After Maxine finished her class for the day and had gotten hom, she just laid on on her bed. Her students were advancing wonderfully. After they had finished forming their cores nearly a week ago, she had told them to cultivate at home and they could form the basic frame work for their personal fighting style by both sparring and her personal guidence in the dojo. Once they reached a certain level of strength and skill, she would take them into the forest to practice fighting essence beasts as a group.
During her free time, Maxine had figured out a few tricks using the spatial attribute by mimicking it. Like she expected, it was horribly inefficient to do so. One essence dart made of the spatial attribute cost as much as ten of her ordinary ones. However the penetrating power of that spatial essence dart was beyond what she had expected. Instead of only piercing a few inches into a tree like a normal essence dart, the spatial attribute essence dart just kept going through everything in it's path. However it did eventually dissipate, but only after it penetrated twelve trees and a five foot thick boulder.
After that experience, Maxine made a mental note never to give Kanisha a reason to hate her and started to experiement using the spatial in a variety of other ways in an attempt to make a dimensional storage device. She wasn't able to use Silky's arachne silk or essence beast hide as a medium to make dimensional pouches. However after a twelve attempts, she was able to make a single dimensional storage ring out of Twilight Iron, but it only had a one cubic foot of space inside of it. She considered it a success and gave it to Kanisha to study on how to make something similar herself. When the girl was confident that she could, Maxine would provide her with some practice materials.
Maxine even figured out why she wasn't able to make the space inside of her spatial storage device larger. Her affinity for that attribute was essentially zero and she was using a mimicked version rather than the original. Those two facts together made it a few thousand times more difficult for her to create a spatial storage device. Hence she decided to only mimic that attribute with her shadow essence to perform an attack of last resort.
Unfortunately now that she didn't have anything to keep her mind occupied, her thoughts shiften to the impending arrival of the Technological Union's ship. She had spent the remainder of her free time thinking of a way to avoid having to use her clone to fake her death. She really didn't want to hurt Emily. Her first idea was trying to have her clone and decoy hide in the shadow world temporarily until the ship from the Technological Union scanned the planet and left. She even had a good reason for it too since there had been an assasination attempt on her in the past. Unfortunately Hellen told her that plan wouldn't work. It was very possible that the ship from the Technological Union had specific orders to scan Maxine first due to her physical resemblance to Hellen. Since their sensors can scan all the way to the Earth's core, they would believe that Guan had spirited her off of the planet, if she wasn't on it. Which would be more than enough of an excuse to find and capture Maxine.
Maxine's second idea was to take everyone she cared about with her to the shadow world to hide. However she knew it would never work. She could handle the lack of color in the shadow world, but it would be too much to ask for others to do that same. The rest of the ideas were utter stupidity and were swiftly discarded. Hence she was left with little choice but to use her clone to fake her death.
The only thing that Maxine think of that she could let Emily know that she was still alive was through one of her ravens after the ship from the Technological Union left. As for the rest of her Shadow Wolves and ravens, she would make them appear as if they are melting into the ground when in fact they are being sent to the shadow world through small portals in the instant that her clone dies. The only exceptions would be the thirty iron stage Shadow Wolves spread across Emily's, Silky's and her mother's shadows. Unfortunately that plan still left Emily feeling a great deal of pain for some time and prevented Maxine from coming back to Earth until she was strong enough to defend herself.
Maxine got out of bed and walked around the house to help clear her head. She saw Silky was watching an children's anime about fighting robots and one of the characters was a binary clone of some kind. Maxine shook her head slightly and told herself that Silky needed to cut down on the TV shows. However as she walked back to her room, she felt as if she was hit by lightning. Binary clone?! Why didn't I think of that? I could make one that looks like me but has mom and dad's DNA. My appearance could easily be passed off as a atavism of some kind.
Maxine went back to her room as calmly as she could and contacted Hellen via spiritual sense, "Mom, I need to talk to you."
"Yes, what is it Maxine?" Hellen asked via spiritual sense.
"If I made a binary clone using my adoptive parent's DNA, would that be enough to trick that Technological Union?" Maxine asked while hoping that it would work.
"I am sorry, but it won't," Hellen answered, "A careful DNA analysis done by an AI would easily be able to determine it is a binary clone, if you were to make it. It wouldn't work either if your father made it either since it wouldn't possess your shadow essence." There goes that idea. I wonder if uncle Zephyr has any plans, but his would probably revolve around stealthily smuggling me off of Earth before the Technological Union ship arrives.
"Well, shit," Maxine said.
"I know you want to avoid hurting Emily," Hellen comforted, "There isn't much that can be done. The most that your father can do is delay them a few days."
"Why can't things be simpler?" Maxine complained to herself, "Are you sure there is nothing that can be done to avoid this mess?"
