had seen commissioner Bubat terrified, now she was seeing him confused. Really confused.
Was it the question she’d asked?
Could he have been talking about actual oaths, like promises?
It didn’t make sense to her. Bubat had spoken as if he had been talking about people. After all, promises didn’t have children.
And Nan still wasn’t picking.
“Sir?” she tried when Bubat continued to just stare at her in disbelief.
“He didn’t tell you.” Commissioner Bubat’s face looked stricken. “He didn’t fucking tell you.”
“Tell me what, sir?”
Bubat’s face morphed into a full scowl. “The fucking bastard didn’t tell you, and now I have. Could this day get any worse?”
Alfa wasn’t certain she even had the IQ required to understand what was going on, but she knew one thing: whatever Naymond hadn’t told her, commissioner Bubat had only just begun to tell her, which meant that he could stop.
“If it’s not something I’m supposed to know, then you don’t have to tell me, sir.”
Bubat shook his head. “It’s not that simple. You already know that there are a set of people who are referred to as Oaths. And that’s also all I needed to know to be in the mess that I’m in.”
Mess? What mess?
“I can’t, in good conscience, leave you with only that, now that you’re on this side of the line,” Bubat continued. “The least I can do is tell you what I know before I report this.”
“Report this?” Alfa felt another touch of panic. “Sir, I’ve been a good detective up until now. And while I know I’ve slipped up on this matter, I feel like losing my job would be…”
Alfa couldn’t complete the sentence. I feel like losing my job would be what? A little too much?
In her carelessness she’d practically sent an untrained child into a volatile situation. Yes, she had been assured that it wasn’t going to be risky, but look where that had gotten her. A child in a portal. And not just any child, a child of a very important person, apparently.
Losing your job will be an apt punishment.
“You’re panicking for all the wrong reasons, Detective Alfa,” Bubat told her. “Knowing what you know right now has a higher chance of securing your job. Hell, you now have a higher chance of becoming commissioner one day, maybe even going higher.”
“Alright, sir,” she said. “Then if there’s a rabbit hole as regards this subject, I’m ready to go down the hole.”
Commissioner Bubat leaned forward and placed his hands on his table. “Good. But I assure you, This isn’t something you can learn sitting down. You should have a seat.”
Alfa wanted to refuse. For her, there was something about standing when she was on foreign grounds. It felt like she held on to some form of authority, an assertion of dominance in someway.
It said that while she was a guest or an outsider there, she was still her own entity. Like a president in a foreign country.
Bubat shook his head at her as an adult would to a child. “Sit, Firdausi. This is no time for whatever principle has left you standing in my office like a soldier for the duration of this conversation.”
Stopping herself from arguing the point, Alfa walked over to the chairs on the other side of the commissioner’s desk and sat down.
Bubat leaned in closer, as if he was about to share a secret.
“What’s your job, Detective?” he asked.
“Governing and solving crimes related to the Gifted, sir,” she answered.
“And would you say you do it well?”
“Yes, sir.”
Bubat nodded sagely. “I would say you do it well, too.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome. But you also understand that you are very limited in your ability to do your job, correct?”
Alfa nodded. “Not many Gifted want to join the police force so it has left us understaffed. I’ve already been talking to Eckberth about a possible campaign to help attract more recruits.”
Bubat snorted. “Good luck with that. You’ll only get D's and E's with that strategy. Everyone above those ranks wants to be a Delver and make the big bucks.”
“True, but survey shows that not everyone is willing to risk their lives with the unknown. What we’re trying to do is focus on those ones unwilling to go into the unknown. If we can tap into that niche, we could bolster the strength of our precincts.”
Bubat paused. “Good to know you’ve given it much thought. Personally, I don’t know if you’re delusional, ambitious, or if I’m just pessimistic.”
“I would say none of the above, sir.”
“Perhaps. But what I’m trying to say is what do you do when an S-rank decides to break the law. What do you do when you have, as people have recently been calling themselves, super villains who are S-ranks?”
“We deal with it as well,” Alfa answered. “S-ranks are just ranks, sir. They might be powerful, but they are not invincible. There is always a way.”
Bubat cocked a brow at her.
Alfa recognized it. It was the brow you gave when someone who should know better utters something stupid. She wouldn’t lie and say she did not deserve it. As far as she knew, she’d also said nonsense. However, she was right when she said they were not invincible. It was just that every strategy she thought of in dealing with an S-rank involved a lot of deaths.
