"Leaving sounds good," Alicia said at once.
"Six days in a war zone doesn't sound so bad," Shen agreed. "We're strong, don't need to eat or sleep, and have anti-boredom enhancements. But we need to find where the Maiden was when she entered the tutorial. We're here to save her, after all."
"As far as we know, she'll arrive in Florence. We can just follow the fight when she's about to arrive."
Shen thought for a moment and ended up disagreeing. "That might backfire if the fight was far from where we might be at the time." He moved toward the door that separated the kitchen from the restaurant's dining room. "We should just ask."
On the other side, he found a military administrative room. Uniformed people sat by tables, discussed things, and walked everywhere. Notebooks and papers showed a lot of information, and a big map on a long table—created by putting smaller tables together—showed the disposition of troops around the city.
An X on the map with the label "Marzia" showed precisely the building where that underground restaurant was.
The few people who noticed Shen didn't come to do something about him, though they showed surprise. He immediately turned, grabbed Alicia by the waist—she was walking after him, and they almost collided—and kept walking. Soon, he was out of the door through which he had entered the place.
"Marzia will arrive in this building," Shen explained as he put Alicia on the ground. "There was a map and a big X. I doubt they will say anything different if I ask."
The kitchen's staff entrance led to a small room with a few doors. Shen took the exit, finding himself on a very long, narrow concrete stairway leading to street level. He and Alicia climbed it quickly.
Two war tanks and multiple soldiers protected the stairs. Shen grabbed Alicia again, jumped over the protection—no one attacked, as he was leaving instead of invading, and they had no orders to prevent that, it seemed—and disappeared into the city.
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The following days passed fast. Alicia and Shen kept hiding or killing anyone they identified as enemy troops. They also got unlocked smartphones from their fallen foes and got internet access.
There was a lot of news about the US. After deliberation, Congress had confirmed that it was indeed illegal for any state to declare independence. A civil war of gigantic proportions had arrived in America.
Evelyn appeared a lot on the news too. The civil war made almost everyone worried about the threat of the upcoming rifts. Evelyn was the face of the solution, the Guardian Association.
The Guardian Association claimed to be looking to protect Earth from external threats and nothing else. Its members wouldn't interfere with the civil war but instead wait to deal with the rifts. The US Congress had already given it its blessing to operate in the non-seceded states. They had also passed a law allowing military Guardians to temporarily leave service and join the Association until the danger of rifts was adequately assessed.
Shen had gotten plenty of messages. The US government hadn't shut down or taken control of his social media accounts, though he guessed they were now using his access to track him down. He didn't care. He could deal with whatever they threw at him.
Almost all Pioneers he had contact with agreed Marzia should be protected. He sent them a message saying he was in the area and telling them where Marzia would arrive at. He doubted whoever might intercept the message would have difficulty finding out about the location, but the "common people" like the Pioneers might.
Finally, Italy was the main focus of what remained of news agencies and social media—by the way, many people swore the Alliance had to be interfering for the internet to still be a thing.
Pictures of destroyed Italian cities, especially Florence, were all over the internet. Videos of attacks, torture, and gore were shared without limits. No one seemed to know why the filters were off.
People argued for and against the Maiden, but Shen got tired of it after a few minutes. No one wanted to change their minds; they just repeated the same things and offended each other.
His relationship with Alicia improved a lot. They shared both superficial and personal things about themselves. Shen talked about how he had felt lonely as a child, and Alicia told him she was afraid of boys and was glad he hadn't exploited her weakness to abuse her.
Shen even participated at the beginning of a session she did manage to set up online with her therapist, though the audio delay was annoying to deal with.
Most of his idle time was spent training. Mastering Combat, plus the personal knowledge his Battle Sense gave him, gave him the extra edge he needed to level up his spear Skill.
| Skill Level Up — Windstorm Spear Art (C-) — Level 4
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The knowledge of a C- Skill at level 4 was enough to push his understanding of Zephyr ahead too. The Windstorm Spear Art drank heavily from the Concept of Windstorm from the Laws of Wind, and Zephyr came from the same Law. The insights he got pushed it way, way ahead.
Currently, his levels of insight on his Concepts were at 90% Sharpness, 87% Zephyr, 66% Arc Flash, 65% Flow, and between 22 to 47% Boundlessness.
That was a result of studying mortal laws of physics, which gave him a fresh perspective on many things, the extra 10% learning ability provided by his Title, a lot of meditation back in his house, training his Skills, and using his Battle Sense to better apply his Concepts to his body—which, in turn, let him understand the Concepts better.
He also improved his footwork, but not enough to reach level 7.
Lastly, his Battle Sense's range had significantly increased. Merely merging Combat with War's ability had been enough to double its range—all he had needed to do was try to push it further. After realizing it, he also took his time to study the ability.