"I am sorry, Maxine, but I don't," Hellen said before cutting off her spiritual sense connection.
Maxine sat on her bed for a long while before her cellphone started ringing. Who the actual fuck is calling me?! She didn't even bother checking the caller ID as she asked with venom in her voice, "Hello? who is this?" She just wanted to vent her frustration on someone.
"Is this a bad time?" Patrick familiar voice sounded from the phone. Maxine took a deep breathe and calmed herself down. Patrick doesn't deserve my fury. Turan the fucktard does. Who the fuck told him to do such a good job that they had to resort to paying a ship from the Technological Union in to find me?
"No, I'm just frustrated," Maxine answered.
"About what?" Patrick almost sounded concerned when he asked that.
"Nothing you can do anything about," Maxine answered, "Anyways, why did you call?" I was under the impression that he hated me because I look like the psycho-bitch from the previous timeline.
"I'm sorry for what I said the last time we saw each other," Patrick said apologetically. However Maxine knew that he wasn't sincere in his apology. She knew him well enough that if he really meant it, he would have come to apologize to her face to face.
"You are out of essence cores again, arn't you?" Maxine announced more than asked.
"Yes," Patrick admitted, "Those damn wolves scoured the area clean of essence beasts bronze rank and up."
"Good, it's better that you don't rely on them to breakthrough the ranks anyways," Maxine answered, "It makes your foundation far more stable."
"Hypocrit," Patrick said, "You are using cores to advance the same as I am."
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"I am not any more," Maxine replied to his accusation, "Using cores is great for advancing early, but it can be detrimental to your future development in the later levels."
"How do you know that?" Patrick asked curiously.
"One of those wierd guys with high cultivations that showed up recently told me that," Maxine said, "I think he was called Zephyr." Sorry, uncle Zephyr. I need a scapegoat. I can't exactly tell him my real mother, who happens to be a soul bound to a bracelet, is the one that told me. Not only would he not believe me, he would probably think I am insane as well.
"Why would someone that isn't from Earth tell you that?" Patrick asked. What? He knows they are not from Earth? How?
"How should I know?" Maxine said, "And what do you mean that they are not from Earth?"
"Uhh, nevermind," Patrick clearly lied.
"Dishonesty is hardly fitting of a knight," Maxine mocked Patrick.
"Why did you call me that?!" Patrick demanded in a fearful tone.
"You mean a knight?" Maxine asked while feeling more than just a little confused, "Don't tell me that you don't know that your fans have dubbed you the Crystal Knight? I honestly thought you knew about it."
"Oh," Patrick said over the phone, "It's fine. Sorry that I overreacted." Note to self: do not call Patrick a knight. It probably has something to do with what Maxine from the other timeline did to him.
"Don't worry about it," Maxine said.
"Well, I best get off the phone. I still haven't finished my homework," Patrick said, but Maxine knew he was lying to her again. It shouldn't take him more than an hour to do any kind of homework with his mental processing speed combined with his physical speed.
"Alright, bye," Maxine said.
"Bye," Patrick said before he hung up and Maxine immediately became depressed. So he only wanted to talk to me in order to get those fucking essence cores. I know why he is acting like this, but it's not like I wanted to look like that bitch that tortured him. At least, he still knows it's me and has my back if I need him. Right?
Maxine spread out her spiritual sense and looked for Turan to give him a piece of her mind. Unfortunately she couldn't find him within her scanning range. God damn it. I forgot he could perfectly hide his essence . He could be in the bushes across the street and I still wouldn't be able to find him with my spiritual sense. Still, she continued to search for him until one of her ravens alerted her to some strange men approaching the village. Huh? What's this about?
Maxine focused on her raven and saw fifty soldiers wearing the heraldry of Kenta. The person leading them had a cultivation at iron stage rank two, the same as herself, and looked too young to be Lord Kenta. That may be his son since he isn't that much stronger than that bandit leader I killed before. She noticed that each of them were armed with heavy axes while each of them still carried a long sword at their hip for some odd reason. Behind them, there was a horse-like creature dragging a ballista. What do they need that thing for? Any one of them could easily kill smash walls with their bare hands. Could it be that these idiots fashion themselves as dragonslayers? This is the last thing I need. On second thought, maybe they are just what the doctor ordered. I needed something to vent my frustrations on and those idiots are perfect for the job.
Maxine created a portal to the shadow world and entered it before returning her focus back to her main body. Damn, I'm glad that those jerks from the Alliance don't know that I can flee to this world. The most they would know even if they saw me open a portal is that I am warping to a place that has a lot of shadow essence. For all they know, I have gone to a deep cavern on Earth.
Maxine used her spiritual sense to lock onto the wouldbe dragonslayers and ordered her dragon to destroy the balista with a fireball. She walked out of the cave and saw her dragon slowly move into position just out of the wouldbe dragonslayers line of sight.