A B-rank Sage was not an S-rank Sage. Even now, there were secrets amongst the S-ranks that the populace didn’t even know about. Secrets that she didn’t know about.
“Alright,” Bubat tried again. “What would you do if one of the rankers decided to go astray? What would you do if a Delver did something they should not?”
“Aren’t there protocols in place for that, sir?” she asked.
From what she knew, before a company of Delvers could be legalized, the company had to sign an agreement to offer the necessary Delvers required in the event that a Delver decided to break the laws.
Delvers were known to grow more powerful than most Gifted because they used their powers unendingly unlike the everyday Gifted. A Delver going astray was like someone on active duty going astray, simple police officers weren’t equipped to handle that.
“That’s true,” Bubat agreed. “It is the reason Delvers don’t go astray. If a Delver of let’s say the Handilion company did something against a Delver of the Bastion company, the Bastion company can be guaranteed to look into it. If we’re being honest, they are more like a group of gangs keeping each other in check. But that’s as far as it goes.”
Alfa paused. “I don’t understand what you mean by that’s as far as it goes, sir.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why the really powerful Gifted never go astray, never break the laws? At least not publicly.”
Alfa had wondered on a few occasions. Most of the time she’d just thought the world was simply lucky. Sometimes the fear of what the world would do if someone like the number one ranker with the enigmatic class of [Unbound] decided to go astray and start killing people. It was an accepted consensus everywhere that it would take more than twenty people on the list of rankers to stop him.
“I always thought the other rankers would stand up to them,” she said, knowing very well that she was reaching.
Bubat laughed. “Oh, Alfa. People aren’t that good. You have a higher chance of the other rankers taking power into their own hands and doing as they please than standing up to a fellow ranker. It will become like a turf war. As long as you don’t encroach on my territory, you can do whatever you want.”
That was a terrifying thought. It was no secret that all the Gifted police force in the United States couldn’t stop the rankers in the country if they decided to share the country amongst themselves.
There was a belief that military might would be able to stop them, but there was a greater belief that the country would negotiate, instead. After all, if you found a way to successfully defeat your rankers while weathering the casualties that would come with that, how were you going to save yourself when portals appeared.
If the other Delvers began to live in fear of the country they served, what would happen? They would most likely migrate to a different country, leaving the United States defenseless against portals.
The country would be a wasteland in half a decade at best.
“Now imagine this.” Bubat leaned in closer, dropped his voice lower. “What would happen if Dragon-Knight’s dragon decided to go on a rampage?”
“She controls the thing doesn’t she?” Alfa asked.
Bubat shook his head. “That thing’s practically an SS-rank creature, maybe weaker, though. Could be an A-rank. Still, Dragon-Knight has said it herself that she cannot win in a fight against it.”
“If she doesn’t control it why hasn’t the government tried to do anything about it?” Alfa asked, now growing terrified of high ranking Delvers.
“Because they can’t. The volcano it inhabits wasn’t a gift from the government, the thing just took it because it could.”
The world was sounding way more volatile than Alfa liked. Bubat was making it sound like a powder keg just getting ready to blow.
“But none of them have,” Bubat continued. “Why? Because of the Oaths. Now I don’t know what exactly the Oaths are, but I do know that they are not on the ranking because they do not fall under the ranking. They are also natural cataclysms in their own way. From what I’ve learnt since that bastard, Naymond, dragged me into this knowledgeable mess, the government isn’t worried about Dragon-Knight and her dragon because they have Oaths. One of them is quite capable of putting them down if they needed to.”
“That’s terrifying. Are you sure it’s not just government propaganda so that they look like they’re still in power?”
“Maybe, but there’s a video that is completely outside the public eye where an Oath went on a Delve with Dragon-Knight and for some reason she had a disagreement with the Oath. Whether she knew he was an Oath or not is anyone’s guess, but he put her and her dragon down, together. Personally, I don’t think he broke a sweat doing it.”
“And no one knows about them?”
“Well…” Bubat scratched his jaw. “They are the government’s secret weapons after all, and there’s only like a handful of them. You don’t go around announcing your spies to the world now, do you?”
“You do not.”
“Now these guys. These Oaths. They are the ones you need to be terrified of. Rumor has it that they all have world skills, and they are called Oaths because they are Oaths of something, like embodiments of concepts. Personally, I know of three but I’ll only give you one. They call her the Oath of Shields. Rumor has it that she has the strongest defense of any Gifted alive.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Everything you’re telling me is kind of hard to believe, sir,” Alfa said, though she could feel the chill in her spine now.