His desperate defense against the missiles back in Iceland had been crucial for that improvement. When he had pushed against Reality, he had felt how the Laws weaved the fabric of existence together. It let him understand better how his Concepts could simply connect him with his allies and enemies—and without energy expenditure to boot.
Shen managed to push his Battle Sense up to six hundred yards, though the number of people he could connect with was still limited to about five hundred. On the positive side, the "Combat part" of his ability now worked on them all, enemies and allies both—though the fewer people he used it on, the more moves ahead he could plan against them.
Another improvement was feeling vague impressions of traps, weapons, and the like. Those impressions didn't take the slots of the people he could feel, which was great.
All in all, it was a significant improvement that he was proud of.
His Battle Sense was one of the best tools in his arsenal. Shen still hadn't found anyone who could block the ability. He guessed going against it required a mastered Concept. Fortunately, no one seemed to be there yet.
Shen felt like a well-oiled machine created for slaughter. He also felt like he had hit a bottleneck. He had just improved the most he could without something to push him ahead.
To go further, he required actual challenges.
Earth, it seemed, lacked those.
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"After saving Marzia, I'll go find Sai, then search for a way to find my clan's ancestral grounds," Shen informed Alice on an evening.
It had been four days since he had killed Martino and Boisclair.
Shen had admitted online to killing Martino and Boisclair, whom he had learned were the Free Republic of Florence's Interim President and General, respectively. The Republic's new leaders insisted Shen had fabricated lies about the torture and blackmail.
To make things worse, Martino was also Marzia's father, who had been coordinating all efforts to save her. His claims of wanting to protect Marzia fell on deaf ears. Shen didn't think there was any scenario where she wouldn't sanction his Title now, either.
He still didn't regret it.
Either way, both sides called him a murderer and wanted his head.
"Sounds good," Alicia replied from where she was sitting, looking at a black fireball floating in front of her.
They were in a destroyed house's basement. Shen had had to move a lot of debris out of the way, but they had learned that air surveillance made staying outside too annoying. Everyone found them and tried to kill them even after repeated failures.
"Regardless of how fruitful my search for the ancestral grounds is, I'll go looking for challenging rifts next," Shen continued. "And I guess I wouldn't mind checking the Alliance's sanctioned training grounds."
He felt the front lines were still a big no. On a scale of power that went from G to A, his D-rank was right in the middle. He wanted to be at least above average before facing Void Spawn, though his plans might change depending on what he learned in the future, especially on the training grounds. For all the tutorial had taught them, it had said very little of the power balance in the Alliance—probably on purpose.
"I'll be right behind you," Alicia said absentmindedly.
She had revealed to him that her therapist had pointed out that she was in a dependency relationship with him. It was supposedly bad for her, but she wasn't ready to move on. She would go wherever he went for the foreseeable future.
The ground shook as something exploded nearby—Shen estimated it was closer than a mile. That was pretty common these days, so he ignored it until the first explosion was quickly followed by others—and got closer.
He activated his Battle Sense.
In the past, the ability had automatically connected with whoever was nearby, without his input. It still did that, but when there were more than five hundred people in its range, it came with an extra "function."
Shen felt a very muted warmth in any direction with a living being he wasn't liked to. He could will the ability to connect with whoever was in that direction, and it would link him to the first person there, at the cost of removing one of the already existing five hundred connections.
He was currently only a few hundred yards away from a military encampment. His Battle Sense immediately connected him to five hundred people, none of whom were close to the explosions—which he felt were artillery shells hitting the ground.
Shen had to will his Battle Sense to connect with whoever the shells were trying to hit—there was warmth in that direction—and he found them instantly.
The War part of the ability let him feel the person as if they were in front of him and he had instantly analyzed everything he could about them.
The person he connected with was a girl around eighteen years old running for her life. She was wearing tight-fitting leather armor and wielding a shortsword. Her facial expression and body language were of pure terror.
The Combat part of his ability gave him even more details about her. He felt her power—middle E-rank—analyzed how she ran and held the sword, determined how likely she was to fight, assessed her threat, and made countless battle plans on how to kill her.
She was running at F+ speed, and her path would place her a couple buildings to the side.
That wasn't the first time Shen saw or felt a young person in Italy; he had killed plenty of them in the past few days. It was also not wise to get involved in a fight he knew nothing about; there were no innocents on that battlefield—e had found not a single civilian around except as corpses.
So, Shen didn't think for even a second that she was a naive Guardian who had taken a wrong turn and suddenly found herself in the middle of Florence two days before the Maiden arrived.
However, something in her absolute panic made him want to save her.
Maybe it was simply the basic human decency that Alicia had accused him of not having when it came to the US President. Possibly, his hormones simply wanted him to save a girl in need. Or perhaps he was just bored.
Either way, Shen said, "Be right back," and rushed to the rescue.
He just hoped she wasn't an enemy, or he would have to kill her anyway.