Maxine smiled and ran torwards those soldiers while activating Shadow Lord form her essence armor. While she approached them, she kept her spiritual sense locked onto them, so she could observe the potency of her dragon's fire. It finally got into the soldiers' line of sight and they immediately scrambled to ready the ballista. Unfortunately they were too late as her dragon unleashed a small silver fireball roughly the size of her head. That doesn't look like it will destroy that ballista completely, but let's see how much damage it does. The soldiers scattered from the ballista once the small silver fireball was within twenty feet of the balista. A bright flash of light that would have blinded Maxine had she seen it with her eyes emanated at the point of impact. When the flash ended, the balista was gone. Only a small pile of ash and a few pools of metalic slag remained.
However Maxine saw what had happened with her spiritual sense. The wooden parts of the balista had been incinerated and the metallic parts melted in just a handful of seconds. No wonder fantasy novels always say dragon fire is deadly. They literately have a plasma gun packed inside their heads. You have no other choice than to dodge it because if you block, you burn. In any case, now that they have seen my dragon's power, I should make my appearance.
By now Maxine had gotten within one hundred feet of the soldiers and she made the ground within twenty feet of her body sprout with shadow tendrils. "It would seem that you have come to kill my 'pet,'" Maxine said in the shadow tongue while sounding angry, "Now give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill the lot of you for attempting to destroy what is mine." All of them whirled around to face Maxine with either a heavy ax or a sword in hand, and she saw more than one of them had fear in their eyes at the mere sight of her. Regardless of what these idiots say, I am going to beat the living shit out of all of them.
The closest soldier, whom was wielding an ax, charged at Maxine while screaming, "DIE, DEMON!" Demon? Well I guess I do look like one from his perspective. She let him get inside of her shadow tendril field and used one of the shadow tendrils to grab his foot. Her shadow tendril lifted him high into the air and slammed him into the ground repeatedly. However she was careful not to use too much force. She only wanted to break some of his bones, not kill him.
After slamming the bastard one last time, Maxine looked at the rest of them. She waited a few seconds for their answer before she said, "Well? Are you going to answer me or stand there looking stupid?" However after she said it, she knew that it was a mistake. All except for their leader, whom she assumed was Lord Kenta's son, roared their battlecry as they charged at her.
Maxine sighed to herself as she grabbed one of them with one of her shadow tendrils and used him like a club in a sweeping motion to incapacitate several soldiers at once. The others were undetered as they continued their charge. Not too bright of them. She hurled groups of four shadow tendrils at a time to slam into them. She could hear ribs breaking from those heavy impacts.
Unfortunately, Maxine didn't feel any better just from beating them using her shadow tendrils and charged into the fray herself. She punched and kicked them until they were unable to fight back. This actually feels pretty good. To avoid getting hit, Maxine had used her spiritual sense to feel everything within ten feet of her body and dodged accordingly. She almost felt bad that they couldn't hit her.
During that whole time, the son of Lord Kenta was slowly sneaking around behind Maxine, but she had noticed his actions from the beginning. After knocking out the last of the soldiers, she turned and looked straight at him causing him to freeze. She smiled to herself right before her dragon broke through alot of branches before pinning the young man to the ground underneith one of it's claws.
Maxine turned her head back to the soldiers and saw that they were all groaning in pain on the ground. She walked up to the son of Kenta and removed his helmet. She made a show of carefully examining his face before asking, "Are you the son of Lord Kenta?"
He completely ignored her question and roared at her, "Do your worst, demon! My father and brothers shall avenge me!"
"You are mistaken, young lord. They won't be avenging you since I won't be killing you or your men today," Maxine said, "Think of it as me showing your father respect."
"I won't believe your lies!" he growled at her, "You will kill me once I drop my guard." Is he really this stupid? Seriously, I could kill him right now and he wouldn't be able to resist at all. Why would I need to wait for him to drop his guard? I have a feeling that if I keep talking to him, I will end up giving myself a headache. It would be easier just to send him away. Even he should be able to understand that I am sparing him.
Maxine gave him a momentary glare before she whistled loudly as she ordered fifty Shadow Wolves to grab the wounded soldiers and take them to front gates of Kenta city. She gave her dragon a similar order, but it was supposed to carry the idiotic young lord upside down during the whole flight. Perhaps the increased bloodflow to his brain will cure his stupidity, but I doubt it. In any case, I feel a lot more relaxed and I shouldn't have to deal with those assholes again for awhile. I just showed off a lot of combat potential simply by having my Shadow Wolves and dragon return those idiots back to the city. Unfortunately what I just did won't change my current situation at all. I know that I can't avoid the mess that is coming, so I might as well spend time with Emily, Silky and mom while I still can.