She’d fumbled and sent the child of one of these such people into a portal. That wasn’t just a fumble, she was looking at death by Oath at this point.
“And the S-rank and SS-rank gates,” Bubat continued. “Why do you think people don’t hear about them a lot? Because the government deals with them. Companies have no privilege or rights to S-rank gates and above. That’s the Oaths’ jurisdiction. Detective Alfa, the Oaths are the thunders and lightnings you feared as a child, but in this case, the rankers are the children.”
Alfa gulped.
“Do you understand why your team must, at all cost, not inform the parents of this child until we’ve solved this problem?”
Alfa nodded.
“But can’t we pull a team together?” she asked. “It’s just a C-rank portal. We can say the Gifted police is going in because the companies are delaying and one of our own is in there. We can use Naymond to sway the press. Then we can keep the press under control while we sneak the boy out.”
Bubat shook his head. “The Gifted police does its duty on earth. We have no jurisdiction within portals. In fact, we are quite literally banned from portals for good reasons. No. This has to be handled delicately and more secretly. I’ll call in a few favors, and you see what you can do on your end. You know Delvers, and I hope to God you’re still on good terms with some of them. If we’re lucky, we’ll survive this craziness.”
“Got it, sir.”
Before Alfa left the office, Bubat showed her a video on his monitor. He got to the video after typing in at least four passwords to get access to at least four platforms she’d never seen in her life.
According to him, she may or may not one day have access to it.
The video he showed her left her quaking in her boots. It was of a man, tall and strong, fighting in a place filled with molten lava and rocks. The place looked like the insides of an active volcano. There was no doubt about where it was. The man was fighting inside a portal, and he was single handedly beating Dragon-Knight and her dragon while a lady simply stood off to the side watching as if she was waiting for the necessary to end.
He made it look as if he was simply teaching them a lesson because he could. By the end of the three minutes long video, Dragon-Knight was a brutal mess. Almost all the skills she’d used on the man had done far less damage than they should’ve.
Alfa had never seen a dragon bleed before. But the most terrifying part of it all was that the man had fought with nothing but his fists. Not a single skill was activated. And he had been calm the entire fight.
Bubat called him the Oath of Madness, and Alfa found herself praying Melmarc wasn’t his kid as she dialed a new number on her phone.
The owner picked on the second ring.
“Honey,” Alfa said as she headed for the exit.
“Yes, babe,” The Blight answered.
“I messed up, I really messed up. And now I need a favor.”
“I’ve got you. What do you need?”
…
A [Damned] twitched around the corner, eyes darting about in skull eye sockets. It was a wonder how they hadn’t fallen out due to how jerky they were in their sockets.
Melmarc watched it quietly from around a wall. The red indicators on the ground were already encroaching on him, closing in. They were faster than the [Damned]. Even now, the [Damned] hadn’t found him yet.
It’s only looking for me instinctively, Melmarc noted from experience. The bugs do the real job.
In the last six days he’d been studying the [Damned], paying attention. Whenever he used [Knowledge is Power] around them, they were very aware of him.
What he’d learned was that they reacted just like people to the skill. They knew something had happened, they just didn’t know why it had happened or what the source was. They simply went looking for it.
The critters buried in the ground were the only things that knew where he was. Even now, his skill couldn’t identify what they were. All it told him was that they were threats.
Melmarc was standing on a slab of stone, watching the [Damned] as the multiple indicators converged on him until a few of them were under the slab of stone.
Melmarc knew they wouldn’t come out of the ground, instead, they would make their way into the stone and come out from directly under him. He doubted they were going after him, specifically. For him it was more likely that they were just alerted of his presence by the skill because the [Damned] was alerted, and they were simply flocking to the closest living thing.
At least that was his hypothesis on it.
He raised one leg from the stone as the critters crawled out from under it. They gathered to the single leg, latched onto it and tried to pin him in place. The sensation of pin-pricks filled his foot in all their capable discomfort and he winced.
He knew the moment the [Damned] was aware of him. The indicator behind the wall started in his direction and he braced himself.
Melmarc had done this enough times to know how it was going to end. Twirling his hand slowly, he charged up his skill. The ring appeared around his wrist like an oversized wrist band and his notification flashed in front of him.
[You have used Rings of Saturn]
[Uses remaining: 3/4.]
The critters continued to flock to his feet, latching him down to the stone more and more. Melmarc didn’t worry about them. For some reason, they never rose higher than his ankle. The only way to move them was to actually touch a part of his body against them.
Another thing he’d learnt about them was that when night came, he was uncontrollably sleepy if he had even one of them still latched unto him. He could fight the sleep all he wanted, but his brain would grow more and more incoherent until he simply just past out.
He’d learnt this on his fourth day. He’d had simple nights prior and had simply tried to see if they were the reason he’d made the stupid decision of falling asleep with them on his body on that first night.
When the sleep had come, he’d fought it, and failure had hugged him like a mother hugs her child.
For fear that the critters might somehow be affecting his brain anytime he fell asleep, he’d never tried it again.
As Melmarc’s watched the [Damned] his arm was beginning to weigh him down, the ring of raw mana gathering to it more vividly by the moment.
A few days of training the skill had taught him a few things. One of which was that he didn’t have to remain in constant motion. The motion was only required to charge up the mana, it was as if pure mana pooled to kinetic energy somehow and only in a certain space.
As for the weight, it felt like lifting extremely heavy dumbbells, heavy enough to pull him down. The more he charged it, the heavier it got.
He moved his arm, keeping his hand in motion, and focused on the indicator on the wall. His focus sharpened on the indicator and he knew how exactly he was going to swing his arm. He couldn’t just throw it carelessly, since it could go off target. Largely off target.
When he was sure of the trajectory he needed, he swung his arm around the corner.
The ring of mana left his wrist and shot around the wall. Melmarc had practiced enough times that now he could throw and it would cut through the air like a discuss. The effect was different depending on how he threw it.
He watched the red indicator as he charged up a second ring of pure mana. It pulled his arm down once more in his familiar weight and his interface alerted him of how many uses were left.
[Uses remaining: 2/4]
Melmarc swung the second ring around the corner just as quickly as he’d done the first one. When the first one struck, there was a loud crashing sound like a shotput falling on concrete. A small, red bar appeared above the indicator, before the second ring slammed into the [Damned]. Half of it was greyed out.
The second ring slammed into the [Damned] and the entire bar greyed out. The indicator above the [Damned] went from red to grey. Melmarc watched the indicator drop from the safety of his cover, then hit the ground.
Ignoring it, he turned his attention down to the critters on his leg and watched them drop off, falling like dead things. The first time it had happened, he hadn’t been able to help the smug smirk on his lips.
Now, it was just the expected. The critters were directly linked to the [Damned]. When they died, the critters died.
After confirming that there were no critters left on him, he returned his attention to a different notification. One he’d seen a few times in the past few days. One he’d never heard anything about.
[You have slain Damned]
[You have gained +54 EP]
[Total EP: 612]
Now he had to figure out what exactly [EP] was. So far each [Damned] he’d defeated had given him roughly around fifty [EP]. Melmarc couldn’t tell if it was based on the difficulty of the [Damned]. Considering he’d fought off most of them from a distance they hadn’t been too difficult.
There had been that one [Damned] that had evaded two blasts from [Rings of Saturn] and had almost taken his head off that one time. His luck had been the fact that it had carried a blunt weapon and not a sharp one. The hit had thrown him over a distance. Actually, it hadn't much evaded them as Melmarc had missed horribly.
After defeating it he’d taken an entire day off hunting them. He’d spent it shivering in one corner of a ruined building, wondering why his life hadn’t flashed before his eyes. He’d been too terrified to even think about what effects his stats had on keeping him alive after he’d been struck, all he’d been able to focus on was the fact that he was still alive.
He was grateful enough for just that.
Melmarc looked down at the massive tear in his shirt, a large gash exposing his chest. There was still a large purple bruise where the [Damned] had struck him.
For the second time in seven days Melmarc had almost come face to face with death. And this time, he hadn’t activated [Knowledge is Power] fast enough to save himself from taking damage.
The [Damned] had been too fast. It had taught Melmarc that [Knowledge is Power] was not the ultimate defense he thought it was. He’d always known that on cool down he would be left defenseless. He’d also known that it was possible for him to activate the skill a little too late, but it was another thing to experience it, to take the damage and the pain only a split moment before activating the skill.
Without thinking about it, he touched the bruise and winced. It was tender, and it still hurt like hell even after a few days.
There were Gifted that healed unnaturally quickly and he was sure this would've been a walk in the park for them.
I guess I’m not one of them.
Melmarc left the building a moment later, stepping over the corpse of the [Damned] as he did. There was no reason for it, but he’d done it regardless. Even dead, an indicator remained over it.
It remained grey.
Outside the ruined building, he pulled up [Rings of Saturn].
Rings of Saturn (Mastery 09.37%)
While skill is in effect you cannot use any other skill.
Conclusion of skill will release lock on other skills.
Four blasts before every cooldown will be available.
+10% damage increase for consecutive successful hits.
When he’d gotten the skill, the mastery had been scaled down and he’d worried his [August Intruder] buff would not affect it. He hadn’t cared in the beginning since he was just happy he’d found a way to defend himself and was excited that he had learned how to use the skill.
When he’d become accustomed to it, using the skill without thinking too much about it, his [August Intruder] buff had kicked in.
Against what he expected of himself, he was really curious of what the skill would be capable of at 10% mastery, and what offer he would be given as an alternative skill.
Right now [Bless Your Kindness] was basically useless, so it wasn’t growing as fast as he would've liked it to. His confusion was on a different subject. Why he hadn’t been getting headaches from using [Knowledge is Power] multiple times since entering the portal was a question he still had no answer to.
For now, he attributed it to the fact that the skill had crossed the 10% mastery.
I’ve got three skills, he thought as he stepped out into the darkening evening. One's above ten percent mastery, and the remaining two are almost there.
He looked up in the direction of the massive palace ruins. It would still be a good while before he got there. But Melmarc wasn’t going there yet. He still had things to do.
Finding Naymond was one of them, but for the past two days killing [Damned] had been at the forefront of things. It wasn’t that he had a personal vendetta against them, there was just something about a point based reward system even if he didn’t know what exactly the points did.
He didn’t even know what [EP] was supposed to stand for.
Experience points?
Melmarc doubted the thought even as it surfaced in his mind.
Isn’t that meant to be [Exp]?
Not for the first time, he was making the mistake of attributing video game rules to what was happening. He needed to stop making that mistake. For all he knew, he could find something new again and expect it to act in accordance with video games and get himself in trouble.
He shook all the countless thoughts running through his head and reminded himself of his task at hand.
Melmarc walked under a darkening sky as he headed for the next small, ruined building. If he was lucky, this one would have only one [Damned] like the last one.
If it did, then he could say luck was confidently on his side. That and his unnatural growth rate, he could say things were going amazingly well.
At least we know which side of the Unranked growth potential I’m in.
It was amazing how he’d been a Gifted for less than two months and he already had three skills.
Alright, Mel. He caught himself skipping. Time to kill some more [Damned] and find Mr. Hitchcock.
Naymond wasn’t a combat class Delver but it was hard to believe he would be having a difficult time.
Melmarc looked to the massive castle. He couldn’t have already gone for the orb, could he?
The castle looked so far away, and Melmarc couldn’t imagine Naymond getting there already.
At least, he had a strong feeling Naymond was safe and doing better than he was. Maybe together they could actually close the portal.
As he approached the building, he thought of where he would be sleeping tonight and groaned.
He really missed sleeping in a comfortable bed.
Showers, too.
And brushing. He missed brushed teeth.
His breath smelled like the [Damned].
…
Naymond dived into the building.
His leg was bleeding out, crushed under a blow from one of the creatures with a massive anvil for a hand.
There were critters crawling all over his bleeding leg and some where on his hand from when he’d had to push aside one of the monsters while he was retreating not too long ago in the afternoon.
He had been lucky the monster had been the only one in that building if not it could’ve been worse.
Naymond hated portals. Now he hated being alone in a portal. What he wouldn't do for a cup of water right now.
I really hope Melmarc’s doing better than I am.
There was a part of him that doubted it, though, but he refused to think negatively. The boy was a [Faker] with no offensive skill. His only hope would be if he could get his hands on a weapon and that jumping attack the monsters used was a skill he could copy.
If not, everyone inside and outside the portal would be in trouble once Madness found out about this.
The only good thing about this portal was that it seemed if you were inside it, you didn’t get hungry or need water unless you were in Naymond’s current state, so he could rule out the fear of Melmarc dying of starvation. There were a few portals like this. Theoretically speaking, the ambient mana served as nourishment in some way.
Melmarc just had to stay away from injuries and he would be fine.
Please be good, Naymond thought, breathing heavily.
Then he experienced his first real stroke of luck today. The numbing sensation in his arm disappeared abruptly and the critters fell off, dropped lifelessly to the ground.
It told him all he needed to know. He wasn’t the only one fighting now.
Relief washed over him.
He wasn’t alone, and that was comforting.